The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla's Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.

The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla’s Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.

    • Squids@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • ManjuuLemmy@lemmy.world
    7·
    1 year ago

    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!

  • benpo@lemm.ee
    4·
    1 year ago

    Why forcing the browsers? Couldn’t they just make a law for ISPs to block specific domains?

  • pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz
    3·
    1 year ago

    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?

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      5·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • jsdz@lemmy.ml
    41·
    1 year ago

    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?

      • sab@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        I guess it cannot be completely enforced. What they can do, however, is to say that Firefox is illegal in France unless it complies with their unjust laws.

        Mozilla could either choose to comply and release a French version of Firefox with government mandated fixes, or decide not to comply and probably block firefox.com from being accessible from France. This would make it harder for French users to find an alternative browser, making even more people will stick to the pre-installed Chromium based one.

        In general it’s just not a good thing when open source software becomes illegal, no matter how hard the laws might be to implement.

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
      05·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      1 year ago

      Its nothing to do with the right wing and everythiny to do with authoratarianism. Left wing authoratarians hate freedom just as much. They just usually attafk different targets.

    • Cam@lemmy.worldEnglish
      01·
      1 year ago

      Why do right wingers hate freedom so much?

      What? Am I on crazy pills? This has nothing to do with polticial leaning. Its man VS big gov.

        • Cam@lemmy.worldEnglish
          01·
          1 year ago

          A globalist leaning. Macron if I recall comes from big money in the financial world. The do not have a leaning poltically, they are amoral, dark triad.

  • moitoi@feddit.de
    2·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • zwekihoyy@lemmy.ml
      21·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Whelp, I signed in the dumbest way possible. Signed under the name Lupine Arsène. Only thing I regret is not putting the country as France to complete the dumb joke.