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Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by kleiba on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:27AM (#33893548)
A drastic reminder of the pure luxury we're allowed to live in in the West, and a call to arms against all those trying to threaten our democracies.
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by mrtksn on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:51AM (#33893738)
I don't know, the West is also preoccupied with content moderation, restriction of movement of people, restriction of ideas, abolishment of the democracy and the laws so "right things can be done" and there are people calling for executions.

It's not even the oppressors VS the freedom fighters, the fight going on is over who is going to be the oppressor and what exactly should be restricted.

I'm also worried that the online spaces have no accountability and that has become the norm. People and content is removed from public spaces all the time by all powerful people and algorithms, what happens if the that thinking expands beyond online forums? The existence of the individual has been forgotten and people are virtually executed at whim and I'm not sure that with the proliferation of killer drones people are not simply going to push a button and clean up the real world annoyances without thinking about the moral implications of the action.

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by icare_1er on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:56AM (#33893794)
Totally agree. I would not even begin to compare our societies with North Korea but one does not need equality of situation to make a comparison.

The tendency in the West is clearly to suppress content, decide arbitrarily what is good and what is evil, what you should watch and not watch.

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by mrtksn on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @08:17AM (#33893988)
Unfortunately the digitalisation has enabled that being done at scale. Before everything going always online and recorded, the tendency to restrict freedoms was unfeasible for the most part. Not anymore.
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by modo_mario on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:57AM (#33893812)
>a call to arms against all those

wrt interventionism and avoiding past mistakes: Keep in mind a big part of what has kept the north korean regime so stable is the memory of plentiful massacres that occurred during the war. Villages that were killed due to suspicion of collaboration and a south Korean dictatorship till 88 or so.

As others pointed out by others as well: Much of what ends up reported about NK ends up being fake. I have no doubt that NK is a brutal authoritarian regime but after all the fake stories i kind of tune out to news like this.

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by chasd00 on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:54AM (#33893779)
> we're allowed to live in the West

“allowed”? Who exactly did we ask permission? The government should live in fear of the governed.

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by icare_1er on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:53AM (#33893768)
Everytime topics like this are mentionned, with the totalitarian regimes in North Korea, Iran or elsewhere, it's funny to see how free access to resources, VPNs, open internet, etc... is treated differently. Good when it comes to dictatorships, but evil when in the west.
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by fyresala on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:59AM (#33893823)
When free access to resources, VPNs, open internet, etc. are considered evil in the west?
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by icare_1er on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @09:02AM (#33894418)
You haven't noticed those shiny banners on Tweets or Youtube videos, shadow-banning articles for your own good or warning you that it is "disputed" ?

Twitter recently has been a good example of desire to control information, with half of the political class and even head of states (Macron) saying that it should be "controlled" to restrict "fake news", by fake news they of course mean someone talking about H.Biden's laptop, or someone saying that there are only two genders.

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by BurningPenguin on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @10:04AM (#33895093)
Hey, one of France's neighbours here: Nobody gives a damn about you talking about dumb shit, as long as it doesn't endanger one or many people. What we actually care about, is a bunch of people - who coincidentally seem to come from the same political spectrum - using a public space, to artificially push unfounded conspiracy theories, and trying to rile up society, so they can seize power and abolish democracy as a whole. All by using fake accounts, bots and apparently Russian money to destabilize society, and also gathering weapons for their great "liberation" from the deep state or some shit. At the same time they keep on whining about "freedom of speech", every time their bullshit is getting called out.

Just recently, a bunch of conspiracy freaks in my country were raided by police, since they were found out to be preparing for a coup. Funnily enough, it was once again people from right-wing parties, Qanons and one descendant of former royalty in Germany.

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by icare_1er on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @10:22AM (#33895367)
"unfounded conspiracy theories, and trying to rile up society, so they can seize power and abolish democracy as a whole"

>> Yeah yeah i know. That's pretty much copy-paste what any totalitarian regimes says when they shutdown the internet, cf. Iran lately. And no thanks, I don't need you to decide for me if a content is rubbish or not, I can work it out for myself...

By the way, you wanna talk about how "unfounded" the "conspiracy theory" on H.Biden's laptop was ?

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by vdnkh on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @12:22PM (#33897157)
The fact that this comment isn't flagged and downvoted shows the absolute state of HN.
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by BurningPenguin on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @12:01PM (#33896865)
I'm talking about the EU part of your nonsense. I don't follow that Biden-Ukraine stuff. All i know is that there is still no proof for that and the only people whining about his alleged "corruption" are known to project their own corrupt ways onto others.

What i do see all the time here in Germany, are a bunch of bots and funny accounts with random numbers artificially pushing primarily far right topics on Twitter trends and other social media. And that is a problem indeed. As we have seen with those incidents, like that guy at a gas station being shot in the face for demanding the customer to wear a mask...

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by icare_1er on Thursday December 08, 2022 @05:17AM (#33906316)
" I don't follow that Biden-Ukraine stuff."

>> Yeah, I'm not surprised, you seem to be fed directly by what Twitter and Youtube are telling you is worth knowing about, so no wonder you have never heard of certain things.

And again, "he's a bot pushing far-right topic" is textbook what any totalitarian regimes say when they justify shutting down the internet, I don't think you realize how much you sound exactly like the Ministry of Information in Iran, in Moscow, or in North Korea.... "oh, but i'm leftist, it's ok when WE do it".

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by BurningPenguin on Friday December 09, 2022 @03:30AM (#33918998)
> "Yeah, I'm not surprised, you seem to be fed directly by what Twitter and Youtube are telling you is worth knowing about, so no wonder you have never heard of certain things."

Ah yes, that must be it. Not the fact that this topic is mainly pushed by a known sensationalist crap show of a "news station", or a bunch of corrupt politicians whose followers tried to overthrow the government.

> And again, "he's a bot pushing far-right topic" is textbook what any totalitarian regimes say

Dude, if you don't even recognize accounts being about 2 months old, with literal serial numbers on it and not a single tweet until a certain point in time... Mixed with legit accounts of known party members of the AfD, a far right party, and people who follow the Russian propaganda of RT or literal Nazi blogs and have the "Reichsflagge" somewhere in their profile. It's so damn obvious, you'd have to be blind not to notice it.

Also, it's not about shutting down the internet. It's about applying existing law against mega cooperation who seem to think they stand above it. For some dumb reason, that seems controversial to you guys. No country in the world wants you to stand outside and scream "overthrow the government" or something. Why should it be allowed on the internet, then?

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by icare_1er on Friday December 09, 2022 @05:15AM (#33919688)
"No country in the world wants you to stand outside and scream "overthrow the government" or something"

>> When many BLM protesters, even US Senators (of Illinois if memory serves me right), advocated VIOLENT protests to take down the establishment, using rhetoric like "this is a war", leftists applauded, and none was censored by GAFAs. Double-standards ?

And how do you make a tweet saying that there are only two-genders, equivalent to "overthrow a government" ? Sounds like a pretty convenient excuse to censor pretty much anyone you want... again, just like Iran... in Iran, removing head-scarf is deemed equivalent to wanting to "overthrow the government".

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by BurningPenguin on Friday December 09, 2022 @06:32AM (#33920187)
> And how do you make a tweet saying that there are only two-genders, equivalent to "overthrow a government" ?

Where did i make it equivalent? Stop putting words in my mouth. I'm talking about people who are actively trying to subvert the democratic process. Because contrary to what they say, it's not that two-gender nonsense that gets them in trouble. It's a puppet they use to pretend to be victims. An age-old trick to get you to follow them.

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by icare_1er on Friday December 09, 2022 @09:16AM (#33921415)
I talked about GAFAs censoring whatever is contradicting leftists, like, someone saying that there are only two genders.

You responded to this bringing the FSB.

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by ekianjo on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @08:44AM (#33894230)
by politicians who want to make it seem everyone using a VPN is doing evil stuff
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by amanaplanacanal on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @08:48AM (#33894268)
I haven’t heard this one, but I’m in the US. Maybe they are elsewhere. Can you name some of these politicians?
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by AuthorizedCust on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:30AM (#33893581)
I’m reluctant to use “luxury” to describe these rights, and even more reluctant to suggest the west shares them well.

The former sets up an argument that these rights are superfluous, and the latter fails to recognize areas where the west does poorly at upholding rights, especially the limitations on speech imposed by many western governments.

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:41AM (#33893661)
> former sets up an argument that these rights are superfluous

Luxury has more than one meaning [1]. If you prefer the language of counting blessings, so be it, though I could also pedantically quibble it implies a divine underwriting of our fundamental rights.

> the latter fails to recognize areas where the west does poorly at upholding rights, especially the limitations on speech imposed by many western governments

This crosses from pedantic quibbling to missing the forest for the trees.

[1] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/luxury

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by matesz on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:33AM (#33893602)
> the limitations on speech imposed by many western governments

Ok enough I quit hacker news

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by wholinator2 on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @08:32AM (#33894120)
Then go. The quality of your comment is extremely poor and is the exact kind of talk that will eventually turn this place into reddit, echo chamber devoid of actual discussion and difficult ideas. Here, the goal is to say something meaningful and extend the conversation, not stop discussion with vague appeal to emotions about frustrations with the "wrong opinion". I'd've actually been on your side in a discussion if it had continued rather than being stonewalled by attempting to set up a barrier between who's allowed to post and who's not. By commenting that you're implicitly pushing this place towards a culture that throws its hands up and plugs its ears whenever a "difficult" idea is presented. If you cannot handle that, then this isn't the place for you.

But who knows, maybe if you'd genuinely asked and heard them out instead of going all, "we don't like your kind here", you might've found yourself agreeing with them. Who knows, but this is about the genuine and free discussion of ideas, not baiting flame wars.

Edit: this is a long comment. It's the first one I've posted after seeing growing number of anti-discussion, reddit-like behavior. It's personally frustrating to me because this is where I go to get away from stuff like this. I hope this isn't too angry or judgy, and I hope everyone's doing okay.

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by hairofadog on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @08:57AM (#33894351)
To be fair, while I wouldn’t generally be in favor of a comment like the one you're replying to, I did feel empathy for it in this case. It's not about avoiding a difficult topic; it's exhaustion with this extremely tiresome tendency to try to bring bad-faith arguments about social media moderation into literally every topic. It reminds me of the scene in The Big Lebowski:

https://youtu.be/pn-kxUEySy0

"Excuse me, sir. Please keep your voices down. This is a family restaurant."

"Oh please, dear. For your information, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint!"

Is social media moderation worth discussing? Sure! Is, "Teens may or may not have been executed for distributing movies, but on the other hand they deleted my tweet" a conversation worth having? Debatable.

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by LegitShady on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:49AM (#33893717)
The list of people who care about you being here is empty while people concerned about the trajectory of free expression is a significant portion of several democracies. Good luck on Reddit or Slashdot or whatever is next for you.
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by crims0n on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:48AM (#33893698)
OP was making the point that we shouldn't take our rights in the West for granted, because there are people in the world who have it demonstrably worse. Not every statement needs to account for all variables.
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by pksebben on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @08:03AM (#33893859)
"you should be glad all I do is yell at you, honey. Jerry down the block beats his wife with a belt"
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by _3u10 on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @08:12AM (#33893930)
There are also people who have it better. Some countries even have the right to life.
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by 0dayz on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:40AM (#33893650)
I mean you're allowed to move to north Korea if you want.
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by 41tor on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:52AM (#33893761)
I'd rather move someplace slightly better like... Queens

;-)

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by imwillofficial on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @08:24AM (#33894044)
Compared to, I don’t know, the entirety of human existence, we live in absolute luxury
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by ricardoplouis on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:35AM (#33893614)
The luxury and call to arms fails to reach all ears considering out government routinely does the same thing to teenagers in the states, but because they are poor and black, it's largely considered acceptable in our culture.
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by luckylion on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:37AM (#33893631)
Can you link to a recent case where a teenager was executed for distributing movies?
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by ricardoplouis on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @08:11AM (#33893927)
I'm mostly referring to the cases where the teenager or child was killed by the police for no reason at all. There's no movie involved, but the execution happens nonetheless

https://eji.org/news/black-children-are-six-times-more-likel...

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by luckylion on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @08:38AM (#33894172)
Extralegal killings by police officers are manslaughter or murder, but it's really something entirely different from an execution.

It's bad enough, you don't need to add fantasy to make it seem worse.

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by zozbot234 on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @08:07AM (#33893896)
People have definitely been raided by police for distributing movies over the Internet. It's only a matter of time until somebody gets killed.
Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by 41tor on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @07:51AM (#33893744)
> Can you link to a recent case where a teenager was executed for distributing movies?

Did you read the OP? O_o

Re:North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South K... by luckylion on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @08:40AM (#33894185)
North Korea isn't part of the United States. The comment referenced the US. Obviously, that's what I'm asking about.