What the hell is happening in Denmark at the moment??
First forcing the chat control topic upon Europe, now this?
I looked up their government, would have expected far right or so, but it is liberal social democrat…
So what happens here?
Don’t be fooled by the party names. You have to look at the policies and consequences. Danes like to feel progressive, have left leaning stuff like free education and totalitarian measures against stuff they fear. The social democratic party remained in power after Germany moved troops into Denmark in 1940. It should tell you a lot.
Denmark resistance lasted for the whole 6 hours.
Yeah, the time it took to drive from Germany
Something is rotten in Denmark.
The soc.dem. are not a left party anymore. The current government consists of three different center-right parties. And they have some weird priorities sometimes.
The social democrats copied a lot of anti immigration talking points from the right because this seems to be just popular in Denmark. I guess they are just weird.
But these laws are not anti immigration, they are anti freedom in general.
True, my guess is as good as yours. It feels like they paired seemingly good intentions (I mean who is against fighting CSAM right) with a complete lack of technical understanding and proportion. Maybe that’s not a political spectrum kind of think but generational lol. Idk tho it still confuses me how people can be so ignorant to go through with this.
I wonder how much it has to do with the success and subsequent loss of this operation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield
Because it seems like a lot of countries in the west are pushing this kind of thing rover the last several years and there’s a heavy push right now. https://www.privacyguides.org/videos/2025/12/16/taylor-lorenz-on-kosa-the-screen-act-and-repealing-section-230/
It’s already been taken off. The guy who requested this is a complete asshole that needs to be thrown out of office immidietly.
I hate journalism so much these days…
Random dude in the parliament: “Let’s all shit our pants.”
“Journalists”: “Denmark wants to shit its pants!!”
The whole country wants to ban VPNs?
Or just a small subset of politicians in the pocket of big corporations who see their profits melt because of their own greed?
What’s the difference?
Wut? Are you actually suggesting that the entire population of Denmark (aka, the whole country) is just
politicians in the pocket of big corporations
???
Well, I’m an American, and we’re collectively blamed for the fuckshit our government does, so absolutely yes.
But also, if the Danish government passes a law that goes into effect, how does it matter how many or how few Danes wanted it?
Well, you collectively elected Trump for president.
Twice.
Uh huh, and how’d the Danish government arrive in power?
Same way. But there’s a difference between proposing a VPN ban and nuking a hurricane.
Yeah, Denmark might actually try their stupid idea.
How do you “ban VPNs”? That’s not how software works, and VPNs are… you know, a key part of a bunch of online infrastructure. I get that they mean “ban them to bypass restrictions”, but the entire point of a VPN is you can’t tell from the outside what it’s being used for. You may as well ban thinking about butterflies. You can write it down, but you can’t enforce it.
I actually want one country to ban VPNs just so every other country can see the fallout or complete lack of enforcement
VPNs are banned in some countries. At least in practice. China comes to mind and please nobody tell me „I have a friend in China and they use one!“ That friend is either breaking the law, or a state agent or foreigner where that law doesn‘t apply. Hotels have that as part of their service for tourists because why the hell would anyone travel to a country with basically no internet? Of course they are exempt.
But Chinese citizens are absolutely not allowed to use VPNs to break through the great firewall. The overwhelming majority wouldn‘t even know how. But of course most of them know at least one person who can.
So in theory the law is useless but in practice it‘s very effective to control information. Whatever the case it‘s nothing a democracy should pursuit. Ever.
This is such an important message. We should not lull ourselves into complacency. Banning vpns will be yet another step towards a closed, non-anonymous internet where governments (and by extension companies) will force you to give up access and control over your digital life
Let me tell how how much people actually follow laws in China.
I was born while the One Child Policy was in effect. My mother already gave birth to my older brother. Basically, my existence is illegal.
As you can see, clearly I’m not dead. They didn’t manage to kill me, just demanded my parents paid a massive fine and denied legal papers until they did so.
Honestly if you just browse and don’t post anything too serious, are they really gonna go after everyone who use a VPN. I mean, say even if just 1% uses a VPN. That’s 1,400,000 people. Are they gonna lock up a million people? Really? Surely they have bigger fishes to catch. (Edit: 1% of 1.4 billion is actually 14 million, good luck locking that many people lolz)
As for control of information, internarional phone calls aren’t blocked, you can send letters. My mom regularly call my aunts (aka: her sisters) in China. I heard the Covid QR codes being mentioned, afaik, the didn’t lose their teaching jobs nor ever got arrested.
The overwhelming majority wouldn‘t even know how.
It’s like adblocking. Do you know anyone irl that use adblockers? Seriously, I don’t know anyone that does except like maybe 1 perdon.
But here we are, on a platform where practically everyone uses adblockers.
Or in another analogy. Mainstream social media is like inside the GFW and Lemmy is like using VPN to bypass it.
TLDR: Okay sorry if my point isn’t concise, I guess my point is: NPCs will just follow the wind, those who have the will to dig deeper will probably be able to bypass the censorship (provided that it’s not completely cut off from the outside internet)
To add to your point, Xiaohongshu has plenty of people on it who aren’t Chinese as well. Loads. It’s not like they’re in cultural blackout.
When companies offshore dev or IT to China, do those employees get full VPN access with access to the “western” internet?
Good question! I‘m not that deep into the technical aspects but Chinese companies that work with foreign companies would have to work with the government and other Chinese companies that control internet access in China to circumvent the firewall legally. The process is likely limited and heavily monitored by authorities. Same would go for Chinese companies with storefronts in the global web. They would need to access our internet regularly but I assume their access is limited to some degree.
I imagine unless you‘re a big player it can be quite the hassle so many Chinese companies would rather work with domestic companies than with foreign ones. I think this is one major reason why many contracts with Chinese companies can only be done through middlemen. As an outsider, you can‘t get full access to their industry because you have no means of contacting all these little manufacturers yourself.
But again, I don‘t actually know for sure what these processes look like. Maybe someone with actual experience can shine a brighter light on this.
Most likely split tunnelling
But idk anything
Hotels are not exempt, not sure where you get your info
You are being absolutely ridiculous. VPNs may be de jure forbidden in China (idk about this even), but de-facto they’re absolutely allowed, nobody is prosecuted for using them, and every young Chinese person can tell you this. You haven’t talked with a Chinese living in China in your entire life.
From the article:
Ma [the one ordered to pay] said the police seized his phone, laptop and several computer hard drives upon learning that he worked for an overseas company, holding them for a month. He was later asked to provide details about his work, his bank details, his employment contract and other information, before being issued with the penalty in August
This person was not “using a VPN”, he was lying to the government about his working status and working for an overseas firm illegally.
There’s nothing illegal about working overseas
They’ll do what Russia does with their online services. Have a registration scheme with noncompliant VPNs being outright banned.
Simple when you know which dictator to copy.
I guess that works for VPN services offering servers outside the country. That’s not what VPNs are, though, and you still can’t ban the concept of VPNs having a connection outside the country. VPN software is available open source and all it takes for it to connect abroad is my phone with a VPN connection to my home computer being abroad.
I mean, Russia (and even China) still have people using VPNs all over the place. This (and a lot of the push for age verification and comms backdoors) reeks of barely understanding the desired result and entirely misunderstanding how the tech works.
I believe China does statistical analysis to do stuff like detecting and blocking VPNs, suspicious looking ssh traffic, etc from home Internet connections not going to an approved business. It’s my understanding it’s very hard to get around the GFW at the moment, and pretty complex stuff is needed to mask VPN traffic to make it look normal (Project X, Xray, Reality, etc).
Yeah, I read about some of the tightening at the time and I’m not disputing that there are technical ways of… you know, making your country’s Internet a mostly separate bubble for non-techie users.
The point is it’s both hard and extremely invasive to get there. You can’t just wish upon a star for VPNs to not be used for a particular application without going to those extremes. Especially if the thing you’re trying to prevent is people watching Superman two weeks early or wanking to a mainstream porn page.
They just block encrypted connections out of Russia to unknown servers
Precedent is already set by countries blocking them, it’s been done.
The powers that be really don’t like the idea of unmonitored secure networks do they?
What is happening with Europe and the countries within it?
They are not the bastion of liberty that everyone thought they were. Oh look, proved once more. Capitalism corrupts and corrodes every single social program, legislation, and benefit in society.
In a turn that so many people saw coming, social democracy is not immune to the wiles and whims of capital and corruption. Just like any other form of capitalism, it too will decay and dissolve. The rich want nothing but literal, chain and whip slavery over the poor of the world. These assholes are so mentally ill, they genuinely CANNOT stop hoarding, and they are so twisted by power and wealth, they wholly envision themselves as gods.
This is what liberals fail to see: if the rich truly got/ will get their way, we will be chattel slaves for them and then when their AI gets good enough, they will hunt us for sport.
I don’t mean to sound like a tweaking lunatic, but I am so positive that if there is anything that we enjoy or have, the rich want us not to. They are so petty and obsessed, any situation we are in that is not literally beneath their feet is too good for us worthless poors.
We are standing on a MAJOR precipice, the liberal capitalism of old is gone, and they are gunning for everything we are and have now.
Not just capitalism but more Centralization of power in any of its many forms. We have way too much Centralization.
Denmark seems to want to fuck everything up lately, what’s their problem?
They can’t understand each other. Because of their language.
There’s a good chance this guy is just a moron.
Denmark is trying to implement a lot of straight up fascist laws lately…
maybe lemmy at large should see the commonalities between all govts of the world making these moves instead of picking on the most obvious example and taunting citizens to “do something”. It’s as if there’s a coordinated effort to lock the lower classes down before some kind of technology creates civil unrest worldwide.
But then again, I’m just a stoopid murican who should have fixed this by now. Not aimed at you, just a relevant jumping off point for the crap that floods these threads.
I notice this mainly from western countries. Asians and South Americans seem to recognize they arent immune from corruption and bullshit policy. Yet for some reason their western counterparts like to point the finger at other countries (namely the US) and diminish their VERY real problems. “You Americans elected a facist, what are you doing?!” Yet far right parties have been surging for the past decade in Europe and Australia.
Facism was literally birthed in the west yet they never think it will come back
Pls, technology?
Climate change and a war against china are the two triggers.
The third one is AI being used to dominate the world
Shit’s getting extra shitty everywhere. Its like a couple of countries went a little fash and every politician across the globe went FUCK YEAH, LET US IN ON THAT SHIT!!!
“Oh no! We must protect the poor MPA! The poor organization that’s been hell bent on policing what films and media ought to contain and ensuring the multi-million dollar corporations continue to make their millions in peace!”
~ Denmark’s Ministry of Culture, probably
(nevermind the fact that countries with anti-piracy policies have not ever proved that they “repair” the so-called “market-damage” that they purport piracy has done)
Denmark is attempting Schrodinger’s VPN ban. Seems like every week it’s defeated and re-emerges. What a waste of administrative time.
What the hell is a foreign illegal stream?
Gotta give Denmark credit, they’re really going for the Shittiest Western European Country Award. Granted, I’m from the USA and we’re obviously an unmitigated disaster, but like, what the fuck are you guys doing? Competing for attention?
The UK has entered the conversation, we will not be unseated in Europe. But yeah as hard as we try we pail in comparison to you guys, hopefully your inevitable implosion will serve as a warning to the rest of us aspiring authoritarianists… Probably not.
Are you kidding? Whatever collapse they are trying to cause over there will inevitably be done here too once they’re done. It’s like a concerted global fascist effort, and people are sleepwalking straight into it, it’s like they have some brain control machine.
Wait, shit, they do- the Internet.
Correct. The exact same fascists who are doing this to the USA have explicitly stated that they’re targeting the EU next.
Some US states are in the process of banning VPNs too, though. I’m afraid the USA remains the uncontested champion of being a shitty western country and it‘s not even close.
Some US States
None of the even remotely good ones. Why is Denmark trying to be Alabama, again?
The Supreme Court equivalent tried that in Brazil, but soon discovered all government digital infrastructure depends on it and backpedaled.
I’m hearing a lot about zero trust infrastructure lately and I wonder if this is the reason - the desire to eliminate VPNs. I honestly don’t know enough about IT to know if that even makes sense but it wouldn’t surprise me if these big corpos see the writing on the wall and are figuring out how to work sans VPN.
It’s really telling how over the last few months, the overlap of “Oh, WTF is this?” between Privacy and Technology communities have aligned more and more.
What is going on with this vpn banning bullshit. This would render so many banking apps completely useless.
