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

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211–220 of 645 posts

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

#211

Can someone link to sources? Which sites Norway and Poland blocked?

it is unclear from the article what sites were censored in Poland and by whom (and i couldn't figure it out in the sourced paper). However, if in fact the Polish govt has censored any human rights websites, I feel like that should be bigger news there. AFAIK Poland only blocks access to certain gambling sites, which are publicly listed here: https://hazard.mf.gov.pl/

so is it fake news then?

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

#212
post #159

>Poland blocked human rights sites I'm Polish and although some gambling sites are blocked here (hazard.mf.gov.pl), I haven't heard of a single case of a human rights site being censored.

so maybe it worked flawlessly?

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

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried "us election fraud" on both sites in private mode. The results are certainly very different but I don't see any indication of google omitting anything. You're already using a throwaway so you might as well provide some specifics.

You know throwaway accounts can get banned and their comments "dead" too, right? Try the founder of Vice, let's say you want to listen to his Podcast by just searching for his name, good luck doing that on Google, on Yandex it's the 5th result down.

I looked up "Suroosh Alvi". The results are a little different but IMO pretty similar content-wise, nothing jarring. I do see the 5th result you mentioned on yandex missing on google's front page, but all of the google results seem pretty relevant, and the link you mentioned seems to be hosted on vice.com, so I'm not sure if I buy the idea that they're trying to hide that link. Has this guy recently done something controversial? Searching his name on both engines he just seems like a regular guy? Why do you think google would be censoring him?

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

#214

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 Anno…

It's hopeless here. Any perceived criticism of Biden/Democratic Party is instantly downvoted/flagged. It's sad to see how far HN has fallen.

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

#215

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 Anno…

You are getting flagged for posting off topic, not because of any kind of political censorship. There are subreddits for the kind of posts you're submitting.

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

#217

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…

Agree. Another big problem I've noticed is that there are so many partisan news sources. If you are liberal, you go to CNN which has a liberal spin to it. If you are conservative, fox news. The problem is each one is adding their own biases to it.

I saw this clear as day when I was watching live streams during the Portland federal courthouse protest. I would watch these for several hours per day as a form of entertainment. When I read the news articles written the following day, I was completely shocked at how much bias was present in the mainstream news media.

During these protests it essentially went like this: during the day, the protest was 100% peaceful, hardly any police. Literally a perfect 100% peaceful protest. As night came, the crowd would shift. The peaceful people would leave and then a new group would start showing up, dressed in all black and start doing full blown violence against police. Starting fires, destroying private property and many similar illegal and dangerous stuff.

The following day I read articles on CNN that said there was very little violence and it was almost entirely peaceful. This was false because there was tons of violence at the night. When you read articles in fox news they say the protest was mostly violent. This was also false because the day time protest was 100% peaceful.

This type of news reporting is pushing division politics and social media further fans the flames because people can confirm their narrative and also get false reporting from idiots on twitter/facebook which spreads misinformation.

I could also tell this is heavily influencing people's view on the world because I would debate people on reddit. For liberal people, they would link me CNN and washington post articles to support their arguments. If I argued with conservatives, they would link me fox news and breitbart articles. This is what they're linking to me as their "proof" to support their argument. If I responded by saying that fox news/cnn is biased reporting, they would jump to personal attacks at me, almost like this was their favorite football team I was bashing.

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascism has a specific definition that is not just "whatever Mussolini did".

Considering that the term itself comes from his movement, the "Fasces of Revolutionary Action", and that he coined the word fascism personally in 1919 (after the word "fascio"), I think at the very least he gets to be attributed the lions' share of it.

Newton can be credited as being substantially the inventor of Newtonian Physics. That doesn't make alchemy a sub-field of Newtonian Physics, despite the fact that Newton wrote numerous treatises on alchemy.

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

#219
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, before you had to be rich enough to buy the newspaper to print crazy bullshit, but that certainly happened (and still happens) too.

That's still a filter effect. Now, crazy bullshit is being peddled at 100x the rates from before. It's not sustainable.

Yes, we should have never given those poors access to say whatever is on their minds, right? At least not in front of other people...

It'll be the end of civilization.

Everyone should agree with the rich and powerful.

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

#220
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

None of those things, properly understood[1], were in any way mainstream until very recently. And arguably still aren't mainstream.

[1] Obviously, black lives do matter and fascism is bad, but as slogans "Black Lives Matter" and "Anti-Fascism" represent very radical political programs. You should be as suspicious of these slogans as I assume you are of slogans like "All Lives Matter" and "Anti-Communism".

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