Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

news.umich.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 645 posts

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#181

Post by ojbyrne »

paxys wrote: post #134
war1025 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing about this is that nationalism is in general associated with right-leaning politics, and the censorship is far and away being applied more aggressively to those very same right-leaning nationalist groups. You would be hard pressed to find liberal / progressive content being censored online.

Huh? It's the exact opposite. In the US sites like Facebook & Twitter routinely refuse to censor conservative content even if it is against their policies because they are afraid of pissing off Republicans in Congress. A "liberal" on Facebook calling for the beheading of a conservative politican would be banned (possibly even arrested) immediately. The opposite can and does happen every day, with no penalty. And all…

I think that the right has moved the Overton Window so much to the right that they see things that most of the world would see as mainstream (Black Lives Matter, Abortion, Medicare for All, Defund the Police, Anti-Fascism etc) as extreme.

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#182

Post by d23 »

varispeed wrote: post #40

The problem is that we didn't teach people about manipulation techniques because that was governments' favourite tool to control the masses. Now that anybody can reach anyone with any information, bad actors use these techniques to control people to their advantage. Governments' are now in an awkward position - ramp up education in these areas and forever give up a tool that worked for ages, or censor the information…

Did you or the responders read the article? This reads like an assumption that the article is about tech companies in the United States and their effects to combat election misinformation. It's not.

The part about the United States says this:

> 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.

And you say:

> Now that anybody can reach anyone with any information, bad actors use these techniques to control people to their advantage. Governments' are now in an awkward position - ramp up education in these areas and forever give up a tool that worked for ages, or censor the information in hope that bad actors will not influence the public.

The first major heading in the article is this:

> Poland blocked human rights sites; India same-sex dating sites

Not exactly the same thing as individual companies trying to combat misinformation. Even if those things could be twisted as good faith efforts, how would this help make politics more honest?

Having a conversation about the United States is fine, I suppose, but I'd much rather understand how actual governments are censoring things around the world. It's at least what the article is mostly about. If nothing else, it'd be nice for discussions here to actually have some relation to the article rather than being something people quickly upvote and jump in to espouse whatever preconceived opinion they had.

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#183

Post by babas »

ggggtez wrote: post #150
vinni2 wrote: post #28

> ISPs in Norway are imposing what the study calls “extremely aggressive” blocking across a broader range of content, including human rights websites like Human Rights Watch and online dating sites like Match.com. I have no trouble accessing hrw.org and match.com in Norway. I wonder is it specific to some ISPs? I also couldn’t find any law that was passed to block certain pornogrpahic websites in Wikipedia [1] and I…

I believe they are saying that it happened in 2018, not today. It's possible that it was a mistake, and corrected, but it should still concern you that it was done to begin with. Telecoms should not be the arbiters of what content you view.

I'm pretty sure it never happened. This would have been big news here. The technology press went ape when thepriatebay.org was added to a DNS blocklist. I have searched around and can not find any references to hrw or match being blocked by accident or not.

Either the article writer is confusing Norway with another country or this is just "Journalistic flair" i.e. a lie.

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#184

Post by marktangotango »

codemac wrote: post #38

A measure of this community will be how successfully we can manage a conversation about this topic. My bet - we will fail. I'm completely lost on how we should approach this for various social media like fb or twitter where the platform is ubiquitous.

I find I don't think of hackernews as a community anymore, haven't in a long time. To me what I read here is 50-75% of intentional argumentation and spreading of what's essentially FUD by people who are drawn here by the sites popularity, and who are just a likely to be on a payroll or otherwise promoting an agenda.

It's the small percentage of genuine people with reasonable, coherent things to say that keep me coming back. It's a trope, but the quality of discourse has declined markedly in recent years (imo).

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#185

Post by AntiImperialist »

jsnk wrote: post #91
AntiImperialist wrote: post #63

As great as free press and democracies are, they also come with huge weaknesses. Those make it easy for foreign propaganda to influence the public and hence run the countries from outside. Thanks to The Great Firewall and the CCP rule, China is mostly immune to foreign propaganda. At the same time, China is using a lot of effort to affect countries with democracy and free speech, like India and the U.S. China is obvi…

> Those make it easy for foreign propaganda to influence the public and hence run the countries from outside. Foreign propaganda is a problem. But it's tiny compared to propaganda by domestic actors. There's huge amount of disinfo, gas lighting, demoralizing perpetuated by mainstream media, big tech, and intelligentsia. If you are concerned about propaganda, you have to mention the elephant in the room. Or else, you…

But it's tiny compared to propaganda by domestic actors.

All foreign propaganda is peddled by domestic actors. Otherwise, it wouldn't be effective.

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#186

Post by ttt0 »

paxys wrote: post #134
war1025 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing about this is that nationalism is in general associated with right-leaning politics, and the censorship is far and away being applied more aggressively to those very same right-leaning nationalist groups. You would be hard pressed to find liberal / progressive content being censored online.

Huh? It's the exact opposite. In the US sites like Facebook & Twitter routinely refuse to censor conservative content even if it is against their policies because they are afraid of pissing off Republicans in Congress. A "liberal" on Facebook calling for the beheading of a conservative politican would be banned (possibly even arrested) immediately. The opposite can and does happen every day, with no penalty. And all…

I could bet money that the opposite of what you're saying is true. But I think that illustrates a much bigger problem. The society is so polarized, that we can't even agree on basic facts. Something went terribly wrong with the internet and the media and now we're living in two completely different realities, that are fundamentally incompatible with one another.

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#187

Post by CodeMage »

naringas wrote: post #141
AussieWog93 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is that we didn't teach people about manipulation techniques I don't know where you're from, but it's part of the Victorian (possibly Australian) curriculum for all year 12 students. And we still ended up with Rupert Murdoch.

just because it's in the curriculum doesn't mean it will be taught well. consider (for example) k-12 mathematics pretty much anywhere...

You hit the nail on the head there. And it's not just K-12 math, either. I don't know about Australia, but I can see what it's like here in the US.

I moved here 7 years ago, and my son has gone through a public elementary school and is currently in the last year of a public middle school. If it was just one year or just one teacher or even just one school (or one district), I could write it off to bad luck. Unfortunately, it's pretty clear that the whole system is abysmal.

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#188

Post by lettergram »

Of my past 10 posts on HN 6 have been flagged and removed by users. Of those, many made it to the front page with 10+ votes.

I contacted Dang and he was clear it was users censoring it, further that some users were also "vouching" for my posts. It's to the point, people don't want to know.

I feel I'm fairly even handed in my discussion. Here's a couple of my posts (who knows if I'll get flagged):

- Public Safety Announcement: The 2020 Election is Not Over (https://austingwalters.com/public-safety-announcement-the-20...)

- Firearms by the Numbers (https://austingwalters.com/firearms-by-the-numbers/)

- Update: The Dead Vote In Michigan – Voter Database Being Modified (https://austingwalters.com/update-the-dead-vote-in-michigan/)

NOTE: I make no real claims in there, simply state the counter argument to the main media narrative. I have a blog post itself there.

I'm SERIOUSLY concerned about the fact both sides of the political spectrum have no idea what the other is claiming. I'm desperately trying to get my social circle to understand.

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#189

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

disown wrote: post #36
29athrowaway wrote: post #14

Politicians look at Xi Jinping, the guy that has complete control over China for life, and say: "man, I want to have as much power as that guy".

Right on cue, a propagandist tries to turn this into a china-relate issue. What's with you people? Almost every other thread that has nothing to do with china, you people show up?

About a sixth of the global population lives in China, so it only makes sense that they'd come up regularly in discussions of global trends.
Post reply on HN