[dryarzeg]

Believe me or not, but I was discussing this with a lot of Russian people; I have some friends in Russia (and it's becoming increasingly complex to contact with them). And they tell that everything that they experience right now has also started with relatively "harmless" things like blocking piracy websites and some "far-right" Ukrainian media.

So you're not anywhere near Russia. Yet.

[n4r9]

That just sounds wrong. It's a totally different political and cultural climate. Russia has been aggressively censoring the internet since the 2000's, including blocking websites simply for advocating opposition parties (the famous example being Garry Kasparov in 2009). Prior to which the state was already indirectly controlling almost all television and newspaper media. The idea that this is somehow the first step towards a fascist dictatorship is a clear slippery-slope fallacy.

[dryarzeg]

> first step towards a fascist dictatorship

Note that you have introduced the term "fascist dictatorship" into the conversation, not I. So that may be the issue with how you understand my words. Moreover, when I was comparing Russia to UK, I was only comparing them in terms of censorship and amounts of attempts to enforce a state control over the Internet.

And I fail to see how political and especially cultural climate matters in this discussion. Wasn't it the British prime minister, David Cameron, who back in 2015 pledged to ban all online messaging services which provide end-to-end encryption? Isn't that the UK in which Investigatory Powers Act (2016 one) exists? Isn't that in the UK where voices are heard to ban or regulate VPNs by introducing the mandatory age verification? What about the whole recent UK "Digital ID", or so-called "BritCard" effort? Clearly, the political climate may be different, the cultures may be distinct from each other, but still two countries may wander in roughly the same direction - at least as it seems to me in my personal view - when we're talking about censorship.

My argument was never about the "climate". It was rather about the "current weather", so to speak. And the forecast, based on all these data points, looks remarkably similar - but, I must reinforce, only to me - that's my own, personal opinion.

With all that said, to be completely honest - I don’t really care what happens to the UK. It’s not my country at all; I have no connection to it, and what happens there affects me personally, my family, and my friends about 0%. Whether the UK establishes yet another (in the world) dictatorship with an iron curtain, or simply introduces Internet censorship and surveillance for the good of the people, or manages to preserve true democratic values and not trample on human rights - to be perfectly honest, I couldn’t care less. At least - until the UK’s domestic policies start harming other countries through their expression in foreign affairs. For me, the main thing is that nothing like that happens in my country or on my doorstep; the rest isn’t that important, no matter how cynical that may sound...

[n4r9]

The difference in political climate matters because the public has the ability to vote in a party that will roll back the Investigatory Powers act, if it was something they cared about. The difference in cultural climate matters because Russian citizens are used to authoritarianism whilst British citizens tend to balk. And the "current weather" is so far apart that your comparison is absurd. Compare their press freedom indexes, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index#Rank...