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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

#251

Post by newguy1234 »

slg wrote: post #98
paxys wrote: post #24

Fits well with the current wave of authoritarianism/nationalism that has taken root all over the world. A free and open internet represents everything that a government that wishes complete control over its people would be afraid of.

A free and open internet also allows propaganda and hate to flourish which are two bedrocks of most authoritarian and nationalist regimes. It isn't as simple as ending censorship will allow everyone to be free.

Exactly and this is the dirty little detail that people don't want to realize. People think you can just censor right wing misinformation but guess what happens? The right wing movements simply create their own websites and start blocking anything that is a counter argument. Biggest example is reddit which has focused on blocking right wing groups. /r/thedonald used to be big on reddit but they got banned. So they went on to create their own version of reddit and now that website has exploded in popularity. It is apparently in the top 500 most visited websites in the USA now.

It is very likely that moving forward, many right wing people will shift away platforms like facebook, twitter, and reddit. In fact, these platforms already exist. Gab is a replacement for facebook and parler is a replacement for twitter.

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

#252

Post by neximo64 »

Symbiote wrote: post #122
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.

I'd prefer the newspaper to highlight the "factual errors" rather than withdraw the article, but they do need to do one of those things to maintain their editorial integrity. > I bet barely anyone notices. It took a single search to find plenty of articles covering this. https://www.thelocal.fr/20201105/france-is-not-fighting-isla...

You should look up and see what the "factual errors" were and see if you agree if it was about editorial integrity.

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

#253

Post by zests »

slg wrote: post #170
paxys wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A free and open internet also allows propaganda and hate to flourish I disagree. Sure there will always be some amount of misinformation on the internet, but a fully state-controlled media and internet (see - China) is far, far more effective at spreading propaganda and controlling the narrative.

This isn't a binary choice between a fully state controlled internet and a fully free and open internet. There is a spectrum. I believe the ideal internet rests much closer to the free and open side than the state controlled side, but existing at the extreme of free and open would be come with its own set of problems. Just look at all the most popular places on the web that champion their lack of censorship or modera…

Not disagreeing -- but what popular parts of the internet are not cesspools?

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

#254

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

Annoying when the subject of the article is a paper but the article does not link to the paper.

Here is the link

https://censoredplanet.org/assets/censoredplanet.pdf

https://censoredplanet.org/assets/censoredplanet-slides.pdf

Yesterday there was a discussion on the HN frontpage about Firefox "HTTPS-Only Mode" and the thread's 2nd to top comment was a user saying they wanted only one source of DNS data: their ISP. (No other alternatives or backups.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25122260

Perhaps some users really do not care if their ISP now or in the future censors their access to resources on the internet. Perhaps some users will only start to care about the potential for censorship when a site being censored is one they want to access.

Generally, anyone using third party DNS is potentially subject to censorship via an easy, popular method.

SNI is another easy method. Browsers by default send plaintext SNI to every HTTPS site. However not all HTTPS sites require SNI (check for presence of SNI or check SNI against Host header). Additionally, all Cloudflare sites support encrypted SNI.

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

#255

Post by gruez »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #235
d23 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you or the responders read the article? This reads like an assumption that the article is about tech companies in the United States and their effects to combat election misinformation. It's not. The part about the United States says this: > While the United States saw a small uptick in blocking, mostly driven by individual companies or internet service providers filtering content, the study did not uncover widesp…

HN really needs a way to force people to have at least clicked on the article before posting. Maybe something where the article has to be clicked on, and then a X minute timer is started so that people will be strongly incentivized to read the article before commenting.

Then I'll just click the link, read some memes on reddit, then come back once the timer runs out.

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

#256

Post by Der_Einzige »

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.

Isn't that basically what the Allegory of the cave is advocating for?

If you are uneducated (and almost certainly poor), you do not see reality for how it is, but instead you see shadows against the wall. Only through the process of a dialectical education can you begin to see reality for how it is. As a result, only the educated enlightened individuals should become kings or the guardians of a state.

Any system which agrees with this allegory (and most of Western Philosophy implicity agrees with it) also results in the notion that poor people should not be enfranchised at the same level as wealthier people because they cannot be trusted to govern.

If you reject this allegory, than the fundamental justification for hierarchy (some are more fit to rule than others) and correspondingly the state is shattered

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

#257

Post by busterarm »

JoshuaDavid wrote: post #242
busterarm wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Exactly.

No, we don't agree.

He literally coined the term when talking about his movement. If anyone has claim to what the definition was, it's him.

But history is written by the winners and I'm sure modern day fascists would like to distance themselves from that history as much as possible...and thus the term gets narrowed and redefined.

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

#258

Post by cristoperb »

root_axis wrote: post #213
throwsofaraway wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know throwaway accounts can get banned and their comments "dead" too, right? Try the founder of Vice, let's say you want to listen to his Podcast by just searching for his name, good luck doing that on Google, on Yandex it's the 5th result down.

I looked up "Suroosh Alvi". The results are a little different but IMO pretty similar content-wise, nothing jarring. I do see the 5th result you mentioned on yandex missing on google's front page, but all of the google results seem pretty relevant, and the link you mentioned seems to be hosted on vice.com, so I'm not sure if I buy the idea that they're trying to hide that link. Has this guy recently done something co…

I'm not sure, but they might be talking about one of Vice's other founders, Gavin McInnes, who is known as a far-right provocateur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_McInnes#Views

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

#259

Post by [deleted] »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #235
d23 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you or the responders read the article? This reads like an assumption that the article is about tech companies in the United States and their effects to combat election misinformation. It's not. The part about the United States says this: > While the United States saw a small uptick in blocking, mostly driven by individual companies or internet service providers filtering content, the study did not uncover widesp…

HN really needs a way to force people to have at least clicked on the article before posting. Maybe something where the article has to be clicked on, and then a X minute timer is started so that people will be strongly incentivized to read the article before commenting.

[deleted]

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

#260

Post by babas »

systemvoltage wrote: post #226
babas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read that, I immediately dismissed the whole article. Both HRW and match.com are available on the 4/5 ISPs I have access to ATM. Home (Telenor), mobile (Telia), server host (domeneshop), my office (Telia, wired) and a customer network (Not sure about the downstream ISP). On the last one match.com is blocked by a firewall not the ISP. They should really check thier sources. My guess is that they tested on a net…

It could be a mistake, not an intentional lie.

Probably. After reading the paper I'm pretty sure they messed up their testing.

The problem is that they blow it up HUGE both in the paper and the article without cursory checking. That is as bad as lie. Maybe even worse.

From The paper 7.1.2: "Censored Planet data reveals extremely aggressive DNS blocking of many domains in Norway, with many blocks being consistent in all of our vantage points. During the four month period of increased censorship, 25 ASes observed blocking of more than 10 domains in at least six categories. We observed the most rigorous activity in AS 2116 (CATCHCOM) where more than 50 domains were blocked."

Blocking more than 10 domains in 25 ASes I have no reason to doubt. As I said there is extensive DNS blocking. So they write in a way that makes it sound like all the ASes are blocking hrw.org and match. But it's probably only on CATCHCOM. This is a ISP for mostly huge corporate environments where blocking may be by customer demand. So they take one single source of "anomaly" and blow it up. Pretty much a lie.

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