5 ms·

People are downvoting the above comment for some reason, but what is this Windows Defender behavior if not a form of censorship?

by kozak 5y ago

ethbr0 5y ago
Judging. And it's impossible to build certain feature without judging. A lot of people here probably don't remember what email was like in the 90s/00s, before it got bad enough that Gmail's killer feature was (what we'd now call) cloud-enabled spam filtering. The distinction between judgement and censorship is the amount of user control. (1) Does the user know it happened? (2) Can the user override the decision?
- hulitu 5y ago
  1) no 2) no. So it seems a good idea to disable defender.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    Not true. Defender alerts you when it quarantines a virus or whatever. And if you know what buttons to push, you can tell it to remove it from quarantine. You can also tell it to ignore folders if you so desire.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Not in this instance. Program was automatically uninstalled. I didn't have time to poke through it, but options appear limited to whitelisting the app going forward, and then reinstalling yourself.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  Given that Defender (apparently) directly deletes the files in question without asking, it seems you agree with the grandparent that it is, in fact, censorship.
crazygringo 5y ago
That makes no sense. By that logic, what are firefighters doing but censoring homes? What are koalas but a form of eucalyptus censorship? What is locking your front door but a form of censoring burglars? No, just no. Censorship is preventing the transmission of ideas, nothing more, nothing less. Deleting a file has nothing to do with transmission, and it's being done in response to a perceived threat, not its communicative meaning. (Like how you lock your house to protect from burglars.) It's important not to abuse the term "censorship" -- if it means everything then it ceases to mean anything at all.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  ...I'm less sure of this. If Windows Defender was deleting any file named "Animal Farm.txt", that would be a form of censorship, right? It's preventing the transmission of a piece of political literature. Now, what if it was deleting "Animal Farm - The Video Game.exe"? Now, what if it was deleting the keygen for "Animal Farm - The Video Game"? What if the activation server for that game had gone offline, and this keygen was now the only way to play it? My point being, software (and especially games) can absolutely be a way of expressing ideas, and if you block the software, that seems like censorship to me. I also think that some forms of censorship are fine and even necessary—I don't particularly like stumbling across porn unprepared—but it should be optional.
  - Goronmon 5y ago
    If Windows Defender was deleting any file named "Animal Farm.txt", that would be a form of censorship, right? It's preventing the transmission of a piece of political literature. I guess, in some ways, you could consider it censorship. But without evidence that its being done specifically to target certain types of speech, as opposed to a side effect from some other goal, I'm not sure it's a particularly useful label. What is anti-virus software in general but "censorship" of people's abilities to distribute viruses to whoever they want? What is an adblocker but software that "censors" someone's ability to advertise in the most effective way possible?
  - crazygringo 5y ago
    No, it depends on the intent. If the intent is to prevent the transmission of ideas, then yes it's censorship. If the intent is to protect from harm -- totally unconnected to ideas -- then no it's not censorship. The reason Defender deletes keygens is that they're statistically associated with malware and viruses, as any Google search will terrifyingly immediately reveal. It clearly is falling under the "protect from harm" category as it's designed to do. But so to answer your question clearly: deleting "Animal Farm.txt" because of the ideas inside is censorship (prevents it being transmitted). The video game would similarly be censorship if based on its content. But if it's deleting all keygens, regardless of content of their associated video games, then clearly not censorship.
bin_bash 5y ago
That's sort of like arguing a hotdog is a sandwich. It isn't simply because if someone asked for a sandwich and you gave them a hotdog they'd say you gave them the wrong thing—even though technically a sandwich can simply be meat between some bread.

People are downvoting the above comment for some reason, but what is this Windows Defender behavior if not a form of censorship?

by kozak 5y ago

People are downvoting the above comment for some reason, but what is this Windows Defender behavior if not a form of censorship?

ethbr0 5y ago

Judging. And it's impossible to build certain feature without judging. A lot of people here probably don't remember what email was like in the 90s/00s, before it got bad enough that Gmail's killer feature was (what we'd now call) cloud-enabled spam filtering. The distinction between judgement and censorship is the amount of user control. (1) Does the user know it happened? (2) Can the user override the decision?

hulitu 5y ago
1) no 2) no. So it seems a good idea to disable defender.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  Not true. Defender alerts you when it quarantines a virus or whatever. And if you know what buttons to push, you can tell it to remove it from quarantine. You can also tell it to ignore folders if you so desire.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Not in this instance. Program was automatically uninstalled. I didn't have time to poke through it, but options appear limited to whitelisting the app going forward, and then reinstalling yourself.
Sebb767 5y ago
Given that Defender (apparently) directly deletes the files in question without asking, it seems you agree with the grandparent that it is, in fact, censorship.

crazygringo 5y ago

That makes no sense. By that logic, what are firefighters doing but censoring homes? What are koalas but a form of eucalyptus censorship? What is locking your front door but a form of censoring burglars? No, just no. Censorship is preventing the transmission of ideas, nothing more, nothing less. Deleting a file has nothing to do with transmission, and it's being done in response to a perceived threat, not its communicative meaning. (Like how you lock your house to protect from burglars.) It's important not to abuse the term "censorship" -- if it means everything then it ceases to mean anything at all.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
...I'm less sure of this. If Windows Defender was deleting any file named "Animal Farm.txt", that would be a form of censorship, right? It's preventing the transmission of a piece of political literature. Now, what if it was deleting "Animal Farm - The Video Game.exe"? Now, what if it was deleting the keygen for "Animal Farm - The Video Game"? What if the activation server for that game had gone offline, and this keygen was now the only way to play it? My point being, software (and especially games) can absolutely be a way of expressing ideas, and if you block the software, that seems like censorship to me. I also think that some forms of censorship are fine and even necessary—I don't particularly like stumbling across porn unprepared—but it should be optional.
- Goronmon 5y ago
  If Windows Defender was deleting any file named "Animal Farm.txt", that would be a form of censorship, right? It's preventing the transmission of a piece of political literature. I guess, in some ways, you could consider it censorship. But without evidence that its being done specifically to target certain types of speech, as opposed to a side effect from some other goal, I'm not sure it's a particularly useful label. What is anti-virus software in general but "censorship" of people's abilities to distribute viruses to whoever they want? What is an adblocker but software that "censors" someone's ability to advertise in the most effective way possible?
- crazygringo 5y ago
  No, it depends on the intent. If the intent is to prevent the transmission of ideas, then yes it's censorship. If the intent is to protect from harm -- totally unconnected to ideas -- then no it's not censorship. The reason Defender deletes keygens is that they're statistically associated with malware and viruses, as any Google search will terrifyingly immediately reveal. It clearly is falling under the "protect from harm" category as it's designed to do. But so to answer your question clearly: deleting "Animal Farm.txt" because of the ideas inside is censorship (prevents it being transmitted). The video game would similarly be censorship if based on its content. But if it's deleting all keygens, regardless of content of their associated video games, then clearly not censorship.

bin_bash 5y ago

That's sort of like arguing a hotdog is a sandwich. It isn't simply because if someone asked for a sandwich and you gave them a hotdog they'd say you gave them the wrong thing—even though technically a sandwich can simply be meat between some bread.