The global cybersphere will split up, the west and other parties have shown they will use social media networks to organize regime change and take over legitimate protests.
Especially now that China is taking an ever increasing share of the global information streams. Given the increased panicked the US had about tiktok. Showing the result of the western sponsored genocide in Gaza. They had to enforce ownership handover of tiktok US to a group of US based entities.
So i wouldn't be surprised US internet sphere will shrink over time now that China can go on the offensive in the cyber-realm.. The components are already in place just pull the switch so cloudflare has to regulate who gets in and who gets out.
When it comes to the internet, it seems to me that "the other parties" here carries a lot of weight when it comes to disinfo, polarizing propaganda, etc.
Why, do you think that the US, where all the giant social network companies are based, isn't doing this on a massive scale, much larger than anything Russia or Iran (and probably China for now) could ever hope to do?
< The global cybersphere will split up, the west and other parties have shown they will use social media networks to organize regime change and take over legitimate protests.
It's interesting you focus on "the west" when we have solid proof about e.g. Russian interference in many an election and protest via social media. From paid propagandist (e.g. Tim Pool) to the Internet Research Agency. The only factual information we have about anything remotely similar from "the west" was that research about Facebook activity in the Central African Republic being roughly 40/40/20 split between Russians, French, and actual locals. And even that isn't comparable because the French online campaign was mostly combatting Russian disinformation propaganda, not trying to bring about a coup or stoking tensions to get to a civil war.
> Showing the result of the western sponsored genocide in Gaza
The genocide in Gaza is not "sponsored" by the "west". US, maybe.
> The genocide in Gaza is not "sponsored" by the "west". US, maybe.
Well, Hamas was for decades sponsored by entire West via UNRWA while their "from the river to the sea" slogan is as clearly expressed intent to commit genocide as one can wish for.
There are passports and driving licenses which are the de facto forms of ID in the UK (there are technically other valid forms of ID for at least some purposes, but almost nobody uses them). ~85% of UK residents have a passport.
An even more apt analogy is France in New Caledonia. Back in 2024, the French territorial government used an anti-terrorism law to enforce DNS blocks in that overseas territory, for the express purpose of suppressing political protests (by New Caledonians angry at the French mainland government).
> "Philippe Gomes, the former president of New Caledonia's government, told POLITICO the decision aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests" through the app."
> for the express purpose of suppressing political protests (by New Caledonians angry at the French mainland government).
No, to stop the spread of targeted disinformation by foreign actors stoking those protests to turn into riots. (and if you need any proof, check out the protestors with Azeri flags, in New Caledonia. Azerbaijan's tinpot dictator hates France because France supported Armenia, so he's been trying various ways to undermine France because he's that fragile: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/17/new-ca... )
The difference is that people in my country get to vote. A lot.
In the Netherlands GOVERNMENT=THE PEOPLE to a rather problematic degree (if only you knew how bad things really are).
If you want to start an argument "the Netherlands is just like Iran" I challenge it with 20 political parties in Parliament.
Including a pro Kremlin party lol.
The article you linked to is about the dropped plan to require ID for permission to work in the UK.
The parent commenter is referring to age verification for accessing adult content using "highly effective age-assurance systems" (such as photo ID cards, biometrics, etc.) under the Online Safety Act 2023, which is still very much in effect.
Downvotes might happen because your comment reads one-sided.
What about Russia blocking sites?
As of late 2025 and early 2026, Russia has blocked numerous foreign communication, social media, and information services, restricting platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram (partially), Signal, Viber, FaceTime, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Many independent news, VPN services, and foreign websites (e.g., Chess.com) are also inaccessible
But that's my point exactly.... do you consider this to be a good thing? Should EU behave the same as russia or iran? Should those two countries be an "excuse" for us to do it too (hey! russia does it too!)? Should the police in eg. Brussles start shooting at protesting farmers and say "what about iran, they're killing their protesters too!"?
If we consider russia bad for doing those blocks above, then we should consider EU being bad when they do it for us.
it's a very weird kind of propaganda I see a lot of lately.
Everything is the same and comparable never mind how hyperbolic. Doubt it? be showered with cherry picked micro facts that on the surface are similar.
This rests on the fact that in order to establish a big picture you have to take small facts and agree on the big picture, and that leap from small and verifiable to large and analytic is the place you can inject faith and emotion
I live in EU and I oppose internet cenorship, privacy invasion and many other bad things the governments have been doing for years now.
I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there, neither does anyone else commenting here it seems... but many of us do live in EU, and are bothered by EU doing the same thing as iran, even if it's on a smaller scale (for now). You can't support censorship at home and then act outraged when someone else just implements more of it... even though some do, as long as the censored things are the things they personally don't like.
To be fair, i'm more worried about UK, since it's a "test ground" to see how things work before the bad thing are implemented elsewhere, but either way, in my small country we have a saying, that "people should first sweep infront of their own doorways", and yeah, EU and our censorship is my doorway in this case.
TLDR: if we're bothered by internet censorship, we should first stop at 'at home'.
> Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches.
Lets make this clear: "Spain" is not blocking, some ISP companies which have many users ask the judge for permission to block IP ranges because they are streaming football matches. The judge agrees (they don't seem to know how Cloudflare works), so the ISPs are the ones that are blocking their own users to access sites behind Cloudflare. As they have millions of users, the block feels huge, but it is not issued by the government.
I am not a customer of those ISP, so my internet isn't disrupted at all during football matches. Some services, like annas-archive and torrent sites, are intermittently blocked, but you can easily avoid the blocks just by switching DNS server to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8.
This is not even close to true. The Spanish state is mandating that ISPs implement these blocks or face significant penalties, up to and including imprisonment of responsible individuals.
Yes, technically "Spain" is not blocking. ISPs are. It is however the armed agents of "Spain", who will come and violently lock you in a tiny room if you refuse to do as you're told. If you try to resist hard enough, they will simply execute you on the spot.
The global cybersphere will split up, the west and other parties have shown they will use social media networks to organize regime change and take over legitimate protests.
Especially now that China is taking an ever increasing share of the global information streams. Given the increased panicked the US had about tiktok. Showing the result of the western sponsored genocide in Gaza. They had to enforce ownership handover of tiktok US to a group of US based entities.
So i wouldn't be surprised US internet sphere will shrink over time now that China can go on the offensive in the cyber-realm.. The components are already in place just pull the switch so cloudflare has to regulate who gets in and who gets out.
When it comes to the internet, it seems to me that "the other parties" here carries a lot of weight when it comes to disinfo, polarizing propaganda, etc.
Why, do you think that the US, where all the giant social network companies are based, isn't doing this on a massive scale, much larger than anything Russia or Iran (and probably China for now) could ever hope to do?
2 replies →
< The global cybersphere will split up, the west and other parties have shown they will use social media networks to organize regime change and take over legitimate protests.
It's interesting you focus on "the west" when we have solid proof about e.g. Russian interference in many an election and protest via social media. From paid propagandist (e.g. Tim Pool) to the Internet Research Agency. The only factual information we have about anything remotely similar from "the west" was that research about Facebook activity in the Central African Republic being roughly 40/40/20 split between Russians, French, and actual locals. And even that isn't comparable because the French online campaign was mostly combatting Russian disinformation propaganda, not trying to bring about a coup or stoking tensions to get to a civil war.
> Showing the result of the western sponsored genocide in Gaza
The genocide in Gaza is not "sponsored" by the "west". US, maybe.
> The genocide in Gaza is not "sponsored" by the "west". US, maybe.
Well, Hamas was for decades sponsored by entire West via UNRWA while their "from the river to the sea" slogan is as clearly expressed intent to commit genocide as one can wish for.
2 replies →
I mean... EU already blocks eg. some russian sites (some countries more effectively than others)... plus all the chat control pressures every year.
Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches.
UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off.
But every such country likes pointing fingers at others, "hey, our censorship is not bad, they have more of it!".
edit: considering the downvotes, HN is not bothered by our censorship either
> UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off.
There are no ID cards in the UK, so you actually have to get a special jerking off loicense.
I remember giggling at those "oi you got a loicense for that m8??!" memes. Funny, maybe, but not to be taken seriously.
Fast forward less than ten years, and here we are.
2 replies →
There are passports and driving licenses which are the de facto forms of ID in the UK (there are technically other valid forms of ID for at least some purposes, but almost nobody uses them). ~85% of UK residents have a passport.
1 reply →
What if someone is not a certified wanker?
5 replies →
> There are no ID cards in the UK
Not physical cards, but a digital ID system is on the way :(
1 reply →
I remember a popular "greentext" specifically about this...
You've got to pass a test first.
An even more apt analogy is France in New Caledonia. Back in 2024, the French territorial government used an anti-terrorism law to enforce DNS blocks in that overseas territory, for the express purpose of suppressing political protests (by New Caledonians angry at the French mainland government).
> "Philippe Gomes, the former president of New Caledonia's government, told POLITICO the decision aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests" through the app."
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879546 ("San Francisco Subway Muzzles Cell Service During Protest", 113 comments)
> for the express purpose of suppressing political protests (by New Caledonians angry at the French mainland government).
No, to stop the spread of targeted disinformation by foreign actors stoking those protests to turn into riots. (and if you need any proof, check out the protestors with Azeri flags, in New Caledonia. Azerbaijan's tinpot dictator hates France because France supported Armenia, so he's been trying various ways to undermine France because he's that fragile: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/17/new-ca... )
1 reply →
The difference is that people in my country get to vote. A lot.
In the Netherlands GOVERNMENT=THE PEOPLE to a rather problematic degree (if only you knew how bad things really are).
If you want to start an argument "the Netherlands is just like Iran" I challenge it with 20 political parties in Parliament. Including a pro Kremlin party lol.
> UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off.
If you are going to post shit like that, at least get your fucking facts right.
Namely that you are three weeks out of date sushine.
The idea has been dropped: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3385zrrx73o
Reading comprehension, my friend.
The article you linked to is about the dropped plan to require ID for permission to work in the UK.
The parent commenter is referring to age verification for accessing adult content using "highly effective age-assurance systems" (such as photo ID cards, biometrics, etc.) under the Online Safety Act 2023, which is still very much in effect.
2 replies →
Why during football matches?
So people wouldn't stream the games ilegally... the private entity that owns the rights to broadcasting the games can arbitrarily ban whole subnets.
the end result is well... not good:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856
28 replies →
Downvotes might happen because your comment reads one-sided.
What about Russia blocking sites?
As of late 2025 and early 2026, Russia has blocked numerous foreign communication, social media, and information services, restricting platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram (partially), Signal, Viber, FaceTime, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Many independent news, VPN services, and foreign websites (e.g., Chess.com) are also inaccessible
But that's my point exactly.... do you consider this to be a good thing? Should EU behave the same as russia or iran? Should those two countries be an "excuse" for us to do it too (hey! russia does it too!)? Should the police in eg. Brussles start shooting at protesting farmers and say "what about iran, they're killing their protesters too!"?
If we consider russia bad for doing those blocks above, then we should consider EU being bad when they do it for us.
1 reply →
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Your upvotes are issued by sheep and wolf in sheep's clothing telling you to not censor propaganda from a country that's been waging war against you.
Yeah, you're right. It's totally fair to compare how the EU treats its people to how Iran is treating its people right now. Good job. :-/
it's a very weird kind of propaganda I see a lot of lately.
Everything is the same and comparable never mind how hyperbolic. Doubt it? be showered with cherry picked micro facts that on the surface are similar.
This rests on the fact that in order to establish a big picture you have to take small facts and agree on the big picture, and that leap from small and verifiable to large and analytic is the place you can inject faith and emotion
28 replies →
I live in EU and I oppose internet cenorship, privacy invasion and many other bad things the governments have been doing for years now.
I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there, neither does anyone else commenting here it seems... but many of us do live in EU, and are bothered by EU doing the same thing as iran, even if it's on a smaller scale (for now). You can't support censorship at home and then act outraged when someone else just implements more of it... even though some do, as long as the censored things are the things they personally don't like.
To be fair, i'm more worried about UK, since it's a "test ground" to see how things work before the bad thing are implemented elsewhere, but either way, in my small country we have a saying, that "people should first sweep infront of their own doorways", and yeah, EU and our censorship is my doorway in this case.
TLDR: if we're bothered by internet censorship, we should first stop at 'at home'.
4 replies →
> Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches.
Lets make this clear: "Spain" is not blocking, some ISP companies which have many users ask the judge for permission to block IP ranges because they are streaming football matches. The judge agrees (they don't seem to know how Cloudflare works), so the ISPs are the ones that are blocking their own users to access sites behind Cloudflare. As they have millions of users, the block feels huge, but it is not issued by the government.
I am not a customer of those ISP, so my internet isn't disrupted at all during football matches. Some services, like annas-archive and torrent sites, are intermittently blocked, but you can easily avoid the blocks just by switching DNS server to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8.
The fact they allow this sh*t even when it is widely know that is happening and being abused, makes the government also responsible because inaction.
1 reply →
This is not even close to true. The Spanish state is mandating that ISPs implement these blocks or face significant penalties, up to and including imprisonment of responsible individuals.
Yes, technically "Spain" is not blocking. ISPs are. It is however the armed agents of "Spain", who will come and violently lock you in a tiny room if you refuse to do as you're told. If you try to resist hard enough, they will simply execute you on the spot.
6 replies →
That would really boost productivity! Not gonna happen.
Which country cares about productivity, besides China?