Displaying items by tag: Censorship

Twitter is an interesting company. On the one hand they act like they are a bastion of free speech and have stood up for the anonymity of some of the users. They have, in the past refused government interference in how their users post information and respond to tweets on their service. They claim to be against bullying and hate. At the same time, they have suspended accounts, removed tweets and permanently banned people for some very arbitrary reasons. They have stood their ground over this even when proven wrong about the original action. They have also left up tweets calling for violence by some while removing others, very confusing.

Twitter has been in the new a lot over the last few years. From deleting accounts of people and groups for very flimsy reasons to censoring posts that contain factual, but non-popular information. It seems that they just cannot help themselves when it comes to abusing community standards. The practice has even accelerated after Jack Dorsey left the company as CEO. The seemingly one-sided application of community standards has led to much criticism of the platform. The level of disappointment even led to Elon Musk buying 9.2% of the company and gaining a seat on the board of directors (not that this will accomplish much).

The internet is a great thing. It has allowed peoples of different nations and geographical locations to meet, talk, share information and ideas. The massively connected world we live thanks to the internet is one where information of all kinds is literally at our fingertips. Hovering over all these good things has always been the shadow of censorship, control and digital spying. It has also given rise to crime on a massive scale, multiple new types of bullying, harassment, and assault. Still the idea of massive censorship and information control is one that most would agree is a bad thing.

DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine and browser company, has come under a lot of negative press recently and now are facing pressure from the US government. They have already been labeled as a search engine for “conspiracy theorists” by many media outlets despite not really catering to any one group of people. The reality of the search engine is that it is attractive to people that are not happy with increased data collection from groups like Google, Facebook, and many, many others. A benefit of this is that, until now, DuckDuckGo has also not altered or censored search results based on current political motivations or narratives.

Irony is a funny thing especially when it is so blatantly obvious as in our example today. Google, owners of YouTube, Adsense and many other internet properties. Google has a history of policing content they do not agree with going so far as to demonetize and even ban differing options on topics such as the US 2nd amendment and de-prioritizing searches for topics that run counter to their viewpoint.

You knew it was going to happen, but I am honestly surprised that it has happened this soon after the special 301 report recommendations came out. Italy has decided to issue a nation-wide block of sites that are suspected of piracy. One of the sites thrown into the mix is Kim Dotcom’s new cloud hosting service Mega. The measure was ordered by Court of Rome Judge Constantino De Robbio and includes 24 sites in its scope.

Irish subsidiary of Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music have called the local ISPs to start blocking service Kickass Torrents. At the same time they launched a legal action against this service in the Irish High Court.

The slippery slope of Censorship that many predicted when SOPA, PIPA and other IP protecting laws first hit the scene is starting to come true in the UK. After winning a battle to apply network (ISP) level filters for Pornographic and File Sharing sites the UK government is now moving on to what they are labeling “extremist” web sites. On the surface they claim they want to stop extremist rhetoric on the internet (which is still not a good thing) and are working to bundle this in with existing laws that allow for the blocking of pornography and file sharing.

Verizon and a few other broadband companies are out to alter the way you view content on the internet. Ever since the FCC (Federal Communication Commission) put regulations in place to prevent broadband providers from block, throttling or altering content as it passes over their networks (2010) these companies have been fighting back. They argue that the regulation prevent internet expansion and investment. They would like to be able to broker deals with websites and content providers to provide them with different levels of access at different price scales. The FCC feels this type of behavior is anti-consumer and wants to make sure that all content is treated equally.

The fight against child pornography was announced earlier this week, and British Prime Minister called for the cooperation of internet service providers, operators of wireless networks and the authors of a web browsers to help filter the content of child abuse.