alt Hacker NewsI 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'.
Replies
> 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.
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...