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Comment by constantcrying | Hacker News Reader

The issue of chat control is also orthogonal to it's "democracy". It is neither democratic nor anti-democratic. It obviously in no way invalidates people's rights to determine their government, labeling arbitrary issues as "anti-democratic" just because you don't like them is very unhelpful.

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Without expressing my stance on this policy itself: Many measures can be reasonably called "democratic" or "anti-democratic" because they have the potential to affect the ability of the populace to express dissent, and organise political opposition, or because it is seen of creating the tools for the government to create a chilling effect in that respect. As such, it is not at all "obvious" that everyone will agree that it does not affect peoples democratic rights, whether you think so or not.

> It obviously in no way invalidates people's rights to determine their government

But it can do that, if / when it starts getting misused.

There was this "SS not all criminals" political party, AfD in Germany, that got lots of votes during the EU elections. AfD + Chat Control is not any good

Nonsense. Chat control is prior constraint of speech. You can't argue that automated content filters are not censorship. You can agree with the ends (or what content is filtered, and even the governance), but the means themselves are thoroughly anti-democratic. And rife for abuse.

If this issue got put to a straight referendum, and won >80% of the vote, would it then be democratic?

See my earlier comment.

This is simple stuff.

Are you guys being disingenuous?

The problem is they see democracy as only the power of the people and not the power of the people in humanitarian context. So if 80% want to kill 20% that’s ok with them but wouldn’t be ok with people with a humanitarian democracy view.

Would you apply same approach to abortion laws? Because technically it is legal killing people.

Tyrannical democracy vs humanitarian democracy? (Tyranny of the masses)

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