9 ms·

I don’t know this case or the site, I’m only commenting on this because, shouldn’t we be very concerned that anything can be silenced, globally, online? Where d

• mdekkers 3y ago
  > Google started self censoring “Russian propaganda” and everyone was so distracted with the war itself that nobody seemed to take notice of what gears that type of thing set in motion. I recently found out that all of Russia Today is banned and blocked throughout the EU, and whilst I appreciate it’s pure propaganda, I don’t appreciate being told what I can and cannot read/watch/hear. It’s entirely against everything I was told to believe we stood for, and I find it deeply offensive ans disturbing.
  • sgift 3y ago
    Do you mean rt.com? I just accessed that cesspool and Germany is part of the EU, so .. nope. Not banned.
    • orangepurple 3y ago
      Banned in NL it gives an HTHS error NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID the certificate common name in the attack is advice.upc.biz
      • vlabakje90 3y ago
        It's not banned in NL, I can access it just fine.
        • orangepurple 3y ago
          It is banned by Ziggo in the Netherlands. When I open it incognito I am redirected to a Ziggo.nl page saying: Deze website is geblokkeerd Europese sancties De Raad van Europa heeft besloten dat de websites van RT (voorheen Russia Today) en Sputnik News niet meer mogen worden doorgegeven. De website die je probeert te bezoeken, valt onder deze Europese sanctie. Vodafone Ziggo is verplicht de sanctie uit te voeren en heeft de website geblokkeerd.
          • vlabakje90 3y ago
            I'm connected through Ziggo so this surprises me. It's working for me without any problems.
            • orangepurple 3y ago
              It might be DNS poisoning? My DNS resolvers are: 2001:730:3e42:1000::53 2001:b88:1002::10 2001:b88:1202::10 84.116.46.23 84.116.46.22
    • JackGreyhat 3y ago
      I just checked and cannot reach RT from Germany, using the ISP provided DNS server. I think that is key.
      • greensh 3y ago
        I tried using german isp dns, rt.com is blocked. That's shocking.
    • mdekkers 3y ago
      https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/28/eu-rt-ban-extends-online/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/28/eu-rt-ban-extends-online/
    • philippejara 3y ago
      given that rumble was ordered to remove what I can only assume is rt and decided to just stop serving the country instead, It's certainly banned at the very least in France itself. https://archive.is/Ryv67 https://archive.is/Ryv67
  • somethingreen 3y ago
    I used to be a free speech absolutist, but now I believe phylosophical principles exist in service of humanity, not the other way around. If you consider that the goal of russian propaganda is to help Russia succeed in genocide of a 40 million nation, I think it should be fairly easy to handle some censorship, at least until genocide is stopped.
    • Brian_K_White 3y ago
      What philosophical principle justifies censorship, which is just propaganda through ommision? How can someone decide for themselves that they agree something is bad, if they aren't allowed to see it, or even know it exists? I don't think there is any philosophical principle that resloves to "and therefor we should commit ignorance"
      • camgunz 3y ago
        I think the typical rejoinder here is Germany's denazification. There's a difference between preemptively censoring things and deciding some things are just wrong and not worth debating for the umpteenth time. FWIW we preemptively censor things all the time. Information is classified, we don't let you post plans to build nuclear or biological weapons, etc. And to broaden a little, we also have lots of speech restrictions and compulsions. Fraud is against the law and that's largely speech. Inciting imminent lawless action isn't allowed. We require nutrition facts on products, we require doctors to say things before performing abortions, we compel testimony, etc. I personally wouldn't like it if you posted my address and when I'm likely to be away. Speech is complicated, it's powerful, fundamental, and there are a lot of competing interests and principles.
        • Brian_K_White 3y ago
          What does wrongness have to do with anything? No one in Germany studies the history of Nazis and how they came to be?
          • camgunz 3y ago
  • erfgh 3y ago
    Russia Today as a television network is banned because you need a license to broadcast and that license can be revoked when it is found that the network broadcasts only propaganda that has nothing to do with reality. On the other hand, the website of Russia Today is not blocked though it does have some intermittent ddos problems.
    • iraqmtpizza 3y ago
      you need a loicense to be on rumble lololol
  • thejazzman 3y ago
    Please correct me if I'm misreading this, but are you saying bad actors have an inherent right to exercise their bad actions? It's on every individual to defend themselves against whatever harm is being inflicted, and society should stand by because, again, inherent right to be awful should be protected?
    • matrix_overload 3y ago
      The idea is that people should have the skill of critically assessing the information they see, not trusting it by default, and knowing how to verify it. Like, check for conflicts of interest, historical precedents, correlate independent sources, etc. This skill only develops if people have to deal with lies on a daily basis. If we delegate the function of telling what's a truth and what's a lie to a 3rd party, it quickly starts abusing it for its own gain and the quality of life starts sliding downhill.
      • inetknght 3y ago
        > people should have the skill of critically assessing the information they see, not trusting it by default, and knowing how to verify it Unfortunately, in America and I imagine abroad, those skills have been actively eroded so as to favor of consumerism. Moreover, the tools to pull one over on your fellow man have gotten more and more sophisticated such that you cannot trust recorded voices to be real, you cannot trust recorded video of people talking, and likely soon won't be able to trust recorded video at all. There's a serious problem with that in its own. But it's compounded when people don't satisfy the very requirements you want of them.
        • thejazzman 3y ago
          Not to mention health conditions that prohibit people from sharing the mental capacity of people on here. Or let's get specific. My 96yo great aunt with Alzheimer's who has been repeatedly preyed upon. I'm kind of shocked and disappointed to see these attitudes amongst my colleagues. I thought we cared about each other.
  • Ms-J 3y ago
    Sadly the power hungry governments and corporations are getting worse, attempting to dictate what is approved speech. Sometimes they even label things not a lie, but "misinformation" because it's not what they would like you to know. I too find it deeply disturbing.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  Copyright infringement is not protected speech. Google is free to provide or not provide results however they see fit. To me- freedom of speech is the right of citizens to criticize the government without reprisal. This does not mean that adversaries have the right to flood our airwaves with propaganda, lies, and other bullshit under the guise of protected speech.
  • survirtual 3y ago
    The same tools used to "prevent copyright infringement" are used to silence and censor legitimate protest and opposition to tyranny.
  • landoftheice 3y ago
    [dead]
• Y_Y 3y ago
  Vodafone have blocked RT in several EU countries, try it yourself: https://www.rt.com/africa/580875-france-niger-military-agreements/ https://www.rt.com/africa/580875-france-niger-military-agree...
  • mschild 3y ago
    Not just Vodafone. But this happened because RT is one the EUs sanction list. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022/03/02/eu-imposes-sanctions-on-state-owned-outlets-rt-russia-today-and-sputnik-s-broadcasting-in-the-eu/ https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022...
  • spiderfarmer 3y ago
    Good.
• boringuser2 3y ago
  You're just "waking up" now? Tech clearly engaged in election interference on behalf of Trump's opponents in 2020. I don't like the man any more than anyone else, but that was a crime.
  • yikes_42069 3y ago
    It cites its claims or else it gets the hose again.
• flangola7 3y ago
  None of this is new. Blocking is not even that strong of an action, ISIS domains are straight up seized and taken possession of by the United States.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  "We need to wake up" Maybe stop relying on third party DNS 24/7. Most web users visit the same sites over and over, at a frequency of several times per month or even per week. Few of these sites are changing their IP addresses with the same frequency. Some (most, based on personal experience) will go years without a change in address. Yet people keep looking up the addresses every single day if not more frequently. Google censors all the time. Search results are manipuated in ways that are optimised for advertising, not accesibility of information. Perhaps it's subtle enough that people do not notice. Popularity is not necessarily a proxy for truth. But for a so-called "tech" company, popularity is almost always the most important metric. Because advertising.
  • SturgeonsLaw 3y ago
    For the self-hosters among us, here is a guide to setting up your own recursive DNS server, along with PiHole: https://martinkubecka.github.io/posts/general/recursive_dns/ https://martinkubecka.github.io/posts/general/recursive_dns/
    • autoexec 3y ago
      Now I just need a guide on how to actually buy a Raspberry Pi. They've been "sold out" for 3 years.
  • ransackdev 3y ago
    There are these things called authorative dns servers which if they no longer serve your domain due to being silenced then my self hosted recursive unbound setup won’t help anything. Aside from that, this isn’t about relying on other systems. That’s literally the Internet. It’s distributed. It’s open. That’s why it runs on 13 root dns servers. This is about large players who control and manipulate vast amounts of users and traffic, forming a cartel to push their business interests in the name of more profits. Remember when ISPs wanted to strong arm Netflix for more money or cripple their bandwidth, effectively making their service so slow nobody would buy it? The tubes of the internet should be that, dumb, open, tubes. Anything else is no long an open internet. I fear we’re well past that now.
• mlindner 3y ago
  I think the title is actually incorrect. It’s not that it’s been blocked globally, just that a relatively small German dns resolver was ordered to block it wherever they acted.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  This Quad9 case proves that all open resolvers are not necessarily "equal" in terms of the DNS data they will provide. From what I have seen most folks using third party DNS either do not choose a provider, i.e., accept the ISP default, or choose a provider based on "which one is the fastest", "which one is the most 'private'", "which one has family filters, blocks ads", or some other marketing. How many folks consider "which one offers the DNS data I want". What stops Google from "self-censoring" DNS data so that the answers users get from 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are optimised for advertising. It makes business sense. Fortunately nothing in DNS protocol mandates using remote recursive DNS and caches shared with untrusted parties (including the so-called "tech" companies operating them). It is possible to query without the RD bit set and still get the DNS data from authoritative DNS servers instead of resolvers. it does not even look like Quad9 has removed this domain from their cache. I just checked and it's still there, returning an IP address in Lithuania.
  • radicality 3y ago
    Small correction - I believe it’s 8.8.4.4 and not 4.4.4.4 for google dns. Mentioning this since I’m pretty sure I got this wrong myself in the past when setting up dns and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
• Falkon1313 3y ago
  On the contrary. Those sites are still free to say what they want. Google is not censoring their freedom of speech. But freedom of speech also means you can't compel someone to say something they don't want to say. That's not censorship, that's freedom. You can't force Google to rebroadcast that message. And if you think that's the first or only thing they choose not to show, you must be very new. Otherwise you'd've noticed by now that your search results aren't all full of child porn and other garbage. Google isn't forced to show that to you. If you want to see things that Google doesn't show, you're free to find it by other means.
  • bippihippi1 3y ago
    the analogy to compelled speech is a little weak, since google doesn't claim ownership of any speech they display, and since google search is an effective monopoly on information discovery. it's more like an isp choosing not to serve certain traffic. but yeah, google isn't a common carrier. There are things that I would also censor, but I wouldn't prevent someone from saying russian propoganda on my street, because I can walk away. If anything individuals should have more ability to censor their own google results, because that's like, someone speaking inside my home.
  • jonhohle 3y ago
    When does that freedom (which I agree they have) run afoul of Title II responsibilities that Google currently enjoys? When Google suppresses results for things that don’t align with their political or cultural perspective, are they still a common carrier?
• AussieWog93 3y ago
  I'm sure this will be an absolutely abhorrent take to the HN audience, but I've been recently wondering if perhaps a bit of censorship could be a good thing. Not complete censorship, of course, but not complete freedom of communication either. In the past 25 years or so we've gone from being only able to freely communicate our ideas with people we know directly to being able to share anything with anyone all over the world. And it hasn't made life better. It hasn't improved our wellbeing, it hasn't improved our democracy, it hasn't improved our relationships... Empirically, it just hasn't worked and maybe it would be a good thing to attempt to put the genie back into the bottle.
  • lvturner 3y ago
    There are a couple of countries, one very notable, that we can use as a case study.
  • wolverine876 3y ago
    Who decides what should be censored?
    • toofy 3y ago
      if a restaurant removes people if they stand on their tables and scream weird shit at the other diners, is this "censoring"? if hackernews removes child porn or spam, is this "censoring"? if a music venue, who has spent years building a reputation as an amazing place to see goth bands or metal bands or hyperpop bands, is it "censorship" if they don't book a country band? if your email provider removes spam, are they "censoring"? i've found this "who decides" things to be getting increasingly ridiculous. the restaurant owner decides. this isn't rocket science. the music venue owner decides. if a gathering place of humans has spent years cultivating a reputation for certain genres, again, goth music, electronic music, rock music, etc... or fine dining, fast food, bbq, etc.. we don't scream from the rooftops when mcdonalds doesn't serve foie gras. we don't run in panic circles and scream "censorship" when a goth club doesn't book nickelback. we don't clutch our pearls when our email provider removes spam or child porn and proclaim "omg that dick enlargement pill email was removed! censorship! who decides. oh my who decides." if you want to argue against centralization of services, im right there with you. no large city has 1 restaurant. there are hundreds if not thousands. no large city has 1 music venue, again there are hundreds. different places for different experiences. if you want to argue that having 1 gateway to the internet is an absolutely absurd and terrifying dystopia, ill be in the front of that line with you carrying my pitchfork. and if you want to argue that just a handful of centralized increasingly walled off social media sites is absolutely awful, again, im with you. we need hundreds or thousands of gateways to online experiences, not the small handful we have today. at this point the "who decides" thing becomes naturally irrelevant.