> That's the crucial part. Lots of people who do business in other countries either want to, or need to, visit the US from time to time.

That doesn't do them any good because the set of people who never intend to set foot in the US is still vastly larger than the number of people required to set up an offshore internet casino.

> On the other hand, I'm not particularly concerned about some tyrannical regime on the other side of the world that doesn't like the kind of content I have on my site. I'll postpone the research until I actually need to fly over their airspace or something.

Most people can't even name every country, much less tell you what their laws are. And then you'll be breaking them without even knowing, and if that's regarded as a legitimate reason to incarcerate someone then what are you supposed to do? Suppose you have to choose between a layover in Egypt or in Hungary, do you even know which one's laws you might have broken at any point in your life?

> Where does the UK currently stand in the spectrum between "country that everyone wants to visit sometime" and "country that nobody gives a fuck about"? It used to be firmly on the former side, but it seems to be drifting away to the latter side every year.

The problem is if you get on a flight to Paris you have no control over whether it might get diverted to London.

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kijin 19 hours ago | parent [-]

If diverting planes becomes a big enough problem for ordinary businesspeople and not just prominent opponents of certain dictators, I'm sure someone will build an app that helps us plan flights accordingly. Traveling from the US to France and need to avoid UK airspace? Sure, let's take a quick layover in Spain. Have you done any of the following things in the last x years? OK, we'll make a big detour around China this time.

Don't let slippery slope arguments take you into the dystopian future quicker than the world itself seems to be willing to.

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AnthonyMouse 12 hours ago | parent [-]

> If diverting planes becomes a big enough problem for ordinary businesspeople and not just prominent opponents of certain dictators, I'm sure someone will build an app that helps us plan flights accordingly. Traveling from the US to France and need to avoid UK airspace? Sure, let's take a quick layover in Spain. Have you done any of the following things in the last x years? OK, we'll make a big detour around China this time.

There are two major problems with this.

The first is that you don't actually know which countries you have to avoid. There isn't going to be an app that can walk you through every law in every country.

And the second is that you're not the one flying the plane. You thought you were going to Charles de Gaulle but the weather in Paris is worse than expected or some drunk driver crashed the gate and drove out onto the runway and they're diverting all the planes, so after you're already in the air you find out you're actually going to Heathrow.

> Don't let slippery slope arguments take you into the dystopian future quicker than the world itself seems to be willing to

They already do stuff like this. The fact that they do it is now being used as a justification for doing it more and elsewhere. You can watch people telling you that slippery slope is a fallacy as they're greasing the hill.

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int_19h 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> And the second is that you're not the one flying the plane. You thought you were going to Charles de Gaulle but the weather in Paris is worse than expected or some drunk driver crashed the gate and drove out onto the runway and they're diverting all the planes, so after you're already in the air you find out you're actually going to Heathrow.

Such a system would presumably account for possible diversions and plot your flight accordingly.

And yes, that is a thing that some of us do actually need. For example, while I have lived in the West for the past 18 years, I'm still a Russian citizen, and if I ever set foot there again they will likely have some questions for me regarding all the money for the war effort in Ukraine (see Ksenia Karelina for an example). Thus I would very much appreciate the ability to book a flight that is guaranteed to not be diverted to Russia or to any country that is likely to extradite to Russia, and I would pay money for such a service.

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AnthonyMouse 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> Such a system would presumably account for possible diversions and plot your flight accordingly.

I mean, that's fine if you want to avoid Russia while flying from California to Quebec, but you don't really need an app for that one. Whereas if you're within the plane's fuel supply of where you don't want to be, how are you supposed to know ahead of time what kind of nonsense is going to happen while you're in the air?

The plane could have a navigation failure over the ocean and end up arbitrarily far off course. Some first class VIP could have a medical problem which is going to force the plane to divert anyway and then the nearest city with the right kind of hospital is in the place you don't want to be. And what if you end up St. Petersberg not because you had a layover in Finland but because Helsinki was your intended destination?

	▲	int_19h an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You can't account for any possible contingency obviously, but you can still account for most. Start with just determining possible diversions on the route as it is supposed to be. That route can in turn be replaced with a heatmap of historical routes the planes on it have actually taken. And so on. The point is to not be on a plane that can be diverted to a country where you really can't end up at any likely point of its regular route.

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kijin 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> They already do stuff like this.

Who?

I can't think of a single case other than Ryanair 4978, a plane that was carrying a Belarusian opposition activist over Belarusian airspace. Not saying this was justified in any way, but even Belarus didn't dare to touch any foreign passengers.

If you're aware of any actual case of a first-world airliner from country A being forced to land in country B to have a citizen of country C arrested, please provide links.