Slashdot Mirror
Russia Blocks Internet Sites of Putin Critics
An anonymous reader writes in with news about Russias censorship of internet sites critical of President Vladimir Putin. "Russia blocked access to the internet sites of prominent Kremlin foes Alexei Navalny and Garry Kasparov on Thursday under a new law critics say is designed to silence dissent in President Vladimir Putin's third term. The prosecutor general's office ordered Russian internet providers to block Navalny's blog, chess champion and Putin critic Kasparov's internet newspaper and two other sites, grani.ru and ej.ru, state regulator Roskomnadzor said. The move was the latest evidence of what government opponents see as a crackdown on independent media and particularly the internet, a platform for dissenting views in a nation where state channels dominate the airwaves. Ej.ru editor Alexander Ryklin called it 'monstrous' and a 'direct violation of all the principles of freedom of speech,' More at EFF, and in earlier stories at the The Huffington Post, and Deutsche Welle, which notes, 'This year's report by Reporters Without Borders on World Day against Cyber Censorship condemns Russia as one of the "Enemies of the Internet." "Russia has adopted dangerous legislation governing the flow of news and information and freedom of expression online," it concludes.'"
Always funny how Slashdot uses the "silenced person" icon.
Meanwhile, they have a site where the "anonymous coward" can log in to a duplicate account and mod posts down against a commenter they don't agree with until that commenter is literally slienced beyond one or two pre-modded -1 comments a day.
The downvotes are fairly predictable: anyone who doesn't toe the scientism line or who doesn't agree with the fundamentalist atheist dogma is usually first to be mass downvoted. Often a simple declarative sentence is all it takes to rile up some greasy neckbeard asshole, who will dump all five mod points into retaliating because greasy neckbeard assholes take declarative statements as a personal insult.
If you reply, that just gives their duplicate account another three-point shot at your "karma," which is simply a measure of how well you agree with the Slashdot party line. All the greasy neckbeard asshole wants is grist for his logic mill so he can "disprove" everything you say by downvoting it and labeling it.
So essentially, Slashdot is simply a machine to enforce groupthink. Nobody is allowed to color outside the lines without being chased away by the downvotes. It's very much like Boingboing, which is a site devoted to enforcing Cory Doctorow's personal prejudices and cowardly bigotry through his proxy mods.
I propose this be fixed before you spend any more time on your big beta project.
tl;dr Slashdot's moderation system does nothing but force commenters to say the "right thing(tm)"