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Is 4chan the perfect Pirate Bay poster child to justify wider UK site-blocking?

(torrentfreak.com)
361 points gloxkiqcza | 5 comments | 24 Aug 25 16:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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torginus ◴[25 Aug 25 08:26 UTC] No.45011561[source]▶
I genuinely do not understand where how the idea of building a total surveillance police state, where all speech is monitored, can even as much as seriously be considered by an allegedly pro-democracy, pro-human rights government, much less make it into law.

Also:

Step 1: Build mass surveillance to prevent the 'bad guys' from coming into political power (its ok, we're the good guys).

Step 2: Your political opponents capitalize on your genuinely horrific overreach, and legitimize themselves in the eyes of the public as fighting against tyranny (unfortunately for you they do have a point). They promise to dismantle the system if coming to power.

Step 3: They get elected.

Step 4: They don't dismantle the system, now the people you planned to use the system against are using it against you.

Sounds brilliant, lets do this.

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shazbotter ◴[25 Aug 25 13:53 UTC] No.45013857[source]▶
Simple. The UK is not a pro democracy, pro human rights state.

It might be uncomfortable to admit this, but if your government is a police state that's pretty much mutually exclusive with being a pro human rights state.

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1. dmix ◴[25 Aug 25 14:00 UTC] No.45013945[source]▶
It does seem culturally popular in UK to have rules and government hoop jumping for every small thing, to the point it's become a tired meme on the internet. The backlash on this one was likely because it happened very quickly and very broadly across the internet at once. They should have slowly expanded the scope as most governments do and maybe the backlash would have been lower.
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2. parineum ◴[25 Aug 25 14:24 UTC] No.45014198[source]▶
I think most of the EU is like this but the UK seems to be either much more so or just much further along the path. Cultures around the world seem to have a kind of familiarity with some "default" type of governance and, in Europe, it seems like a tendency to defer to or obey "elites".
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3. felineflock ◴[25 Aug 25 14:25 UTC] No.45014208[source]▶
You seem to be describing the same "boiling frog" idea that Gramsci had of the "Long March through the Institutions", the takeover of a society without need to resort to violence, slowly occupying institutions (government departments, universities, arts, media, schools, corporations, etc) to decide the direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institu...

4. const_cast ◴[25 Aug 25 16:14 UTC] No.45015456[source]▶
The frog has been slowly boiled on online privacy and censorship for decades now. Make no mistake, this is not a swift move - it's a meticulous progression.

I mean, you tell someone 20 years ago that you have to use your real name on websites or provide a phone number and they would look at your like you're crazy. Now, we're demanding people upload real pictures of their real life ID to fuck around on the internet.

5. jkaplowitz ◴[25 Aug 25 16:16 UTC] No.45015483[source]▶
> in Europe, it seems like a tendency to defer to or obey "elites".

This varies a lot by country. The French are still known for their protests, certainly not nearly as violent or disruptive in the modern day as their famous 18th-century revolution but very much quite impactful even so. And German trade unions use strikes very effectively to have a fair outcome in contract negotiations with employers.

Countries in the English-speaking world, certainly including the UK but also the US and Canada, seem a lot more deferential to elites in many ways than most of continental Europe.