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0 pointsajsnigrutin3mo ago0 comments

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'.

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Flatterer35443mo ago

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...

ericmay3mo ago

> 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.

ajsnigrutinOP3mo ago

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.

[0] https://www.dw.com/en/war-in-gaza-germany-supplies-30-of-isr...

ericmay3mo ago

> 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.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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Flatterer35443mo ago

ericmay3mo ago

> 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.

> TLDR: if we're bothered by internet censorship, we should first stop at 'at home'.

ajsnigrutinOP3mo ago

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.

[0] https://www.dw.com/en/war-in-gaza-germany-supplies-30-of-isr...

ericmay3mo ago

> 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?

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.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse