The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla's Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.
The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla’s Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.
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Oh yeah, let the government decide on censorship. I see nothing wrong with that. Oh! I know, let’s have a point system based on how much they support the governments policies too!
Signed and shared on Mastodon
Signed Long live Freedom!!!
Signed. Enough with this kind of bullshit in the EU.
And this how the end of a civilization or at least of an era looks like.
The neoliberal system of deregulation of the economy and finance sector, of privatization, of weak states on these topics is crashing right in front of us. It requires now non-democratic, authoritarian, decisions to keep the head outside of the water and not shrinks undersea. The destruction of the environment is a symptom of this end.
A small minority wanted unlimited in a limited world. They wanted to touch the stars and burned their fingers. Like arrogant teenagers, they said it’s nothing and let find solutions that are no more than placebos. But, even this now doesn’t work anymore. They have to use the authoritarian card, another placebo.
It won’t change today. It’s a long process which can be accelerated if the population takes the lead. They know this fact. The authoritarian card is here to keep the population quite by restricting the access to the information “for the general good”. They want to control this aspect of the life too.
But the monster they created is already out of control. It makes and always made more damage than good. They accelerated the neoliberal agenda to keep it calm but it doesn’t work. They are running after it and after their inevitable lost.
slightly off point here but, god I hate the term ‘neoliberal’. the definition is so far from what you would think based on the word alone, it almost seems intentionally misleading. I have the same gripe with “reactionary politics”.
idk when people will realize that capitalism is not conducive to having businesses that are respectful to their consumers and environment, no matter the amount of ill-understood, retrospective regulations you slap on.
EDIT: honestly, I think most people have realized, but the people with the power to change it are the people gaining.
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It’s just like the Cold War, folks… the propaganda is flying both ways - and neither side has to resort to too much lying.
Ok, it’s a freedom and free speech nightmare, but are they stupid or something? They are aiming for the browsers instead of ISPs (and DNSes?)?
They tried this in the UK and the ISPs is just ignored them. So the government declared its success anyway, despite the fact that essentially nothing had happened, and then stopped talking about it.
These laws always come up by people whose grasp of technology is basically, make magic box do thing x. They don’t understand that people smarter than them (school kids) will find workarounds in about 10 seconds.
Yes, but we need to fight them politically as it’s our money being wasted and they do cause some harms. One is, it keeps the population uninformed about what is with and against the grain of technology. But we also want them to not be trying to do wrong things, even if they are probably unworkable.
And the thing is, there are open source internet browsers that can be written to avoid any browser checks that a law might require.
However, if Google’s browser DRM gets widely implemented, a browser-side content blocker would be effective, because all those open source browsers would be unable to access the wider web.
I think if Big Brother Browser with Google DRM is our future, we’re going to see people using 2 browsers as standard. They’ll have one “corporate” internet browser, for Instagram, Amazon, whatever. And one “free” browser for all the grey area stuff.
I “think” I remember them trying something like this before with the ISPs and it got smacked down.
Because DNS will do little and browsers will do straight up nothing. Especially for the good open source browsers.
Posted to ‘privacy’ community: “Put your first and last name on this petition!”
I expect if there are too many fake names it would be used against them too. I think not signing at all is overall less detrimental my own privacy. However if there’s evidence/reasoning otherwise please share!
Edit: I ended up signing with my real name, I don’t see employers or anyone holding that petition against me if they find out I signed this by searching my name.
Privacy is not anonymity.
Privacy is not anonymity in the same way as animals are not dogs. To give away anonymity is to give away a form of privacy.
Can someone explain how this is enforceable??
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How the fuck could a law like that possibly be enforceable? Mozilla should just tell them to go fuck themselves, offer alternative IPs so people can get around country-wide DNS blocks, and then go about their day. Who cares what some spineless country wants?
That’s what’s happened in other countries that have tried to implement this. Unless you want to basically go the Chinese route and ban all exterior access it’s an utterly unenforceable law. Which I am sure they would have been told if they had bothered to consult anybody with domain knowledge.
because it sets a precedent. “oh france did it, its not too bad”
So, what kind of sites does France want to censor? Piracy?
It starts with the basics; piracy, cp, etc. Then it becomes whatever the highest-paying corporation wants to censor. Opposing political views? Check. Anything pro-free thinking? Check. There’s no end to this, so we have to head it off at the pass. If corporations own the Web, we have lost (and we’re shamefully close to that reality…)
Probably dissenting political opinions like many European countries have already started to do
and porn
Eh, I would support blocks on that. My bigger concern is the political blocks that seem quite possible
Okay, so lets build all the infrastructure and technology to block porn in the most effective way possible.
And I pinky winky promise to never use that technology to silence my political opponents.
Just think of the children.
Honestly, if pornography gets blocked I’m fine with the collateral damage of political silencing. Quite frankly, there isn’t much I wouldn’t put up with for that to be blocked
Are we talking cp here or pornography in general?
All of it. CSAM should be taken special care to ensure it is stopped but we should, as a society, avoid all of it
Now imagine if something like this would happen after Google manages to DRM the internet? You won’t even be able to fork the browser…
I do not like france
https://frinkiac.com/meme/S08E02/972387.jpg?b64lines=V2hhdCdzIHlvdXIgbGVhc3QgZmF2b3JpdGUKY291bnRyeT8gSXRhbHkgb3IgRnJhbmNlPw==
I am French and I state that in fact I do not like France
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I like the french government even less
Maybe this is a stupid question, but how does France have jurisdiction to force features into a web browser made by an American company?
They are free to try and compel them and Mozilla would be free to stop operating in France.
And then when in France, I can simply use some other open source browser. This kind of shows how dumb politicians are. Next up? You shouldn’t be able to access dangerous software like GitHub, let’s block that!
What does “stop operating in France” even mean? It’s not like they are selling their browser to the French people…
France would probably block Mozilla’s website
That’s trivially easy for people to get around though.
Most people won’t though. That’s the issue
If worse comes to worst, someone can fork Firefox and remove the in-browser censorship. That is the beauty of FOSS.
Unfortunately the 99% that don’t know about less popular options will still be affected
True, however it will require some grassroots movement/discussion to make it known.