The most pervasive censorship is who and what social media companies decide to block or suppress. Even in places like China. It's deliberately harder to measure, but any censorship measurement that omits it is like measuring war casualties, but ignoring those on the front lines.
Not to minimize the impact of social media censorship, but one should really live in a country like Iran to grasp what pervasive censorship is. Most people born and raised in the relative freedoms provided in modern democratic systems have no clue what it feels like when you have such dictatorships. I say this because, looking at the current trends, we _could be_ heading in that direction, and the comparison is apt.
Most people born and raised in the relative freedoms provided in modern democratic systems have no clue what it feels like when you have such dictatorships.
You don't know what it feels like not because you're so free, but because you agree with the ruling regime on what it considers the most important questions. Those that don't agree find themselves blocked from the financial system, debanked, banned or shadowbanned by social media, fired from their jobs, and any pieces of history or research that might shift opinion to their side is suppressed or twisted by popular media into advocating for the opposite.
To give you an example, the rape and severe beating of a black child by white rednecks, depicted in the star-studded film A Time to Kill, was based on a real event. Except in the real event, the victims were white and the rapist was black: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_to_Kill_(Grisham_novel)...
As another example, in the 2019 Joker film, where Joaquin Phoenix's character kills, vigilante-style, a group of unsymphathetic, threatening white finance-bros, as they intimidate passengers on the subway, was based on the real-life shooting by Bernhard Goetz. Again, the real-life perpetrators were black, and not working in finance, or well-paid in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joker_(2019_film)#Writing
The film Bad Ass was based on a viral video, in which an elderly white man defeated in a fight a younger black assailant, on a bus. In the film, the assailants are a group of white nazis, and the white man was replaced by a latino: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Ass_(film)
It's less obvious in films not inspired by real events, but it is just as pervasive.
I would much prefer the dictatorship-style censorship, because our censorship is far, far more effective.
I'm curious what trends you see towards censorship?
Elon presumably being an exemplar for current trends: Twitter is unarguably far less censored than it was before (though censorship is still present). And Meta took note and also turned down its censorship significantly in response.
The Epstein files, while far less than hoped for by many, are another example of a trend towards sharing far more sensitive info than has been typical by past administrations.
There are many good examples you could point to of increased authoritarianism, but censorship in particular seems to be on the backswing, if anything.
Depends on the platform. On Reddit, definitely yes, as almost all censorship is "deletion style" where the target post or comment is initially visible until the mods suppress it.
But your point is well taken, it's definitely more challenging and expensive than what's being done here.
It would be one heck of a challenge, but, almost by definition "impossible" - as a naive guess, perhaps (for those platforms that have opened code) characterize some statistical signatures that "arbitrary data" ran through it (simulating user activity) would show ...
... and then check for those (or, counterexamples) in the wild.-
You still want to know the extent of that 'moderation' that is totally not censorship. E.g. Facebook and Instagram ban white nationalism, and Youtube has banned American Renaissance, meaning we can infer Google bans white nationalism too, as American Renaissance is guilty of nothing else.
You may agree or disagree with the ban, but surely you agree that we should be aware of such Overton window enforcement?
4chan users might want that, but even for the types of people willing to operate a site like that they don't want to be liable for the amount of CSAM, piracy, and other legally objectionable material that would end up on a fully unmoderated site.
Measure the speed and performance of your network with the NDT test
This is very much in line with the likes of pokemon go, wiki landmark projects and what have you (those are nice things to have for autonomous drones/missiles to navigate only with vision when gps/cellular/starlink is actively blocked).
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Russia banned stuff like speedtest because things like that may help “map” the network, aid NSA to model malware propagation, etc.
Not that this should matter when you have cisco, dell, nokia hardware, but it won’t hurt either.
I really wonder if anyone installs it on their machine. May be I am one off but I am Hearing about this for first time, don't recognize any of their partners.
The most pervasive censorship is who and what social media companies decide to block or suppress. Even in places like China. It's deliberately harder to measure, but any censorship measurement that omits it is like measuring war casualties, but ignoring those on the front lines.
Not to minimize the impact of social media censorship, but one should really live in a country like Iran to grasp what pervasive censorship is. Most people born and raised in the relative freedoms provided in modern democratic systems have no clue what it feels like when you have such dictatorships. I say this because, looking at the current trends, we _could be_ heading in that direction, and the comparison is apt.
You don't know what it feels like not because you're so free, but because you agree with the ruling regime on what it considers the most important questions. Those that don't agree find themselves blocked from the financial system, debanked, banned or shadowbanned by social media, fired from their jobs, and any pieces of history or research that might shift opinion to their side is suppressed or twisted by popular media into advocating for the opposite.
To give you an example, the rape and severe beating of a black child by white rednecks, depicted in the star-studded film A Time to Kill, was based on a real event. Except in the real event, the victims were white and the rapist was black: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_to_Kill_(Grisham_novel)...
As another example, in the 2019 Joker film, where Joaquin Phoenix's character kills, vigilante-style, a group of unsymphathetic, threatening white finance-bros, as they intimidate passengers on the subway, was based on the real-life shooting by Bernhard Goetz. Again, the real-life perpetrators were black, and not working in finance, or well-paid in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joker_(2019_film)#Writing
The film Bad Ass was based on a viral video, in which an elderly white man defeated in a fight a younger black assailant, on a bus. In the film, the assailants are a group of white nazis, and the white man was replaced by a latino: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Ass_(film)
It's less obvious in films not inspired by real events, but it is just as pervasive.
I would much prefer the dictatorship-style censorship, because our censorship is far, far more effective.
I'm curious what trends you see towards censorship?
Elon presumably being an exemplar for current trends: Twitter is unarguably far less censored than it was before (though censorship is still present). And Meta took note and also turned down its censorship significantly in response.
The Epstein files, while far less than hoped for by many, are another example of a trend towards sharing far more sensitive info than has been typical by past administrations.
There are many good examples you could point to of increased authoritarianism, but censorship in particular seems to be on the backswing, if anything.
Hmm.
I'd wager the vast majority of internet censorship is within platform, like that done by Reddit mods.
The most egregious example I've seen in my lifetime was when old Twitter decided to censor a NYPost article, down to blocking sharing in DMs.
It seems that type of example is entirely missed here. Is there any attempt to capture that signal?
As a thought exercise, could it be captured?
Depends on the platform. On Reddit, definitely yes, as almost all censorship is "deletion style" where the target post or comment is initially visible until the mods suppress it.
But your point is well taken, it's definitely more challenging and expensive than what's being done here.
It would be one heck of a challenge, but, almost by definition "impossible" - as a naive guess, perhaps (for those platforms that have opened code) characterize some statistical signatures that "arbitrary data" ran through it (simulating user activity) would show ...
... and then check for those (or, counterexamples) in the wild.-
If you count platform moderation as 'censorship' then there's practically no uncensored public spaces on the internet.
Literally even 4chan has moderation.
Nobody, not even 4chan users, want an actually unmoderated space.
You still want to know the extent of that 'moderation' that is totally not censorship. E.g. Facebook and Instagram ban white nationalism, and Youtube has banned American Renaissance, meaning we can infer Google bans white nationalism too, as American Renaissance is guilty of nothing else.
You may agree or disagree with the ban, but surely you agree that we should be aware of such Overton window enforcement?
4chan users might want that, but even for the types of people willing to operate a site like that they don't want to be liable for the amount of CSAM, piracy, and other legally objectionable material that would end up on a fully unmoderated site.
Deciding what is spam and blocking it is moderation or "censorship".
If 4chan didnt have spam filters, the users would be begging for it almost immediately because the website would become unusable.
Some of the moderation is just banning people with differing opinions.
My comment above does not rely on the premise that all moderation is censorship. Only that some Reddit mods engage in censorship.
Which article, about what subject?
This is very much in line with the likes of pokemon go, wiki landmark projects and what have you (those are nice things to have for autonomous drones/missiles to navigate only with vision when gps/cellular/starlink is actively blocked).
—
Russia banned stuff like speedtest because things like that may help “map” the network, aid NSA to model malware propagation, etc.
Not that this should matter when you have cisco, dell, nokia hardware, but it won’t hurt either.
—
I mean come on, some nuts even willingly install stuff like this: https://atlas.ripe.net/
Are you arguing for security by obscurity?
I really wonder if anyone installs it on their machine. May be I am one off but I am Hearing about this for first time, don't recognize any of their partners.