Isn’t that sort of ironic, because BlackBerry was used disproportionately by government and corporate clients? Wouldn’t a ban basically cut off the very people who should have been favoured?
It was one journalist and the local MP for Tottenham posting, on social media, calls to disable Blackberry Messenger, not some formal government white, or even green, paper. It certainly was not a sitting government official (Sébastien Lecornu) calling several ISPs together and asking them to get ready to do this and to keep the plans secret.
The journalist was Mike Butcher. Both xe and at least one other journalist, Paul Lewis of The Graduian, had been watching the BBM traffic. Butcher pointed out that the authorities had seemingly missed people coördinating riot activity there, posted on Twitter about it, and later retracted xyr post.
Has Mike Butcher expressed an alternative gender ID to you, or a desire to be addressed by bizarre neo-pronouns? Rather than "he/him" as written in his Wikipedia article? Or is this some idiotic affectation of your own devising?
seems like the response is always to restrict the means of communication rather than deal with those actually organising violence. BBM back then, social platforms now.
Well in many cases the violence is organised by the police to create a reason to disband an otherwise peaceful protest.
But why do you start with dealing with anyone? I'd have thought if the population is angry at the government, then it's the government who has to be dealt with, not the population.
yeah, and if authorities themselves are inciting violence, cutting off comms just makes things worse. from the govt's POV it might seem easier than actually addressing people's grievances, but certainly not better for the people.
I know there’s a subsection of the internet who for some reason believe VPNs are the solution to everything and better than sliced bread, but VPNs are absolutely unnecessary (and frankly overkill) for these types of blocks. All you have to do is change the DNS service on your machine, which is trivial even for non-technical users and unlike a VPN doesn’t disrupt anything about your computer usage.
You can install an app like 1.1.1.1 to use Cloudflare and there are many apps that will do it for generic DNS. Or manually but you will need to create DNS Profile and install it. It is not hard to generate one, but it is usually used for encrypted DNS which you should be using anyway.
> I know how to do that with a computer but not iPhones. Androids are probably easier to set up.
I don’t understand this type of comment which is so prevalent on HN. If you don’t know, why do you assume something else is easier or harder? It takes less time to do this web search than to reply to a comment. Here’s how to change it on both iOS and Android, from the same website:
And yes, you can in theory install the same software used to punch through the Chinese firewall, but if it doesn't appear in the app store or google play, your new VPN is as good as dead.
There are no technical solutions to political and social problems.
And rest assured, the party has a list of people and their dogs, and will use it at a moment of convenience.
Public facing VPNs are quite trivial to detect, even if you don't own your country telecom infra.
That’s not really how it works, considering how many people use them. In the recent past they just shut down all “suspicious” looking traffic when there are protests. This has false positives, which is why it’s not always active. Plus allowing VPNs in normal times acts as sort of a social pressure release.
Social media permits Broadcasting for Free. One to All messaging. For all other media - radio, satellite, tv, phones broadcasting requires licenses. Why?
Cuz Claude Shannon told us if everyone broadcasts on the same frequency noise increases and no one hears anything forcing them into broadcasting at higher and higher power or repeating their messages more and more. Which again increases noise. So Broadcasting has always been licensed and regulated. That solved the Noise problem because people were forced to coordinate use of broadcast spectrum.
Social media platforms act as if Shannon doesn't apply. So they do exactly what Shannon predicted. Everyone is broadcasting. No one can be heard clearly. People scream louder and louder. The loudest get locked into arms races. Repeat their messages more and more. At the end of it all Noise hasnt reduced and who gets attention from one day to the next is unpredicatble. And since Platforms dont want to talk about Shannon we are all stuck in some kind of red queen dynamic. People are expending lot of energy. Results are all temporary and unpredictable.
Absolutely correct. Parent comment is taking something valid in physical information broadcast context and trying to apply it to something non related. Its like taking theory of how electricity works and trying to explain rockets with it.
That’s an interesting analogy, but it breaks down somewhat when the messages that get through are those chosen by the government (Facebook, Google, etc) rather than people shouting louder.
If only social media platform let individuals sort messages by time, and filter messages based on their friend groups, and weren't forced to view feeds controlled by algorithms they have no control or insight over.
As someone who lived the first Internet block due to protests with similar demands. This feels refreshing and prove that regimes response to wide spread protests they don’t like is not that different.
Why not just allow genuinely peaceful protests and take stern police/legal action against all other forms of protest? I don't understand the logic behind cutting access to communications platforms. Seems like an indirect or roundabout way of solving the problem.
That's how it works. Until there's so much rioting the police can't deal with it. What should happen then? Cutting communications seems like a pretty good idea.
French riot police aren’t great at dealing with protests — and they protesters know this, so the protests escalate rapidly then throw in looting and you end up with a massive mess
Edit: instead of having my comments instantly shadowbanned by a coin clip, I've now been told that I'm posting too fast. That means a moderator is actively looking at my account and changing which punishment I'm subject to, but I've never received any feedback explaining why I am to be punished.
The rioters are causing damage they themselves will have to pay for in taxpayer dollars. So their cost of living will go up. The way French people protest is mental. I’m sure the Russians have agents on the ground inciting violence.
The people are concerned about the cost of oil I mean it’s the bombs that hit Iran that caused this not the French government.
Am I missing something? What drives people to burn shops down and assault people the next steps is assault rifles, so they should be happy without social media.
The people who destroy stuff in protests in France are people coming from the bad neighborhoods that don't work legal jobs (mostly dealers) and therefore don't pay taxes. They go there to break for fun and to loot stores for profit.
This provides an incentive for the government to ensure that it creates a society that works for everyone. But this is the one thing that no government anywhere is willing to do - they find it much more convenient to use lethal force against those who complain instead.
I mean most governments at least manage to get through most years without large scale violent protests like these. But France also has a tradition of violent protest...
In the US, the people have the second amendment. The rooftop Koreans, Kyle Rittenhouse, etc. are examples of the counterweight ready to reign in protests gone feral.
> Kyle Rittenhouse, etc. are examples of the counterweight ready to reign in protests gone feral.
I mean yes, but that's exactly down to country "personality" and conventions which I was hinting at. France values the right to protest almost above the right to shrug. However its not like the french police are going to be nice to you because you're protesting, french police are _bastards_.
If you wander around with a gun in france, and you're not hunting, the police _will_ shoot you, and more importantly, in the spirit of Liberté, égalité, fraternité, they'll shoot you even if you're white.
No, Jan 6th wasn’t part of the political process. It was politically motivated, but based on greed and delusion. Why do you think dominion voting got a billion in damages from Fox? Because they fueled the delusion and there was proof.
And yet people went out there with no idea instead of, you know, volunteering and helping with their local election office.
> No, Jan 6th wasn’t part of the political process.
You and I might not _like_ jan the 6th, but it was part of the process, it started out as a rally for their candidate, and then dissolved into a riot.
The consequences for the rioters, and the pardoning of them subsequently signalled where the country was going. (Biden trying very hard to not ever be seen as partisan, at the expense of justice, and Trump asserting that loyalty to him is the only currency that matters.)
Not all rallies are for the good of the country, or move the country forward. But they are part of the process, legitimate or not.
The civil rights protest were widely seen as illegitimate, and they were brutally put down. It was only through persistence and a wide base of political action from peaceful marches right up to armed resistance, did laws change.
I know nothing about the present situation in France, but in the past, in many other European countries, more often than not what drove people to burn shops down during protests were covert police/government agents, taking advantage of the weaker minded between protestants, in order to enable an intervention in force by the police against the others.
This governmental tactic of using "agents provocateurs" against protests had been invented by the French themselves, a very long time ago, but now it is universally used by all governments.
How so? Anything to destabilize Europe benefits them. Something highly plausible is not a conspiracy theory, it is a sound strategic move for Russia given the circumstance. And it would be very easy to pull off since their people just fold into the crowd.
There’s a difficult balance to strike, and leadership seems incapable of it lately, hence the uprisings of the people without much property they can call their own.
If the entire population of a country is rioting against the government, the government should immediately resign, or worse. What's happening right now in France bears no difference from what happened years ago in Egypt or Libya.
They normally have to ask for dates, permits, are normally driven by groups that have been around for long, they have websites, they have a list of asks, etc etc.
Compare that with violent ones that see the opportunity coming with 3-4d heads-up (because peaceful protests are normally covered with a little advance - 3-4d - by mainstream press), create an Instagram/TikTok/Whatsapp/Snapchat group, spread it aggressively thanks to zero cost of social/IM, and their only objective is to smash everything in their path (and if they manage, steal some loot to resell).
I have no idea what happens in France now, but in the past of many other countries the main place where the violent protests were really organized was not on any Social/IM platforms, even in the cases where it appeared to be so, but at the police/secret police/government HQs, where covert agents were prepared for triggering and/or leading violent actions during the protests, in order to discredit the peaceful demonstrators and enable direct action of the police against them.
Nowadays whenever you see "violent protests" and "destructions of private property by vandals during protests" you can never be certain whether they are organized by people who are against the government or by the government itself.
There are multiple videos from France showing undercover police instigating and breaking things.
Then, the government is pushing cities to denounce the most popular Left party as the instigator of the riots.
They are preparing to ban them next elections for this. It's pretty clear it's all a political maneuver to ensure it's once again Macron's party versus Marine's far right party, hoping it ensures their win against her
How do you figure that? Why would their members have called to vote for the left parties in the areas where they were losing the last legislative elections if they were preferring Le Pen?
I'm not saying Macron is happy with the "extreme left", but it seems to me he's much more against the "extreme right". And not just him: pretty much every politician and their dog is trying to distance themselves from the Le Pen's party.
You cannot throw out the current neoliberal political regimes based on peaceful protests alone, I thought that by now that would have been obvious for most of us adults in the room who went through Occupy and the peaceful protests of the early 2010s. Tahrir wasn’t peaceful, throwing out Assad wasn’t peaceful, why do people still have the expectation that throwing out a regime that puts an investment banker as its leader is supposed to be peaceful?
Presumably, because the people who want to change things do have in-system ways to do so: joining into a new Party, preaching their views, getting elected, growing, until they convince enough people to give them the power they need to change things.
In practice there may be many roadblocks in that, so this isn't absolute. But if that's the case, it's still on the people who notice the roadblocks to convince most everyone these are real. Without that any protest will lack widespread support and be suppressed regardless.
Empirical history contradicts your claim. In reality people protest when life feels bad and when life feels bad for many many people, there are really big protests. If it gets to this point, the system has already failed, because life already feels bad.
Arguing that the system has escape hatches is just an excuse. The escape hatches have also failed, clearly, since they either haven't been used (which is their fault) or their use did not fix the system.
political movements that pose a threat to the regime's interests are suppressed much more aggressively and in much earlier stages, debanking etc.
there are many NGOs aligned with the current protests, and they receive substantial government funding, because they are in symbiosis. the regime doesn't provide funding for ideologies that actually threaten its interests.
public opinion has now reached a tipping point, any further vandalism/arson/violence will not provide a net benefit to the regime. that's why now they finally try to stop it.
IM cannot be stopped. When a government broadcasts they will censor them, the very next step is for protesters to install something like Bitchat, which does Bluetooth-based, mesh/P2P IM-ing, and is specifically designed to resist even full-on Internet shutdowns.
The best way for governments to deal with protests is to have policies in place that fulfill what We The People want. Everything else is a band-aid atop an ulcer: it hides the problem for a little while, but the problem itself keeps growing regardless.
If there are massive protests, it's clear the reconciliation hasn't reconciled things properly, and a better reconciliation must be done, preferably one that doesn't result in more massive protests from either the same or other huge groups.
In fact, remarkable long-term lack of massive protests would be a very good metric for determining whether ongoing reconciliatory efforts are moving in the right direction. If such protests start happening, correct course sooner rather than later, and measure success by a newfound lack of further massive protests.
> violent rioters use the excuse of the peaceful organized protest to infiltrate and wreak havoc
This is not true, and very much the kind of propaganda spewed by the (far-)right, please do not trust it.
The entire crowd chants very explicit chants against the government and police, gathers around fires in the street, shouts at police when they attack the demonstrators or fire gas canisters and flash-bang grenades. The crowds that get out are not getting smaller, despite mainstream media and government equating the protests with violent looters, so it seems everyone marching feels a need to. There are looters, but they're a tiny, insignificant minority.
The protests are violent because the repression is violent, and because they are marching against real suffering.
Protest - A protest is a public expression, statement, or act of strong objection, disapproval, or dissent against a policy, law, action, or idea.
Peaceful - Peaceful is an adjective meaning free from war, violence, conflict, or disturbance, as well as quiet, calm, and untroubled
Very few protests are truly "peaceful". There will always be a grey area with protests that make them controversial and difficult to manage while "peaceful protest" is usually used as a thought terminating term. Though riots are different and probably are made up of opportunists.
You can always be assured of one thing, if the USA/west control apparatus does something defensive, it is because they’re very familiar with why it needs to be done to counter methods they’ve not only used, but successfully so to overthrow governments and cause chaos in societies.
2) even by french standards, this is getting out of hand
3) peaceful protest is being facilitated, the problem is, not everyone is peaceful and there isn't enough police to arrest everyone.
If you are american you have to remember that france _likes_ to protest, not in a cutesy way where you all line up and make a message out of people. No they blockade roads, factories, shopping centres and generally bring cities to a grinding halt. Spontaneously. Put it this way, the No kings protest had they been run by the french would have been visible from space.
Sometimes workers take company execs hostage (see good year 2014 and air france 2015, where execs had to literally run away)
Or more generally the yellow vest movement had rolling blockades that fucked with everything.
A minority, at least in France, is using those networks to organize (in a pro manner) illegal activities. I got in a rabbit hole browsing those groups and I was, honestly, puzzled at how this could happen in the open.
I’m sure this comment comes from a good place. I just want to say that cops escalate tensions in peaceful protests on the regular, when it fits their or their superiors narrative.
The playbook is always the same here in Germany: create a temporary limitation, like “ban use of umbrellas” or “don’t chant in arabic or irish” (both real things that happened at demos in Berlin). Then one of two things happen: either people comply, and cops create a new limitation. Or someone doesn’t comply and is violently arrested. Some people don’t like being beaten up, so they fight back. Now a peaceful protest turned into “violent police attacking thugs”.
I know that Germany shut down a protest by saying "no languages other than English or German" and then having cops walk around the protest grounds listening to people's private conversations with amplifying equipment. On a single violation they can use that excuse to disband the whole protest.
They also like to walk in irrationally straight lines, as they have the right to shove aside anything or anyone that obstructs their movement, just like those British palace guards.
You're too naive, the whole thing was allowed to happen for purely political reasons. 99% of protesters were peaceful, those were heavily attacked by police Non politically motivated casseurs were allowed pillaged, barely any were arrested, these streets were devoid of police forces
The far right gets to blame migrants as usual
The center right (in charge right now) gets to blame the "UlTrA left"
The left gets fucked
Medias exclusively talk about the riots for days, the original demands are completely forgotten, boomers get behind the government for "LaW AnD OrDeR"
Protest is almost always a criticism of the current government. Why would you expect a government to protect their enemies? People who aren't interested in using power don't try to obtain it.
Because then it's trivial for an undercover cop to do violence to a protest, then label it a violent protest and shut it down. Countries do this all the time, it's an extremely effective way to dispel anger against the government, or retarget it to any group you want by saying they're the ones doing the violence.
Seems like he really wants to limit the spread of videos showcasing the behaviour of the protesters, and their backgrounds... This goes hand in hand with his pathetic speech about how it's all fake news and AI.
It seems French society will soon embark on the path to total VPNization. Once the government gets a taste of blocking Internet resources, it won't stop.
Belgium introduced dns blocking to block one child porn website, and then the slippery slope gears started turning. Over a thousand websites are blocked countrywide now.
Real rioters will dive into no-DNS internet communication. Most internet protocols were designed with DNS independence in mind (read the email RFC, email addresses can have IP literals instead of DNS names which is of paramount importance, which I use BTW).
Namely, in the end, they will have to switch off telecommunication as a whole... well, if they are not interested in gathering intelligence about the rioters.
And then real rioters will have 'mesh communication devices', and then govs will need EM jammers too.
Sooo... govs should work on good and wide spread EM jammers instead of trying to to block DNS...
These are kids who use messenger/whatsapp etc. No they won't be bothered to even switch messenger. The goal isn't to shut down some criminal network it's to just make word of mouth spread in 10 minutes instead of 1 I reckon.
The second it is blocked, they'll move to other applications/protocols able to work without DNS.
Those applications/protocols already exist to 'work around' authoritative regimes around the world. Only their usage will be re-purpose.
And many are not "kids", and even so, "kids" will also be able to use them since those alternative communication apps are packages to be used by non-tech-savvy people.
You're talking about core groups who think about protesting all day. But 99.9% of these people are not that, they're average people who are fed up of the government stealing all their money and giving it to themselves and billionaires while the country crumbles. (USA could learn something from them)
All DNS servers operating in France are required to cooperate with the censorship regime, this is why Quad9 exited France. Presumably part of this new measure will be ISPs redirecting all port 53 traffic to their own resolvers.
Isn't the problem a large number of migrants that are looting the stores, and not social media?
Why not ban migrants from getting citizenship? So that they can work for 2-3 years and then must leave. Also, restrict their movement freedom so that they are not allowed to live in the capital.
It's part of a bigger push against individual liberties in France.
In a week, we got curfew, military in the streets to control protests, blanket ban on protests in a few cities (but not uniformly applied, illegal far-right protests have been tolerated at night during curfew), an extremely violent police repression (protest control policemen in France have very violent weapons, and those resulted in lost eyes and shredded hands // and that's not counting all of the unjustified beatings in the protest while looting was happening under their eyes elsewhere), the prime minister outright lying on the fatalities, spoke person laughing at the idea of condemning violence from the police, mass arrests, proposals from the party in power to ban social media, to ban the big left party (the second one in terms of voting intentions rn), to tag people in the protests invisibly, to disenfranchise people that will get condemned for anything in those protests… and by the way completely ignoring their responsibilities in anything in this story, blaming a party that never has been in power for all the economic problems in this country.
156 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadWant more stability? Shut down medias for a year before any elections to "smooth" the public debate.
Mike Butcher later retracted xyr call to shut off Blackberry Messenger. The other person who called for it was David Lammy, MP.
* https://techcrunch.com/2011/08/11/absolute-explosion-how-bla...
The journalist was Mike Butcher. Both xe and at least one other journalist, Paul Lewis of The Graduian, had been watching the BBM traffic. Butcher pointed out that the authorities had seemingly missed people coördinating riot activity there, posted on Twitter about it, and later retracted xyr post.
* https://www.theguardian.com/uk/blog/2011/aug/08/london-riots...
The MP for Tottenham was David Lammy.
But why do you start with dealing with anyone? I'd have thought if the population is angry at the government, then it's the government who has to be dealt with, not the population.
This is an absolute crisis for the EU.
I am all for eliminating the antisocial media and the billionaires behind them as well, but I fail to see how censorship fixes anything.
Good luck France.
You'd think a 1st world country would know about VPNs but not this one
I don’t understand this type of comment which is so prevalent on HN. If you don’t know, why do you assume something else is easier or harder? It takes less time to do this web search than to reply to a comment. Here’s how to change it on both iOS and Android, from the same website:
https://www.howtogeek.com/261701/how-to-change-the-dns-serve...
https://www.howtogeek.com/787039/how-to-change-your-dns-serv...
Doesn’t seem meaningfully different to me.
And yes, you can in theory install the same software used to punch through the Chinese firewall, but if it doesn't appear in the app store or google play, your new VPN is as good as dead.
There are no technical solutions to political and social problems.
Trivial bypasses only fuel further government abuse. Your VPN is about as strong as your kneecaps in an authoritarian regime.
Parfait.
Cuz Claude Shannon told us if everyone broadcasts on the same frequency noise increases and no one hears anything forcing them into broadcasting at higher and higher power or repeating their messages more and more. Which again increases noise. So Broadcasting has always been licensed and regulated. That solved the Noise problem because people were forced to coordinate use of broadcast spectrum.
Social media platforms act as if Shannon doesn't apply. So they do exactly what Shannon predicted. Everyone is broadcasting. No one can be heard clearly. People scream louder and louder. The loudest get locked into arms races. Repeat their messages more and more. At the end of it all Noise hasnt reduced and who gets attention from one day to the next is unpredicatble. And since Platforms dont want to talk about Shannon we are all stuck in some kind of red queen dynamic. People are expending lot of energy. Results are all temporary and unpredictable.
But please don’t call it European spring.
I believe the first Internet block due to protests was in the Maldives in 2004.
But Spain is lacking jobs, and so are most European countries. The heavyweights of France and Germany aren't doing so well either.
Edit: instead of having my comments instantly shadowbanned by a coin clip, I've now been told that I'm posting too fast. That means a moderator is actively looking at my account and changing which punishment I'm subject to, but I've never received any feedback explaining why I am to be punished.
The people are concerned about the cost of oil I mean it’s the bombs that hit Iran that caused this not the French government.
Am I missing something? What drives people to burn shops down and assault people the next steps is assault rifles, so they should be happy without social media.
Simple:it's "If society doesn't work for me, then it's better that it works for no one"
I mean yes, but then france is on the 5th republic now, so unlike the USA where they just sit and take it, they riot until something happens.
Don't boast too much about the US lmao
Epstein died in 2019. Biden was in office from 2021 to 2025, no files were released.
Trump took office in January of 2025, since then some ( but not all? ) files have been released.
Why fault Trump but not Biden? Didn’t Trump actually do better?
What about the blatant nepotism in the administration? Kushner &co?
Daily reminder that Trump shilled goya fucking beans from the oval office lmao
I mean yes, but that's exactly down to country "personality" and conventions which I was hinting at. France values the right to protest almost above the right to shrug. However its not like the french police are going to be nice to you because you're protesting, french police are _bastards_.
If you wander around with a gun in france, and you're not hunting, the police _will_ shoot you, and more importantly, in the spirit of Liberté, égalité, fraternité, they'll shoot you even if you're white.
This _is_ the part of the political process.
For example in the USA jan6th was part of the democratic process there. Not a good part, but its still part of it.
And yet people went out there with no idea instead of, you know, volunteering and helping with their local election office.
You and I might not _like_ jan the 6th, but it was part of the process, it started out as a rally for their candidate, and then dissolved into a riot.
The consequences for the rioters, and the pardoning of them subsequently signalled where the country was going. (Biden trying very hard to not ever be seen as partisan, at the expense of justice, and Trump asserting that loyalty to him is the only currency that matters.)
Not all rallies are for the good of the country, or move the country forward. But they are part of the process, legitimate or not.
The civil rights protest were widely seen as illegitimate, and they were brutally put down. It was only through persistence and a wide base of political action from peaceful marches right up to armed resistance, did laws change.
This governmental tactic of using "agents provocateurs" against protests had been invented by the French themselves, a very long time ago, but now it is universally used by all governments.
Pensions cost 400+ billions a year, it's not the couple of millions of euros of damage that will change anything.
How much damage happened during the 1789 revolution? What about he US civil war?
If that's how you read the situation you're a complete tool
the "russian bot" thing made sense. this is just conspiritardation.
There’s a difficult balance to strike, and leadership seems incapable of it lately, hence the uprisings of the people without much property they can call their own.
Hundreds of videos of riot police beating kids and women, kids lost eyes, hands, feet, etc.
Zero video of the police intervening during the looting, not a single police officer in any of the looted streets
Compare that with violent ones that see the opportunity coming with 3-4d heads-up (because peaceful protests are normally covered with a little advance - 3-4d - by mainstream press), create an Instagram/TikTok/Whatsapp/Snapchat group, spread it aggressively thanks to zero cost of social/IM, and their only objective is to smash everything in their path (and if they manage, steal some loot to resell).
Also many "violent" protesters are organized, and even more so have to be to stay as safe as possible.
Nowadays whenever you see "violent protests" and "destructions of private property by vandals during protests" you can never be certain whether they are organized by people who are against the government or by the government itself.
Then, the government is pushing cities to denounce the most popular Left party as the instigator of the riots.
They are preparing to ban them next elections for this. It's pretty clear it's all a political maneuver to ensure it's once again Macron's party versus Marine's far right party, hoping it ensures their win against her
I'm not saying Macron is happy with the "extreme left", but it seems to me he's much more against the "extreme right". And not just him: pretty much every politician and their dog is trying to distance themselves from the Le Pen's party.
In practice there may be many roadblocks in that, so this isn't absolute. But if that's the case, it's still on the people who notice the roadblocks to convince most everyone these are real. Without that any protest will lack widespread support and be suppressed regardless.
Arguing that the system has escape hatches is just an excuse. The escape hatches have also failed, clearly, since they either haven't been used (which is their fault) or their use did not fix the system.
there are many NGOs aligned with the current protests, and they receive substantial government funding, because they are in symbiosis. the regime doesn't provide funding for ideologies that actually threaten its interests.
public opinion has now reached a tipping point, any further vandalism/arson/violence will not provide a net benefit to the regime. that's why now they finally try to stop it.
The best way for governments to deal with protests is to have policies in place that fulfill what We The People want. Everything else is a band-aid atop an ulcer: it hides the problem for a little while, but the problem itself keeps growing regardless.
We The People's desires are mutually exclusive.
We want lots of benefits, low taxes; high government spending/services, a stable currency; economic growth, low inflation; security, freedom; etc.
Representative democratic government is the reconciliation between those wants.
So no, the answer isn't as simple as giving the people what they want.
In fact, remarkable long-term lack of massive protests would be a very good metric for determining whether ongoing reconciliatory efforts are moving in the right direction. If such protests start happening, correct course sooner rather than later, and measure success by a newfound lack of further massive protests.
This is not true, and very much the kind of propaganda spewed by the (far-)right, please do not trust it.
The entire crowd chants very explicit chants against the government and police, gathers around fires in the street, shouts at police when they attack the demonstrators or fire gas canisters and flash-bang grenades. The crowds that get out are not getting smaller, despite mainstream media and government equating the protests with violent looters, so it seems everyone marching feels a need to. There are looters, but they're a tiny, insignificant minority.
The protests are violent because the repression is violent, and because they are marching against real suffering.
Peaceful - Peaceful is an adjective meaning free from war, violence, conflict, or disturbance, as well as quiet, calm, and untroubled
Very few protests are truly "peaceful". There will always be a grey area with protests that make them controversial and difficult to manage while "peaceful protest" is usually used as a thought terminating term. Though riots are different and probably are made up of opportunists.
You can always be assured of one thing, if the USA/west control apparatus does something defensive, it is because they’re very familiar with why it needs to be done to counter methods they’ve not only used, but successfully so to overthrow governments and cause chaos in societies.
1) its france, Rioting is a national sport
2) even by french standards, this is getting out of hand
3) peaceful protest is being facilitated, the problem is, not everyone is peaceful and there isn't enough police to arrest everyone.
If you are american you have to remember that france _likes_ to protest, not in a cutesy way where you all line up and make a message out of people. No they blockade roads, factories, shopping centres and generally bring cities to a grinding halt. Spontaneously. Put it this way, the No kings protest had they been run by the french would have been visible from space.
Sometimes workers take company execs hostage (see good year 2014 and air france 2015, where execs had to literally run away)
Or more generally the yellow vest movement had rolling blockades that fucked with everything.
The playbook is always the same here in Germany: create a temporary limitation, like “ban use of umbrellas” or “don’t chant in arabic or irish” (both real things that happened at demos in Berlin). Then one of two things happen: either people comply, and cops create a new limitation. Or someone doesn’t comply and is violently arrested. Some people don’t like being beaten up, so they fight back. Now a peaceful protest turned into “violent police attacking thugs”.
They also like to walk in irrationally straight lines, as they have the right to shove aside anything or anyone that obstructs their movement, just like those British palace guards.
The far right gets to blame migrants as usual
The center right (in charge right now) gets to blame the "UlTrA left"
The left gets fucked
Medias exclusively talk about the riots for days, the original demands are completely forgotten, boomers get behind the government for "LaW AnD OrDeR"
What happens if agents of the state initiate the violence?
The looting is mainly the immigrants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_Be...
Don't worry we'll embark on the protofascism path before and it'll bring its own share of problems
Namely, in the end, they will have to switch off telecommunication as a whole... well, if they are not interested in gathering intelligence about the rioters.
And then real rioters will have 'mesh communication devices', and then govs will need EM jammers too.
Sooo... govs should work on good and wide spread EM jammers instead of trying to to block DNS...
Those applications/protocols already exist to 'work around' authoritative regimes around the world. Only their usage will be re-purpose.
And many are not "kids", and even so, "kids" will also be able to use them since those alternative communication apps are packages to be used by non-tech-savvy people.
This one is on you pal.
Why not ban migrants from getting citizenship? So that they can work for 2-3 years and then must leave. Also, restrict their movement freedom so that they are not allowed to live in the capital.
In a week, we got curfew, military in the streets to control protests, blanket ban on protests in a few cities (but not uniformly applied, illegal far-right protests have been tolerated at night during curfew), an extremely violent police repression (protest control policemen in France have very violent weapons, and those resulted in lost eyes and shredded hands // and that's not counting all of the unjustified beatings in the protest while looting was happening under their eyes elsewhere), the prime minister outright lying on the fatalities, spoke person laughing at the idea of condemning violence from the police, mass arrests, proposals from the party in power to ban social media, to ban the big left party (the second one in terms of voting intentions rn), to tag people in the protests invisibly, to disenfranchise people that will get condemned for anything in those protests… and by the way completely ignoring their responsibilities in anything in this story, blaming a party that never has been in power for all the economic problems in this country.
Next years are going to be fun :)
However, DoT uses a separate port (853) that can easily be blocked entirely, whereas filtering DoH requires relying on SNI or lists of IP addresses.
It is like blocking something with a gate which you can open by reaching a latch on the other side with your hand
Only the freaking politician can attempt to block something via DNS ;)