cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/55094411

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[–] 222 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (19 children)

What the hell is happening in Denmark at the moment??

First forcing the chat control topic upon Europe, now this?

I looked up their government, would have expected far right or so, but it is liberal social democrat...

So what happens here?

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  • [–] 109 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    My bet is on a lot of bigtech bribes lobbying

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  • [–] 44 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Big Tech has no interest in chat control, though.
    They vehemently opposed it from the start.
    How the Danish are acting just doesn't make sense...

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  • [–] 64 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Don't be fooled by the party names. You have to look at the policies and consequences. Danes like to feel progressive, have left leaning stuff like free education and totalitarian measures against stuff they fear. The social democratic party remained in power after Germany moved troops into Denmark in 1940. It should tell you a lot.

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  • [–] 42 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Something is rotten in Denmark.

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  • [–] 29 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    It isn't just Denmark. You see it here in Sweden, too. I'd be surprised if you didn't see it across Europe.

    I'm not really happy with any of the big political parties here in Sweden. The Greens hate nuclear power so much they'd prefer to open up fossil fuelled power plants than keep nuclear ones up and running. The Left party work really hard to get out of the EU. These are both parties I align the best with.

    The Social Democrats are just these milquetoast soft-core conservatives, pretending to care about issues but turning their coats the second they get the chance. Unfortunately they always end up leading any of the left-winged government coalitions, typically with the help from the Centre who then gets to dictate all the policies, so it just ends up being a centre-right government that sells out our welfare to private interests.

    It's been like this for well over a decade at this point. Useless bunch, the lot of them.

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  • [–] 18 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    The social democrats copied a lot of anti immigration talking points from the right because this seems to be just popular in Denmark. I guess they are just weird.

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    [–] 143 points 8 months ago (25 children)

    How do you "ban VPNs"? That's not how software works, and VPNs are... you know, a key part of a bunch of online infrastructure. I get that they mean "ban them to bypass restrictions", but the entire point of a VPN is you can't tell from the outside what it's being used for. You may as well ban thinking about butterflies. You can write it down, but you can't enforce it.

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  • [–] 65 points 8 months ago (15 children)

    I actually want one country to ban VPNs just so every other country can see the fallout or complete lack of enforcement

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  • [–] 81 points 8 months ago (14 children)

    VPNs are banned in some countries. At least in practice. China comes to mind and please nobody tell me „I have a friend in China and they use one!“ That friend is either breaking the law, or a state agent or foreigner where that law doesn‘t apply. Hotels have that as part of their service for tourists because why the hell would anyone travel to a country with basically no internet? Of course they are exempt.

    But Chinese citizens are absolutely not allowed to use VPNs to break through the great firewall. The overwhelming majority wouldn‘t even know how. But of course most of them know at least one person who can.

    So in theory the law is useless but in practice it‘s very effective to control information. Whatever the case it‘s nothing a democracy should pursuit. Ever.

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  • [–] 47 points 8 months ago

    This is such an important message. We should not lull ourselves into complacency. Banning vpns will be yet another step towards a closed, non-anonymous internet where governments (and by extension companies) will force you to give up access and control over your digital life

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  • [–] 38 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

    Let me tell how how much people actually follow laws in China.

    I was born while the One Child Policy was in effect. My mother already gave birth to my older brother. Basically, my existence is illegal.

    As you can see, clearly I'm not dead. They didn't manage to kill me, just demanded my parents paid a massive fine and denied legal papers until they did so.

    Honestly if you just browse and don't post anything too serious, are they really gonna go after everyone who use a VPN. I mean, say even if just 1% uses a VPN. That's 1,400,000 people. Are they gonna lock up a million people? Really? Surely they have bigger fishes to catch. (Edit: 1% of 1.4 billion is actually 14 million, good luck locking that many people lolz)

    As for control of information, internarional phone calls aren't blocked, you can send letters. My mom regularly call my aunts (aka: her sisters) in China. I heard the Covid QR codes being mentioned, afaik, the didn't lose their teaching jobs nor ever got arrested.

    The overwhelming majority wouldn‘t even know how.

    It's like adblocking. Do you know anyone irl that use adblockers? Seriously, I don't know anyone that does except like maybe 1 perdon.

    But here we are, on a platform where practically everyone uses adblockers.

    Or in another analogy. Mainstream social media is like inside the GFW and Lemmy is like using VPN to bypass it.

    TLDR: Okay sorry if my point isn't concise, I guess my point is: NPCs will just follow the wind, those who have the will to dig deeper will probably be able to bypass the censorship (provided that it's not completely cut off from the outside internet)

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Thanks for posting this and I believe a lot of people think that when you're online in China you're CONSTANTLY monitored by someone assigned SPECIFICALLY to you or something.

    There used to be like I guess a modern day old wives tale where if you're playing an online game with someone from China and typed into in-game chat "Tianamen Square Massacre 1989" it would knock the person from China offline. I remember doing that a few years ago and the other guy, from China, took awhile to respond and when he did he simply said "that's our history".

    It's like you said, the vast majority will follow the rules and won't use a VPN but others will just be like "ok, what are you going to do?" and do so. It's like pirating stuff in the US. I've heard stories of people getting sued out the wazoo by movie studios for pirating and sharing but those stories are few and far between and generally the people doing it aren't smart about it. I've been pirating content for decades and have never gotten a notice or email or letter about anything.

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    They'll do what Russia does with their online services. Have a registration scheme with noncompliant VPNs being outright banned.

    Simple when you know which dictator to copy.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    I guess that works for VPN services offering servers outside the country. That's not what VPNs are, though, and you still can't ban the concept of VPNs having a connection outside the country. VPN software is available open source and all it takes for it to connect abroad is my phone with a VPN connection to my home computer being abroad.

    I mean, Russia (and even China) still have people using VPNs all over the place. This (and a lot of the push for age verification and comms backdoors) reeks of barely understanding the desired result and entirely misunderstanding how the tech works.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago*

    VPN bans amount to only allowing private companies to operate vpns for the purpose of infrastructure and commerce. It wouldn't ban vpns entirely, but no average person would have the means within his country to be able to purchase or use one... legally.

    While it would be sorta bad, it's like taking the top layer off of the cake while leaving the rest.

    There's ways out, still, and there always will be. They can't ban buying a vps from next door, and putting wireguard on it.

    I am a relatively cheerful if a bit offputting person, I do not mean to say this is good news by my tone. This fucking sucks lol. Sorry.

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    [–] 109 points 8 months ago

    i guess we all should have fought back on internet censorship, rather than fallen back on "well i can still vpn".

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  • [–] 79 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Denmark seems to want to fuck everything up lately, what's their problem?

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    [–] 66 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Gotta give Denmark credit, they're really going for the Shittiest Western European Country Award. Granted, I'm from the USA and we're obviously an unmitigated disaster, but like, what the fuck are you guys doing? Competing for attention?

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  • [–] 65 points 8 months ago

    The powers that be really don’t like the idea of unmonitored secure networks do they?

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  • [–] 62 points 8 months ago* (10 children)

    The whole country wants to ban VPNs?

    Or just a small subset of politicians in the pocket of big corporations who see their profits melt because of their own greed?

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  • [–] 51 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    Denmark is trying to implement a lot of straight up fascist laws lately...

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  • [+] 37 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)
  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I notice this mainly from western countries. Asians and South Americans seem to recognize they arent immune from corruption and bullshit policy. Yet for some reason their western counterparts like to point the finger at other countries (namely the US) and diminish their VERY real problems. "You Americans elected a facist, what are you doing?!" Yet far right parties have been surging for the past decade in Europe and Australia.

    Facism was literally birthed in the west yet they never think it will come back

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  • [–] 19 points 8 months ago

    Shit's getting extra shitty everywhere. Its like a couple of countries went a little fash and every politician across the globe went FUCK YEAH, LET US IN ON THAT SHIT!!!

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  • [–] 44 points 8 months ago

    Denmark is attempting Schrodinger’s VPN ban. Seems like every week it’s defeated and re-emerges. What a waste of administrative time.

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  • [–] 34 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    What is happening with Europe and the countries within it?

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    [–] 26 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    They already pulled back the part about banning VPNs last night, before this post was even made.

    Source

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    Once again, I would like to thank stupid politicians and greedy media conglomerates for their contributions to media piracy. If not for all their hard work, we would still be playing Russian Roulette with shitty DIVX rips on Limewire.

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  • [–] 24 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    What the hell is a foreign illegal stream?

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    [–] 21 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    "Oh no! We must protect the poor MPA! The poor organization that's been hell bent on policing what films and media ought to contain and ensuring the multi-million dollar corporations continue to make their millions in peace!"

    ~ Denmark’s Ministry of Culture, probably

    (nevermind the fact that countries with anti-piracy policies have not ever proved that they "repair" the so-called "market-damage" that they purport piracy has done)

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  • [–] 18 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    It's already been taken off. The guy who requested this is a complete asshole that needs to be thrown out of office immidietly.

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    [–] 18 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    The Supreme Court equivalent tried that in Brazil, but soon discovered all government digital infrastructure depends on it and backpedaled.

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    [–] 14 points 8 months ago

    Denmark: everything is hygge unless you are Inuit or a Refugee. Now add free Internet to the exception list.

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  • [–] 13 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Until someone tells them how corporate IT works.

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