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

(torrentfreak.com)
361 points gloxkiqcza | 2 comments | 24 Aug 25 16:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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pjc50 ◴[25 Aug 25 09:02 UTC] No.45011799[source]▶
The UK has never been a free speech state. Remember the extremely weird era when Gerry Adams MP could not be heard on TV and had to have his voice dubbed?
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bigfudge ◴[25 Aug 25 10:45 UTC] No.45012441[source]▶
Few European countries have free speech in the way the US does because their legal frameworks explicitly recognise potential harms from speech and freedoms speech can inhibit and attempt to balance these competing freedoms.

I don’t think that makes us ‘not a free speech state’ — although the suppression of the IRA spokesmen was weird and criticised at the time.

Also worth remembering, it’s probably not possible to listen to Hamas or Islamic Jihad spokesmen on US media…

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1. red-iron-pine ◴[25 Aug 25 16:49 UTC] No.45015863[source]▶
> Also worth remembering, it’s probably not possible to listen to Hamas or Islamic Jihad spokesmen on US media…

clips can be easily and readily found on most social media sites like youtube.

the really scary ones generally are only in arabic with arabic names and titles, so the english-only gringo demographic aren't going to see them

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2. bigfudge ◴[25 Aug 25 20:17 UTC] No.45018468[source]▶
If social media existed then, no doubt Sinn Fein would be on there. The restrictions were only on the voice— not the words— of people like Adams on national TV channels. I really don’t think the UK treatment 40 years ago is that unusual and definitely doesn’t speak to the relative freedom of speech in US vs UK