They’re simply not capable of such things. The government fails to grasp technology entirely, passes technically impossible bills and destroys even the good things it creates (ftth is now fttn).

While there’s some precedents with piracy website DNS entries removed from ISP dns, I doubt the gov would want to pick a fight with a multi billion (trillion?) dollar company who would actually fight back.

>They’re simply not capable of such things.

Google and Facebook are not cutting edge technologies. They are in the position of IBM in the 80s and Microsoft in the 90s, a legacy technology with huge market share being able to charge monopoly prices. A home grown alternative to google search is not beyond any university with a 100m budget.

What if I told you the government hasn’t been capable of moving away from IBM, SAP, Oracle, SAP or Microsoft yet ;)

What if I told you that North Korea has their own OS?

Id say that Australia isn’t. A dictatorship

> piracy website DNS entries removed

I admit I hardly visit pirate sites, but I didn't even notice that happen. I just checked and the Pirate Bay is still available so I don't know what they're even blocking.

e.g. 1337x.to, limetorrents.cc and torrentking.eu bring up an "access blocked" page. "Access to this site has been blocked by an order of the Federal Court of Australia" etc.

https://thepiratebay.org is working fine for me today, although I'm sure that address hadn't worked for a while until very recently, and it wasn't the same sort of blocking as those above.

I have a new computer. On my old one I changed to Google DNS when a lot of torrent sites were being blocked a few years ago, and suddenly they all worked again. Kind of silly saying access is blocked when changing one number on the computer unblocks them all.

Those 3 all work for me (well the 3rd one gives a Cloudflare error at https://torrentrex.com/, not a DNS black hole). I am based in Sydney with my ISP's own DNS (Aussie BB).

I think I read somewhere that smaller ISPs aren’t required to implement the restrictions, Presumably they might choose to not manage their own dns servers thus significant overhead. but I could be wrong.

Tpb is definitely blocked, I didn’t notice for ages but turns out I was always overriding my ISP DNS and using google dns which for some reason doesn’t block it, I’ve since moved to cloudflare who are in the same boat.

It doesn’t need to replace fb or google, only the functions it uses and provide an extensible set of tech for locals to develop solutions as needed. Still a massive undertaking but more reasonable.

No one HAS to build those services. The services Google and FB provide are 100% nonessential to successful society.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but alternatives already exist for both.

China has home-grown tech for both certainly, but I don't know if the fact that everyone uses a flavor of search engine and social media proves that they're nonessential.

I guess you could say search engines are nonessential like music and entertainment are nonessential. Somehow people end up wanting both anyways.

most Australian news outlets are 100% non essential click bait trash, too.

I'd say all of them, particularly the state media which have journalistic policies that allow them to skirt the issuing of retractions for months (ABC) or not at all (SBS). At least the private sector media will retract and correct in a reasonable period of time, in my experience both Fairfax and News Corp, although they're also generally rags at this point.

Interesting point, do you have any examples? I’m generally left swinging but find the general style used by sbs and abc are generally less click baity and manipulative but are at times pretty left swinging themselves.

Context: left = progressive, right = conservative. I think those terms switch in some countries so figured id mention.

After requesting a retraction for some false news on SBS' website, I was informed after a very lengthy delay that they did not issue retractions to articles unless there is a complaint received within an arbitrary period of time. There's that, then there's the fact ACMA has zero oversight over SBS' online operations because they can only regulate their television content.

For the ABC, on two separate occasions I reported some pretty egregious incorrect reporting and both times retractions occurred over a month later.

Contrast this to the retractions I've gotten from the private sector. A reporter on a News Corp website replied to my email in under 10 minutes (!!) and issued a retraction. A reported for Fairfax similarly retracted a point in an article the following day after a complaint.

So, the contrast is stark and revealing. ABC and SBS will lie to you with impunity and zero oversight, while the private sector at least has the decency to correct themselves in a reasonable period of time.