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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

#501

Post by tsimionescu »

colordrops wrote: post #484
taneq wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trusting sources and verifying information is actually an incredibly hard game. Being too credulous leaves you open to misinformation, but on the other hand, being uncritically skeptical leads to the current "fake news" environment where (to those involved) no source is credible and we might as well all just believe whatever meets our preconceptions and dismiss the rest.

Do you have a suggestion or thesis? It's not so hard that it couldn't be taught to average humans. Even if it was extremely hard, it should still be taught, considering its importance.

The problem is that, for many topics, there just isn't a reliable source to go to. Sure, if you want information on scientific topics, you have very good options - go to one of the celebrated journals and read some papers, or at least the press releases from those same journals. When it comes to current domestic affairs (has there been massive election fraud in the US? is ANTIFA terrorizing the US?) then the mainstream media is a trustworthy source.

However, if you want to know about the effects of NAFTA, or US policy on Venezuela and how useful it is, or Russian involvement in the US elections, or trickle-down economics, or the benefits of a stimulus package etc, then the NYT, the Economist, and Breitbart are about as likely to give you a trust-worthy picture. So where can you look to, as an average citizen without time to conduct your own research on each topic you potentially care about? I don't think there is any good answer.

Society absolutely needs a new independent, small-scale, un-elitist media. "Factory journals" and such - small organizations that are not owned by any powers that be, where a few people can spend the time to digest other sources and try to come up with a more accurate picture. Not multi-million dollar ad-based industrial media (NYT), and not activist propagandist media (Breitbart) - that is always going to be far too heavily biased to have any hope of being a trust-worthy source of information on most topics that they can feasibly ignore.

And in case you don't believe me that most US media is a horrible source of information on the outside world, please find one single article on the biggest worker's strike in world history, that happened in January of this year in India.

Edit: to be clear: I'm not in any way claiming that Breitbart is a credible news organization to any extent similar to the NYT or Economist. Breitbart are a disgusting organization whose aim is misinformation, and lying comes naturally to them; the NYT and Economist and others like them do have journalistic practices and actually care about the truth, and are excellent sources for some kinds of news - they just have massive biases in certain other areas, especially on foreign and economic policy, where they are not trustworthy, but even then I wouldn't expect outright lies.

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

#502

Post by taneq »

colordrops wrote: post #484
taneq wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trusting sources and verifying information is actually an incredibly hard game. Being too credulous leaves you open to misinformation, but on the other hand, being uncritically skeptical leads to the current "fake news" environment where (to those involved) no source is credible and we might as well all just believe whatever meets our preconceptions and dismiss the rest.

Do you have a suggestion or thesis? It's not so hard that it couldn't be taught to average humans. Even if it was extremely hard, it should still be taught, considering its importance.

Not really. It's hard in the "NP hard" sense, not the "calculus is hard" sense. We don't have answers and there probably aren't any.

The best you can do is cross-reference everything you know, take into account the degree to which you can verify each thing independently, and try and come up with some correlations between different sources to establish a web of credibility.

Unfortunately, experience has shown that regular humans just don't do this.

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

#503

Post by hliyan »

nso95 wrote: post #458
frankbreetz wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more gate keeping for TV, therefore less false information. Anyone can post on Twitter or Facebook.

Have you ever seen Fox news? Any infomercial? Reality tv?

I have to agree. The illusion of gatekeeping is far worse than a complete absence of it.

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

#504

Post by AntiImperialist »

tsimionescu wrote: post #238
AntiImperialist wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Foreign interference" has been going on from day 0 in the United States Agree. Not as effective as today. But yes. Anyone who actually use the excuse of "foreign interference" for totalitarian censorship basically basically doesn't believe in the concept of democracy. Agree. I think Democracy has failed because the tools of propaganda have become very effective. Democracy died in the U.S. a long time ago... the Deep…

You're mostly right in everything, except that 'the Deep State' is not that deep and is not that much part of the state - most US propaganda is actually pretty transparently done by the corporate sector. We call it PR and marketing now, but it is exactly propaganda, used to great effectiveness everywhere in the world. Teb other major leg of US propaganda is the entertainment industry, which is also extremely effectiv…

most US propaganda is actually pretty transparently done by the corporate sector

Agree, but I'm not talking about most. I understand there is "cholesterol bad" or "anti-vaxx, stupid, amirite?" from pharmaceuticals or "almonds make penis hard" from nutrition "science" funded by the food industry. That is not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the Deep State, which is comprised of ex-military, the CIA and weapons industry people. They're pretty deep into everything.

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

#505

Post by fps_doug »

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…

Don't get the downvotes either. This is a somewhat valid point. I feel like many people, even here on HN really like to paint the world black and white in this regard.

Everything bad we hear about Russia & China must undoubtedly be true, because it's reported by our press, and we have freedom of press, which means that our press never lies or has an agenda. At least when it comes to foreign affairs. So your Facebook feed must've undoubtedly told the unbiased truth about your country.

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

#506

Post by kebman »

What is the "Freedom Score" based upon? I find it strange that the USA has such a low score (in the 80's), though I do note that the censorship in the USA isn't really as much state-driven, as it is corporate. I also noted that Iceland has a lower score than Norway, which seems odd to me, as it's for instance known to fervently support the integrity of servers stationed there.

I've noticed that part of the reason Norway has less censorship than other countries, is because it's outside the EU (despite being a de-facto member). In several instances of using a VPN, things that were censored in the EU (I remember checking several EU countries) weren't cencored in either Norway or the USA.

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

#507

Post by n0nc3 »

tptacek wrote: post #487
n0nc3 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just toss out core enlightenment principles because a handful of loud simpletons latch on to bad ideas. Not without explaining why.

I object to the claim that I've tossed out any "core enlightenment principles" by observing that we have drastically fewer gatekeepers now than we did in 1980.

It is my understanding that toleration, free association, and free expression are core enlightenment principles that enable a civilization to be governed by reason. These are threatened by the censorious attitude of boomers and aging gen-xers with home equity to protect.

It is not unusual for older, wealthier elements of society to question the value of free expression for the masses. [1]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/democratic-enlightenment-philosophy-r...

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

#508

Post by igorkraw »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #479
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.

That's a cynical take, a slightly less cynical take is that the rich and (privately) powerful have always tried to cement their power in form of organising a feudal-ish state and that the rest of us had to actively support democratising forces to counteracting them.

What this means is having everything which lends itself to monopoly to democratic control, not private control, and to work together to make democratic control as efficient, localized and legitimate as possible. A well oiled, properly constrained bureaucracy is a wonderful thing, as anyone who has experienced e.g. German and post-soviet bureaucracy can attest to. And yet the Germans (rightfully) still think their bureaucracy needs improvement, because of course it does, but it's still necessary and better than privatising the essential services that are provided.

"Starve the beast" is a warcry of rich and powerful who will benefit from the vacuum after they pervert and hollow out working institutions like the US post office (if you think it's not profitable and relying on tax payers money, do your research please).

Technology and interconnection is kinda neutral here, it has helped to raise awareness of the problems but has also helped to spread misinformation and lies by the likes of Prager U And their ilk

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

#509

Post by zrth »

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…

They say Dec 2019 to Mar 2020: "Our anomaly detection alerted us to high scores in DNS blocking starting from December 2019 until March 2020"

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

#510

Post by anticodon »

fps_doug wrote: post #505
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…

Don't get the downvotes either. This is a somewhat valid point. I feel like many people, even here on HN really like to paint the world black and white in this regard. Everything bad we hear about Russia & China must undoubtedly be true, because it's reported by our press, and we have freedom of press, which means that our press never lies or has an agenda. At least when it comes to foreign affairs. So your Facebook…

Is it sarcasm? A bit hard to get for me.

There's an old and very easy way to create a distorted image by selectively publishing the news: just ignore all the positive news and publish only negative news.

Many opposition channels and blogs in Russia exploit this technique. E.g. there're some anti-Russian blogs (quite many) that publish only vivid descriptions of the most cruel crimes that happened in Russia recently. When people read mostly these blogs they get an impression that everyday life in Russia is permeated by brutal crimes and there's no escape from villains if you step outside your apartment.

They're also quite popular among Russian immigrants living in Europe and USA (my guess is that because they're promoted in Google/Facebook/YouTube search results), and they always tell me in private conversations: "How can you live in such a brutal place where people are killed for no reason every day?"

They don't get that crime happens in every country every day, what is important is statistics: how effective is effort for fighting the crime, how big is percent of victims, etc (btw, also a rich field for statistics manipulation).

But these blogs do not publish fake news - they can publish only true facts. There's enough true facts you can use to create a distorted image if you ignore all the other information.

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