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#censorship#don#twitter#moderation#post#reddit#should#those#platforms#measure

Discussion (39 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

walrus01•about 2 hours ago
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.
howunfortunate•about 3 hours ago
Hmm.

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?

eigenspace•about 3 hours ago
If you count platform moderation as 'censorship' then there's practically no uncensored public spaces on the internet.

Literally even 4chan has moderation.

Nobody, not even 4chan users, want an actually unmoderated space.

NDlurker•about 2 hours ago
Some of the moderation is just banning people with differing opinions.
howunfortunate•about 2 hours ago
My comment above does not rely on the premise that all moderation is censorship. Only that some Reddit mods engage in censorship.
zrobotics•about 3 hours ago
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.
eigenspace•about 2 hours ago
Deciding what is spam and blocking it is moderation or "censorship".

If 4chan didnt have spam filters, the users would be begging for it almost immediately because the website would become unusable.

like_any_other•about 3 hours ago
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?

thewanderer1983•30 minutes ago
Not just reddit mods. Google 2013 Eglin Air Force Base incident reddit.
urbnspacecowboy•about 2 hours ago
> old Twitter decided to censor a NYPost article

Which article, about what subject?

howunfortunate•about 2 hours ago
Are there NYPost articles you feel people should be prevented from DMing? Or posting, for that matter?
qerghnui•34 minutes ago
Why do you refuse to answer the question?

The story you are referring to involved the New York Post or its affiliates breaking in to Hunter Biden's laptop (a felony) and publishing his personal correspondence, complete with unredacted phone numbers and email addresses. This violated Twitter's policies against doxxing and dissemination of hacked materials. Characterizing this as censorship is misleading; the story contained no newsworthy information and its publication violated longstanding Twitter policy. It's hard to imagine Twitter functioning without such a policy. I don't see any reason the New York Post should get away with violating it just because it claims to be a newspaper.

The Wall Street Journal, a Murdoch rag like the Post and hardly known for its liberal bias, declined to publish this information, which is why it wound up in the disreputable Post instead. Respectable journalists have ethical standards. Act like thugs, get treated like thugs.

ThePinion•about 2 hours ago
They censored the Hunter Biden laptop story weeks before the election.
Bluestein•about 3 hours ago
As a thought exercise, could it be captured?
goatsi•about 1 hour ago
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.
howunfortunate•about 3 hours ago
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.

Bluestein•about 3 hours ago
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.-

1e1a•about 2 hours ago
Would be cool if it also measured the latency and throughput across many different protocols to detect deviations from net neutrality.
sandeepkd•about 3 hours ago
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.
thenthenthen•about 1 hour ago
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
8organicbits•about 1 hour ago
Many of the partners are country focused but the Tor Project, Citizen Lab, and Internet Society are well known to me.
piskov•about 3 hours ago
> 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.

—

I mean come on, some nuts even willingly install stuff like this: https://atlas.ripe.net/

progbits•about 2 hours ago
Are you arguing for security by obscurity?
like_any_other•about 3 hours ago
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.
geraneum•about 3 hours ago
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.
howunfortunate•about 2 hours ago
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

ACCount39•2 minutes ago
Multiple jurisdictions have tried to play the stupid games of "we'll make a dumb fuck law that creates problems for you, the website operator, and if you don't conform, we'll sinkhole you at ISP level". Platforms like Xitter and Telegram being the common early targets.

The "age verification" push is a big move in that direction in Western countries. "Think of the children" is an evergreen excuse for authoritarian measures.

geraneum•about 2 hours ago
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.

NooneAtAll3•about 1 hour ago
censorship of websites is done to move more of population onto social platforms you control

one isn't ignoring the other