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

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

#471

Post by themacguffinman »

slg wrote: post #340
cortic wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone is in a bubble of disinformation The censorship of the good information is the problem. And it probably started with censorship of bad information that lead to the bubble in the first place. >work on preventative measures so people are never exposed This is where the analogy breaks down, its not a virus, its an idea, anyone can come up with an idea, good or bad. you want to protect people from themselves…

>The censorship of the good information is the problem. And it probably started with censorship of bad information that lead to the bubble in the first place. There is nothing nefarious about bubbles. They happen automatically when people are in control of what they consume. Imagine I join Twitter and I am given a list of people to follow. I don't like to hear from people with viewpoints that I think are crazy so I u…

Nothing about QAnon is inherently viral, there's no real rhyme or reason to QAnon theories and they contradict each other half the time. QAnon is just the latest adaptation of solipsistic, uncritical, and delusional thinking that started long before the internet and will continue long after it dies. Ever wonder what happened to flat earth theory? That used to be the "viral" bad idea of the time, but if you look around now it's practically dead. It's dead because flat earthers have moved on to QAnon [1]. "Wealthy democrats drink the blood of children" is literally a random stupid idea that only spreads because these idiots all talk to each other. It could be anything; In a different decade they would instead be talking about the Freemasons, or a flat earth, or the Jewish agenda. The common theme is not the idea or the politics, it's the broken mentality that creates a worldview in which nothing is your fault, everything bad is caused by inhuman others, and you are one of the few smart enough to see what others cannot.

It's foolish to think that censoring these people actually solves anything. Because you never addressed the broken psychology that attracts them to this garbage in the first place, they'll continue finding other outlets, your attempts to censor them only feeding their delusions further. Censorship might help you avoid them on the internet, but let's see if you can avoid them at the polls.

[1] In Search Of A Flat Earth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44

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

#472

Post by nullsense »

hliyan wrote: post #434

I'm coming to the realization that misinformation has to be combatted at the ear and not the mouth. I feel the world needs to go through a learning period where everyone realizes that whatever they read on the Internet is default false and they need to verify before they believe anything. In the least they need to verify credibility of sources, if not individual articles or tweets. I suppose what we're experiencing n…

If I apply that logic to your comment then everything on the internet should be assumed to be true.

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

#473

Post by lawnchair_larry »

lettergram wrote: post #451
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect and illustrates the parent’s point. There is a sincerely held belief that a subset of the people who had the means, motive, and opportunity to influence the results in key districts may have succumbed to the temptation. This is actually the more rational position as far as I can tell. So, a lot of people are looking at anything that may prove or disprove this. This is in no way unlike what the democ…

Since you brought up inconsistencies.. If you're curious, they are requesting data to do the analysis - https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.283580... (I'd love said logs) Personally, I just try to explore what I can. I regularly post on HN because these are computer related investigations or things I find interesting. I was hoping it would lead to interesting discussion about how to validate this st…

Thanks, I had not seen that one yet. I agree, the more that these are shared, the sooner they get reviewed by other experts who can debunk them, and we all improve our knowledge. Looking forward to whatever comes of this one.

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

#474

Post by tootie »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #453

The big problem in todays age is we can no longer assume the government is accountable to us, or even get straight answers from the right people there. Why can't I ask someone at the government directly exactly what their policy is on blocking websites, which sites are blocked, and what the legal basis for blocking is? And get a real, detailed, authoritative answer? And contest that answer if it does not meet legal s…

Snowden had nothing to do with censorship. I haven't seen a credible accusation of internet censorship against the government in recent memory. Private companies can refuse to serve certain customers. And obviously there's copyright law and government secrecy laws. But no personal expression is banned.

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

#475

Post by tootie »

birktj wrote: post #349

This is pretty bad. As have been pointed out by multiple commenters in this thread a lot of the examples in this article and the underlying paper are simply incorrect. I'm Norwegian and I can say with extremely high confidence that three domains given as an example in the paper [1] (page 10): hrw.org, match.com and 163.com has never been blocked by any major ISP in Norway. However I do know that some piracy and gambl…

If you call your tool Censored Planet it certainly implies you have a conclusion in mind before you start collecting data.

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

#476

Post by didibus »

hliyan wrote: post #434

I'm coming to the realization that misinformation has to be combatted at the ear and not the mouth. I feel the world needs to go through a learning period where everyone realizes that whatever they read on the Internet is default false and they need to verify before they believe anything. In the least they need to verify credibility of sources, if not individual articles or tweets. I suppose what we're experiencing n…

I'd like to distinguish what this article is talking about, which is the government blocking actual websites, against moderation on private social media websites and platforms.

I don't mean that the latter is not necessarily a problem or not, but we definitely should not be mixing up our thoughts and impression of one with the other, they are very very different in nature.

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

#477

Post by Thorrez »

>“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,”

I don't really see how this is true. Net neutrality made it possible for companies to implement the ability to block stuff (but not actually block stuff)? Wasn't it always technically and legally possible for companies to block stuff, sometimes even required? The very next paragraph mentions child pornography or pirated content.

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

#478

Post by stephen_g »

donw wrote: post #360
p1necone wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What benefit do you think the government gets out of lockdowns? (other than the obvious one of stopping the spread of the pandemic).

Ten minutes of thinking gave me: (1) Identification of potential dissidents. Those who violate lockdowns or mask orders are most likely to resist state control. (2) Normalizing control over common activities. It takes four weeks to normalize a new habit. "Two weeks to stop the spread" has been going on since March (that's thirty-two weeks and counting). Americans are now habituated to state-controlled social behavior…

I don't think that really holds up. I'm in a part of Australia that had a lockdown and we've rolled back most of the restrictions because we're successfully basically eliminated the virus in our state (in the community that is - we have a few cases in quarantine of people arriving internationally every couple of days).

The feeling is that people want to get back to normal, but understand that most of the regulations were necessary given the seriousness of the pandemic. I feel absolutely no sense that people are more willing to submit to Government control now or anything like that, and it's the same even talking to people down in Victoria that had a big second wave and way longer lockdown than we did. Their willingness to comply was to stop the spread of the virus so they could get out of lockdown, and it worked, and now the restrictions are being rolled back.

It's frustrating to hear people in the media here crowing on about 'authoritarianism' and 'government control' over this, especially because the State Governments that are in charge of pandemic restrictions have demonstrated little desire to maintain restrictions longer than was sensible given the virus. But at the same time, these conservative commentators who are aligned with our right-wing Federal Government happily ignore actual authoritarian, draconian laws that the Feds are passing to give police and intelligence services unprecedented powers for warrantless mass surveillance etc. over the last decade...

I'd even go as far as saying that the pandemic would actually be a really bad time for a Government to try and 'normalise' increased government control, because there's no legitimate or logical reason to maintain it once the pandemic is over (if we get a vaccine for instance). The desire to throw off all the restrictions once the virus is gone is just too strong.

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

#479

Post by chordalkeyboard »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #453

The big problem in todays age is we can no longer assume the government is accountable to us, or even get straight answers from the right people there. Why can't I ask someone at the government directly exactly what their policy is on blocking websites, which sites are blocked, and what the legal basis for blocking is? And get a real, detailed, authoritative answer? And contest that answer if it does not meet legal s…

> The big problem in todays age is we can no longer assume the government is accountable to us, or even get straight answers from the right people there.

Consider the notion that government has always been this way however its easier to tell this now because we are all so interconnected and informed.

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

#480

Post by chordalkeyboard »

chroem- wrote: post #463
hliyan wrote: post #434

I'm coming to the realization that misinformation has to be combatted at the ear and not the mouth. I feel the world needs to go through a learning period where everyone realizes that whatever they read on the Internet is default false and they need to verify before they believe anything. In the least they need to verify credibility of sources, if not individual articles or tweets. I suppose what we're experiencing n…

How should we handle misinformation from official sources? It wasn't that long ago the New York Times told the world they had evidence of Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction, setting off a chain of events that literally killed hundreds of thousands of people. In today's political climate, the misinformation that led to the Iraq War could never have been exposed. Edit: surely I'm not the only one who…

Is there even a way to vet information from official sources?
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