They're right to point out that laws like this are primarily motivated by government control of speech. On a recent Times article about the UK's Online Safety Act:
> Luckily, we don’t have to imagine the scene because the High Court judgment details the last government’s reaction when it discovered this potentially rather large flaw. First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act. They suggested asking Ofcom to think again and the minister agreed.
And I could keep going. But point being there are a thousand alternative frontends and every other bit or piece to interface with the same bluesky without censorship.
And the only user facing components are the frontend and the PDS. The appview can't even see the user's IP, only the PDS it proxies through. So if you move to an independent PDS and use any third party frontend, even if you use the bluesky PBC appview, there is no direct contact/exposure to the company that could be exploited.
Does it actually? (Genuine question.) The article doesn't get into specifics about how the block is implemented, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is some non-trivial way around it.
Or, conversely, I'm unsure if other decentralized platforms would be unable to implement a similar block.
TLDR it's a single geoloc RPC call clientside. you can just tag it with an adblock filter to kill it. Or use any third party client (my comment to OP has a bunch of them listed).
Bluesky is not decentralized. The AT protocol is - albeit with few large integrators besides Bluesky, but it isn't susceptible to like 51% attacks or anything so that's mostly okay.
(I personally don't think Bluesky is a bad idea and I'm glad for more things in the ecosystem. But the point of decentralizing isn't just to protect against editorial constraint by the service owner; it's to protect against government pressure too. Mississippi could go after Mastodon service providers, but it'll cost them a lot more to find and chase 'em all).
If you think technology will protect you from censorship look at China. They can stop all but the most persistent users. It is just a question of how much they care to; they have the means. And most users are closer to Homer Simpson than Edward Snowden.
Cool take. Shitting on the south is an age old American tradition. I have a hard time understanding why people gleefully have these attitudes towards fellow human beings. Does someone from Mississippi not deserve factual actual push back against these laws? If we can't fight it there, it'll be in Connecticut soon enough.
Every time on the Internet someone goes "X doesn't suck. It actually rules" and it turns out no one was saying X sucks I think X actually does suck.
It's trying too hard to convince people of a thing they never believed the opposite of.
On HN, I read someone say "Soldiers are not idiots. They're actually some of the smartest" in some context where no one alleged the opposite. Until that moment, I figured they were slightly higher than median (remove all the mentally disabled since nearly any employed group can't have many of those).
But after that comment I was like "he wouldn't be insisting on this if it weren't true. No one said they're stupid. The majority must be fucking retarded".
They're right to point out that laws like this are primarily motivated by government control of speech. On a recent Times article about the UK's Online Safety Act:
> Luckily, we don’t have to imagine the scene because the High Court judgment details the last government’s reaction when it discovered this potentially rather large flaw. First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act. They suggested asking Ofcom to think again and the minister agreed.
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/online-s...
And surprise surprise, it's in the name of "protecting children", the same thing red blooded Americans have been falling for for decades.
How exactly can a website restrict itself in a single state?
They're blocking IPs that look Mississippi-ish. I assume just using Maxmind or some other IP geolocation database.
IP geolocation
Other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44989125
https://archive.is/r8cfH
This proves that Bluesky is not decentralised, btw.
FWIW the only "site that goes dark" is the https://bsky.app website frontend/mobile app.
And the "block" is a single clientside geo-location call that can be intercepted/blocked by adblock, etc.
And the "block" doesn't apply to any third party clients. So that includes:
- https://deer.social (forked client)
- https://zeppelin.social (forked client + independent appview)
- https://blacksky.community (forked client + independent appview + custom rust impl of PDS + custom rust impl of relay)
And a bunch of others like:
- https://anisota.net/
- https://pinksky.app/
- https://graysky.app/
And I could keep going. But point being there are a thousand alternative frontends and every other bit or piece to interface with the same bluesky without censorship.
And the only user facing components are the frontend and the PDS. The appview can't even see the user's IP, only the PDS it proxies through. So if you move to an independent PDS and use any third party frontend, even if you use the bluesky PBC appview, there is no direct contact/exposure to the company that could be exploited.
but Bluesky runs the API that all of these tools rely on
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Does it actually? (Genuine question.) The article doesn't get into specifics about how the block is implemented, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is some non-trivial way around it.
Or, conversely, I'm unsure if other decentralized platforms would be unable to implement a similar block.
TLDR it's a single geoloc RPC call clientside. you can just tag it with an adblock filter to kill it. Or use any third party client (my comment to OP has a bunch of them listed).
Bluesky is not decentralized. The AT protocol is - albeit with few large integrators besides Bluesky, but it isn't susceptible to like 51% attacks or anything so that's mostly okay.
Meanwhile, nothing has changed on Mastodon.
(I personally don't think Bluesky is a bad idea and I'm glad for more things in the ecosystem. But the point of decentralizing isn't just to protect against editorial constraint by the service owner; it's to protect against government pressure too. Mississippi could go after Mastodon service providers, but it'll cost them a lot more to find and chase 'em all).
If you think technology will protect you from censorship look at China. They can stop all but the most persistent users. It is just a question of how much they care to; they have the means. And most users are closer to Homer Simpson than Edward Snowden.
Mississippi would have a hell of a time convincing every ISP in the US to put up a firewall too.
They could try, but not even China could build an impregnable firewall.
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technology does not work unless you use it
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Or they pick a few and make an example out of them.
I believe the example would be "Good luck with that I'm in Germany."
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[dupe]
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44989125
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Cool take. Shitting on the south is an age old American tradition. I have a hard time understanding why people gleefully have these attitudes towards fellow human beings. Does someone from Mississippi not deserve factual actual push back against these laws? If we can't fight it there, it'll be in Connecticut soon enough.
Hating on Mississippi is an age-old Southern tradition.
Unless you're from Mississippi, then you hate on Alabama.
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Mate, it's making fun of Bluesky.
Every time on the Internet someone goes "X doesn't suck. It actually rules" and it turns out no one was saying X sucks I think X actually does suck.
It's trying too hard to convince people of a thing they never believed the opposite of.
On HN, I read someone say "Soldiers are not idiots. They're actually some of the smartest" in some context where no one alleged the opposite. Until that moment, I figured they were slightly higher than median (remove all the mentally disabled since nearly any employed group can't have many of those).
But after that comment I was like "he wouldn't be insisting on this if it weren't true. No one said they're stupid. The majority must be fucking retarded".
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I read the comment more as a criticism of Bluesky ("nobody actually uses it [except California liberals?]") than a criticism of Mississippi.
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You could very well read that as praise for Mississippi