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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

#491

Post by donw »

stephen_g wrote: post #478
donw wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

First: thank you for replying, and not just downvoting.

> 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.

It is highly debatable that lockdowns ever were, or currently are, either necessary or effective.

> State Governments that are in charge of pandemic restrictions have demonstrated little desire to maintain restrictions longer than was sensible given the virus.

The US is in the thirty-second week of "two weeks to stop the spread".

Credibility went right out the window when the powers-that-be decreed weddings and funerals as too risky, but protests and riots as totally fine.

Not to mention the long list of politicians whose personal lives seem to be an exception from the rules they have imposed on others.

> There's no legitimate or logical reason to maintain it once the pandemic is over.

I remember airports before 9/11. Hell, I remember the US before 9/11.

The ironically-named Patriot Act represented a massive seizure of power and a wholesale trampling of American civil rights. None of the airport security measures introduced were necessary or effective, and yet they continue to this day.

Since 9/11, the United States has been at war in the Middle East for twenty years, squandering trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of innocent lives to achieve... nothing.

This was neither legitimate nor logical. But it did make a bunch of politicians and their friends very powerful and very wealthy.

I also remember, at the time, the moral frenzy that enveloped the nation after the fall of the twin towers.

Things now feel the same from where I sit.

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

#492

Post by redis_mlc »

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…

This is not well-understood by most people, even at the time.

Saddam Hussein did have a "weapon of mass destruction", poison gas, and used it on Kurds. You can find photos of bodies with white foam from their mouths from that time.

He did not have much, if any, nuclear technology, despite the "aluminum tubes" news clips which led to the concern over weapons of mass destruction. (There are specialized alloys used in nuclear processing, but not aluminum.)

Aside from that, the main information source was an exiled Iraqi politician that the administration said was credible to construct their narrative.

So Saddam Hussein went from a US ally, to a war criminal.

One major US newspaper tried to push back, but the rest, including the NYT, just repeated everything the White House said.

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

#493

Post by passerby1 »

anticodon wrote: post #485
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…

I don't get what any government has to do with it. Almost all information now is consumed via Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. These are private companies that has their own censorship rules and push their own agenda aggressively. Government has no control over this, even USA government as was seen recently when Facebook blocked links to NYT articles and Twitter was censoring Trump twits. All other countries (exce…

Interesting, your post is downvoted without any comments. Maybe it wouldn't harm to say what's wrong?

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

#494

Post by unishark »

dheera wrote: post #483
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…

In this age among democracies it also isn't just governments that are blocking content -- it's companies that play gatekeeper in communications between people. People have stopped reading traditional forms of interpersonal communication, so my only way to get messages out to friends is through platforms like Facebook. Unfortunately, Facebook themselves like to play gatekeeper on what my friends see and don't see, whi…

Is this because you haven't confirmed your identity? I presume that is for stopping the alleged bot campaigns trying to affect elections.

Or is there a setting somewhere to block political-looking posts? Because this would be awesome. I heard something about 3rd party software claiming such a feature but I wouldn't trust them.

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

#495

Post by jesuscyborg »

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #344

If we are going to have an honest conversation about censorship in the United States, we must call out the political left as the principal perpetuator. Whether it's college campuses violently protesting conservative speakers (e.g. Ben Shapiro), tech platforms banning and labeling speech they disagree with (e.g. Twitter, YouTube, Reddit), or corporate America demonizing those whose speak the truth and/or hold differin…

Have you read James Damore's essay? If you look at only the abstract theory, there wasn't a whole lot of 'think differently' or rebellious points of view in there. Totally identical mindset to the status quo establishment. He just decided to be rude while presenting his arguments using non-technical language, and pointing out things about people that they're powerless to change. That's what makes it scary. For example, no one would have thought the worst of him if he wrote a treatise talking about behavioral correlations between samples having or not having the sry gene and called out publishers for suppressing such statistics. Instead he called women neurotic. Not a great way to speak truth to power.

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

#496

Post by oblio »

busterarm wrote: post #219
oblio wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's more about education and a skeptical but not paranoid and nihilistic mind, than about "rich and powerful". You should be "this tall to ride". In this case, "this tall to broadcast your thoughts to millions of people".

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

#497

Post by teraku »

jml7c5 wrote: post #118
teraku wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's feudalism

How?

Well the OP said:

> We're seeing the teaming up of governments and giant corporations to control the narrative and tell people what's true and what isn't.

And then he said it's facism. To which I say, no, it's feudalism:

> Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of the legal, economic, military, and cultural customs [...]. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships that were derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labor. [0]

I don't get why people downvote me so much. It's basically a direct answer

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism

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

#498

Post by anticodon »

passerby1 wrote: post #493
anticodon wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get what any government has to do with it. Almost all information now is consumed via Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. These are private companies that has their own censorship rules and push their own agenda aggressively. Government has no control over this, even USA government as was seen recently when Facebook blocked links to NYT articles and Twitter was censoring Trump twits. All other countries (exce…

Interesting, your post is downvoted without any comments. Maybe it wouldn't harm to say what's wrong?

Well, my comment is against the against the grain (rusophobia is trendy in the contemporary world even among Russians). Also, it's a bit muddy. I said that government has nothing to do with censorship, but I contradict myself.

Although censorship in the US is some kind of internal struggle between parties that is hard to understand for an outsider like me, but promotion of rusophobia in social networks and YouTube is probably endorsed by US government. I doubt that ordinary engineers and managers at Facebook really care so much about Russia to boost rusophobic articles in the feed.

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

#499

Post by vixen99 »

passerby1 wrote: post #493
anticodon wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get what any government has to do with it. Almost all information now is consumed via Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. These are private companies that has their own censorship rules and push their own agenda aggressively. Government has no control over this, even USA government as was seen recently when Facebook blocked links to NYT articles and Twitter was censoring Trump twits. All other countries (exce…

Interesting, your post is downvoted without any comments. Maybe it wouldn't harm to say what's wrong?

It would be more interesting if in general it was impossible to downvote (any comment) without providing a reason.

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

#500

Post by teraku »

OJFord wrote: post #336
dragonwriter wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, it's feudalism Its really, really not feudalism, which is highly de -centralized.

I'm not so sure, I think if GP had expanded on it a little it's an interesting take. Multiple corporations (with their 'fiefdoms') is decentralised from government, in a similar manner to peers being decentralised from government (or the crown). You could either argue 'not as much so', or that 'corporate lobbying, unions, and party donations have a similar influence on policy'; regardless I think it's an interesting…

First of all this, but even in the very definition of feudalism it's feudalism:

> Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of the legal, economic, military, and cultural customs [...]. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships that were derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labor. [0]

Don't really get all the downvotes. I could extend more on it, and explain my reasoning, but I feel like HN is too caught in this "tech moguls are saviors" and even if they weren't and they wouldn't be where they are, somebody else would be a bad actor.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism

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