Bitcoin Forum

More use of the Hegelian Dialectic to strip us of our freedoms piece by piece. Never submit.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-13/austria-wants-ban-online-anonymity-and-urges-world-follow-its-footsteps

It really feels surreal that it is 2019 and places in Europe are still trying to silence people's speech.

It is one thing to filter certain words from being used. It is another thing to ban people for using words that are allowed.

I may not support the ban of online anonymity when it comes to financial transactions such as  blockchain and cryptocurrencies, but on the issue of trying to stop hate speech on the social media I believe that is a food move in the right direction of you consider the havoc hate speech have cause in our society recently and social media is the vehicle use to convey this hate speech all around the world.

That's not how it works. Either you have it or you don't, you don't get to pick and choose. Also if you think finances are more important than freedom of speech then you are quite naive.

So look like facebook/twitter is going to lose a lot of userbase in Austria. Might be all the user shift to some other platform that would not come in jurisdiction of EU and Austria.

So what Austria will be going to do next?
Selectively banning the websites in Austria. Look like they are moving towards the internet censorship and this is their first step.

It's not fair to say that Austria as a whole wants to ban anomity because some far right or left group introduced a bill that will never get passed.


Bills get brought up all the time in America that are a joke in order to prove a point,

In the USA for several years, we have seen over and over, banning of conservative writers and thinkers by Facebook and Twitter based on something they said being "hate speech."

I no longer take this type of thing seriously and consider it nothing more than one sided political repression.

Maybe it is one of those kind of things that sounds nice in the abstract, but when implemented becomes evil very quickly.

"Hate Speech" is becoming the new "Terrorism".  Anything that stood in the way of the United States was labeled as terrorism.  "Terrorism" allowed in the Patriot Act to spy on Americans.  "Terrorism" gave reason for USA to invade other countries for resources.

Now calling anything they don't agree with Hate Speech will allow them to push their agendas once again.

Conspiracy theory: most Internet control legislation aim at Bitcoin.

Think about it: if you control the Internet, you control Bitcoin.

Everything has been coming to that for a long time. Recently, with all those Facebook scandals all EU countries made their changes in laws, that are related to data storage.
Such policy can be provided in different ways, for example in Poland you have to verify your sim card with your ID to activate it, then it became easy for the government to identify the user in social networks. Media platforms like FB or twitter would kindly help with that.
This hate speech shit was started by US leftists and spread to the entire western world.

The EU (and its member states) is an authoritarian regime which is steadily marching in the same direction as the USSR. Every year they reduce individual freedoms. If I was in the EU, I'd be trying to leave ASAP.

And to think some here believes in the goodness of a centralized anything, especially thoughts, as long as they are in control...

I don't know if the Allies can keep saving you from your own destruction over and over again Europe...

The reason why Austria is banning online anonymity is that Europe was dominated by money laundering cases and fraud. More European banks are being drawn into money-laundering allegations centered on dirty Russian money, adding to the scandal in an industry still recovering from the financial crisis.

A big percentage of money laundering was operated and executed using the cryptocurrencies as well. So we have to expect that KYC will become with us always.

Check this article for more information.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-05/dirty-money-scandal-widens-with-reports-on-nordea-and-lithuania

If that is the case then they just banned bitcoin partly. Bitcoin promotes the idea of being anonymous. Is bitcoin banned in Austria?

Think of the havoc caused by the oppression and suppression of freedom of speech, be it hate speech or any speech... I just can't comprehend how people can fall into this trap of thinking anything good can come of this, especially those in the Bitcoin community.

"We need less anonymity to find hate groups" they said. "Criminals are abusing anonymity of crypto" they said. All the same thing over and over. Cyberbullying. Money laundering. Criminal activity. These are trigger words used to justify the gradual reduction of rights.

Austria can do that but only within it's own jurisdiction. It's not going to put the country in a good light among the international community but if their government would implement such a backward law, the citizens would have no choice but to comply. But they can't influence other countries to follow suit.

It's looking very grim for the future of europe regarding privacy and a lot of citizens don't even give a frick about it
"oh i have nothing to hide"
But i guess it's the same thing all around the world even after the NSA Snowden leaks it only took a few weeks to get back to the usual status quo...
What can we do about this when the majority of people just doesn't care about anything as long as their nutella doesn't taste like feces?

You know what you tell those "if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide" people? You tell them "In that case, you won't mind if I show your mother what kind of pornography you like."

Oh this Austria, what a wonderful country... Mountains, rivers, Schönbrunn Palace and a lot of another amazing stuff.
By the way, it's also a Hitler's birthplace.

That's kind of what i've been telling friends that told me that they had nothing to hide, but they wouldn't let me search their browser history :(
And i don't think that this changed anything in their attitude, we need to raise awareness because if people get told that the NSA has their nudes and their porn history, maybe they'll wake up.

Europe is going a really, really bad way for their citizens. actual example is the upload filter. they want to control everything. free speech isn't given anymore. your opinion is different to the mainstream media (which is given by the gov) you are a bad nazi. strange times in europe.

Ask them what they think about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLjht9uJWgw

dont worry russia will limit nazism in europe,

Some 30 or 40 years ago, it was possible to have an anonymous ban account in Austria. I guess times have changed, but the people not so much. I'm sure plenty of Austrians will fight this.

We may not like that ban online anonymity but we don't have the rights to fight the government for what they are implementing. I can't guarantee they can convince other countries to follow them but I can say that this is the start and they are going to do what they can do to implement it.

Or _{most likely} lead it.

This is unenforceable, even if the world submitted (which i doubt). They might go against corporations, but they can't do nothing against p2p, decentralized, obfuscated network technologies...