This is exactly the kind of government overreach people like me have been screaming about since, in my case, the 1990s.
“I told you so” just doesn’t feel so good when what’s happening is nothing less than the entirety of human freedom and liberty is being eroded before our very eyes, and those who disagree with it get labeled as kooks, and accused of hating whatever “oppressed group” of the day is in vogue.
Yes. I had always worried about the copyright industry. That was the big money pushing for censorship. Controlling access and exchange of information is part of their business model and even personal ideology. But I don’t know how much this has actually to do with them, and how much is simply the will to power.
What I did not see coming at all was how the left would completely 180 on these issues. That, at least, I blame on the copyright industry.
Right wing people have screeched about “the intolerant left” forever, but I always ignored the obvious hypocrisy. I took it as a debate on what is permissible in polite society. But now Europe is at a point where there is simply a consensus against free speech. Only the most illiberal forces will be able to use these legal weapons to full effect. That will be the extreme right.
It’s just a logical extension of what happens when government becomes the arbitrator of all.
The biggest issue is that so many people see it just as you do, left vs right, instead of liberty vs authoritarianism.
For decades, the libertarian movement, as seen by the left, has been largely associated with the right, simply because of their professed support of the free market, and dislike of gun control
But that same movement has been seen by the right as largely associated with the left, because of their views on things like the drug war, enforced morality, and anti-corporatism.
Has there been a large shift of alt-right into the libertarian movement over the past few years? Yes. Absolutely. And I despise it with a passion.
But there are still quite a lot of us truly anti-authoritarian libertarians out there who despise both left, and right leaning authoritarianism.
But when I bring up issues of authoritarianism, I get “BoTh SiDeS?!” bullshit responses. Because YES, as we can see, BOTH SIDES do their own fair share of this authoritarian bullshit.
They differ in methods, yes. But the bottom line is an encroachment on personal privacy. Plus, property rights are just a logical extension of personal privacy rights.
Well to be fair the left in the usa does have another reason to see the libertarian party as just another right wing party. They vote republican when it comes down to D vs R
I’ve never voted for a Republican OR Democrat that I didn’t know personally in my entire life. Why do I add that qualifier? Because I did know some older small town politicians, in both US parties, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when my grandfather was still alive, and they were his friends.
So you just don’t vote for most offices then?
No. Voting for the lesser of two evil is still voting for evil. I’ll write someone in before I vote for some party functionary that only cares about their own political power.
The ideal of free speech is a naive fantasy especially with social media which can amplify the craziest of ideas which can go viral.
Yes the Left has gone overboard with their thought policing however the right wing in want their personal bigotry to be allowed and nobody else (no mention of DEI in USA government institutions allowed). The Left want free speech for everyone except the bigots but then their definition of bigots becomes a slippery slope.
I mushed a lot of things together in my post. Copyright and political censorship have very different motives behind them. The point is that, to enforce copyright, you need extensive surveillance of online content and the means to shut down the exchange of information. That requires an extremely expensive technical infrastructure. But once that is in place, you can use it for political censorship without having to fear pushback over the economic cost that would come even from politically sympathetic actors. Conversely, if you introduce political censorship, you might get support by the copyright industry, including the news media, for helping their economic interests.
Where it gets to political censorship, the paradox of tolerance is exactly the lunacy that I’m talking about. In mad defiance of all historical fact, there is belief that liberalism is weak, that political dissidents must be persecuted, information suppressed. Never in history has democracy fallen because of a commitment to tolerance. All too often, they fall because majorities feel their personal comfort threatened by minorities and support the strong leader who will “sweep out with the iron broom” (as a German idiom goes).
Do you notice how that Wikipedia article has nothing to say on history?
Conversely, if you introduce political censorship, you might get support by the copyright industry, including the news media, for helping their economic interests.
Never occurred to me. Interesting point to ponder.
“sweep out with the iron broom”
The would-be fascists don’t want democracy. Note how Trump is softening up the public by using the term fascism lately.
Good essay:
The goal is to shift the Overton window: dictatorship is not a threat, but a regrettable necessity… dictatorship as safety, democracy as danger.
https://michaeldsellers.substack.com/p/trump-says-americans-would-rather
You’ve been screaming about internet censorship since before the internet?
Fucking time traveller right here
What are you talking about? The internet existed all through the 90s
It sure did. Well done!
… I was online in 1993, bro. I was dialing into BBSs with worldwide fidonet bulletin boards even earlier than that.
Don’t be such a dipshit.
Back in my day we had to dial in to get the internet.
GoddamnGl Gubberment ruining everything
Brother, delete this silly comment and be a nicer person. Please, there is still time!
Nah. OCs a whinging boomer.
“Screaming” “People like me” “liberties eroding before our very eyes”
It’s like he’s never read a history book. Or travelled outside his state.
Hey, UK! When you are being compared to Mississippi, you are fucking up very very badly.
I live in the UK, and this is something I was saying about the Online Safety Act. It puts all the onus on the websites and not only do some websites not have the money or resources to comply, but with something like Mastodon, it doesn’t really work. Like this bill was written and passed by people who don’t know shit about fuck about tech. Several Lemmy and Mastodon instances have shut down/Geoblocked the UK because of this, and other jurisdictions don’t seem to understand that either.
It’s almost like this law was made to preserve the Meta monopoly. Starting a social media platform just got more expensive and complicated.
They consulted with MindGeek, who own Pornhub etc… They’re one of the few companies big enough to comply. It was designed to preserve their monopoly, not Meta’s. The politicians voting on it didn’t necessarily understand that, but the law had been approved by children’s charities and (a single representative of) the industry, so there’d be no reason (if you didn’t understand how technology works) to question it.
What gets me is how many people in this very community have the same level of ignorance. And on top of that, they don’t understand that these laws also apply to the very service they are using.
I think that was the point. Not only decentralized services, but a lot of small and/or individual services too. The way age verification is done is both stupid, and expensive. Only the big names will remain.
I don’t see how Mississippi or the UK think they can issue laws on sites hosted outside their jurisdiction. That’s just mind boggling. The onus is on the state to provide age verification, or make their ISPs do it.
“You have no power here” - Some server hosted on a satellite (probably)
Watch the whole world go “ahaha age verification go brrrrr” in the next months/years, and we’ll talk again. I’m particularly baffled at the EU that was all “privacy friendly, consumer first” until a handful of month ago.
If a government wants this in place, they should also facilitate the means.
Nice.
