Katherine Hayhoe, author of “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World,” serves as Chief Scientist for the Nature Conservancy and is a distinguished professor at Texas Tech. You might expect that she would be considered a legitimate authority on the subject. p span[style*="font-size"] { line-height: 1.6; } But in the Meta-verse, where it seems virtually impossible to connect with a human being associated with the administration of the platform, rules are rules, and it appears they would prefer to suppress anything that might prove problematic for them. p span[style*="font-size"] { line-height: 1.6; } Hayhoe expressed her personal frustration in a recent post on Facebook. p span[style*="font-size"] { line-height: 1.6; } “Since August 2018, Facebook has limited the visibility of my page,” she writes, “labelling it as ‘political’ because I talk about climate change and clean energy. This change drastically reduced my post views from hundreds to just tens, and the page’s growth has been stagnant ever since.” p span[style*="font-size"] { line-height: 1.6; } The implications of such policies for our democracy are alarming. Why should corporate entities be able to dictate what type of speech or content is acceptable?

With permission from the Kansas Reflector, I’m sharing the column verbatim here in an attempt to sidestep Meta’s censorship. I hope you’ll share it far and wide—and I really hope Meta doesn’t block this version.

By its very nature, moderation is a form of censorship. You, as a community, space, or platform are deciding who and what is unacceptable. In Substack’s case, for example, they don’t allow pornography but they do allow Nazis. That’s not “free speech” but rather a business decision. If you’re making moderation based on financials, fine, but say so. Then platform users can make choices appropriately.

The Conversation’s senior editor had pulled the piece at the last minute, claiming it was “too polemical”. Unfortunately, the senior editor didn’t elaborate on their judgement (or contact me directly), so I can only guess that they were uncomfortable with my direct language and reference to the “generally supine media” – concerns all too easily hidden behind the façade of “too polemical”.

I remember when news media outlets in the First Amendment-loving US used to criticize China for its lack of press freedom; but the New York Times is now accusing Beijing of not cracking down enough on its news media and online discourse in order to silence criticism of Israel and the US. Good luck with that.

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Censorship and Information Control During Information RevolutionsExploring how new information technologies from the printing press to the digital age have stimulated new forms of censorship and information control.

n the political aftermath of the tragedy at Chernobyl, the failure to inform its citizens served to expose the hubris of the Soviet State

αντιμάχονται αγνώστους αγκαλιασμένοι με μια τηλεόραση

If the link is in a Proud Boys forum, would you not take any action against it, even if it’s like, “Click this link to help plan”?Are you asking if we have people out there clicking every link and checking if the forum comports with the ideological position that Signal agrees with?Yeah. I think in the most abstract way, I’m asking if you have a content moderation team.No, we don’t have that. We are also not a social media platform. We don’t amplify content. We don’t have Telegram channels where you can broadcast to thousands and thousands of people. We have been really careful in our product development side not to develop Signal as a social network that has algorithmic amplification that allows that “one to millions” amplification of content. We are a messaging platform. We don’t have a content moderation team because (1) we are fully private, we don’t see your content, we don’t know who you’re talking about; and (2) we are not a content platform, so it is a different paradigm.

I found this paragraph in a New York Times article about Elon Musk’s attempts to buy Twitter striking: The plan jibes with Mr. Musk’s, Mr. Dorsey’s and Mr. Agrawal’s beliefs in unfettered free speech. Mr. Musk has criticized Twitter for moderating its platform too restrictively and has said more speech should be allowed. Mr. Dorsey, too, grappled with the decision to boot former President Donald J. Trump off the service last year, saying he did not “celebrate or feel pride” in the move. Mr. Agrawal has said that public conversation provides an inherent good for society. Their positions have increasingly become outliers in a global debate over free speech online, as more people have questioned whether too much free speech has enabled the spread of misinformation and divisive content. In other words, the culture has changed; the law persists, but it does not and, according to the New York Times, ought not apply to private companies.

Munroe, though, assumes the opposite: liberty, in this case the freedom of speech, is an artifact of law, only stretching as far as government action, and no further. Pat Kerr, who wrote a critique of this comic on Medium in 2016, argued that this was the exact wrong way to think about free speech: Coherent definitions of free speech are actually rather hard to come by, but I would personally suggest that it’s something along the lines of “the ability to voluntarily express (and receive) opinions without suffering excessive penalties for doing so”. This is a liberal principle of tolerance towards others. It’s not an absolute, it isn’t comprehensive, it isn’t rigorously defined, and it isn’t a law. What it is is a culture.

Even if you grant the arguments that this awesome exercise of surveillance is warranted, given the trade-offs in question, that makes it all the more essential that the utmost care be taken in case the process gets it wrong. Google ought to be terrified it has this power, and be on the highest alert for false positives; instead the company has gone in the opposite direction, setting itself as judge, jury, and executioner, even when the people we have collectively entrusted to lock up criminals ascertain there was no crime. It is beyond arrogant, and gives me great unease about the company generally, and its long-term investments in AI in particular.

This Article is a manifestation of Madison’s hope. Start with the reality that it seems quaint in retrospect to think that any of the Bill of Rights would be preserved absent the force of law. This is one of the great lessons of the Internet and the rise of Aggregators: when suppressing speech entailed physically disrupting printing presses or arresting pamphleteers, then restricting government, which retains a monopoly on real world violence, was sufficient to preserve speech. Along the same lines, there was no need to demand due process or a restriction on search and seizure on any entity but the government, because only the government could take your property or send you to jail.

Aggregators, though, make private action much more possible and powerful than ever before: yes, if you are kicked off of Twitter or Facebook, you can still say whatever you want on a street corner; similarly, if you lose all of your data and phone and email, you are still not in prison — and thank goodness that is the case! At the same time, it seems silly to argue that getting banned from a social media platform isn’t an infringement on individual free speech rights, even if it is the corporations’ own free speech rights that enable them to do just that legally, just as it is silly to argue that losing your entire digital life without recourse isn’t a loss of property without due process. The big Internet companies are manifesting Madison’s fears of the majority operating against the minority, and there is nothing the Bill of Rights can do about it.

Indeed, judging from the accounts of the many employees who have now gone on record about this issue, the “debates” that have been happening at Basecamp are precisely the kinds of conversations that happen when you have a diverse workforce. Different issues affect different people differently, and being able to speak freely about those differences is the hallmark of a healthy culture. But by framing these discussions as “acrimonious debates” rather than “challenging conversations,” Hansson has positioned himself not as a peacemaker, but as a tyrant hell-bent on taking his toys and going home; shutting down discussions rather than holding space for growth and discovery.

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I have allowed a handful of anonymous people censor me. They have forced me, out of fear, into seeing myself a potential victim. 

All in all the internet seems to be getting smaller and smaller, I don't use any social media apart from HN and Reddit, and I only use Reddit because I seem to still be addicted to it since it's probably one of the most censored of all of them.10 years ago as a 20 year old I benefited greatly from how the internet was, here is an example: I grew up on the idea that there was nothing wrong with porn, and there isn't per se, and no one ever spoke about addiction like behavior when it came to watching it, then one day I discover a controversial post on Reddit and dove down the rabbit hole and lo and behold I had the same problems as this community of people trying to quit watching it, and I benefited from their experiences and knowledge, same about discovering communities against social media like Facebook, which pushed me to research the subject and deleting my account, etc. but now it seems like any controversial community is quickly banned or pushed aside in its own unfindable bubble and that to me is a great loss.I want to see people have an opposite opinion than mine, and I want to be able to get into heated non censored discussions in comment sections and get suggestions about articles, studies and content to challenge my views.

Google and Youtube search are heavily censored, for example if you open Youtube and type "JRE alex" then Alex Jones will be the last suggestion despite his episode having the most views, if you type "JRE Robert" then Youtube will suggest Robert Downey Jr and other guests whose name starts with Robert, but it won't show Robert Malone, and if you write "JRE Robert Malon" it still won't suggest it.

I’ve been vindicated

In addition to the practical advantages of thiswriterly inertia, in a work for Catholic consumption (such as the editions of theeighteenth century produced for the seminary in Padua) a traditional definitionfor “terra” was necessary to avoid potential censorship; it was in any case also anaccurate description of what “terra” meant to the ancient authors whose worksthe Calepino was designed to help elucidate.

Πρώτη η Ελλάδα στον Δυτικό Κόσμο σε θανάτους Covid-19!

διαπιστώνουμε ότι η Ελλάδα δεν ανερχόταν στην 1η, αλλά στην 10η θέση από τις 27 χώρες της ΕΕ:

Χωρίς να αμφισβητεί τον ορθότητα των αριθμών (κάτι που θα αποτελούσε όντως fact checking), το Hellenic Ηoaxes διαπράττει το ατόπημα όχι μόνο να εγκαλεί τον καθηγητή, διότι επέλεξε τη συγκεκριμένη «παραπλανητική» κατ' αυτό σύγκριση, αλλά και να προδιαγράφει ποιες είναι οι… σωστές συγκρίσεις. 

Intervention pathways, once established, will provide state and state-sponsored actors with additional tools for controlling public dialogue.

Russia has reportedly been trying for years to “unplug” from the internet so it can completely control communications in the country. Internet providers shouldn’t help the Russian government, or any government, keep people within an information bubble.

The European Union, in an unprecedented move, has decided to prohibit the broadcasting and distribution of content by these outlets throughout the European Union

or the endangerment of public health

We’re not a place—it’s very difficult to come to Xbox Live and say, ‘Okay, I want to go create a political party on the platform’. You could kind of twist the tools and try to get there, but it’s just not set up for general-purpose conversations or community.

τα κανάλια που βρίσκονταν σήμερα στα δικαστήρια είχαν έρθει για την υπόθεση του ψευτογιατρού, αλλά δεν καλύπτουν βεβαίως την αθώωση των μελών του Ρουβίκωνα. Θα ήταν πολύ πρόθυμα να καλύψουν το θέμα αν είχαν τη χαρά να μπουν φυλακή οι κατηγορούμενοι.

Όμως απουσίαζαν, όπως απουσίαζαν και από τη χθεσινή δίκη για τα Σεπόλια. Και επειδή τα κανάλια δεν αποτελούν έναν αυτόνομο μηχανισμό, αλλά είναι οργανωμένος επικοινωνιακός βραχίονας της κυβέρνησης, με υπαλληλική σχέση εξαιτίας της χρηματοδότησής τους μέσω της διαπλοκής, έχουμε κάθε δικαίωμα να σκεφτούμε ότι το κράτος έχει μία πολύ συγκεκριμένη στρατηγική: χρησιμοποιεί τους δημοσιογράφους του για να φωνάζουν την ώρα της άδικης σύλληψης, άλλα φροντίζει να κάνουν σαν να μη συμβαίνει τίποτα την ώρα της αθώωσης.

The censoriousness, the shunning, the ritualized apologies, the public sacrifices—these are rather typical behaviors in illiberal societies with rigid cultural codes, enforced by heavy peer pressure.

The censoriousness, the shunning, the ritualized apologies, the public sacrifices—these are typical behaviors in illiberal societies with rigid cultural codes.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar

John Bowers, Elaine Sedenberg, and I have described how that might work, suggesting that libraries can again serve as semi-closed archives of both public and private censorial actions online. We can build what the Germans used to call a giftschrank, a “poison cabinet” containing dangerous works that nonetheless should be preserved and accessible in certain circumstances. (Art imitates life: There is a “restricted section” in Harry Potter’s universe, and an aptly named “poison room” in the television adaptation of The Magicians.)

Passed by the National Board of Review

restrictions on free speech

Who owns and controls it?

He is seriously concerned – as many of us are – about the destructive repercussions of identity politics, the censorship of dissenting opinion, and the rewriting of American history.

I oppose the banning of Donald Trump and his non-violent believers/content from social media platforms such as Facebook Twitter, YouTube and Amazon. I feel (irrationally?) Trump is arrogant and disgusting as a person. I like some of his anti-CCP policies, but not sure I'd vote for him. The "USA First" stance is particularly damaging as it scares USA allies away. I don't think there's enough evidence for the electoral fraud allegations, but I haven't researched the court cases extensively. However, banning him opens a very dangerous precedent, making the US more like a dictatorship... more like China. Also it's not effective. Those who were silenced will only have more motivation, and the risk of terrorism is greatly increased. The people must decide what is true. Not big companies. Individuals must be able to express their beliefs. Bot accounts must be banned, but real individuals must not. If you think a group of people is a bunch of idiots who believe fake news, then, tough, that's democracy for you. Maybe it means that your government is not investing enough in education and welfare to properly educate and give hope to those people. I'm against violence.

The two blockbusters released this year (Guan Hu’s Eight Hundred and Zhang Yimou’s One Second) were both mysteriously pulled from festivals and released to the public this year after the state demanded edits

conservatives

But as long as the most important measure of success is short-term profit, doing things that help strengthen communities will fall by the wayside. Surveillance, which allows individually targeted advertising, will be prioritized over user privacy. Outrage, which drives engagement, will be prioritized over feelings of belonging. And corporate secrecy, which allows Facebook to evade both regulators and its users, will be prioritized over societal oversight.

Increased pressure on Facebook to manage propaganda and hate speech could easily lead to more surveillance. But there is pressure in the other direction as well, as users equate privacy with increased control over how they present themselves on the platform.

Facebook makes choices about what content is acceptable on its site. Those choices are controversial, implemented by thousands of low-paid workers quickly implementing unclear rules. These are tremendously hard problems without clear solutions. Even obvious rules like banning hateful words run into challenges when people try to legitimately discuss certain important topics.

This situation is reinforced by recent survey results—surprisingto many Westerners—showing that most urban Chinese Internet users actually trust domesticsources of news and information more than they trust the information found on foreign newswebsites (Guo et al.2005, pp. 66–67).

Though government statements emphasize anti-pornography crackdowns, ONI found the primary focus of China's filtering system to be on political content. Public security organs and internet service providers employ thousands of people – nationwide, at multiple levels – as monitors and censors. Their job is to monitor everything posted online by ordinary Chinese people and to delete objectionable content.

usually overwhelmed by misconceptions (the charitable interpretation) or lies and propaganda (the more accurate one). Some of the most prominent politicians in the country — notably Senator Ted Cruz — routinely lie to the public about what the law says and how courts have interpreted it.

In mid-2019, researchers at Facebook began studying a new set of rules proposed for the automated system that Instagram uses to remove accounts for bullying and other infractions.

One of the new tools debuted by Facebook allows administrators to remove and block certain trending topics among employees. The presentation discussed the “benefits” of “content control.” And it offered one example of a topic employers might find it useful to blacklist: the word “unionize.”

The US president has claimed the social media platform is "interfering in the 2020 presidential election" and "completely stifling FREE SPEECH" after it added a warning to two of his tweets on Tuesday.

. I assumed that archive.org had a completely anti-censorship ideology, removing videos only when forced to by the law. However, they now seem to be acting like Youtube, deleting any video that is offensive. I really don't like this switch in censorship policy that archive.org seems to have taken. if (window.archive_analytics) { var vs = window.archive_analytics.get_data_packets(); for (var i in vs) { vs[i]['cache_bust']=Math.random(); vs[i]['server_ms']=90; vs[i]['server_name']="www27.us.archive.org"; } if ($(".more_search").size()>0) { window.archive_analytics.send_scroll_fetch_base_event(); } }

What's terrible and dangerous is a faceless organization deciding to arbitrarily and silently control what I can and can not do with my browser on my computer. Orwell is screaming in his grave right now. This is no different than Mozilla deciding I don't get to visit Tulsi Gabbard's webpage because they don't like her politics, or I don't get to order car parts off amazon because they don't like hyundai, or I don't get to download mods for minecraft, or talk to certain people on facebook.

The issue here is still the same. You’ve added too many buttons to the composer toolbar. That breaks the composer layout on both narrow desktop viewports and on mobile - on any theme. This theme was designed for the default Discourse layout. If your site requires a lot of extra buttons, then it’s up to you to fix it. I think you’ve already figured out how to do it If you need to override the CSS in this theme, then create a theme component with those overrides and add it to your theme.

Right now, Facebook is tackling “misinformation that has imminent risk of danger, telling people if they have certain symptoms, don’t bother going getting treated … things like ‘you can cure this by drinking bleach.’ I mean, that’s just in a different class.”

When the disease emerged, the Chinese government suppressed information and then turned the social media platforms into tools for both reliable information and propaganda.

The services are promoting the good and deleting the bad, sending users straight to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the W.H.O.

the platforms have been moving unusually fast to delete misinformation

There have been rumblings, for example, that Germany’s hate speech law goes too far in clamping down on free speech. MacKinnon said there is “real concern among human rights groups that this is going to lead to over-censorship” and put too much power in the decision of private employees about what to leave up and what to take down. “When in doubt, you censor it, whether or not it’s really actually illegal.

While Americans tend to prioritize individual liberty, Europeans are more inclined to value the role of the state. Americans are generally more tolerant of offensive speech than Europeans. That has translated to a greater impetus to regulate tech in Europe.

Germany at the start of the year began enforcing a new hate speech law that gives social networks just 24 hours to act on hate speech, fake news, and illegal material.

The law has been controversial in Germany with some saying it could lead to inadvertent censorship or curtail free speech.

For the parallels between the fight against harmful and hateful speech online today and the crusade against sexual speech 50 years ago are stunning: the paternalistic belief that the powerless masses (but never the powerful) are vulnerable to corruption and evil with mere exposure to content; the presumption of harm without evidence and data; cries calling for government to stamp out the threat; confusion about the definitions of what’s to be forbidden; arguments about who should be responsible; the belief that by censoring content other worries can also be erased.

Censorious

The residents’ lack of success in drawing attention and widespread support to their struggle is a scenario that has been repeated the world over for decades in coun-tries led by dictators: rebellions are drowned out through silencing and censorship.

But they are actually validated by the most illiberal part of our Constitution, Article 19(2), which allows caveats to free speech on grounds like ‘public order’ and ‘decency and morality.’ Those are open to interpretation, and anything goes.

Tolerating all ideas does not mean becoming a supporter of them. Saying everything does not mean accepting everything.

We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance.  Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort, are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant.  I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once.  The same argument is applied to Trotskyism...To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore "Trotskyism is Fascism".  And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated. This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it.  If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions. "As I Please," Tribune (8 December 1944)

A phrase much used in political circles in this country is "playing into the hands of".  It is a sort of charm or incantation to silence uncomfortable truths.  When you are told that by saying this, that or the other you are "playing into the hands of" some sinister enemy, you know that it is your duty to shut up immediately. "As I Please," Tribune (9 June 1944)

Think, for example, about the schools who block YouTube and a bunch of other great tools for learning and expression — so youth maybe have access to a computer and internet, but half of it’s blocked from them.

What it is to be Transgender I had begun to annoy the extremists of trans Twitter with a piece I published in July 2014 which called for recentering trans debate around material reality. Broadly that: human beings are sexually dimorphic mammals; transwomen are biologically male (if we aren’t, then what do we transition from/to?); human beings are subjected to sex-based socialisation which begins at birth (what does this say about transwomen who cannot accept this?); the lives of transwomen are different to the lives of women (by this I mean women born women, again what does this say about transwomen who cannot accept this?). rape and death threats directed at lesbians and other feminists are wholly unacceptable.

You may have heard that the internet was designed to resist a nuclear attack. That’s not entirely correct. It’s true that the project began with military considerations. The initial research was funded by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. But the engineers working on the project were not military personnel. Their ideals had more in common with the free‐speech movement than with the military‐industrial complex. They designed the network to route around damage, but the damage they were concerned with was censorship, not a nuclear attack.

Let me be clear – saying that you feel harmed by another queer person’s use of a reclaimed word like tranny and organizing against the use of that word is NOT social activism. It is censorship.

will cut out the offensive parts; or, as in the case of “Trannyshack,” the name of the club was changed.

it is becoming difficult to speak, to perform, to offer up work nowadays without someone, somewhere claiming to feel hurt,

humor is something that feminists in particular, but radical politics in general, are accused of lacking. Recent controversies within queer communities around language, slang, satirical or ironic representation and perceptions of harm or offensive have created much controversy with very little humor recently, leading to demands for bans, censorship and name changes

censors

Censorship has never contributed to the cause of social justice; throughout history it has invariably been on the side of totalitarianism and repression.

Britain’s Coalition government is rushing through an anti-terrorism bill that would require universities to take action to stop students and staff from being drawn into terrorist activity. According to Home Secretary Theresa May, this would require higher education institutions to ban extremists from speaking on campus.

Details on the EU dinner are sparse. But there is increasing concern over the role social media plays in disseminating extremist propaganda, as well as being used as a direct recruitment tool. However, there is also a significant worry that placing strict controls on social networks could actually hinder counter-terrorism efforts. "The further underground they go, the harder it is to gleam information and intelligence," said Jim Gamble, a security consultant, and former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop). "Often it is the low level intelligence that you collect that you can then aggregate which gives you an analysis of what's happening." Mr Gamble was formerly head of counter-terrorism in Northern Ireland. There were, he said, parallels to be drawn. "There's always a risk of becoming too radical and too fundamentalist in your approach when you're trying to suppress the views of others that you disagree with. "In Northern Ireland, huge mistakes were made when the government tried to starve a political party of the oxygen of publicity. I would say that that radically backfired."

One cannot call the history of intellectual property a purely proletarian struggle. While ancient Roman laws afforded a form of copyright protection to authors, n14 the rise of Anglo-Saxon copyright was a saga of publishing interests attempting to protect a concentrated market and a central government attempting to apply a subtle form of censorship to the new technology of the printing press.