Edit: In a nutshell - almost every other transfer of goods and services across national borders is subject to quality standards. Why do we give a pass to a system that allows deep, individualised access to people's personal lives and mental processes?
Sovereign firewalls are mostly used by countries that have them for censorship and surveillance, and I think letting governments use a pretext of digital services being able to avoid tolls and taxes to establish such a powerful tool would be a huge mistake.
I don't want the government to decide which thoughts I can access and which ones I can't, but I also understand that allowing a foreign power (let's say Russia, although "the US" works just as fine) to freely run undercover propaganda and/or destabilization campaigns without any recourse doesn't look good either. And while I agree with "when in doubt aim for the option with more freedom", I can understand those who share your position.
Step 1 is reduce your attack surface :) As a second point, democracies are propaganda campaigns - it's a feature, not a bug.
I believe that national cultural and societal norms play a key part in self-regulation. I think it's too much to ask for those balancing forces to work as effectively without first turning down the firehose.
Is that a made up problem? IMO: yes. That's a PARENT'S responsibility, not mine.
There are legitimate arguments in favor of a national firewall. Nobody is making them.
That's just as bad of an argument as so-called intellectual walls of text. Nothing needs to be done, the outcomes are not bad. My argument is as strong as yours.
This is about the worst attitude you can have in politics.
That would be an interesting discussion in itself, but even so - accessing material in isolation over the internet removes all of the benefits of cultural and community self-regulation.
>freely run undercover propaganda and/or destabilization campaigns
I'm of the opinion that WWW3 has already happened - it was a war for hearts and minds waged over the internet, and we've already lost.
Who is we, and who won? What did they win?
This is a very fancy way of saying “censorship”.
> I'm of the opinion that WWW3 has already happened - it was a war for hearts and minds waged over the internet, and we've already lost.
If the open, unfettered exchange of culture and ideas is such a threat to our system then we deserve to lose. If my only option is to be stuck in a system that enforces ideological conformity on its subjects, then I’d rather it be the Chinese system. At least it’s not so dysfunctional!
If we are receiving all of the downsides of a liberal democracy without the benefits, what’s the point anymore?
