Comment by shadowgovt

11 hours ago

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.

If you get 75% coverage (or let's say the 5 biggest ISPs here, comcast and so on) you don't need to really chase the long tail of small providers that hard. It would effectively be unavailable to non technical people at that point.

  • AT&T, Comcast, C-Spire. I don't know anyone who is on anything else here unless it's through a university.

six months ago I would have said the same thing about US universities.

  • Universities? The primary revenue source for basically 100% of US universities is the federal government. The concept of a private university in the US is little more than a legal technicality.

They don't need to. If only 1% of the people are able to access censored content and therefore hold censored ideas, the majority will treat them as crazy pariahs.

It's the same mechanism that makes us consider the 1% of flat earthers crazy. Sadly the mechanism works based on how many people believe a thing, not whether it's true, so it can also block true things if only 1% of people believe them.

  • We think flat earthers are crazy because it is a fairly trivial thing to prove them wrong. If you believe something that is that easily disproved AND widely understood to be so, there is clearly something wrong with you.

    • We don't think that people who think there's a bearded man in heaven are crazy, even if that's crazier than thinking earth is flat.

      We don't think they are crazy because they are not 1%, they are majority.

      Most people think flat earthers are crazy not because they proved them wrong. Just most people around them think flat earthers are crazy and that's enough.

      1 reply →