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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

#551

Post by anticodon »

duckmysick wrote: post #544
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…

Which NYT articles were blocked on Facebook?

At least an "questionably sourced article that made incriminating claims about Joe Biden and his son Hunter".

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

#552

Post by anticodon »

SilentBan wrote: post #545
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…

Its not russophobia but the truth. On the other hand the pro-russian channels are propaganda as they spread fake news(that Russia is good/right).

Most opposition channels also spread blatant and obvious lies. Just a recent example: Navalny posted a link to the video that says that crime rate in today's Russia is comparable to the crime rate in Russia in 90s. It's an obvious lie to everyone who lived in Russia in 90s.

Also, about a year ago Navalny published a video that said that education in US universities is free for everyone (if you don't have money to pay, some rich businessman will pay for your education).

There're tons of examples, usually ignored by the people watching his bullshit. They probably don't even know that most of his lies were debunked because YouTube, Twitter, Facebook will never show them any contradictory articles for two reasons: information bubble and manual censorship.

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

#553

Post by raxxorrax »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #521
igorkraw wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

> 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. How do you feel about the perspective that democracies allow the majority (or plurality) to force their values on the rest of us? How do you feel about the notion that the rich and powerful are well acquain…

> How do you feel about the perspective that democracies allow the majority (or plurality) to force their values on the rest of us?

Better than a warlord forcing their values on us, even if the majority often seems lacking and with the exception that you are the warlord.

I agree that governments could do a better job at letting people pick their values themselves, especially with the current Victorian approaches

edit: Well technically a authoritarian warlord doesn't care about your values, only a totalitarian one would require that you tell everyone how much you love him. Maybe the latter is worse, but what would it matter at this point.

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

#554

Post by Foxboron »

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…

My guess is that they think DNS resolution failures are consorship. There where some insane numbers like 95% unavailability of pcgamer.com and worldofwarcraft.com in the article as well. It makes no sense.

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

#555

Post by raxxorrax »

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…

We had that around 2010 basically before the threat of fake news was conjured up. Still angry at those panicking...

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

#556

Post by raxxorrax »

taneq wrote: post #461
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…

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.

This was the perspective that set the course for current actions, but the situation got worse.

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

#557

Post by anticodon »

ordu wrote: post #536
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…

I do not know why Google blocks pro-russian sources, but I know why I'd blocked them, if I could. They are not "pro-russian", they are all "pro-Putin". Any "pro-russian" source that is not "pro-Putin" will become "anti-russian" in a short time, because of activity of other "pro-russian" sources. They just forcibly stick "anti-russian" label on such a source, and here we are. Putin do all he could, to draw an equality…

There's one clear sign that you can find on any Russian anti-Putin and/or pro-liberal blog or channel: that Russian people are lazy, stupid, alcoholics and drug addicts, that Russians never invented anything (all the technology at all times was stolen from Europe and USA), Russia never won any war (including WWII that was "won" exclusively by USA), etc.

They go even as far as to declare Russian language "stupid and barbaric and ugly" (Gasan Gusejnov).

Not touching any other reason for now, for me it's a clear sign that all opposition is rusophobic and/or paid by the CIA/MI-6.

Why would a sane person call his nation "stupid alcoholics using barbaric language"?..

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

#558

Post by teraku »

dragonwriter wrote: post #538
teraku wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> but even in the very definition of feudalism it's feudalism: Except there is no “holding of land in exchange for labor”, the only concrete element of the description you quote.

Not in the literal sense of land, but in the economical/capitalistic sense. In capitalism theory, the basic idea behind the growth of capitalism is defined as "land grab", i.e. the system ingests what is foreign and makes it its own. So land in that sense can mean anything that binds people to you. Nowadays this means money in order to pay rent, food, bills etc.

> 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.

Now why do I call this feudalism? To be honest I could call it various other things, the most "getting to the root" would be "class warfare". I chose to call it feudalism in this case, because feudalism was basically the last period/time we chose to call it honestly what it is: Getting ruled from above. They want to implement censorship, because even though we always say "one day it might work against you", but for them it does not. Ever.

So when we introduced parliaments we split law-making power from nobility to politicians, elected by the people. But if you are an "accumulator of wealth", you can basically act as a modern fief. Especially if you work together with politicians.

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

#559

Post by raxxorrax »

anticodon wrote: post #498
passerby1 wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The US wasn't in Ukraine to promote democracy. Maybe it was a reaction to Crimea, perhaps they wanted to hinder the pipeline between Germany and Russia, maybe they just wanted influence in another eastern European state, but I am certainly not surprised the conflict is escalating. We are regressing to cold war thinking and while I think Putin is a despot, I see the actions of the US very critically.

Sad really, since we had a better political situation just 15 years ago.

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

#560

Post by pibechorro »

igorkraw wrote: post #508
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

Ya,no. Top down authoritarian systems (including democratic ones) always corrupt. Power leads to cronyism and sociopaths rising to control. Always, just give it time.

Its not "the rich" vs "the working people" narrative you subscribe to. If anything your attitude and worship of burocracy is what creates the power to be corrupted.

Less is more.

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