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You raise a good point, but we can't get complacent. While the Internet makes it hard to cut off access to a book altogether, the technology exists to make book

You raise a good point, but we can't get complacent. While the Internet makes it hard to cut off access to a book altogether, the technology exists to make books harder to find. Imagine slow- or errorbanning[0], but applied to authors and books rather than users and comments. There have been strides toward securing net neutrality, but it remains an issue. [1] [0]: If you aren't familiar with these terms, Coding Horror has a good introduction: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-hellban.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-h.... Most people here know of these techniques already because Hacker News uses hellbanning. [1]: See https://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality https://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality

mikeash 13y ago
Just look at China's internet censorship regime for an excellent example of how this works. The Great Firewall does not prevent a determined person from accessing banned content. You don't even have to be all that determined, really. They make no effort to block things like ssh tunnels or VPNs. You're just a quick "ssh -D" command or Tor install away from access to everything they block. One wonders, then, why they bother. Many technically-minded people ask this question. Or they assume the Great Firewall does much more than it really does, and think that stuff like ssh must be blocked. (Of course, it's not. China likes international business, and if foreigners can't get secure access to their corporate networks, foreigners won't come to China to do business.) The Great Firewall's purpose is not to prevent information from being accessed at all, its purpose is social control. If 100 Chinese internet users attempt to access blocked content, perhaps 10 will persist and succeed, while 90 will just move on to looking at cat pictures or whatever. From the point of view of the Chinese authorities, that is a success. The Great Firewall will block attempts to read about the Tiananmen Square massacre. This seems silly, because Chinese people know about this event anyway. But it changes the discourse. It gently pushes the online conversation toward "safer" topics. With modern technology, a determined person will always be able to find the content they want, no matter how banned it is. This is not a concern. What is a concern is the ability to push the less-determined people, who vastly outnumber the determined people, toward topics and material that the authorities prefer.

mikeash 13y ago

Just look at China's internet censorship regime for an excellent example of how this works. The Great Firewall does not prevent a determined person from accessing banned content. You don't even have to be all that determined, really. They make no effort to block things like ssh tunnels or VPNs. You're just a quick "ssh -D" command or Tor install away from access to everything they block. One wonders, then, why they bother. Many technically-minded people ask this question. Or they assume the Great Firewall does much more than it really does, and think that stuff like ssh must be blocked. (Of course, it's not. China likes international business, and if foreigners can't get secure access to their corporate networks, foreigners won't come to China to do business.) The Great Firewall's purpose is not to prevent information from being accessed at all, its purpose is social control. If 100 Chinese internet users attempt to access blocked content, perhaps 10 will persist and succeed, while 90 will just move on to looking at cat pictures or whatever. From the point of view of the Chinese authorities, that is a success. The Great Firewall will block attempts to read about the Tiananmen Square massacre. This seems silly, because Chinese people know about this event anyway. But it changes the discourse. It gently pushes the online conversation toward "safer" topics. With modern technology, a determined person will always be able to find the content they want, no matter how banned it is. This is not a concern. What is a concern is the ability to push the less-determined people, who vastly outnumber the determined people, toward topics and material that the authorities prefer.