There's a pretty bad bias problem here because the probe app scans domains that are frequently blocked in dictatorships, but doesn't scan domains that are frequently blocked in "democracies", like Anna's Archive. Then it ends up looking like the dictatorship countries have all the censorship.
I would only use the term "censorship" to refer to the prevention of speech based on its content. Content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions aren't censorship according to the way I use the word, and neither is copyright protection.
Note that censorship isn't necessarily bad and restrictions on speech that aren't censorship aren't necessarily acceptable. The prohibition on child pornography is censorship but I support it, while I am opposed to IP law in its entirety.
Anna's Archive is prevented by some countries from visiting because of its (presumably illegal) content. All restrictions are based on its content.
See "Spotify lawsuit" in the wikipedia article. Also:
"In January 2024, Italy's ... ordered major internet service providers (ISPs) in the country to block Anna's Archive due to a copyright complaint..."
"In March 2024, ... ordered major ISPs in the Netherlands to block Anna's Archive and LibGen due to a request by advocacy group BREIN (which represents the interests of the Dutch entertainment industry)."
"In December 2024, the UK Publishers Association won an order from the High Court of Justice requiring major ISPs to block Anna's Archive... under section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act."
My point is - copyright is also a "content related" reason: some site is banned because the content of the site is infringing the copyright of someone else.
In the end, all censorship is content related. One could definitely argue along the spectrum of "all" to "none" censorship is appropriate, but I would guess most people actually hold the belief that "some" censorship is okay, while disagreeing on "which" censorship is okay.
If this is the case, then the bias problem is indeed relevant.
Plus, this sentence in the original post I replied to really struck me as absurd: "Content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions aren't censorship".
Let's imagine a country bans the distribution of all writings by authors in another country/region disregard of the content. It would not be censorship according to the original post.
The fact that a ban encompasses a wide variety of content could mean simply that it is difficult/undesirable to limit the scope of the ban, but the censorship always originates from the content.
You are misunderstanding time/place/manner restrictions. The rule must apply equally to all speakers regardless of topic, opinion, or political stance. If you banned "the distribution of all writings by authors in another country/region" you aren't applying the restriction equally.
Is it a bad sign if CSAM, Personal (medical, financial, etc) Records, Snuff, and Malware/Ransomeware are censored? What about manufacture of WMDs, terrorism, hate speech? Free software, and copyrighted music? Historical records of genocide?
As an aside… the if there was a real system out there that was trustworthy, it would have all of this and it would be the evidence you actually need to trust it.
If someone had a secure system for some of the worst stuff out there and it lasted more than a minute, pay attention because they might have actually solved some real problems.
Trusted authority with democratic accountability is the least worst option. Too much censorship is authoritarian, but too little and authoritarianism can flood the public discourse with so much noise that free speech becomes impossible.
"I was just downloading those videos of children being raped to make sure they were still available in their full un-redacted format!"
Let me know how that works out.
Arguably, the most significant difference is between "free speech" and commercial/paid speech, or distribution vs viewability, but not distinguishing the two and calling both "internet censorship" creates a phrase without much support or meaning.
Scare quoting democracies is probably telling, but OONI absolutely does test content blocked in Western countries. <a href="https://explorer.ooni.org/domain/annas-archive.org" rel="nofollow">https://explorer.ooni.org/domain/annas-archive.org
scare quoting """""""""democracies""""""""" is perfectly acceptable when it couldn't be more obvious that those so-called democracies do anything but represent the will of their peoples. do you know anyone who'd voted for having to scan their face to access verboten webseites? to have encryption backdoors in their messengers? to have state-mandated spyware preinstalled on their phones?
They don’t represent the people’s will, but unfortunately many people believe in censorship, so even if they were true direct democracies we may still see some.
With modern technology, we might be in the first era where direct democracy is truly viable. Frankly I think the people should have direct veto power on any legislation.
The normal approach is to compromise across topics.
Maybe one should have a finite number of winning votes in a period. Then the majority might want something (or not want) but wouldn't consider it important enough to spend their vote on.
I think that would reduce the sense of urgency where there is non, equalize involvement, foster debate with the barely involved and ofc create a focus on things one wants rather than things one doesn't want.
Who knows, maybe one should be able to spend more than one vote per topic.
> . Then the majority might want something (or not want) but wouldn't consider it important enough to spend their vote on.
Rule of the thumb: everyone will not 'just' [1]
The majority is not a single person that will somehow behave like a rational being that will count their votes and vote only for "things that matter". People view very different things as "things that matter", and the system is easily gamed. Run a few popular, but pointless votes, exhaust available winning votes for the period, then try to pass a meaningful legislation. You will have riots form people who have spent their votes, but still want to vote for something truly important.
And that's before we start talking about whether people should directly vote on removing building code regulations for example. Or whether or not measles vaccines should be mandatory.
I'm just playing with the puzzle. It's not like I deeply thought about it and this was my conclusion.
Votes per period might not work. You could in stead accumulate votes over time.
Of course the proposals could repeatedly go against a specific group. Not sure if you could create a unit of accounting for it or have some kind of independent jury examine the gaming.
I also wondered if the price could scale with the % victory. Like, if 100% votes A it costs zero votes. 51% would be the most expensive.
Maybe give the proposal makers a bunch of tokens, filling a proposal costs x, each vote against it costs y.
The core thought is basically, if people are overly attached to something they will get it but will have reduced influence on everything else.
I don't know if it's possible to improve every kind of voting in the same way.
But we could improve some parts. For example, voting in elections could be improved by introducing Single Transferrable Vote <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote (CGP Grey had a bunch of videos on this: <a href="https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3897F608FAD61E88&si=TzEP91pKPyG_P3Zt" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3897F608FAD61E88&si=TzEP...)
The only good clue I have for a new or modified system is that it has to be simple enough for the voter to understand it. The single transferable vote is technically great but the name doesn't explain how it works. You have to make up for that with education (which seems doable)
I wonder how similar the result would be if the voter could cast one vote for something and one against. This seems less complex.
It has other advantages. A large election budget shouldn't automatically convert to votes. Doing a pis poor job should probably cost more than a few votes.
Well, that's already viable in Switzerland. Any proposed law can be forced into a national vote by collecting 50'000 signatures for a Referendum.
...you'd be surprised, plenty of regular people actually want these things to happen. State is God for reliably the majority of the population of the world (seeing as the majority resides in China and South Asia).
> do you know anyone who'd voted for having to scan their face to access verboten webseites? to have encryption backdoors in their messengers? to have state-mandated spyware preinstalled on their phones?
I know a few. They're called "normal people who don't suffer from crippling tech libertarianism" and there's more of them than of you.
> I know a few. They're called "normal people who don't suffer from crippling tech libertarianism" and there's more of them than of you.
They voted for it or you assume they don't mind it existing?
They accept it as a tradeoff. They vote for things like "less crime" or "our children don't access things that are bad for them".
They're all around you irl. Touch grass and find out.
And to your sarcastic remarks about those people being dumb, believe it or not not everyone is willing to forgo every possible evil in the name of personal privacy in remote communication. Such privacy was never a thing until very recently anyway.
(In fact as far as most people are concerned it isn't a thing today either, you'd be surprised how many people assume that their messages and calls are spied on anyway)
and so you've spent 20 minutes editing this comment to optimize the amount of snark instead of simply showing me one proof of that silent majority's existence :)
oh, but it's the exact opposite. the people IRL tend to react to censorship and surveillance with the word пидорасы, while the regime's eunuchs on the Internet defend it.
maybe having lived under the Soviets makes my people less welcoming to the idea of a commissar deciding what they're allowed to see, hear, say, and ultimately think.
GWB had a second term. Trump had a second term. I would find it reassuring to believe that democracies don't represent the "will of the people", but I've come to accept that, much of the time, the "the people" and I don't see eye to eye.
Funny how people block Anna's Archive but never archive.org, which houses the largest centralized collection of warez on the planet. Usenet might have more but it is replicated across the globe.
Internet blocking is a last resort for regimes that can't do anything against the source of the information or intermediaries, but it's a red herring in regimes that can. Anna's Archive has a political position and is one of the very few voices that survived the immense pressure. How many didn't? How many attempts were not performed at all because of it? This suppression is really hard to measure, OONI can't do anything here, it measures blocking. It's very simple to understand.
"democracies" have a separate problem, even if we had true direct democracy (and not representative democracy)- people often conflate what is popular with what is true.
You can see this directly in online forums (including this one), unpopular truths are routinely flagged to the point where it doesn't matter that discussion could have happened, it effectively can't- and not because the points don't make sense or can't be reasoned with... but because it doesn't feel good that it's true.
So, unfortunately, I think censorship is inevitable.. I guess it's better to have censorship from a small group of people for a small group of people instead of having censorship from a small group of people to a nation-wide group of people though.
Here's my personal benchmark on this public site. Anecdote of 1.
Does posting links to these two videos related to health care decisions that were officially approved or denied to people. Get this post... Unalived?
The platform is quite open, so you can build whichever tests you want. Personally I run a dockerized ooni via scheduled GitHub actions, which shows blocks impacting GitHub runners. You should be able to see logs from that here, which shows three blocked websites <a href="https://github.com/robalexdev/ooni-unattended-action/actions/runs/33824187064/job/100873202754" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/robalexdev/ooni-unattended-action/actions...
You can build your own lists and share them using ooni run: <a href="https://run.ooni.org/" rel="nofollow">https://run.ooni.org/
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
qerghnui · · focus · HN ↗
Note that censorship isn't necessarily bad and restrictions on speech that aren't censorship aren't necessarily acceptable. The prohibition on child pornography is censorship but I support it, while I am opposed to IP law in its entirety.
Gathering6678 · · focus · HN ↗
qerghnui · · focus · HN ↗
Gathering6678 · · focus · HN ↗
"In January 2024, Italy's ... ordered major internet service providers (ISPs) in the country to block Anna's Archive due to a copyright complaint..."
"In March 2024, ... ordered major ISPs in the Netherlands to block Anna's Archive and LibGen due to a request by advocacy group BREIN (which represents the interests of the Dutch entertainment industry)."
"In December 2024, the UK Publishers Association won an order from the High Court of Justice requiring major ISPs to block Anna's Archive... under section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act."
Source: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna%27s_Archive" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna%27s_Archive
asdfaoeu · · focus · HN ↗
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
Gathering6678 · · focus · HN ↗
In the end, all censorship is content related. One could definitely argue along the spectrum of "all" to "none" censorship is appropriate, but I would guess most people actually hold the belief that "some" censorship is okay, while disagreeing on "which" censorship is okay.
If this is the case, then the bias problem is indeed relevant.
Gathering6678 · · focus · HN ↗
Let's imagine a country bans the distribution of all writings by authors in another country/region disregard of the content. It would not be censorship according to the original post.
The fact that a ban encompasses a wide variety of content could mean simply that it is difficult/undesirable to limit the scope of the ban, but the censorship always originates from the content.
WillPostForFood · · focus · HN ↗
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
But when Iran turns off the whole internet during a protest apparently that is a content-neutral t/p/m restriction?
ShinyLeftPad · · focus · HN ↗
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
kurthr · · focus · HN ↗
Is it a bad sign if CSAM, Personal (medical, financial, etc) Records, Snuff, and Malware/Ransomeware are censored? What about manufacture of WMDs, terrorism, hate speech? Free software, and copyrighted music? Historical records of genocide?
SV_BubbleTime · · focus · HN ↗
If someone had a secure system for some of the worst stuff out there and it lasted more than a minute, pay attention because they might have actually solved some real problems.
fsflover · · focus · HN ↗
Here you go: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2p" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2p
nottorp · · focus · HN ↗
Doubt it. Besides malice there's also incompetence.
See the article that's also on the front page right now about Spain blocking Cloudflare (i.e. half the internet) during football matches.
owisd · · focus · HN ↗
nottorp · · focus · HN ↗
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
kurthr · · focus · HN ↗
Let me know how that works out.
Arguably, the most significant difference is between "free speech" and commercial/paid speech, or distribution vs viewability, but not distinguishing the two and calling both "internet censorship" creates a phrase without much support or meaning.
averysmallbird · · focus · HN ↗
vlyan · · focus · HN ↗
armchairhacker · · focus · HN ↗
troupo · · focus · HN ↗
I think we would see more.
pennomi · · focus · HN ↗
troupo · · focus · HN ↗
Counterpoint: see any NIMBY meetings where they shut down any and all proposals and legislations, even the obviously beneficial common sense ones.
Rule by mob has rarely been productive.
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
econ · · focus · HN ↗
Maybe one should have a finite number of winning votes in a period. Then the majority might want something (or not want) but wouldn't consider it important enough to spend their vote on.
I think that would reduce the sense of urgency where there is non, equalize involvement, foster debate with the barely involved and ofc create a focus on things one wants rather than things one doesn't want.
Who knows, maybe one should be able to spend more than one vote per topic.
troupo · · focus · HN ↗
Rule of the thumb: everyone will not 'just' [1]
The majority is not a single person that will somehow behave like a rational being that will count their votes and vote only for "things that matter". People view very different things as "things that matter", and the system is easily gamed. Run a few popular, but pointless votes, exhaust available winning votes for the period, then try to pass a meaningful legislation. You will have riots form people who have spent their votes, but still want to vote for something truly important.
And that's before we start talking about whether people should directly vote on removing building code regulations for example. Or whether or not measles vaccines should be mandatory.
[1] <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/squareallworthy/163790039847/everyone-will-not-just" rel="nofollow">https://www.tumblr.com/squareallworthy/163790039847/everyone...
econ · · focus · HN ↗
Votes per period might not work. You could in stead accumulate votes over time.
Of course the proposals could repeatedly go against a specific group. Not sure if you could create a unit of accounting for it or have some kind of independent jury examine the gaming.
I also wondered if the price could scale with the % victory. Like, if 100% votes A it costs zero votes. 51% would be the most expensive.
Maybe give the proposal makers a bunch of tokens, filling a proposal costs x, each vote against it costs y.
The core thought is basically, if people are overly attached to something they will get it but will have reduced influence on everything else.
troupo · · focus · HN ↗
econ · · focus · HN ↗
troupo · · focus · HN ↗
But we could improve some parts. For example, voting in elections could be improved by introducing Single Transferrable Vote <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote (CGP Grey had a bunch of videos on this: <a href="https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3897F608FAD61E88&si=TzEP91pKPyG_P3Zt" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3897F608FAD61E88&si=TzEP...)
econ · · focus · HN ↗
I wonder how similar the result would be if the voter could cast one vote for something and one against. This seems less complex.
It has other advantages. A large election budget shouldn't automatically convert to votes. Doing a pis poor job should probably cost more than a few votes.
ShadowOfThePit · · focus · HN ↗
zaik · · focus · HN ↗
nephihaha · · focus · HN ↗
snowram · · focus · HN ↗
dartharva · · focus · HN ↗
ModernMech · · focus · HN ↗
ShinyLeftPad · · focus · HN ↗
I know a few. They're called "normal people who don't suffer from crippling tech libertarianism" and there's more of them than of you.
choo-t · · focus · HN ↗
They voted for it or you assume they don't mind it existing?
ShinyLeftPad · · focus · HN ↗
vlyan · · focus · HN ↗
where do these paragons of civil obedience congregate? how do they express their wishes for less freedom and more surveillance?
ShinyLeftPad · · focus · HN ↗
And to your sarcastic remarks about those people being dumb, believe it or not not everyone is willing to forgo every possible evil in the name of personal privacy in remote communication. Such privacy was never a thing until very recently anyway.
(In fact as far as most people are concerned it isn't a thing today either, you'd be surprised how many people assume that their messages and calls are spied on anyway)
vlyan · · focus · HN ↗
physicalecon · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
ShinyLeftPad · · focus · HN ↗
why would i waste that much time on writing a reply to you and where do you see snark exactly?
> one proof
i just talk about it with people irl, yeah that thing i suggest you try;)
vlyan · · focus · HN ↗
maybe having lived under the Soviets makes my people less welcoming to the idea of a commissar deciding what they're allowed to see, hear, say, and ultimately think.
ShinyLeftPad · · focus · HN ↗
consider that not everyone grew up in an oppressive dictatorship.
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
ShinyLeftPad · · focus · HN ↗
thomassmith65 · · focus · HN ↗
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
Edit: it must have been added recently since there's proper data now. But most of the CUII list is still not.
Viliam1234 · · focus · HN ↗
majorchord · · focus · HN ↗
orbital-decay · · focus · HN ↗
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
dijit · · focus · HN ↗
You can see this directly in online forums (including this one), unpopular truths are routinely flagged to the point where it doesn't matter that discussion could have happened, it effectively can't- and not because the points don't make sense or can't be reasoned with... but because it doesn't feel good that it's true.
So, unfortunately, I think censorship is inevitable.. I guess it's better to have censorship from a small group of people for a small group of people instead of having censorship from a small group of people to a nation-wide group of people though.
sellmesoap · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=YmOeKahtmdQ" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/watch?v=YmOeKahtmdQ
<a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=FRRX0J_TDXY" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/watch?v=FRRX0J_TDXY
8organicbits · · focus · HN ↗
You can build your own lists and share them using ooni run: <a href="https://run.ooni.org/" rel="nofollow">https://run.ooni.org/
ciupicri · · focus · HN ↗