Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jensson | Hacker News Reader

You do know that the government can already remove whatever they want? Why is this evil at all compared to what we already have? All it does is give us more due process and clearer rules than before when it was up to private actors to do it.

For example, do you think it is more evil that Google can ban you for any reason without telling you why, or the government being able to ban you while stating exactly why and you having legal rights? I think the first is worse than the second, so moving from the first to the second is a positive development.

View on HN

Expanding and institutionalising the current situation will only serve to entrench it even further and make it practically impossible to move away from. I would not call this a positive development. Not even in the slightest.

For some reason governments tend not to be proponent's of anarchy. Couldn't imagine why.

That is not at all what I'm proposing and I'm honestly baffled as to how you ever came to that conclusion.

Surely you can imagine the possibility of us coming up with systems and processes that are both non-anarchic as well as different from what we have today.

I took your comments to be against the government being involved in this process at all, and I cannot imagine a way that system would work. If you have an alternative system that is not sans government I would be interested in hearing it.

Considering you wanted the government to confine people to their homes a year ago for not receiving the covid vaccine (even if they had natural immunity), I'm not at all surprised that you want the government to be more involved. Some people are just wired to want to have a parental figure that tells everyone else what to do.

The user you are replying to has an authoritarian nature.

See this thread where he extolled the virtues of confining people who didn't get the covid vaccine to their homes, and insisted that natural immunity wasn't a thing:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30120181

Which government does that?

They can sue and arrest people who publish, not play ducking big brother

If they tell Google that you have illegal content then Google will remove it, that is how it works today everywhere. What kind of world do you think we live in?

Which is crucial, that google has the chance to challenge the request , in court where it belongs

Removing content by government insiders has only been done in authoritarian countries

Google can challenge the content flagging as well. These trusted flaggers can only flag content for Google to review, they can't remove it themselves, as far I understand it. So it is exactly the same as before, just that it is formalized.

Edit: Think the Twitter files, with how the American government flags content on Twitter and then Twitter bans it. USA already has that trusted flagging system, but under the hood so you don't see it. I don't see why moving that to the open would be any worse.

> Think the Twitter files, with how the American government flags content on Twitter and then Twitter bans it

Yes this is pretty much what it is, and now it is a legal requirement, and the request by the government have to be prioritized and processed 'without delay'.

And if the government abuses the requests, then the website can complain to ... the government.

I don't understand why you think this is normal. it is not. This "government unable to stop itself" is precisely the reason why press freedom was written into constitutions

Much of EU doesn't rank low in corruption. What this means is, every 4 years the new government will be re-staffing the "national censorship service" (Digital Services Coordinator ) with its cronies. The countries which need free press the most will be affected for the worse

> Much of EU doesn't rank very low in corruption. What this means is, every 4 years the new government will be re-staffing the "national censorship service" with its cronies.

But Google could challenge that to the EU court, and the EU court isn't full of Bulgarian cronies. Or do you think that the EU court would take the side of Bulgarian cronies, really?

If Bulgaria wanted to censor the internet they would already have their own laws to do it. As you said, only extremely authoritarian countries censors the way you describe here, I doubt Bulgaria would get away with it, they would get kicked out of EU if they start to create a CCP style big brother state.

(I used Bulgaria as an example since it is ranked the most corrupt country in EU)

There is no EU court, only national courts can refer a case to the ECJ for consultation. There is also no way to "kick a country out of EU"

PS. You can't "force" anything to go to the ECJ, only national courts decide. EU law is integrated into local law

Google could just reject their requests and force them to go to EU court. The EU court is the only reason this law would have any more bite than a local law, without it you just have Bulgaria doing their own thing and they don't have enough weight to do that.

They would go to national court.

EU directives are turned into national laws.

Expecting technology to fix - or even be immune from - preexisting corruption is just too idealistic. There's no silver bullet for changing how a collection of people behave in the way you want.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com