Comment by kubb

One does not have to be anti-immigrant to not be happy about immigration policies. It is known at this point that the Kremlin is actively helping migrants to come to Europe. If an enemy knows that this will be to the detriment of Europe, maybe Europeans themselves should also acknowledge that?

Because we all know that an instrument given to law enforcement, once installed, is never used for other things later. All the things we set up to combat terrorism or protect children turned out to be used for those exact use-cases.

The problem is the instrument in itself, and the message it sends - not the officially intended use.

If the UK was only arresting people for posting death threats, you might have a point.

That’s not what’s happening, and not the kind of speech suppression that people are worried about.

Unless they are government backed trolls with fake ids issued ad-hoc by that government. That's one of the possibilities.

People already sell access to their Google accounts so buyers can run not-that-legal ad campaigns. Creating one extra step won't do much to solve problems as long as the incentive is big enough and budget is sufficient.

In the 1930s, the Dutch government conducted a census that included religion. The Netherlands, after all, had a comprehensive population registry system (Bevolkingsregister) established in the 19th century. This registry was centralized, continuously updated, and included religion, addresses, family connections, and occupations.

After the German occupation in 1940, the Nazis accessed and exploited the Dutch population registry, including religious affiliation.

About 75–80% of the ~140,000 Jews in the Netherlands were killed.

This is the highest percentage in Western Europe.

Compare that to France, which had a more fragmented administrative system, and less complete central records and 25% of Jews in France were deported and killed — a much lower percentage than the Netherlands.

As usual, when reaching the Godwin point, the idea is not for you to take it at face value, but to extrapolate to your situation.

The concentration of power and centralized people tracking are eventually always abused, and once your system becomes less free (which has historically eventually happened on a long enough timescale), you will pay the price for it.

In our case, having a full history of all opinions, interactions, locations, and behavior linked to full identity of people is what we are ultimately talking about here. It's already well on its way, but it will make it worse.

The more you concentrate power and feed data about people, the greater the potential damage.

And of course, it doesn't need to be a full-on dictatorship to get problems with those.

It's a spectrum of increasing problems you will get, the more you lean into it.

>Go on social media and criticize some politicians in the UK/DE about their open borders policies being directly responsible for some of the terror attacks there, and there's a high chance police will knock on your door for "being a right supremacist" and for committing the "speech of hate".

In the UK that happened when a woman phrased her criticism of open border policies as a call for migrant hotels to be burned down.

This was controversial as many who wanted closed border policies (like Nigel Farage and supporters) thought that rallying crys to re-enact some kind of version of kristallnacht should count as protected political speech.

You mean France and Italy where the parties which blame open border policies are governing? Somehow the whole rightwing discourse looks to me based on scare tactics: it will be so bad, it's not yet bad but just wait and it will be! All fortune tellers in that wing indeed.

Please link to sources where this has happend in Germany.

> or the UK. Go on social media and criticize some politicians in the UK/DE about their open borders policies being directly responsible for some of the terror attacks there,

Could you give any examples of this happening? I assume you aren't referring to the one who called for migrant hotels to be burned down with brown people inside in the middle of race riots?

Because what is right and wrong can be subjective, I could argue that if you said Strawberry is better than Kiwi, that's hate, and suddenly you find yourself on the wrong side of it.

Don't dare say anything with the remotest chance of being controversial or that could have a hint of upsetting someone, don't even think about expressing an opinion that someone might not agree with.

The problem in your ideal digital world isn't that the bad abuse the freedom they have now, it's that the bad will also abuse the lack of freedom everyone else will have then, and suddenly everyone with no ill intent is on the wrong side of the enforcement.

The comment you just replied to would probably find itself on the receiving end of it because of the wording and tone.

What is hate? Who gets to decide? What if someone decides that what you're saying is hate?

"Hate speech" is an excuse to attack people that are not conforming with state/government opinion. It is basically the modern version of "someone has to think of the children". And it is played through conservative, family-value people, like you seem to be.