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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

#241

Post by dragonwriter »

ttt0 wrote: post #222
ojbyrne wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the right has moved the Overton Window so much to the right that they see things that most of the world would see as mainstream (Black Lives Matter, Abortion, Medicare for All, Defund the Police, Anti-Fascism etc) as extreme.

That's not how the Overton Window works. The Overton Window says what kind of opinions are socially acceptable. If you describe those things are mainstream, they're by definition inside the Overton Window. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that you're more likely to be fired for being a nationalist rather than a communist, so that's another indicator that the Overton Window is actually on the left.

> Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that you're more likely to be fired for being a nationalist rather than a communist

I see no evidence that that is the case.

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

#242

Post by JoshuaDavid »

busterarm wrote: post #224
JoshuaDavid wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newton can be credited as being substantially the inventor of Newtonian Physics. That doesn't make alchemy a sub-field of Newtonian Physics, despite the fact that Newton wrote numerous treatises on alchemy.

Or possibly that alchemy has nothing to do with motion and gravitation. Chemistry isn't a sub-field of Physics either.

Exactly.

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

#243

Post by [deleted] »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #214
lettergram wrote: post #188

Of my past 10 posts on HN 6 have been flagged and removed by users. Of those, many made it to the front page with 10+ votes. I contacted Dang and he was clear it was users censoring it, further that some users were also "vouching" for my posts. It's to the point, people don't want to know. I feel I'm fairly even handed in my discussion. Here's a couple of my posts (who knows if I'll get flagged): - Public Safety Anno…

It's hopeless here. Any perceived criticism of Biden/Democratic Party is instantly downvoted/flagged. It's sad to see how far HN has fallen.

[deleted]

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

#244

Post by 6nf »

paxys wrote: post #134
war1025 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing about this is that nationalism is in general associated with right-leaning politics, and the censorship is far and away being applied more aggressively to those very same right-leaning nationalist groups. You would be hard pressed to find liberal / progressive content being censored online.

Huh? It's the exact opposite. In the US sites like Facebook & Twitter routinely refuse to censor conservative content even if it is against their policies because they are afraid of pissing off Republicans in Congress. A "liberal" on Facebook calling for the beheading of a conservative politican would be banned (possibly even arrested) immediately. The opposite can and does happen every day, with no penalty. And all…

Do you have examples of these calls for beheadings of non conservatives?

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

#245

Post by neximo64 »

cblconfederate wrote: post #138
neximo64 wrote: post #26

Emmanuel Macron has been getting newspapers to pull down their articles in the past few weeks (the FT usually never removes articles but they did too). I bet barely anyone notices. Interesting that politico sent one straight to print today without an online article first.

Wasnt that an editorial decision? he did write an opinion about them but how did he get them to pull them down?

He personally called and asked to have it removed. Politico and some other papers too.

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

#246

Post by rbanffy »

cogman10 wrote: post #61

I have to wondered how we "fix" our current internet situation. On the one hand, censorship appears to be appealing to stop the tide of misinformation. Anti-vaxx garbage is a prime example of something that should be censored into oblivion. It is actively harmful to the public. But, on the other hand, who pulls the levers of censorship is equally terrifying. I don't want a world where a dissenting opinion is censored…

> I have to wondered how we "fix" our current internet situation.

Isn't Tor a tool made specifically for this?

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

#247

Post by Der_Einzige »

n0nc3 wrote: post #131
tptacek wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has never in the history of western civilization been easier for people to inject random claims into the public discourse. Neither Mike Wallace at 60 Minutes nor Otis Chandler at the LA Times would have given an inch of space for QAnon or antivax, but the "giant corporations" you allude to today do so happily, and at a scale no newspaper publisher would have imagined 50 years ago.

Conversely, it has never been easier to inject true claims that are inconvenient for gatekeepers. What tilts the balance of equities in favor of censorship for you?

Because it takes far longer to confirm if a claim is true or not than it does to make a claim.

The folks who makes lots of claims which are false know this, and do so anyway because it is effective at swaying public opinion.

"never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

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

#248

Post by WalterBright »

busterarm wrote: post #86
tptacek wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has never in the history of western civilization been easier for people to inject random claims into the public discourse. Neither Mike Wallace at 60 Minutes nor Otis Chandler at the LA Times would have given an inch of space for QAnon or antivax, but the "giant corporations" you allude to today do so happily, and at a scale no newspaper publisher would have imagined 50 years ago.

No, before you had to be rich enough to buy the newspaper to print crazy bullshit, but that certainly happened (and still happens) too.

> rich enough to buy the newspaper

That's not how it worked. The moment Gutenberg invented the printing press, printers popped up everywhere and printed anything and everything. That means newspapers, newsletters, pamphlets, flyers, advertisements, bills, leaflets, everything.

It was cheap to print, not remotely restricted to the rich, and you certainly did not need to buy a newspaper. Schools print newspapers, businesses do, too.

A lot of it was political, too. For a famous example, see "Common Sense".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense

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

#249

Post by antris »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #125
busterarm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than that. 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. It's the literal definition of fascism. And you see it being championed by people as defending against "the greatest threat to our democracy".

The president of the United States has been using these platforms to lie to the entire world unashamedly. For the most part not even the skillful half truths, statistics and selective quoting that politicians are known for, just complete fabrications and nutjob conspiracies. The corporations had the choice to continue to be complicit, silence him completely or provide some balance from other sources. It seems to me t…

> The corporations had the choice to continue to be complicit, silence him completely or provide some balance from other sources

I am not so sure. Did they really have a choice?

I think the financial incentives are lined up so that inevitably such a click-baity behavior and culture is nearly impossible to ignore for the news media as a whole. How can everyone choose not to report together, when it makes such a good-selling piece of content?

I am starting to think that algorithm-driven news sources and targeted advertising is something we should consider banning. Breaking up our collective culture into small bubbles of isolated realities is something that is driving many countries, not just the US, apart.

Even in Finland I see people who are not only entertaining, but 100% believing all the Trump conspiracies based on stories, Twitter posts etc. picked up from social media, although we pretty much don't have any mainstream news here. Even if the educated and responsible journalists have been drowned by the flood of fake news, do-it-yourself journalism and information warfare. They cannot keep up and don't have the time to fact check everything. And when they do, the people who believe in this... shit, have already moved on to the next piece of content that supports their view.

F this.

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

#250

Post by refurb »

ketzo wrote: post #130
nprz wrote: post #54

Remember how the usefulness of the internet and social media was championed by media during the Arab Spring movement? Now it's suddenly a threat to our democracy. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/11/16/21570072/obama-interne...

I mean, in that article, he makes a pretty coherent point: > Obama: If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work. We are entering into an epistemological crisis. I don't think that's out of place in a conversation about today's internet/media landscape. He's not saying "the internet i…

What an incredibly paternalistic and disappointing quote from Obama. “If we don’t have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from false”.

So clearly we need the gov’t to step in help the rabble who are clearly unable to figure out the “truth” on their own.

Does he realize this is the exact argument authoritarian gov’ts give for censorship? We need to censor to avoid “social disharmony” or stop those “fomenting discord”.

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