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Censorship Government

Is Slashdot Blocked In Parts Of India? (slashdot.org) 172

Posted by EditorDavid from the jungle-block dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader davesag writes: I'm a regular long-term Slashdot reader and have been living in Delhi for the last 9 months. As of last Friday 25th August the only way I can access Slashdot at all is via a VPN. It appears that Slashdot has joined the growing list of websites the Indian Government finds threatening.

The Indian Government is deeply paranoid over internet access, with many sites being blocked, jail sentences for viewing blocked URLs, and bans on open wifi networks.
In 2015 the Indian government blocked access to over 800 adult web sites, and earlier this month they reportedly blocked access to Archive.org. "A block on Slashdot is over the top," davesag writes, "and makes me wonder what it is about this news site that the government here finds so terrifying."
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Is Slashdot Blocked In Parts Of India? More

Is Slashdot Blocked In Parts Of India?

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2017 @10:35PM (#55107705)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:jail wifi (Score:5, Funny)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2017 @11:11PM (#55107855) Homepage Journal

      Not when the answer is obvious.

      What about this news site does the government find so terrifying?

      Goatse.

      • Re:jail wifi (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @04:48AM (#55108573)

        Being Slashdot is American and sometimes Western European centric in terms of members and stories. There is a lot of animosity towards India with people loosing their decent jobs to India because a bunch of companies decided to outsource everything.
        This was at full force in 2003 where it was the companies trend to fire all those quirky IT guys who get paid a lot of money, and shift the work to India for a fraction of the cost.

        It took a few years but the realization that IT outsourcing was over used and not as cheap as it seems. So it scaled back a bit. But still there are a lot of people who had a good job in Slashdots core demographic area who had lost it and never really was able to get that type of job again. So many of the articles and post are bias against India.

        So chances are some of India local officials may see something and decide to block it. But it may not be on the national blocking list.

        • Being Slashdot is American and sometimes Western European centric in terms of members and stories. There is a lot of animosity towards India with people loosing their decent jobs to India because a bunch of companies decided to outsource everything.

          It's pretty sad that they would block us over talking about outsourcing and not about how fucking rapey their government is, let alone their culture.

      • NOO! You did it again. They were just about to unblock /.

        Smooth move Ex-Lax.

  • We'll describe it to you over the phone (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2017 @10:36PM (#55107709) Journal

    Just outsource your browsing to Americans.

  • you don't want to cause a revolt among your population when they visit Slashdot and start discussing such sensitive matters.

  • terrified ... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "and makes me wonder what it is about this news site that the government here finds so terrifying."

    Maybe the grammar ...

    • You think they might lose their individual accent that we all come to like so much?

    • "and makes me wonder what it is about this news site that the government here finds so terrifying."

      Maybe the grammar ...

      Maybe Indian government is tired of the racists on slashdot. I see many stories on India on slashdot.org have comments like "Now INdians must figure out how to make toilets, provide human rights and create a democracy."

  • I suppose if my code sucked badly, I'd want to hush up my critics, too...

  • Works fine here in Mumbai (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Saurabh Kanwar ( 5068519 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2017 @10:50PM (#55107763)
    I am accessing slashdot through a major ISP/telco here in Mumbai, and there doesn't seem to be a block at all. Usually blocked sites return an error message that says that the site is barred due to orders etc. Did OP see a message or did the site just fail to load? Could be ISP incompetence.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      I am accessing slashdot through a major ISP/telco here in Mumbai, and there doesn't seem to be a block at all.

      In that case, we're turning you in.

  • It's working fine here... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Nope, working fine in Pune India. No VPN required. ISPs - Tata Communications and You Telecom.

    • Re:It's working fine here... (Score:5, Informative)

      by palemantle ( 1007299 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2017 @11:04PM (#55107827)
      Staying in southern India now and haven't had any problems getting to Slashdot. Have tried getting to the site using both Airtel and an ISP called Pioneer which leases bandwidth from all kinds of sources from what I understand.

      So either this bit about government censorship is FUD or the government is unbelievably incompetent at the same. I'm thinking the former.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        So either this bit about government censorship is FUD or the government is unbelievably incompetent at the same. I'm thinking the former.

        Certainly it's both.

      • I was in both northern and southern India last month and had absolutely no problem accessing /. (or any U. S. news agency I was looking at).

        Maybe the contributor has a bad gateway near him?

    • I am browsing slashdot from Mumbai without VPN (but using https), no issues here.

  • Modern dictatorship (Score:4, Insightful)

    by XSportSeeker ( 4641865 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2017 @11:00PM (#55107807)

    The sirens are going at full force in several countries of the world.
    A whole lot of countries are tumbling into the cycle of dictatorship and tyranny after enjoying a good time of democracy.
    It's already happened in several middle eastern countries, it's happening in South America and some Asian countries, and it's spreading out.
    Enjoy while you can folks, and leave stories of hope behind. Because our grandkids might need it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And meanwhile in USA the population has "democracy" by name which isn't any better. Only the super elite has a say and none of the elected officials give half a fuck what the average joe care about.

  • It's 9AM in Delhi, get to fucking work, quit reading fucking Slashdot.

  • I'm in Mumbai right now and can access Slashdot just fine without the need of a VPN. For fun, I tried going to archive.org with no success. The India government should "do the needful" and unblock it unless they have some problem with nostalgia.

  • As soon as you start censoring anything at the ISP level mistakes and policy will be made...

    this is not a option that can be disabled by users/citizens but by companies....

    why browser manufactures dont simply give the option of pulling a blacklist as a standard and pull from gov mandated site then the user/citizen can decide...

    welcome to the new world order where you dont decide if you can break the law only companies can do that...

     

    • why browser manufactures dont simply give the option of pulling a blacklist as a standard and pull from gov mandated site then the user/citizen can decide...

      Let the users decide? Can't you see that the users have already made the wrong decision? Obviously the government knows better! /sarcasm:off

  • Easy access to Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)

    by gopla ( 597381 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2017 @11:32PM (#55107905) Journal

    I am from Mumbai, India. I have been on Slashdot since 1999, and never faced any blocking.

    The internet censorship in India is more about porn than political views.

    • The internet censorship in India is more about porn than political views.

      You mean about the stuff that Really Matters : )))

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Weird, you'd think they'd encourage porn so people choose masturbation over contributing to overpopulation.

  • Can't he just use the Slashdot app?

    That's the only way I access /. these days. I don't like the fact that I have to give Slashdot access to my camera, microphone, contacts list, location data and biometric information, but it's convenient as hell.

  • I just tried 2 ISPs to check this: BSNL (government ISP) and Reliance Jio (private). Slashdot is working smooth on both. Other users also report the same. As of last Friday 25th August, perhaps your Internet usage quota has got exhausted. Get it recharged. And quit spreading fake news.
    • I also think that this is a fake news. I have been accessing Slashdot every single day through 3 - 4 ISPs (My Fiber Optic to Home, 4G Reliance JIO, 3G Vodafone, and Office network which is load balanced across 3 ISPs, including Govt. sponsored ISPs). I have never faced any issue what so ever till date.
  • It's really funny how the websites are blocked by the Indian government.

    In the past, when a huge list of websites where blocked in a single day (which included Github and others), the block was just at DNS level. So if you were using some public DNS (eg.: Open DNS), you were still allowed to visit those websites.

    Several other websites are blocked only when non https websites are visited. Say for example http://archive.org/ [archive.org] is blocked, while https://archive.org/ [archive.org] is not (try it with lynx or w3m, you mi
  • Have you tried unplugging your router then plugging it back in again?

  • Clearly not, or how would the editors do their work?

  • So if we only see "No" answers from users in India we then definitely know that there a places that it is blocked, right?
  • Quick, everybody post how they really feel about Indians!

  • the country is developing far faster than we could have ever imagined

  • Definitely not blocked in India (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It seems that some posters run crying about censorship rather than calling their ISP. I am on the partly state owned ISP and /. has never been blocked here.

  • There's so many reasons you might have trouble accessing a website. It's not always censorship. One person says he can't access slashdot, and with nothing but that, we've got a discussion thread full of people denouncing India. Seriously?

    Lots of other folks in India say it works fine for them. So it's not censorship, just one person having network problems. It happens. It's not a big deal.

    Don't jump to conclusions. Take your time, get the facts. And seriously how did the slashdot editors let this th

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