<story><title>‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies</title><url>https://news.umich.edu/extremely-aggressive-internet-censorship-spreads-in-the-worlds-democracies/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zaptheimpaler</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;Why can&amp;#x27;t I ask someone at the government directly exactly what their policy is on blocking websites, which sites are blocked, and what the legal basis for blocking is? And get a real, detailed, authoritative answer? And contest that answer if it does not meet legal standards?&lt;p&gt;The current standard is far, far removed from that. They can block a site or surveil you without any realistic accountability. The legal system is technically a recourse, but that works only in horribly egregious cases like NSA spying revealed by Snowden, and after years of delay after the case has faded from public consciousness. Even that didn&amp;#x27;t change anything about how the government acts today. And we would not have known about it if it hadn&amp;#x27;t been for &amp;quot;illegal&amp;quot; whistleblowing.&lt;p&gt;When the average person can&amp;#x27;t even get straight answers from the government about how they govern, let alone influence that policy, that is a failure of democracy. We are trying to solve problems in the democratic functioning of government using technology, but that will only ever be a cat and mouse game. These f&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt; decided on their own that mass surveillance &amp;amp; censorship is okay, and we are left trying to use technology to hide when we should be able to demand a national conversation about what kinds of surveillance is okay.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chordalkeyboard</author><text>&amp;gt; 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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></comment>
<story><title>‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies</title><url>https://news.umich.edu/extremely-aggressive-internet-censorship-spreads-in-the-worlds-democracies/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zaptheimpaler</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;Why can&amp;#x27;t I ask someone at the government directly exactly what their policy is on blocking websites, which sites are blocked, and what the legal basis for blocking is? And get a real, detailed, authoritative answer? And contest that answer if it does not meet legal standards?&lt;p&gt;The current standard is far, far removed from that. They can block a site or surveil you without any realistic accountability. The legal system is technically a recourse, but that works only in horribly egregious cases like NSA spying revealed by Snowden, and after years of delay after the case has faded from public consciousness. Even that didn&amp;#x27;t change anything about how the government acts today. And we would not have known about it if it hadn&amp;#x27;t been for &amp;quot;illegal&amp;quot; whistleblowing.&lt;p&gt;When the average person can&amp;#x27;t even get straight answers from the government about how they govern, let alone influence that policy, that is a failure of democracy. We are trying to solve problems in the democratic functioning of government using technology, but that will only ever be a cat and mouse game. These f&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt; decided on their own that mass surveillance &amp;amp; censorship is okay, and we are left trying to use technology to hide when we should be able to demand a national conversation about what kinds of surveillance is okay.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dheera</author><text>In this age among democracies it also isn&amp;#x27;t just governments that are blocking content -- it&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;companies&lt;/i&gt; that play gatekeeper in communications between people. People have stopped reading traditional forms of interpersonal communication, so my only way to get messages out to friends is through platforms like Facebook.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, Facebook themselves like to play gatekeeper on what my friends see and don&amp;#x27;t see, which I personally think is unethical. For example, if I post something about the election, its visibility may be restricted among my friends, so I need to do all kinds of Unicode upside-down tricks to prevent Facebook from even knowing my post is about the election. If I post a Youtube link instead of a Facebook video, Facebook downranks it because Youtube is a competitor, and downranks it to the point that friends don&amp;#x27;t actually see it. Sometimes they downrank text only posts to the point that I need to include e.g. a cat picture to get Facebook to give it the proper visibility.&lt;p&gt;I once posted to my feed something about donating to a particular disaster relief NGO, only to be censored out by Facebook because they mostly censor external links (only a small fraction of friends actually see them). No friends saw it in the first hour in their feed. I asked several and they didn&amp;#x27;t see it in their feed. Fishy, eh? I delete the post and re-post the same thing saying &amp;quot;Google for XYZ to find the donation website&amp;quot; instead of an actual link and BAM 40+ likes in the first hour and several friends donated.&lt;p&gt;Personally I think this corporate censorship is unethical. It&amp;#x27;s okay for Facebook to play the ranking game with business-sponsored media but definitely NOT okay with them doing that between friends who have mutually agreed to follow each other. I&amp;#x27;m okay with a &amp;quot;popular posts&amp;quot; section on top of everything else, but the &amp;quot;everything else&amp;quot; really must include &lt;i&gt;every single post&lt;/i&gt; of all of the people I have chosen to be friends with unless I specifically tell them to mute a particular person&amp;#x27;s content.&lt;p&gt;Ironically, WeChat doesn&amp;#x27;t engage in &lt;i&gt;this&lt;/i&gt; type of censorship. They obey government censorship, but besides that, I can guarantee on WeChat that a post that I make that passes the government test will be seen by every single contact if they happen to be looking at the feed. I much prefer that model, rather than Facebook&amp;#x27;s sporadic random non-transparent censoring.</text></comment>