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hunglee2today at 12:32 PM1 replyview on HN

The time for Great Firewall of Europe was 2005, when Friendster, Skype, Xing were still a thing. Probably too late now but effort still needs to be made. One upside of a sovereign European Internet is an ecosystem which may sustain thousands of well paying jobs


Replies

hagbard_ctoday at 1:25 PM

Great Firewall? Is that where you think we - Europeans, Americans, anyone living in what used to be called the 'free world' - should go, just follow the Chinese and North Korean and similar regimes in restricting access to whatever those in control deem to be appropriate? Do you even realise what you're proposing here?

We in what used to be called the 'free world' used to revel in our freedom of movement, our freedom of thought, freedom on conscience, religion and more. We used to look at places where such freedoms were not a given like they were and to a large extent still are here. The Chinese 'Great Firewall' was seen in the same light as the Berlin Wall: a means to keep an oppressive regime in power, to keep the citizenry of China unaware of anything the regime did not want them to know about so they could mow them down at Tienanmen Square without people outside of the area learning about it. Now there's some HN user claiming that Europe should also build one - why exactly? What is it that we Europeans should not be allowed to access? Why should the European Commission - maybe I should start calling them the European Commissars - have such power over Europeans?

I say no to any such proposal and will, just like the Chinese, find a way around any such tool of oppression.