> I'd also like to separate the logistics from the morality here. If you believe it's hard to do it without satisfying privacy concerns, totally true! But then the focus should be on finding a good privacy-respecting solution, not just arguing for the status quo.
I like this point. I feel like the tech community just figured politicians would forget about the issue. Instead of working together to develop a solution.
By providing technical means to implement such censorship in "more acceptable" ways, you lower the political bar for its passing.
Not only that, but once you do so, you effectively concede that such censorship is valid to begin with, which can and will be used against you to pass further laws along those lines in the future. And if those laws cannot be implemented without ditching all that privacy you worked so carefully to respect in your compromise, well, too bad about that.
No. The tech community absolutely has the right to refuse to provide technical means and argue any views they want.
However we're seeing what happens next. Politicians write laws anyway forcing the tech community to do what they want.
I am just saying that in hindsight a bit of cooperation may have resulted in a less privacy invasive solution. I guess with the supreme court ruling it's too late now. The politicians have already won.
I like this point. I feel like the tech community just figured politicians would forget about the issue. Instead of working together to develop a solution.