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Vice: Internet Freedom Is Actively Dissolving In America (vice.com)
An anonymous reader points out Vice's rather dark view of the state of Internet freedom, the author of which posits that "one fact about the internet is quickly becoming clear this year: Americans' freedom to access the open internet is rapidly dissolving." As evidence, the writer points out negative trends in broadband adoption, legal moves to weaken encryption, industry consolidation that means fewer competitors in some areas, increasing use of data caps, and increasing reliance by many (especially poorer) Americans on mobile phones as their only internet-connected devices. (On the other hand, it's worth pointing out that there are now free encryption-centric apps for voice and text communication that give ordinary people privacy options, and both unlocked phones and inexpensive data plans are far closer to the American norm than they were a few years ago.)
Completely true. The CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation, a publicly funded news outlet in Canada) has been filtering comments that don't fit their agenda, or outright closing comments sections on articles when the narrative starts falling apart, risking a backfire of the programming attempt. A number of articles don't even get the comment section from the start, since they know people will point out the bullshit immediately. There was more truth in the comments sections than in the articles in many cases.
I can't find it right now, but there was an opinion article on cbc.ca that was along the lines of "Is it time to remove online comments altogether?" because you "had no right" to them in the first place. Never mind that this is an organization that is funded by taxpayer money, to the tune of about a billion dollars a year.