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Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

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Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#141

Post by AStonesThrow »

dyauspitr wrote: post #105
EasyMark wrote: post #95

I can understand shutting it down to Indian IP ranges, but the whole world? I think they should have stood up to the Indian court and took wikipedia offline for India, otherwise soon there will be avalanche of demands to take down anything negative about modi, trump, xi, and putin.

Shutting it down in India is losing your second biggest user base.

I checked to see how large the Indic Wikipedias are, and the Tamil project is the largest at #60, while Hindi is #62, Bangla #63. (Urdu is #54, if you count it among them.)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias

Now, those are further down in the list than I would've expected, but I suppose that the answer is that many Indians are contributing to English Wikipedia in the first place, due to greater exposure and fluency in that country.

There is certainly extensive coverage of Bollywood, cricket, and other topics of great appeal to Indians at home and abroad.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#142

Post by smsm42 »

selimthegrim wrote: post #41
zmgsabst wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Media has always been salacious nonsense — at least, judging from the 1880s English newspapers I’ve read as part of a research writing class: they’re full of complete lies about Jack the Ripper, for instance. Most of the discussion from government is using that perennial fact to justify suppressing true information — eg, suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story or people’s personal experiences with the COVID vac…

The chain of custody issues alone render the laptop story incredible

It's fascinating to see the true believer. It's like those cult members that stayed in the cult when the day of the end of the world came and passed and nothing happened. They just said "well, it's probably going to happen next year". It's both sad and fascinating - there's literally nothing too ridiculous that people couldn't believe given the opportunity.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#143

Post by defrost »

mrlongroots wrote: post #131
albert_e wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those who consistently take anti-establishment stances, often without merit, barely get a footnote "anti-establishment" as in holding the government accountable and asking questions of them -- irrespective of which party is in power? isn't that the job of news media? if they are doing it consistently - good on them. why does it need a footnote or disclaimer? I am sure there is enough content to file under a "Contro…

> "anti-establishment" as in holding the government accountable I'm all for holding the government accountable, but the apt metaphor for some of the cited outlets would be that they protest for a road where the government hasn't built one, and protest for the tree where they chopped one to build a road. > Volunteers are free to add. I tried addressing this in my initial response. I have nothing more to add.

> but the apt metaphor for some of the cited outlets would be that they protest for [ opposites ]

You might be confused about media outlets.

They are not homogenous, they have many people working for them, and their primary task is covering what's happening; both those parties that are pro tree and those parties that are pro road.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#144

Post by ogurechny »

rootusrootus wrote: post #81
ekianjo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't know that COVID is a great example. The people most upset about 'authoritarian' abuses by gov't during COVID are themselves extremely authoritarian. Just about different topics. I otherwise agree that authoritarianism is on the rise, across the board.

So you're ready to insist that, say, Agamben is just some stupid Texan hillbilly just to have an excuse to ignore the not so pleasing thoughts.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#145

Post by lazide »

dartharva wrote: post #124
typewithrhythm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As more normies got on the web more of it becomes about how to herd them. In the early days there was less gain from authoritarian actions, because you are more likely to be resisted by the users of any service. The current users don't know how to bypass restrictions, and are generally more numerous. Making authoritarian actions more valuable. Unfortunately this leads to previously useful sites declining.

It's not just the newer generations. I have multiple friends who are literally afraid of using ad blockers and sideloading apps on their Macs in fear of some imaginary boogeyman out to get them. And VPNs are exclusively the domain of criminals, apparently. There are a dominating amount of people who have turned into the caricature of the perfect CONSUMER. It is so frustrating.

It might make more sense/be more palatable if you think of it as manifestations of particular inter-societal evolutionary strategies.

And that people actually have less control over their actions than anyone is willing to acknowledge or believe.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#146

Post by ruthmarx »

We desperately need more work done on a separate internet that by design cannot and never can be censored.

I know there are some projects toward that already, but my fear is they won't reach maturity before governments blocking any content they don't want their population accessing is the norm.

Some things should be illegal, sure, but if governments start attacking free speech and limiting what materials a population should have access to when they have no reason to do so, then an alternate network where crime is rampant that they can't police is a necessary price to pay to get around unjust authoritarianism.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#147

Post by mrlongroots »

defrost wrote: post #143
mrlongroots wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "anti-establishment" as in holding the government accountable I'm all for holding the government accountable, but the apt metaphor for some of the cited outlets would be that they protest for a road where the government hasn't built one, and protest for the tree where they chopped one to build a road. > Volunteers are free to add. I tried addressing this in my initial response. I have nothing more to add.

> but the apt metaphor for some of the cited outlets would be that they protest for [ opposites ] You might be confused about media outlets. They are not homogenous, they have many people working for them, and their primary task is covering what's happening; both those parties that are pro tree and those parties that are pro road.

And I trust and hope that I am able to make that distinction before I lay out my allegations :).

I don't want this to become a game of "supplying the evidence" because that also becomes a game of the "skeptical party" DoSing the "earnest party". What I said was a best-effort distillation of my takeaways from years of following Indian news media, both free and paid.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#148

Post by dyauspitr »

AStonesThrow wrote: post #141
dyauspitr wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shutting it down in India is losing your second biggest user base.

I checked to see how large the Indic Wikipedias are, and the Tamil project is the largest at #60, while Hindi is #62, Bangla #63. (Urdu is #54, if you count it among them.) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias Now, those are further down in the list than I would've expected, but I suppose that the answer is that many Indians are contributing to English Wikipedia in the first place, due to greater exposu…

I’m not sure what the breakdowns are for Indian contributions, but Indians make up ~10% of daily visitors.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#149

Post by ruthmarx »

dartharva wrote: post #124
typewithrhythm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As more normies got on the web more of it becomes about how to herd them. In the early days there was less gain from authoritarian actions, because you are more likely to be resisted by the users of any service. The current users don't know how to bypass restrictions, and are generally more numerous. Making authoritarian actions more valuable. Unfortunately this leads to previously useful sites declining.

It's not just the newer generations. I have multiple friends who are literally afraid of using ad blockers and sideloading apps on their Macs in fear of some imaginary boogeyman out to get them. And VPNs are exclusively the domain of criminals, apparently. There are a dominating amount of people who have turned into the caricature of the perfect CONSUMER. It is so frustrating.

It's like the humans turned into cattle in the seventh season of Supernatural, except they are doing it to themselves.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#150

Post by ruthmarx »

endgame wrote: post #30
lolinder wrote: post #17

On January 18 2012, Wikipedia went black to draw attention to SOPA [0], a bill they described as one that "could fatally damage the free and open Internet". Since then, we've seen a slow and steady march in the direction we all dreaded. Country after country has decided that they have the right to block content on the "free and open Internet", and business after business (even those who joined the SOPA protests) has…

> Have governments become more authoritarian? Judging by the various misinformation legislation they're rushing to adopt, yes. The free internet said too many things that powerful people didn't like. An Australian example: https://x.com/SenatorRennick/status/1834455727764869593#m

Australia is an especially bad country in this regard.
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