There are passports and driving licenses which are the de facto forms of ID in the UK (there are technically other valid forms of ID for at least some purposes, but almost nobody uses them). ~85% of UK residents have a passport.
An even more apt analogy is France in New Caledonia. Back in 2024, the French territorial government used an anti-terrorism law to enforce DNS blocks in that overseas territory, for the express purpose of suppressing political protests (by New Caledonians angry at the French mainland government).
> "Philippe Gomes, the former president of New Caledonia's government, told POLITICO the decision aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests" through the app."
This is the only example I'm aware of (are there others?) of a Western government effecting internet censorship to suppress protests. (Though the article also mentions Macron considering (but rejecting) the same idea in France, to suppress protests following a police shooting. See also[1])
> for the express purpose of suppressing political protests (by New Caledonians angry at the French mainland government).
No, to stop the spread of targeted disinformation by foreign actors stoking those protests to turn into riots. (and if you need any proof, check out the protestors with Azeri flags, in New Caledonia. Azerbaijan's tinpot dictator hates France because France supported Armenia, so he's been trying various ways to undermine France because he's that fragile: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/17/new-ca... )
"aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests"" is a direct quote from one of their top politicians. I'm not going to pretend I didn't read it.
There's foreign bad-actor misinformation in every country (Iran too!)—it's cynical, and specious, to say that excuses governments who take away their citizens' internet access. New Caledonia admitted specific intent to target "organizing protests". That's exactly the reason why they shouldn't have the power to cut off their internet (though really, no one should). They shouldn't be in that position of power over the protesting faction, because their disagreements are so strong that they can't help but abuse that power. They've delegimitized the protestors; by censoring them, they're not "protecting" them from foreign actors in some well-meaning paternalistic way (their rationalization), they are rather continuing their political battle by other methods.
It's an anti-pattern, all over the world right now, that groups of people who start off with irreconcilable political differences, devalue the legitimacy of the other group's speech and their right to speak it. One group calling another "mislead by propaganda" is an aspect of that delegimitization. This pattern needs to be called out and pushed back against, when it's used to rationalize silencing dissent.
The article you linked to is about the dropped plan to require ID for permission to work in the UK.
The parent commenter is referring to age verification for accessing adult content using "highly effective age-assurance systems" (such as photo ID cards, biometrics, etc.) under the Online Safety Act 2023, which is still very much in effect.
First you're going to insult me, call me a sunshine, and defend what the UK government is doing, because there's currently a way to bypass a restriction that shouldn't exist implemented this way in the first place?
So, by your logic, russian censorship of media is ok too, just use a vpn, right? Chinese firewall? Just use a VPN! Turkey social media blackouts? VPN!
The difference is that people in my country get to vote. A lot.
In the Netherlands GOVERNMENT=THE PEOPLE to a rather problematic degree (if only you knew how bad things really are).
If you want to start an argument "the Netherlands is just like Iran" I challenge it with 20 political parties in Parliament.
Including a pro Kremlin party lol.
Downvotes might happen because your comment reads one-sided.
What about Russia blocking sites?
As of late 2025 and early 2026, Russia has blocked numerous foreign communication, social media, and information services, restricting platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram (partially), Signal, Viber, FaceTime, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Many independent news, VPN services, and foreign websites (e.g., Chess.com) are also inaccessible
But that's my point exactly.... do you consider this to be a good thing? Should EU behave the same as russia or iran? Should those two countries be an "excuse" for us to do it too (hey! russia does it too!)? Should the police in eg. Brussles start shooting at protesting farmers and say "what about iran, they're killing their protesters too!"?
If we consider russia bad for doing those blocks above, then we should consider EU being bad when they do it for us.
A company using legal action to protect their IP rights is so different from a theocratic dictatorship shutting down the entire Internet to prevent their overthrow.
Perhaps you don't follow the news about Iran but these comments are incredibly daft.
The problem itself is not IP protection…. They tried that, and were always chasing behind - servers changed week after week, ban after ban.
So, misteriously (suspicions of bribery abound) now they block full blocks of internet preventively, bringing down innocent and paying customers with them. From Law Enforcement to privatized Minority Report.
Thats what people dislike. If you are a private entity and loose money to piracy, use the legal framework to solve it. Don’t override it with lobbying
That market is not really free, but government regulated and mandated and the government says they are fine to do this (as far as I know, I do not live in spain).
If you have to sue your provider just to get a normal service then society has already failed. I can only imagine you're an American for litigation to be your go-to solution.
I rarely encounter a company that doesn't scam me to the maximum extent it thinks it can get away with. That extent is determined by how many customers sue them.
Note, litigation being the "go to" solution of the American system is intended. The civil courts were basically supposed to solve all problems. Which is why they work great for rich people.
All the memes about America being "litigious" are intentional. It is incredibly difficult to seek preventative justice in the US. The intent is that you must be harmed first and then be made right.
It's a system dreamed up by wealthy aristocrats who were openly against slavery but owned people anyway and assholes who had the audacity to claim the constitution was "We the People" even though it excluded most people and was drafted entirely without authority to do so (defensible, the articles of confederation were utterly failing) and purposely built a system where people didn't vote for representation (because they didn't want a society representative of average people) and the few idealists who were far too stupid or gullible to go along with all of this. Tons of them were lawyers.
We don't, for example, have an ombudsman I can go to and complain about a business maybe not following the law and get the government to essentially be my advocate. We instead are forced to sue that company, and prove in court, with vastly unequal resources, that we deserve remedy.
Our judicial system is also clearly preferential to corporations over people, and refuses to hold corporations to justice, even when they have been objectively found wrong!
The jury of her peers awarded the McDonalds hot coffee lady $2.7 million (explicitly "two days of coffee revenue") because there was clear negligence and refusal to act safely after burning tens of other people and being outright warned about their coffee temperature, and the judge decided to unilaterally reduce that payout to half a million! He said the payout "must be reasonably related to the injury" and admitted Mcdonalds had acted recklessly and caused the injury and acted with "wanton and callous behavior" and the judge STILL reduced the clearly valid jury verdict by a huge amount! God forbid a company actually pay for their clear and reckless disregard!
But that's even worse... Iran is a stuck up country with huge political issues, internal and external pressures, outside countries attacking it while internally they're at the cusp of a civil war. Of course they'll shut down the internet, what else do you expect them to do? It's not like they have many options, nor the government trying to stay in power and crush a coup, even if that means blocking the internet, nor the people who are protesting against it and risking their lives.
But EU countries should be a bastion of freedom, free speech, free access to information, democracy, human rights, rights to this, rights to that... Why do we, the EU countries have to use the same playbook? Yes, banning the whole internet is in one way worse and in other easier, than just banning a list of sites where people can find a way around it, but again, the difference is just in the quantity, the censorship factor is the same. The government gets scared people will see some other propaganda from the other side, and censors it... and even that is done very selectively (daily mail is still accessible from over here, so are fox news and cnn)
With spain it's even worse, because it's not even the government doing it, but the government giving the right of censorship to a private company which clearly abuses that right and the government tolerates this... no court orders, no judges, no way to complain, no fair use, no nothing, a private company decides and the government gives them a blank stamped paper to aprove that.
Yes, i know iran has it much worse, but there's nothing we can do about it here, assuming the internet is banned for iranians and they can't read this or comment here. But EU is doing the same, and we've been tolerating it for years... a site here, a site there,... not everything, but censorship is still censorship, no matter how many sites are censored, and there are people from EU here that should argue against censorship, even if it's just a few sites and not all of them.
A republic with a supreme religious leader who actually decides everything, that fakes elections and has a council of religious leaders that can disqualify any candidate
that's without even talking about killing 30,000-40,000 citizens for wanting their rights
> It subsidize basic needs of its poorer citizens, such as fuel, bread, housing, education and healthcare.
I'd start with supplying basic needs like water and electricity.
The actual subsidizing is for the IRGC which steals whatever they can get their hands on so they can be counted on to mass slaughter the people
you're absolutely "Right". Iran should hold as many elections as Saudis or UAE, have as many coups by generals as in Egypt and Pakistan, or build as many American military bases as Jordan and Turkey to be considered a republic by your types.
Khomenei is called the "supreme leader" since 89. His predecessor betrayed his allies by wording a referendum for the abolition of the monarchy weirdly, making it instead about the installation of a theocracy.
(i don't want to make it overly political, but once again the historical materialist offshots of the revolutionary groups are the only ones who understood the betrayal and called a boycott of this referendum. Please listen to marxists when they're in a coup, they are so used to betrayal they'll see it comming)
It was the same "Marxists" who helped Khomeini gain power so by all means observe Marxists but only to understand where they are trying to lead society so you can be ready to limit the amount of damage they'll do. Lenin is supposed to have called these people 'useful idiots', useful to create societal upheaval because they are so easy to lead and eager to follow but for that same reason they should be neutralised once the Party has gained power. Lenin and Stalin tended to just kill them or sent them into the GULAG, Mao sent them to the countryside, Khomeini followed Lenin and Stalin in getting rid of the Marxist students who helped push the revolution.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. They were part of the coalition against the Shah, which included Islamists, Democrats and Marxists. Since Marxists are used to be betrayed, it's basically a feature at this point, they were the ones to understand where the betrayal would come from. If the democrats did follow and boycotted the referendum too, maybe Iran wouldn't have a supreme leader and have a democracy. So if you're part of a coalition with Marxists, listen to their paranoia once it's done.
Iran is a democratic republic just like the 'democratic peoples republic' of North Korea is, i.e. not at all. It is remarkable how often entities which use the term 'democratic' do not live up to the concept it refers to
Iran is not called a democratic republic but an Islamic Republic and at that it is the only one of its kind in all of Middle East. Like all republics holds regular elections and referendums.
The fact that you don't like the results does not make it a dictatorship
it's a very weird kind of propaganda I see a lot of lately.
Everything is the same and comparable never mind how hyperbolic. Doubt it? be showered with cherry picked micro facts that on the surface are similar.
This rests on the fact that in order to establish a big picture you have to take small facts and agree on the big picture, and that leap from small and verifiable to large and analytic is the place you can inject faith and emotion
The UK is doing some shitty stuff and a man was arrested for wearing a “Plasticine Action” t-shirt a few weeks ago, “Palestine Action” being a proscribed group in the UK, and showing support being an offence. When the mistake was realised he was released after a few hours with an apology.
These things are objectively terrible, shouldn’t be happening. The UK government is under popular and legal pressure to un-proscribe the group as hundreds (thousands?) have been arrested and charged.
But it is not the same as someone being ‘disappeared’ in South American dictatorships, where they would be taken and denied process for years if not killed outright. Yet people here drew that comparison. He was arrested for inconvenient speech! It’s the same! And then I came under fire for defending the actions of the UK, having done nothing of the sort.
But defending the arrest of the man with "Plasticine Action" t-shirt as a mistake (only realized after a "few" hours, god damn!), is god damn ridiculous.
About 2 decades ago I read an article about how bureucracies don't even allow for humor any more, e.g. even clearly joking about having a bomb in the airport is now taboo. Something about rigid inhumane inflexible rules, in my vague memory of that article.
Where airport security has to examine babies for terrorist motives, because it's written in the rules, fuck human reasoning!
Heh in my own estimation arresting supporters of Palestine Action for peacefully protesting is already too close to Iranian autocracy ideal and too far from a "democratic country" ideal which the UK used to be...
It’s awful that they’re arresting people with “Palestine Action” t-shirts too. It’s just not the same thing as actually disappearing people.
That's the point of this thread, no? Things can be bad in different ways and to different degrees.
If I say I don't like the way you just spoke about my sister and punch you in the gut, that's a pretty shitty thing to do.
If I say I don't like the way you just spoke about my sister and cut your throat then bury your body in the forest, I would like to think we can agree that's worse.
> If I say I don't like the way you just spoke about my sister and punch you in the gut, that's a pretty shitty thing to do.
> If I say I don't like the way you just spoke about my sister and cut your throat then bury your body in the forest, I would like to think we can agree that's worse.
So at what point can we start saying that violence because of words (or shirts) is bad? How much does it have to hurt? Should we act as if you're a good guy, because it was just a punch? Or should we remove you from power and punish you before your punches turn into throat cutting?
10 years ago, getting arrested for wearing a tshirt with some text on it, would be on an iran/north korea level of shitty governments, something that could never happen "at home" (in uk, eu,...)... now it's somehow become "shitty, but not as bad, because in some other land you'd get shot instead," (and similar excuses). How much closer must UK come to iranian levels, before you start seeing the parallels between the behaviour of the two governments?
We were pointing out "the great firewall of china" not so many years ago as a horrible thing, now we have censorship in EU. How many sites must be added to the EU list to become an equivalent of the chinese "firewall"?
This behaviour has to be stopped now, when it's just arrest and excuses, and not after 10 years when people start getting shot for protesting here too.
> So at what point can we start saying that violence because of words (or shirts) is bad?
Straight away!
> Should we act as if you're a good guy, because it was just a punch?
No, and nobody is asking you to. In fact this is the whole point, can you not distinguish between those two guys?
Neither one is good. You're not being asked to decide one is 'good' and the other 'bad'. You're not being asked to accept that the more minor one is OK because it's not as bad as the other one.
They can both be bad. But they aren't the same. We don't say "Dude A was upset about someone talking smack about his sister too, so he's just as bad as Dude B". Or at least most people wouldn't. But we also don't say "It's fine to punch someone in the gut because at least he didn't cut the guy's throat". Dude A probably gets a night in the cells and a minor punishment, maybe a conviction for assault and released on parole for time served. He's got some anger issues and probably some issues in his relationshp with women. B gets serious jail time.
> now it's somehow become "shitty, but not as bad, because in some other land you'd get shot instead," (and similar excuses)
Nobody's making excuses. That's all on you and how you're deciding to ascribe motivations to other posters. Let me say it again - nobody is saying it's OK. I'm not defending anything. If you think I am I'd invite you to re-read the thread.
> How much closer must UK come to iranian levels, before you start seeing the parallels between the behaviour of the two governments?
One is a strict conservative, theocratic dictatorship that is commiting mass murder in order to hold on to power. The other is a troubled democracy that, as far as anyone can tell, isn't murdering its citizens to keep order but has made some pretty fucked up decisions about what constitutes terrorism and a terrorist organisation. Both of these are bad. But they aren't the same, there are some parallels in their actions, though not so much in either motivation or outcomes. And proclaiming that the actions of the UK or the EU are the same as Iran or Russia or China provides cover for atrocities IMHO, and is straight out of the propaganda playbook those countries like to put about the place. It also just destroys nuance of discussion when basically anything negative may as well be Hitler.
> 10 years ago, getting arrested for wearing a tshirt
Was something that happened occasionally under varying different laws. It was shit then too.
And if you'd worn a pro-IRA t-shirt in the 80s/90s, you'd have faced arrest for that as well. Still would in fact. The major change that people have a problem with in the Plasticine/Palestine action cases is the classification of a pro-Human Rights, direct-action group as a terrorist organisation, and the suppression of speech as a result of that classification. If you'd like to see a list of all the organisations currently classified this way, there's one here - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror...
I don't think many people in the UK have a real problem with this law as it applies to (say) ISIS, or the Wagner Group, though I know that in some other countries (US?) you are more likely to be able to show support for those without facing sanction because of stronger protections of free speech.
I would see it as moving the baseline, which Europe and (more historically) UK was for many people in civil rights area. If we just say that authoritarian countries are still worse, this partly implies that what Western countries are doing is becoming acceptable, as long as it is still "better" or "less bad".
The important point is, if the erosion of civil liberties continues, these governments are losing their high ground. They must stop.
As in the Cold War, I would give an allowance for the West to still be preferable (modulo strict rights record) if they actually muster some sort of power to confront tyranny. But if the rulers only want cheap rhetoric wins, no.
It's not literally the same of course. But you should wonder, how much of the difference is due just differences in how much they need to do?
If South American dictatorships could have their way with less blood and less noise, don't you think they would prefer that?
I'm reminded of a tragicomic recent admission from Nate Silver of 538 fame. He said Disney almost never interfered in their editorial process, as if that was a good thing. What that really meant, after all, was that Disney was perfectly willing to interfere in their editorial process, but almost never felt the need to. (As you would expect. I mean, why would Disney care about political polling?)
Could it similarly be that the UK government is perfectly willing to engage in brutal political suppression, but rarely has a need to? In that case maybe people are right to sound the alarm even though we haven't reached South American dictatorship levels yet.
I mean, given that is hasn't worked and hundreds of people have continued to stand up and be arrested for supporting Palestine Action, I'd say that's a no?
It hasn't worked in changing policy, or meaningfully changing who's in charge. Currently the government is getting its way with this sufficient level of brutality.
I think it's likely they will get still more scared that they won't, and ramp up the brutality accordingly.
The path forward is clear: Reform gets into power, builds their own paramilitary "immigration enforcement" groups a la ICE, and you get the occasional summary execution in the streets, along with arrests based on UKs unmatched surveillance system.
The people complaining probably live in the UK or are related to it somehow. Then it would make sense that they are more worried about authoritarianism in the UK rather than in South America.
And even if the man was wearing a proper "Palestine Action" shirt that'd still be pretty concerning. It is an insane stretch to say that wearing a shirt represents a matter for police action. How far the world has moved on from when the UK could be considered a forward-thinking bastion of liberalism.
The people complaining were American AFAICT and weren’t worried by either, they were just drawing hyperbolic equivalences between suppression of speech and state orchestrated mass kidnapping and murder.
If we're talking about the Palestine Action shirt, Israel is defending against accusations [0] that they are genocidal. The police action of the UK seems like it could be pretty easily construed as suppression of speech in support of state orchestrated mass kidnapping and murder on a concerning scale.
Whatever is happening in SA might be as bad, I suppose, but I don't speak Spanish or have any family connection there so I'm not going to look it up. Although if they're genocidal then they should stop too, should that need to be said.
The example given was of a man in a “Plasticine Action” t-shirt, with the poster saying how that man was “disappeared” by the British state when he was briefly arrested and released.
If you’re not aware of the history of people being disappeared by states such as Chile under Pinochet, or more broadly what it means for a state to disappear someone, that’s kinda on you.
Either way these are not equivalent actions.
Yes, it’s suppression of free speech in a chilling manner. I hate it. No, it’s not the same as suppressing that speech by taking someone and holding them in a secret prison for years and/or killing them.
And one thing Assange used to say over and over again, was that he was inspired by government attempts to suppress WikiLeaks releases, because that was evidence that they feared the information in them could actually change things. This is pretty much also the main thesis of Chomsky, and many other western dissidents (and some others too, e.g. Ai Weiwei): our leaders are as unaccountable and willing to use brutality as any dictatorship, they just have less reason to.
Call me when the UK government brings the machine guns and starts slaughtering 40k Palestine Action protestors and I promise to agree it's all the same
I'll make it easier for you:
wake me up when the UK government slaughters 1% the amount of the protestors the Iranian government just did in two days.
400 protestors shot by machine guns mounted on SUVs in London.
That just might be approaching slippery slope territory to the current Iranian actions.
Currently I believe we are at zero protestors casually shot on the streets of the UK, so I fail to see the equivalency
Bad as the Iranian regime is, we know that foreign governments are actively working for regime change/collapse in Iran (Mossad boasted in public about being with the protesters on the ground in Iran, whether that's true or not it seems like a statement intended to make things worse). So maybe be extra careful where you source those death numbers claims.
UK is not, and will not be in the situation Iran is in for the foreseeable future. There will not be several powerful countries, some widely hated in UK and openly preferring a UK in smoking ruins to democratic government in the UK, calling for revolution there (although don't get me wrong, UK too could totally could use a revolution). UK has nuclear weapons. UK has a world-class surveillance apparatus, and doesn't have to contend with the cynical people running it getting regularly murdered or bought out by more powerful actors.
What all this means - and this has been the core message of just about all dissidents in western countries for decades - is that the people with control in the UK don't have to gun down hundreds (or tens of thousands, if you believe the colored reports) in the streets to cling to power. If it was their best option, they might.
Sure, and his treatment has been awful in so many ways.
I'm honestly not trying to defend any action by any state in this thread, I'm not trying to say that the UK is better than any other state. I'm not trying to make any point at all beyond using a specific example in agreeing with the comments above mine that "Everything is the same and comparable never mind how hyperbolic."
But it seems to be construed as if I am, no matter how much I agree that the actions we're talking about are terrible. People come back and tell me the UK is bad and I should feel bad for defending it. I know right! And if I was I would!
I must admit I find the whole thing very frustrating.
The problem is you have to fight for these things every generation.
It's a mistake to take things like trial by jury, open justice ( not secret courts ), non-arbitrary detention, even regular elections for granted.
I totally agree with you that the UK is not Iran and there is too much hyperbole - but at the same time the current government is trying to criminalise legitimate protest, cancelling elections and trying to remove trial by jury for a substantial set of things ( the ultimate protection against an authoritarian state ).
As an example, it's very telling that the government ensured that in all the Assange legal proceedings it never went before a jury.
The current government creating all these precedents, in the shadow of the prospect of a potential Reform government is something I think we should all be concerned about.
Tell me about it, that Jury thing in particular was shocking to hear, that they’re considering throwing aside an ancient right in the name of expediency and clearing a backlog, as if it was a minor detail and not the basis of the system of justice.
Especially since there is no evidence that it's the presence of juries is the cause of the backlog.
The idea that the state can deprive you of your freedom for a sentence likely to be less than 3 years without the chance to be tried before you peers, is worrying.
Note is was six months before Nov 2024, it's 12 months now and they are looking to extend to 3 years! ( or more - given the word: likely ).
Juries are not an administrative inconvenience or process inefficiency.
The current legal reform seems to be operating on the assumption that the defendent is guilty - rather thana resumption of innocence.
Better to let the guilty to go free, than imprison the innocent.
I mean, you bought up an example of a man being dragged off the streets of the UK for (1) trying to express support for playdough and (2) being suspected of undermining support for genocide.
I have relatives in the UK, right now. And after this conversation I'm now more concerned for them than I was this morning, and I can make some educated guesses about why ol' mate didn't want to talk to you about Pinochet, who Wikipedia suggests died 20 years ago. Sounds like something is going on in the UK right now.
I mean, seriously, I have left-wing family members who might be travelling to the UK this year. Is there some sort of guide to what political t-shirts will get them arrested?
This feels disingenuous on your part now and is in fact exhibiting the exact problem brought up in the thread.
You’re not being asked to feel better about the UK! If you didn’t know about this stuff and you feel worse about the UK, good, you probably should!
But you are being asked to see a difference in degree between:
Someone speaks out about human rights abuses and murder sanctioned by the state, and is arrested, then later released with an apology.
Someone speaks out about human rights abuses and murder sanctioned by the state, and is arrested, their arrest is denied by the state and they turn up several years later in a mass grave.
You’re telling me those are the same thing?
> I mean, seriously, I have left-wing family members who might be travelling to the UK this year. Is there some sort of guide to what political t-shirts will get them arrested?
“Palestine Action” is currently a proscribed organisation. They are proscribed because some of them are alleged to have fucked with some fighter jets and done some other illegal direct action stuff.
So currently it’s illegal to show support for that specific group.
There are open court challenges to the whole situation, and many hundreds of people are awaiting trial for continuing to show support to the group after the proscription. The whole thing is a shitshow.
But you can (AFAICT) support Palestine and Palestinian people as much as you like, you’re just not allowed to wave “Palestine Action” flags or t-shirts around.
I live in EU and I oppose internet cenorship, privacy invasion and many other bad things the governments have been doing for years now.
I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there, neither does anyone else commenting here it seems... but many of us do live in EU, and are bothered by EU doing the same thing as iran, even if it's on a smaller scale (for now). You can't support censorship at home and then act outraged when someone else just implements more of it... even though some do, as long as the censored things are the things they personally don't like.
To be fair, i'm more worried about UK, since it's a "test ground" to see how things work before the bad thing are implemented elsewhere, but either way, in my small country we have a saying, that "people should first sweep infront of their own doorways", and yeah, EU and our censorship is my doorway in this case.
TLDR: if we're bothered by internet censorship, we should first stop at 'at home'.
If not for EU there would already be multiple states with privacy invasive systems seen in UK.. We are close of getting there and they keep on trying, but so far the blocking states are enough as majority.
Sure EU has some fkn horrible sides to it, such as the anonymous vote to get big stuff through when a majority should be enough as democracy depicts, but currently 2 states out of all EU states can block the big decisions...
> I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there
You also don’t live in the United States, or in Israel or Palestine but folks tend to forget that it seems.
But you can do something anyway which is to be aware of the atrocities committed by Iran’s regime, make sure your government is aware of your opinion, you can protest outside the Iranian embassy in your country, help Iranian dissidents, help Iranians find sneaky ways to get internet access, &c.
I’m not expecting anyone to do those things but I find this “I don’t live there” argument continue to creep up whenever it comes to Iran but it never enters conversation when it comes to specific other countries.
> TLDR: if we're bothered by internet censorship, we should first stop at 'at home'.
Sure but you don’t have to focus on one issue at a time. Honestly resorting Internet access in Iran is probably more important than whatever rules and things the EU is implementing because in Iran people are actually dying and you can always change the EU rules back through democratic processes.
But what can you do for iran? I mean... we can type text on forums and sites like this, that no one in iran can see... and in the meantime, EU will push for another chat control, some new "think of the children" thing will happen, suddenly the "show your real-identity ID to watch at porn" will turn into "show your ID to register on reddit".
On the other hand, there are many people from EU here who need to hear it, that EU is doing the same as iran... censoring websites and more (IDs, chat control,...). Yes, maybe not at the same level, less sites are censored here, but censorship is still censorship, and the trend is going towards more control and more censorship.
United states, israel (and palestine), etc. are different. Are we bothered by what israel is doing in palestine? Yes! (some of us). Can we actually do something about it? Sure... the germans can tell their government to stop selling weapons to israel [0], we can implement sanctions, tarrifs, etc. This is something that we can do "at home", something that can make some change. We did that for russia, we did that for iran, north korea etc (at various times and various levels), but we did something. We didn't really do that (at least not at scale) for isreal. US is doing that to us (EU) with tarrifs every two weeks, but we didn't really properly respond, even under the threat of an invasion on greenland.
Yes, restricted internet in iran is bad, but we can't stop it. Sadly, changing back EU rules is similarly hard to do, which again, is something that should be fixed, by us, at home.
> I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there
(Just a reminder that the above is what I responded to)
> But what can you do for iran?
You can encourage your governments to take action against Iran as well. Further sanctions, diplomatic pressure, providing support to the Iranian people, &c. In my case as an American I am encouraging my government to take the toughest action possible to stop Iran. Much of the blood of dead Palestinians can be placed at their feet too since they arm and support Hezbollah and Hamas who are doing what they can to keep killing people and keep the conflict active.
Just because you personally don't know what can be done doesn't mean something can't be done, and at a minimum you can encourage your government to continue to do the things it's already doing. You don't have to know what can be done, you can leave that up to others while demanding that the Iranian regime halt its indiscriminate mass murder of Iranian civilians before they make the number of people killed in Gaza look like a warmup.
Not living in Iran doesn't mean you (an EU citizen I presume) can't do anything about the actions of that regime. It's simply not a valid argument.
> Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches.
Lets make this clear: "Spain" is not blocking, some ISP companies which have many users ask the judge for permission to block IP ranges because they are streaming football matches. The judge agrees (they don't seem to know how Cloudflare works), so the ISPs are the ones that are blocking their own users to access sites behind Cloudflare. As they have millions of users, the block feels huge, but it is not issued by the government.
I am not a customer of those ISP, so my internet isn't disrupted at all during football matches. Some services, like annas-archive and torrent sites, are intermittently blocked, but you can easily avoid the blocks just by switching DNS server to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8.
One thing is that they facilitate, not by inaction but by allowing judges to allow the blocks, and another different thing is saying that is the state the one who issues the block.
This is not even close to true. The Spanish state is mandating that ISPs implement these blocks or face significant penalties, up to and including imprisonment of responsible individuals.
Yes, technically "Spain" is not blocking. ISPs are. It is however the armed agents of "Spain", who will come and violently lock you in a tiny room if you refuse to do as you're told. If you try to resist hard enough, they will simply execute you on the spot.
So this is not even close to true en the first sentence, but it is true in the second paragraph.
As I said, my ISP doesn't do this block. Are they defying the Spain government mandate? Are they facing penalties or prison? This is a private thing that Movistar /O2, mainly, is doing, to protect their football stream. Thes is like saying that the US government forces Disney to enforce tneir IP protection.
Your last paragraph is a shame. Execute people on the spot, what the fuck are you even talking about? Spain don't even punish people torrenting or piracing unless you are profiting from it (e.g. selling pirate streams).
Nobody has claimed that this is a government mandate, it isn't. It's a court order, coming from the judiciary. While Americans might consider the judiciary to be a branch of the government, in Spain it is considered entirely separate.
> Execute people on the spot, what the fuck are you even talking about?
The police will absolutely kill you if you try to forcefully resist them when they come to arrest you for violating a court order. This is not unique to Spain, but is more of a universal principle.
1. The ISP ask a judge to ban some IPs, and the judge gives them the permission to do so, because they asked. A judge could ask every ISP to do so, but they don't. But the ISP must request permission to ban, that es the reason the ban is limited to some ISP.
2. It does not come from the judges, it comes from the ISP that request to do it. Some ISP don't care about football, so they don't ask, they don't ban, and they are not mandated nor allowed to ban.
3. Not true, please don't FUD. In Spain is extremely rare to be killed by the police, even resisting, unless you threat them with a gun for example. And there are more cases with guns or knifes that are peacefully defused, than "executions on the spot". I don't know what are your intentions lying like that, but they don't look good.
I assume you can read Spanish, I don't think the link to the court order leaves any room for interpretation.
LIGA NACIONAL DE FÚTBOL PROFESIONAL y TELEFÓNICA AUDIOVISUAL DIGITAL S.L.U filed the lawsuit against Vodafone España S.A.U, Vodafone ONO S.A.U, MASORANGE Orange Espagne S.A.U, DIGI SPAIN TELECOM S.L.U, TELEFÓNICA ESPAÑA S.A.U and TELEFÓNICA MÓVILES ESPAÑA S.A.U.
> A judge could ask every ISP to do so, but they don't
You are getting this wrong. The judge isn't acting on their on initiative here, but because La Liga (together with Movistar+) sued the biggest ISPs in Spain.
They didn't bother suing the smaller ISPs, probably because co-ordinating the blocking with them isn't worth the hassle.
>3. Not true, please don't FUD. In Spain is extremely rare to be killed by the police, even resisting, unless you threat them with a gun for example. And there are more cases with guns or knifes that are peacefully defused, than "executions on the spot". I don't know what are your intentions lying like that, but they don't look good.
You're failing to understand that this is the implicit threat that accompanies most court orders anywhere.
1) If you refuse to comply, you will be locked in a small room for an indefinite period
2) If you continue to actively resist, increasing amounts of force will be used to force your compliance.
3) If you still continue to resist, you will be summarily executed.
Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches.
UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off.
But every such country likes pointing fingers at others, "hey, our censorship is not bad, they have more of it!".
edit: considering the downvotes, HN is not bothered by our censorship either