For everyone in this thread saying "but the platforms!", I don't disagree with you. Extensive censorship exists. But I don't believe that's the intended purpose of this tool and the metrics it collects. It doesn't measure censorship at what we would call layers 4-7 in the OSI model. It's concerned with IP reachability and layer 3. It collects valid data for that purpose.
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.
We might be talking past each other a bit. I agree that without any sort of spam filter a comment site would become unusable.
What I was trying to point out is that there are a lot of users of these 'edgy' sites that would like to post content that the site owners don't want them posting. So the site owner censors and removes CSAM and piracy so that the site isn't immediately in a legal black hole. The site owners remove content that at least some of the users would want be a use they find it morally or legally objectionable. Spam is kinda orthogonal to that point, since neither the site owner or the users want to see it.
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?
Join the referral program for a low cost online pharmacy. Post a link on each platform informing the users about the availability of male health products. Measure if it gets removed.
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.-
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.
I would love to contribute, but i do not think it is a good idea to install and run this in China…enough said. Also i already know the outcome: network is fast, everything is blocked
> 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).
—
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.
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.
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.
Edit: oof, it's extremely concerning that the comment below was flagged
It’s too soon for such a conclusion IMO. The pervasive Iran-like censorship I was talking about will rear its ugly head when those authoritarian regimes are established. It’s a tool and I can assure you it will be used extensively. This is nothing new really.
P.S. the Epstein files were just a cruel joke! I wouldn’t list it there.
There’s nothing simple about authoritarian control.
Who says we have less censorship? Sure people can tweet all kind of stuff without getting banned. Fine, but at the same time US president is removing news networks he doesn’t like from press briefings. That’s just one example. To say the censorship is in decline is baffling.
> 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.
We don’t know what it feels like because we collectively participate and decide what should be considered and what not _periodically_ and it’s possible to change it, evidently, with various degrees and velocity by voting.
> I would much prefer the dictatorship-style censorship, because our censorship is far, far more effective.
Case in point!
I’ve lived under both and can guarantee you don’t know what that dictatorship you so much yearn for has in their bag for you until it’s too late.
I guess he is not yearning for dictatorship, the style of censorship is the question. Preventing access to information is bad, but likely less harmful than deception.
Its true, all usually highly conplex world events are dumbed down to an insanely infantile level that carefully omits anything that may poorly reflect on corporate interests.
Also obvious is that all news is made in a short list of countries. Everywhere else the best you can hope for are terrible events.
You will only get opinions from a small list of talking heads.
One might imagine populating the media with nothing but professors. Each field has new stuff every week. In stead you get Adam Savage. The name isn't by acident.
Not a single one of my examples was committed by the government (except if you count funding Carnegie Mellon and MIT). But even in cases when they are, voting rarely helps: https://www.woes.blog/p/tgr-democracy
> you don’t know what that dictatorship you so much yearn for
Re-read my sentence. I don't yearn for a dictatorship, I yearn to blunt and make obvious the current secret, subtle censorship regime.
I repeat - you agree with the regime. You're floating in the river, letting it carry you where it pleases, while telling those swimming upstream that there is no current, nothing to struggle against.
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?
Literally even 4chan has moderation.
Nobody, not even 4chan users, want an actually unmoderated space.
If 4chan didnt have spam filters, the users would be begging for it almost immediately because the website would become unusable.
What I was trying to point out is that there are a lot of users of these 'edgy' sites that would like to post content that the site owners don't want them posting. So the site owner censors and removes CSAM and piracy so that the site isn't immediately in a legal black hole. The site owners remove content that at least some of the users would want be a use they find it morally or legally objectionable. Spam is kinda orthogonal to that point, since neither the site owner or the users want to see it.
You may agree or disagree with the ban, but surely you agree that we should be aware of such Overton window enforcement?
Which article, about what subject?
But your point is well taken, it's definitely more challenging and expensive than what's being done here.
... and then check for those (or, counterexamples) in the wild.-
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/
one isn't ignoring the other
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.
Edit: oof, it's extremely concerning that the comment below was flagged
P.S. the Epstein files were just a cruel joke! I wouldn’t list it there.
Surely they could get away with at the very least the same amount?
There’s nothing simple about authoritarian control.
Who says we have less censorship? Sure people can tweet all kind of stuff without getting banned. Fine, but at the same time US president is removing news networks he doesn’t like from press briefings. That’s just one example. To say the censorship is in decline is baffling.
We don’t know what it feels like because we collectively participate and decide what should be considered and what not _periodically_ and it’s possible to change it, evidently, with various degrees and velocity by voting.
> I would much prefer the dictatorship-style censorship, because our censorship is far, far more effective.
Case in point!
I’ve lived under both and can guarantee you don’t know what that dictatorship you so much yearn for has in their bag for you until it’s too late.
Also obvious is that all news is made in a short list of countries. Everywhere else the best you can hope for are terrible events.
You will only get opinions from a small list of talking heads.
One might imagine populating the media with nothing but professors. Each field has new stuff every week. In stead you get Adam Savage. The name isn't by acident.
Not a single one of my examples was committed by the government (except if you count funding Carnegie Mellon and MIT). But even in cases when they are, voting rarely helps: https://www.woes.blog/p/tgr-democracy
> you don’t know what that dictatorship you so much yearn for
Re-read my sentence. I don't yearn for a dictatorship, I yearn to blunt and make obvious the current secret, subtle censorship regime.
> has in their bag for you
Is it jail?
“White Lives Matter” Slogan Earns Two Dutch Men Imprisonment for Racism - https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news-corner/nether...
Activist ran race-hate sticker library, court told - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51zn2l33r9o -Stickers with text like "It's OK to be White" and "We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066". For which he was later convicted and jailed - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867
I repeat - you agree with the regime. You're floating in the river, letting it carry you where it pleases, while telling those swimming upstream that there is no current, nothing to struggle against.
Interesting! How did all of these social media companies made a 180 suddenly after power shifts in Washington?
> You're floating in the river,…
Of course but this doesn’t have any bearing on what I said. We are talking about severity and type of censorship not its meaning.