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0 pointsBarrin925y ago0 comments

>it solves many problems - it puts an end to cyberattacks, for instance. but is it right? i doubt it.

I think it's right. Countries have sovereignty over their physical territory and they ought to have sovereignty over their digital territory, that's the basis of any democracy and self-determination.

Of course it produces awful results in Turkey because Erdogan is an autocrat, and autocrats use power to enact dumb policies, in this case censoring something because his family was insulted.

However in democracies it is necessary to not be defenseless and to maintain values. Here in Europe I've always felt that we're pretty much exposed in the digital sphere to either American norms due to sheer size, and nowadays more and more to negative campaigns by countries like Russia and China as they've learned to weaponize cyberspace.

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pasabagi5y ago

I think cultural defensiveness is a strange phenomenon. The musical tradition that grew into jazz survived centuries of the most brutal slavery, but now it's the basis of most of what we hear in our day-to-day. Ultimately, cultural values that work will win out, and art that is beautiful will shine through. No amount of political pressure, violence, boundaries and borders can change that. You can't mandate that people should buy bratwurst, or read Horace, or go to church - but equally, if your values are good values, they can only be suppressed for some time, before they spring up in new forms and new places.

In China, they are conducting a great experiment in suppressing and controlling culture. Perhaps it will work - perhaps not, but I think you could only really achieve such a goal with such means, and moreover, I think such means are far more insidious and corrupting than any kind of foreign influence. Sheltered culture becomes irrelevant, then idiotic, then it becomes something only idiots and fossils can believe in.

Barrin92OP5y ago

> You can't mandate that people should buy bratwurst, or read Horace

of course you can. Do you know why the Breton language in France is reduced to 200k speakers and the Académie française gets to determine how French is spoken? Because the state stamped out every regional language during the creation of the Republic, and that was that.

Are the native cultures of the new world almost gone because they're worse cultures? No, it's because they were defenseless. Did Chrisitanity and Islam spread because they "worked?" No, they were spread by sword or settlement.

China's experiment isn't new, it's not even an experiment really. how do you think the Romanization of large parts of the old world happened, or the Russification of much of Eastern Europe? Is Finland 'idiotic' for defending its culture? Are they actually just living in a worse culture and haven't realised it yet?

What a terrible might makes right logic.

pnako5y ago

>Because the state stamped out every regional language during the creation of the Republic, and that was that.

They had signs on the walls in Breton schools telling that "it's forbidden to spit on the ground, or speak Breton".

redis_mlc5y ago

Malaysia, a former British colony, stopped teaching English in schools for the past 2 generations out of local pride.

Ironically, the generation older than that can still speak English, and roll their eyes when they have to translate for their adult kids who can't engage in tourism or trade.

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