The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla’s Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.
Did you know: Using adblockers is considered terrorist activity in france?
As always I am reminded that governments are run by the tech illiterate.
Can’t they just put a metal box with a guard around the entire internet?
It is just a black box with a blinking light anyway.
Although the guard might get tired from climbing the stairs of the Elizabeth tower every day.
It crowd 🤣
Elizabeth tower every day.
because the internet has the best reception up there?
On one hand, yeah
On the other hand, I’m scared about the day when someone who is tech literate gets into government and tries to push stuff like this
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I always thought the derision of that was overblown. You can tell what he meant. It’s not a completely flawed analogy.
Oh yeah, let the government decide on censorship. I see nothing wrong with that. Oh! I know, let’s have a point system based on how much they support the governments policies too!
Signed and shared on Mastodon
How the fuck could a law like that possibly be enforceable? Mozilla should just tell them to go fuck themselves, offer alternative IPs so people can get around country-wide DNS blocks, and then go about their day. Who cares what some spineless country wants?
That’s what’s happened in other countries that have tried to implement this. Unless you want to basically go the Chinese route and ban all exterior access it’s an utterly unenforceable law. Which I am sure they would have been told if they had bothered to consult anybody with domain knowledge.
because it sets a precedent. “oh france did it, its not too bad”
Can someone explain how this is enforceable??
Why forcing the browsers? Couldn’t they just make a law for ISPs to block specific domains?
Too easy to bypass that with a VPN, proxy, or alternative DNS.
Either way it’s still a software restriction that can be bypassed with other software.
Librewolf is going to get very popular…
Never heard of that one, I was telling somebody the other day about IceWeasel. So there definitely are FF clones. Or I guess you could just compile Firefox yourself and remove the denylist portion of the code. Would be extra funny if they compiled a version specific for France (because why block sites for everybody else?) and put it next to the regular one on their website with text that said oh BTW if you’re in France definitely only download this version, wink wink.
Meanwhile Linux distros will just package the non-blocklist version and French citizens will end up bypassing the restriction by accident!
Librewolf is designed to be private and secure and is basicly hardened Firefox without telemetry
It’s not basically Firefox, it’s a fork with the settings already configured for privacy.
Firefox being free software, it wouldn’t make much sense for them to try and do something like this. So obviously we know that Mozilla would never go along with such an absurd law and start doing censorship on behalf of France. … right, Mozilla? Slightly strange that you didn’t say so?
True… How would governments enforce dumb laws like that on open source software anyway?
It would work for 95% of browser users, who will not know that they can use a fork of Firefox because they have no idea what that means.
I do not like france
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I like the french government even less
And this how the end of a civilization or at least of an era looks like.
The neoliberal system of deregulation of the economy and finance sector, of privatization, of weak states on these topics is crashing right in front of us. It requires now non-democratic, authoritarian, decisions to keep the head outside of the water and not shrinks undersea. The destruction of the environment is a symptom of this end.
A small minority wanted unlimited in a limited world. They wanted to touch the stars and burned their fingers. Like arrogant teenagers, they said it’s nothing and let find solutions that are no more than placebos. But, even this now doesn’t work anymore. They have to use the authoritarian card, another placebo.
It won’t change today. It’s a long process which can be accelerated if the population takes the lead. They know this fact. The authoritarian card is here to keep the population quite by restricting the access to the information “for the general good”. They want to control this aspect of the life too.
But the monster they created is already out of control. It makes and always made more damage than good. They accelerated the neoliberal agenda to keep it calm but it doesn’t work. They are running after it and after their inevitable lost.
slightly off point here but, god I hate the term ‘neoliberal’. the definition is so far from what you would think based on the word alone, it almost seems intentionally misleading. I have the same gripe with “reactionary politics”.
idk when people will realize that capitalism is not conducive to having businesses that are respectful to their consumers and environment, no matter the amount of ill-understood, retrospective regulations you slap on.
EDIT: honestly, I think most people have realized, but the people with the power to change it are the people gaining.
Maybe this is a stupid question, but how does France have jurisdiction to force features into a web browser made by an American company?
They are free to try and compel them and Mozilla would be free to stop operating in France.
Can we sign it even it we don’t live in France?
Yes
Signed Long live Freedom!!!
Posted to ‘privacy’ community: “Put your first and last name on this petition!”
I expect if there are too many fake names it would be used against them too. I think not signing at all is overall less detrimental my own privacy. However if there’s evidence/reasoning otherwise please share!
Edit: I ended up signing with my real name, I don’t see employers or anyone holding that petition against me if they find out I signed this by searching my name.
Privacy is not anonymity.
Somehow, I don’t think ruthless authoritarians are going to care about what the little people think.
Maybe a decentralized encrypted takedownsafe and possibly anonymous internet protocol won’t care what they think?
I mean we have to try IMO.
Good luck with that. The only such protocol I know of that people actually use is Tor, and it’s a US government honey pot.
And now it allied with cryptocoins
I mean, illegal online transactions are like the one place where crypto really shines.
Thanks for the support, Negative Nancy
Yeah I’m trying anyways :-) thx bdw
And if you bothered to invest a fifth of a third of a quarter of the energy you’re putting into being defensive into helping solve the problem, we wouldn’t be here.
I took your comment as against the argv_minus_one guys, so in favour of my comment he was bashing.
Anyways I do invest time in this stuff, I built the Tenfingers sharing protocol.
Cheers
And I took your comment as immature negativity only to find out it’s jealous whining at best and concern trolling and forum sliding at worst.
You’re not going to win the argument. All you’re going to do is make things worse. You’re not going to stop us from supporting Firefox in their time of need, or France’s, or the Internet. It’s just not gonna happen.
So go find something better to do with your free time and let the adults talk.
