'Extremely Aggressive' Internet Censorship Spreads In the World's Democracies (umich.edu) 239
Researchers from the University of Michigan used their own automated censorship tracking system to collect more than 21 billion measurements over 20 months in 221 countries. They discovered that citizens in what are considered the world's freest countries aren't safe from internet censorship. From a press release: [Roya Ensafi, U-M assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science who led the development of the tool, and her team] found that censorship is increasing in 103 of the countries studied, including unexpected places like Norway, Japan, Italy, India, Israel and Poland. These countries, the team notes, are rated some of the world's freest by Freedom House, a nonprofit that advocates for democracy and human rights. They were among nine countries where Censored Planet found significant, previously undetected censorship events between August 2018 and April 2020. They also found previously undetected events in Cameroon, Ecuador and Sudan. While the United States saw a small uptick in blocking, mostly driven by individual companies or internet service providers filtering content, the study did not uncover widespread censorship. However, Ensafi points out that the groundwork for that has been put in place here.
"When the United States repealed net neutrality, they created an environment in which it would be easy, from a technical standpoint, for ISPs to interfere with or block internet traffic," she said. "The architecture for greater censorship is already in place and we should all be concerned about heading down a slippery slope." It's already happening abroad, the researchers found. "What we see from our study is that no country is completely free," said Ram Sundara Raman, U-M doctoral candidate in computer science and engineering and first author of the study. "We're seeing that many countries start with legislation that compels ISPs to block something that's obviously bad like child pornography or pirated content. But once that blocking infrastructure is in place, governments can block any websites they choose, and it's a very opaque process. That's why censorship measurement is crucial, particularly continuous measurements that show trends over time." The study is titled "Censored Planet: An Internet-wide, Longitudinal Censorship Observatory."
"When the United States repealed net neutrality, they created an environment in which it would be easy, from a technical standpoint, for ISPs to interfere with or block internet traffic," she said. "The architecture for greater censorship is already in place and we should all be concerned about heading down a slippery slope." It's already happening abroad, the researchers found. "What we see from our study is that no country is completely free," said Ram Sundara Raman, U-M doctoral candidate in computer science and engineering and first author of the study. "We're seeing that many countries start with legislation that compels ISPs to block something that's obviously bad like child pornography or pirated content. But once that blocking infrastructure is in place, governments can block any websites they choose, and it's a very opaque process. That's why censorship measurement is crucial, particularly continuous measurements that show trends over time." The study is titled "Censored Planet: An Internet-wide, Longitudinal Censorship Observatory."
Did you detect my sarcasm? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I wonder if they will voluntarily turn Starlink off over countries that don't want it, or if they will just get jammed?
There is a third option, they cooperate by blocking and reporting as required in those countries, but I can't see that happening.
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At this point Starlink depends on ground stations near the customer, so it's a moot point.
It is an interesting question what they will do when they have sat to sat links, though.
Google has become the evil Librarian (Score:3, Insightful)
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While the United States saw a small uptick in blocking, mostly driven by individual companies or internet service providers filtering content, the study did not uncover widespread censorship
Read things first.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Freedom House is a U.S.-based,[4] U.S. government-funded[5] non-profit non-governmental organization (NGO) . . ."
Which explains how the Israeli theocracy gets the laughable accolade of "free".
If something gets all of its funding from the US government how does that qualify it as an NGO?
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It only seems ironic... (Score:2)
...just like spending money (on investments) in order to save money.
Or like a country eliminating the freedom to own slaves in order to increase freedom.
Freedom House (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure that I agree with their approach. That anything which follows democratic processes is necessarily 'free'. Pure democracies can become mob rule. Where the majority encroaches on the civil liberties of minority groups that they don't agree with.
Re:Freedom House (Score:4, Insightful)
Democracy is an absolutely hideous system. It really is mob rule; that's why so many systems involve constrained groups that you "vote for" by proxy, to get things done in a general manner you'd like.
I'm a fan of proportional representation myself, as allows a goodly number of parties to be represented, with a degree of nuance. The US (and UK, and lots of others) running First past the Post systems are bad at nuance; they were workable decades or centuries ago, but I don't really think are fit for modern society. Interestingly, the FPTP system in some cases actually fosters environments where it's possible for the minority to encroach on the civil liberties of the majority groups that they don't agree with as well as the minority.
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Democracy is an absolutely hideous system.
Yes, oligarchy is clearly superior. /s
Re:Freedom House (Score:5, Insightful)
Democracy only really works on a small scale with well educated voters who believe in and understand the process.
Similar to communism, which again only works on a small scale with like minded participants.
As soon as you extend this out to the masses, you get large numbers of voters who don't understand the issues (cant, don't want to, don't have time to etc) while having an equal vote to those who do.
You then get large numbers of people who will believe what they read without fully understanding or properly researching. Combined with mass media controlled by a select few, it is very easy for those few to control the way people vote.
Baseless, elitist tautology (Score:2)
You don't even need a high school diploma to know a minimum wage that hasn't been updated in 13 years and the continued occupation of Afghanistan are bullshit. And there is not reason why we couldn't have national referendums to pass popular policies that are blocked by elitists who have screwed up more things than "the mob" ever could. Stuff like legalizing marijuana, ending warrantless wiretapp
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You don't even need a high school diploma to know a minimum wage that hasn't been updated in 13 years and the continued occupation of Afghanistan are bullshit.
And yet it's easy for Fox News, OANN, etc to convince people that raising the minimum wage will crash the economy and that it's easier to fight them over there than it is to fight them over here, and that the liberals pushing for said policies are evil, with the added bonus of making shitloads of money while doing so.
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Smaller and easier to bribe/manipulate parts? That's why the large corporations are all funders of the "small government" astroturf parties like the Libertardians, why cough up a couple million to buy a national congresscritter when you can spend a few thousand and corrupt the entire county commission?
Re:Freedom House (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure that I agree with their approach. That anything which follows democratic processes is necessarily 'free'. Pure democracies can become mob rule. Where the majority encroaches on the civil liberties of minority groups that they don't agree with.
That is why we need to be more creative about how we elect people. The Electoral College is an 18th century way around this problem that doesn't really work in modern society (and various changes have made it not work as intended anyway). We need to get rid of first past the post. We also need to do away with congressional districts. There are creative ways to solve the mob rule problem without sacrificing democracy, but people are usually too distracted arguing about things like abortion and immigrants to pay attention.
On that note, kudos to Alaska for passing ranked-choice voting.
Perhaps, rather than just assuming that democratic = free, they should look at the strength and diversity of minority parties. A party duopoly, like a market duopoly, appears much more competitive than it really is.
Re:Freedom House (Score:5, Insightful)
The current system keeps the incumbents in power. You have a system where the two main parties are basically sharing power and swapping places every few years. Why would either of them sacrifice this for a system that would almost certainly result in a severe reduction in their power?
Other smaller parties would nodoubt be in favor of a change to the system, but they have no power to do anything about it.
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At the end of the day it doesn't matter if your name has an R or D in front of it. Your paychecks are signed by the same employer. You all play for the same team, the government.
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You all play for the same team, the corporations that paid to put you in power.
FTFY
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That is why we need to be more creative about how we elect people.
I don't really care how we select our leaders. Only that their powers are constrained. The English had the right idea with King Charles I. Violate the law, Constitution or Magna Carta and we get the rope. Likewise, any Socialist Utopia thinks they can take rights away from individuals, even if by popular vote gets sent to a work camp.
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Democracy is a lousy system of government, no doubt. There are many flaws with it. The only problem is, the alternatives aren't much better either, so until someone comes up with another system of government, we are stuck with what we have.
As far as freedo
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If you look at their source for the "freedom" measure you'll find that Freedom House is entirely funded by the US State Department. I'd say their sources leave a bit to be desired as well as their methodology.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
a few issues... (Score:4)
Under the law, there are no realistic consequences for platforms or fact-checkers who engage in dishonest or biased behavior.
Should a private company not be allowed to be politically bias? I think it would be great if they weren't allowed to be but that would mean bringing back something like the Fairness Doctrine which the Republican party fought hard to destroy because it was politically beneficial. What we really have here is a case of fair-weather deregulation. They were all excited for it as long as it worked in their favor.
there was a case where "fact-checkers" were shutting people down for "spreading fake news" because they were saying that Biden supported a Grand Wizard when in reality Sen Byrd was an Exalted Cyclops.
Well here's the thing, one is a fact and one is not a fact.
You may call it legalistic bullshit but if we do not rule based on fact and fact alone then how can you quantitatively draw the line? Everyone can have an opinion on where that line should be drawn but to do so en masse, one must be able to quantify this opinion so that it will be applied without bias.
I mean the difference between two bullshit positions in the same hate group makes a night and day difference to voters, amirite?
This requires the application of context to the nature of the comment which is an entirely different can of worms that once again runs up against the problem of quantification and bias.
Re: a few issues... (Score:2)
Well... private companies are apparently not allowed to be biased etc.
See Christian bakers, bed and breakfasts etc and for that matter the fun instance of a Muslim landlord refusing Christian and Jewish tenants. They were all told by courts that they could not discriminate, be biased etc.
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The Christian bakers ended up vindicated, they still have to make cakes for gay people, but they don't have to write happy gay marriage on them.
A Muslim landlord refusing Christian and Jewish tenants is outright violating the well-known law against religious discrimination (as religion is a protected class) and there is really no confusion there. As well, housing is an activity/service with additional protections above and beyond the usual, because everyone needs it.
So in short, no, and also no.
Re: A big problem is 0 liability for "fact-checker (Score:2)
Under the law, there are no realistic consequences for platforms or fact-checkers who engage in dishonest or biased behavior.
Good idea, let's get some tough legal consequences for being biased or dishonest on the internet and turn the fact checkers off.
Your next fact checker will be the person suing you and a judge, sounds fair to me!
Re:A big problem is 0 liability for "fact-checkers (Score:4)
The law (Second 230) says they can use whatever criteria they want for moderation. Their motivation is irrelevant, "bad faith" is irrelevant.
Fact checking isn't really all that important anyway. Most people have already decided who is lying and who isn't. It's more of a fig leaf for social media companies who want to look like they are doing something about fake news, and copium/click bait for people who want their existing opinions validated.
S230 (Score:2)
The 2020 equivalent of "But her emails...."
Re:A big problem is 0 liability for "fact-checkers (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, there was a case where "fact-checkers" were shutting people down for "spreading fake news" because they were saying that Biden supported a Grand Wizard when in reality Sen Byrd was an Exalted Cyclops.
This is a pretty subtle and possibly devious misstatement of all of the related fact-checking I found. If you have a link to some fact-checker who focused on the difference between the Grand Wizard and an Exalted Cyclops, please post it, because I think you're spreading fake news.
The claim that seems to have been widely fact-checked was that Biden eulogized a Grand Wizard, Senator Byrd. This is false, not because Byrd was never the Grand Wizard (though he wasn't; the Grand Wizard is the leader of the entire KKK, not just a neighborhood chapter) but because he had long since renounced his membership in the KKK and apologized for ever having been a member. By the time Biden gave his eulogy, Byrd hadn't been a member of the KKK for at least 50 years, and the clear implication of the claim was that Biden was eulogizing a committed, open, KKK-style racist. As the longest-serving Senator in US history and a man who had, by his own words, seen the error of his racist ways and renounced his previous beliefs, it was entirely appropriate for Biden to speak his eulogy.
number of countries (Score:2)
It says 221 countries.
There are 193+2 General of the UN.
Where are all the others from?
I couldn't find a list.
I'm not sure there are even like 25 disputed areas.
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Massive Censorship of the Palestinian BDS Movement (Score:5, Informative)
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When I saw Israel in that list - I was surprised that they were surprised.
Pretty much the same applies to India and Poland (I'll have to look Hungary up). The other three named were less obvious although I could see why Italy could have been a problem.
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The theocracy in Israel was rated "free" by a pseudo-NGO called 'Freedom House' which is entirely financed by the US government.
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I do not see the BDS movement as anti-semitic, but rather as anti-oppression.
And you are correct. BDS is literally the same thing as was done to South Africa when they had their decades of apartheid. Israel is doing the same thing but expecting, no, demanding, they be treated differently. Because they're Israel.
One can fully support the existence of a country but not support its policies. Which is what BDS is. Israel is free to pursue their apartheid and we are free to support BDS as a consequence of tho
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Apparently, there are now 32 states in the U.S. that prohibit the state from contracting or investing with companies or persons who support the Palestinian BDS movement (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/anti-bds-legislation).
It's so censored, the link to "BDS" from that page is a 404, and it goes to their own site :) I had to look it up with google, which at least provided what I was looking for as the top result.
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So head over to voat.co so you can hate the Jews all day long.
Not surprised (Score:2)
With the spread of misinformation that is, at times, harmful to the public, this is expected evolution of the internet. If the people can't govern themselves, the government will do it for them (some actually want this).
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It hasn't occurred to you that if you want to suppress information it helps if you call it misinformation at the same time?
"Hey you're censoring!"
"No I'm removing disinformation"
"Oh then it's alright. Don't let me interrupt you."
In reality there is so much garbage around that you can easily package it. For every bit of information you want to suppress for your own agenda, throw in 9 bits of garbage information to obfuscate it. Nobody will notice.
Terrorism, pedophilia, illicit drugs, video piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Reminding us that impeding corporate profits is equal to assaulting children.
Poor article, no censorship in Norway (yet) (Score:5, Informative)
I am Norwegian and I was surprised that porn should be censored here. Looking at the source, the original reference is this article [privateint...access.com] by Rick Falkvinge of the Swedish Pirate Party, who does not say there is such a law, only that the Norwegian Christian Democrats (a small party in the range of about 4%) suggested such a censorship. This party is in government and has some influence, but not enough to uproot key liberal principles: of course this proposal was never implemented, and probably was just pandering to their ageing and shrinking electoral base.
Then there is blocking of gambling sites, which can hardly be called censorship. Gambling is an economic activity with the morality of crack dealing (though none of the flair), and Norway happens to have a state monopoly on all gambling in order to rein in the phenomenon. There are way too many people who end up ruining their lives and families with gambling, enriching a bunch of profiteers with no qualms about exploiting what is known to be an addictive disorder [wikipedia.org]. If you conjure up freedom of speech for this bunch of crooks, you can just as well protect narcos under the same umbrella.
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Alas, the actual report states the opposite of what you say. The anomaly detection found blocking of, among other things, Human Rights Watch.
Ironically, the below quote has been lightly edited because the lameness filter otherwise prohibited me from posting it. The most important change is that I had to remove the sentence immediately following the below quote.
"Norway is ranked #1 (Most Free) in the Reporters Without Border Press Freedom Index [88]. However, recent laws passed in the coun- try encourage the
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Then there is blocking of gambling sites, which can hardly be called censorship.
It can hardly be called anything else, because it is censorship by definition. Whether it is warranted is a separate discussion, or at least a separate part of the same discussion.
Gambling is an economic activity with the morality of crack dealing
Crack is worse than gambling because it directly harms your health, if in no other way. That still makes it worse, though.
and Norway happens to have a state monopoly on all gambling in order to rein in the phenomenon.
So it's not just censorship, it's protectionist censorship.
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"Then there is blocking of gambling sites, which can hardly be called censorship. Gambling is an economic activity with the morality of crack dealing (though none of the flair), and Norway happens to have a state monopoly on all gambling in order to rein in the phenomenon."
Setting aside your little ad hominem sermonette on gambling, what you're describing is that there IS censorship. Literally, it's the government having a financial (commercial) interest in this activity, and using the force of the state t
The Art of Ignorance has been lost (Score:3)
We seem to have lost how not to pay attention to everything we read and hear. We used to simply ignore all that which doesn't make sense, not giving it any further attention than it needs, and to give more attention to finding the truth.
So now have we started to label, sort out and even ban all that which doesn't align with our believes as if we're on a crusade for the truth.
It has become harder to keep an open mind when one is flooded with mass information. Misinformation has made people more desperate and frantic in finding the truth and to trust information.
The AIs of social media then tailor information to specific groups, and while this is a feature, has it also become harder to find a common ground between all people, and is thereby fanning the flames.
I don't however want to compare our censorship to that of dictators and tyrants, because the later tend to use censorship out of a convenience and to suppress the truth, while we are in a struggle to keep our open-mindedness and the truth alive in what seems to be a coordinated bombardment of information.
We need to allow ourselves more ignorance and stop paying attention to every little bit of information even when it sounds as if it is the wrong way, but we do have a limit to the amount we can process and we also cannot let AIs make every decision for us, but we need to make decisions for ourselves.
Free flow of information is a threat (Score:3)
The simple fact is: the free flow of information is a threat. If people can freely communicate, then they may communicate ideas that don't agree with what they are supposed to think. That potentially threatens the position of the power brokers out there: the so-called "elite", the professional politicians and their hangers-on.
It doesn't matter if the information flowing contains "fake news", conspiracy theories, and other nonsense. The principle of free communication is more important. Recent trends to restrict the freedom of expression, both by Internet giants and by governments, should not be tolerated.
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You're paranoid frankly speaking. The elite as you call them frankly doesn't care for what you think. They have their own thoughts, but you're not supposed to think in a certain way, because of them. They're more content with people not thinking at all. Besides, if they could make you think the way they wanted you to, then wouldn't your own thoughts already be proof of them failing at it?
That's not censorship (Score:2)
It's only censorship when the government does it.
On my site or in my house I'm holy dictator and can throw out or block whomever I like.
False and false (Score:2)
Simply untrue.
The US Government has both demanded censorship from internet companies, and told them who to censor via government funded think tanks like the Atlantic Council. So yes, Shirley, this is government censorship:
https://about.fb.com/news/2018... [fb.com]
Having publication standards is not censorship (Score:2)
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Ah but where do you draw the line? When does guy with webpage pass over to 'official news site'. Is it when they get incorporated?
More over 'facts' aka statements that are either true or false regardless of state of the observes , tend to fall into 3 catagories.
1) Those easily tabulated and proven right or wrong. ( aka Ford made N number of X type of car in 1990)
2) Those complex and difficult to verify. ( The integrity of the steel used in the blocks of Ford trucks in 1990 was compromised by t
company L i
And yet, Facebook and Twitter (Score:2)
Both of these companies were/are huge supporters of net neutrality yet they regularly take it upon themselves to editorialize (to put it mildly) content on their platforms. Hypocrites. All. Of. Them.
"Information wants to be free" or does it (Score:2)
interesting the consequences of everyone actually having the ability to communicate what they think and feel to everyone else isn't it?
"“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quot... [goodreads.com]
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4 years of "Everybody who disagrees with me is Hitler", now you want to pretend like you care about empathy.
4 years of "Trump stole the election with Russia", now the new narrative is "Anyone who doubts THIS election is evil and wrong"
Re:Show empathy to SORE LOSERS. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody spent four years claiming Trump stole the election. Hillary conceded the very next day and wished Trump good luck. Yes, there were investigations regarding collusion, but no direct evidence of this was found (the impeachment was NOT about Russia or collusion). However, Russia was indeed involved in election interference in 2016 and likely in 2020 also.
We're not saying people who doubt this election are evil, but they're wrong and presumably misguided by Trump and his campaign.
Remember the four years of "Trump won, get over it losers!", it's not "we can't possibly have lost, there must be immense fraud at a global scale that is so well hidden that no one can find it!" Nobody is pushing the fake election story except for Trump, his campaign, and the fake news industry led by OANN, Brietbart, and Newsmax, and other fringe sites. The evidence of massive fraud just does not exist, it's all just a faith-based belief that it must be there.
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"Nobody spent four years claiming Trump stole the election."
Have you been in total isolation since 2016???
In spite of HRC's concession, she did blame Russia. And not just her.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
https://www.newyorker.com/maga... [newyorker.com]
https://www.bloomberg.com/opin... [bloomberg.com]
https://www.wwaytv3.com/2018/0... [wwaytv3.com]
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I never noticed any such thing. The opposite seemed true to me.
Japan (Score:2)
> "News sites like The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, for example, were aggressively blocked in Japan when Osaka hosted the G20 international economic summit in June 2019."
Is this a typo? Did the author mean to write China? I can find no mention of this "aggressive blocking" incident anywhere, including the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
NGO Freedom House rated Japan’s Internet access as “free” with scores as low as 22.
Re: Show SWASTIKAS to RICK SCHUMANN! (Score:2)
What's that supposed to be? A screen shot of a TRS-80 text mode skiing game?
Re:It's only "censorship" when (Score:5, Funny)
Fact checkers have determined that this is mostly false.
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It's right there on snopes.cn .
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Fact checkers have determined that this is mostly false when stated with addition on "because those moderators are all colluding". The mostly false part is the "all moderators".
I love fact checkers. From my studies of WW2 propaganda efforts, they appear to be just a slightly more sophisticated variant of Goebbels. "Rumours of crushing defeat on Eastern Front from overpowering Soviet Air Force are mostly false".
Re:It's only "censorship" when (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder what your opinions are on moderation, content curation, and brand management. Should those things not exist? If we can agree that they should exist, that curation keeps our museums from being filled with nothing but discarded bubblegum, then who should sign off on what qualifies as curation? Not the curator, apparently. Maybe a judge? Who should be in charge of brand management? Not the company who owns the brand, clearly. Maybe a judge? Judges are good at brand management, that's what they're there for.
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Little corrections, like one of the US's largest newspapers being locked out of its account unless it deleted a tweet to its own, now-validated, story? Like others being unable to link to that?
Little corrections, like a social media platform deleting group after group who were advocating for clean and fair elections?
Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
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Little corrections, like one of the US's largest newspapers being locked out of its account unless it deleted a tweet to its own, now-validated, story?
Has it really been validated?
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Yes, the email at the center of that story was the one that was signed by Google's DKIM system. The provenance of the laptop has also been confirmed. You would know these things if the corrupt media and tech giants had not worked so hard to censor the information. As the Washington Poost wrote, the media and tech decided to "treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation -- even if they probably arenâ(TM)t".
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Can you cite any sources for these claims? I fly across the country to all the time to get computers repaired at a podunk store run by a blind shopkeeper. I also just drop them off for years at a time.
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The fact that you're all worked up about this fabricated non-story to the point of ranting at strangers on the internet tells us all we need to know about you.
Enjoy your neocon LARP. When you're done playing and want to join the grown-ups, let us know.
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It's not fabricated and it is not a non-story when the person being pushed into the Presidency has an entire family that has been peddling influence while collecting large bags of cash for years.
Why do you hate the truth so much?
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Commies? In the Ukraine? Sorry, but Slow Joe's co-worker at the time Hillary Clinton helped put neo-Naz1s in charge of the country when they were getting too close to cooperating with Russia.
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The New York Post is one the countries largest newspapers? Oh that's a good one. Who are they beating out besides Weekly World News and the National Enquirer? I'm still waiting on the FBI report on the laptop data. They've had it for over a year now...
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The New York Post is beating the LA Times, The Washington Poost, the Chicago Tribune, and The Boston Globe, among others [cision.com].
And the FBI does not release reports like that. Even when a case goes to prosecution -- like the Representative caught with $90,000 in bribe money in his freezer -- the FBI does not publicize what they found. If the evidence becomes part of a court case, it becomes public that way. The FBI is not allowed to confirm the laptop's authenticity, and you are being dishonest to suggest they
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Advocating for clean and fair elections, as if that needs advocating for. No, they were trying to discredit the election with bullshit claims about cheating and illegal voting which have proven to be entirely false.
The claims were such utter horseshit that even the lawyers resigned from the case. You know it's bad when a lawyer won't take your money.
As for this newspaper the Hunter Biden laptop story turned out to be, you guessed it, total bollocks. Nothing of interest, FBI has had it for a year and not fou
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Maybe a judge?
I'm sure he'd be okay with that as long as the judge was endorsed by the Federalist Society.
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That would be the Libertardian solution, thundering herds of lawyers babbling incessantly in front of incorruptible judges and always-competent juries.
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If we can agree that they should exist, that curation keeps our museums from being filled with nothing but discarded bubblegum, then who should sign off on what qualifies as curation?
Um, "not including something in a collection" is NOT censorship bro. Censorship is is a direct activity seeking to remove information from being discoverable.
Is the "hits" station on your radio censoring Country Music when they play only "the hits"? No. You can just change the station to a Country Music station and get your rocks off there.
TL;DR, I am unsure why you are conflating curating with censorship when they are explicitly different things. You can kind of tell by the fact that they are different wor
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Re:It's only "censorship" when (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt it. So maybe don't act like you're so much more morally superior here.
In the end it's usually the same story, everywhere. It's not whether it's Left or Right, it's whether it's YOU or not you.
Generally they don't want to stop exploitation as long as they have a shot becoming the exploiter themselves.
I live in a country where political parties are on the Left, Right, and a whole lot of centrists.
Everyone of them complains when speech they agree with is restricted, but very few also complain when speech they don't agree with is restricted. Those that usually complain about that are Libertarians and Classical Liberals.
They don't clearly fit on either the Left or the Right. And with a lack of that polarization in our stupid Either-you're-with-us-or-against-us societies, they're not with anyone else and hence rarely get enough votes.
Re:It's only "censorship" when (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end it's usually the same story, everywhere. It's not whether it's Left or Right, it's whether it's YOU or not you.
Generally they don't want to stop exploitation as long as they have a shot becoming the exploiter themselves.
I wish I had mod points. I'd just like to amend it to read they don't want to stop exploitation as long as they think they have a shot becoming the exploiter themselves
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In a given region there are generally not many ISP, and there are significant financial, regulatory, and technical challenges to starting a new one. So it makes more sense to treat ISPs like true monopolies (and the ultimate monopoly, the government) than social media.
Any idiot can rent cloud instances, and many can code up something like Facebook or Twitter. If enough people go to Gab and Parler, Twitter and Facebook will be punchlines like MySpace and Friendster--because these services provide no value a
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The first line is the ISP's, as long as they're free to control where you go, they have the most power. Your ISP doesn't like slashdot, loading it never works. Likewise with any big company, your ISP can block or filter them. Most people don't have a choice or only a similar choice when it comes to your ISP and if you want to use the internet, well you need an ISP. That is what net neutrality is supposed to protect against
In theory, competition could work around this but between the cost of infrastructure a
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More and more I am questioning the Internet? Our growing groups of Commerical/NGO walled gardens and control centers.
I am finding fewer and fewer reasons to use the what? Commercial Internet? what ever we call what we got.
I use little social media, No Facebook, Twitter etc etc and don't use Google for search, run ad blockers and noscript and I have even dropped most of my streaming(down to sling) not sure how long?
I write programs an
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It's one solution, unluckily more and more stuff is only easily accessible online, Simply paying bills, little well if you want to look for work. Even playing with tech stuff is harder offline, even if it is just downloading tools or source code.
OTOH, where I am, using the internet is getting harder, oversold, stuck on a shitty LTE connection, tonight even answering here is slow and this is a fairly easy to load site, especially with stuff sent to 0.0.0.0 and NoScript etc. Now to press the preview button an
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I feel you'd be right at home with the local crazies that still talk on the CB at night.
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+1. I always wonder if they feel like doing an honest moderation job when marking someone's comment as "Troll" just because it says something they disagree with, or if it's just "end justifies the means" for them.
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Trolling is saying shit just to piss people off. Any time you see a comment left in good faith marked as "Troll", it is abuse of moderation.
I get modded Troll regularly, but not when I'm trolling. That's usually modded "Funny". (I only troll for humor value, pissing people off is secondary. IMO humor is important.)
Re:Unexpected (Score:5, Informative)
USA has a freedom score of only 86. This is not what I was expecting for de most democratic nation of the world. Has it always been this low?
The problem you are having is your assumption that the US is the most democratic nation in the world.
Having lived in Scotland, England, France, Australia, New Zealand and the US, I would definitely not put the US ahead of New Zealand or Australia in terms of being democratic, and probably not ahead of either Scotland or France. Both New Zealand and Australia have far more democratic electoral systems for example, New Zealand using Mixed Member Proportional Representation, and Australia using a version of Ranked Choice voting.
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Considering that Freedom House is financed entirely by the US government I think that 86 is about the best score that they could pump it up to without being too blatant.
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Why are old conservatives so frightened of Kamala? Is she going to visit your home while you're sleeping and suck out your soul? What are some of her socialist policies that you feel will be harmful?
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Old conservatives are frightened that Kamala will be an effective voice for the gov. option on the ACA. They fear their rank and file will decide they'd rather have health insurance rather than none or might choose it over the insurance companies. These are the same companies that had no problem rejecting coverage for anyone with existing conditions. This meant if you got one of those, you were to be sacrificed on the Altar of Ayn Rand.
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If you class every successful country outside the US, and a majority of US voters as extreme left Socialist doesn't that imply your calibration is a bit off?
You seem to have the wrong impression of what Socialism is. Maybe you are confusing it for something really common like water or air.