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Internet Freedom Wanes As Governments Target Messaging, Social Apps (npr.org)
Roughly two-thirds of the world's internet users live under regimes of government censorship, according to a report from Freedom House, a pro-democracy think tank. The report adds that internet freedom declined worldwide for a sixth consecutive year in 2016 with the governments increasingly crack down on social media services and messaging apps. From a report on NPR: "In a new development, the most routinely targeted tools this year were instant messaging and calling platforms, with restrictions often imposed during times of protests or due to national security concerns," the report says. WhatsApp emerged as the most-blocked app, facing restrictions in 12 of the 65 studied countries. The report's scope covers the experiences of some 88 percent of the world's Internet users. And of all 65 countries reviewed, Internet freedom in 34 -- more than half -- has been on a decline over the past year. Particular downturns were marked in Uganda, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ecuador and Libya. Facebook users were arrested in 27 countries, more than any other app or platform. And such arrests are spreading. Since June of last year, police in 38 countries have arrested people for what they said on social media -- surpassing even the 21 countries, where people were arrested for what they published on more traditional platforms like blogs and news sites. "Some supposed offenses were quite petty, illustrating both the sensitivity of some regimes and the broad discretion given to police and prosecutors under applicable laws," the report says.
If only a completely invisible network existed where people were not only anonymous, but had built in protections so that government's/ISPs couldn't tell if you were connected to the network in the first place..... Oh... Wait... We've had it for a decade.
to post pictures of Trump getting slashed in the throat with a box cutter by Isis, then you deserve what you get. Artistic freedom of expression be damned when you cross that line. ICE-T still deserves jail time for his cop killer record in the 90s along with the other disgusting thugs who promote a culture of violence in our youth.
If only a completely invisible network existed where people were not only anonymous, but had built in protections so that government's/ISPs couldn't tell if you were connected to the network in the first place... Oh... Wait... We've had it for a decade.
I could see WhatsApp using this in advertisements to promote that they are so good at spreading information that repressive governments try to shut them down. They could advertise free speech. Wait, aren't they owned by Facebook? Nevermind.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
You have no idea how much we unconstitutionally spy on you.
No, it's worse than you even think you know.
Welcome to the Stasi of the 21st Century.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Facebook is a walled garden, where you get all the freedom you pay for.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sites require FB?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Look at Facebook's deplorable treatment of Trump supporters. Go Donald!
I feel like in the third book when everything is going badly and hangs in the balance. We have an orange president-elect, that is hostile to net neutrality, free speech, and privacy. Both branches of congress hostile to net neutrality, free speech, and privacy. All we need now is a stiff wind to bring everything tumbling down.
I got news for you. If any information about out is on the internet no warrant is necessary. I saw an application that gleans information about an individual from posts on Social Media. I don't want ex girlfriends to find me.. I've been married for a while. I don't want drama so I don't have a Facebook or MySpace account.
It's bad enough I have LinkedIn. I wish I didn't but I was told it's good to have for employment networking.
There is a backdoor in Facebook for Law Enforcement. Basically an account that bypasses all security settings.
If you don't like it.. delete all your Facebook friends, posts, photos, and change your name to something random... then deactivate your account.
Now that dissent is patriotic, once again (instead of being racist and sexist), efforts to criminalize "hate speech" and the like should stop for a while. Internet freedom — at least, in the US — should be Ok for at least one generation.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
In order to achieve some level of real freedom online we need steganography and decentralized distributed anonymous systems. Even among countries / regions / areas which we seem to have more freedom it's not nearly adequate nor does it exist across the board for everyone.
Particularly in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, and similar certain groups are excluded, marginalized, and imprisoned who are a threat to no one. Those who've used or sold drugs are an excellent no-longer-as-stigmatized example of this. Communists are another great historic example of this.
There is one or more segments of society which today I can see are prevented from speaking and communicating online or off and nobody dares to attack the censorship of these groups for fear of the reproductions of doing so. Both legal and socially. One person whose expressed views on the radio that didn't even lend themselves to attack without severe twisting of the facts has faced severe levels of harassment from bigots and religious nut jobs. Going so far as to libel and slander them anonymously. The social repercussions are terrible and the case even escalated to the level of an FBI raid of the person expressing these liberty-leaning views. Expressing your belief that drug dealers are not the enemy should never be a crime. Expressing your belief that the FBI is the enemy should not be a crime and should not lead to a raid. Yet- these sorts of expressions are attacked. The police maintain lists of people via license plates they don't like and routinely go after them. It's quite harassing and unethical. I know quite a few activists on such lists who get routinely targeted for it in the United States.
Both politicians and the media exploit societal views of certain minority groups to gain attention and votes.
It's (not very) ironic that this article appears directly before the online cyberbullying article.
Even ignoring places like China which heavily censure what people can do online, it's becoming more clear by the day that giving people the freedom to say whatever they want online without accountability is a bloody nightmare.
Cyberbullying has become prolific. Twitter might as well be bought out by 4chan. One news outlet after another is shuttering their comments section because the discussions are basically guaranteed to turn into flamewars or worse. People don't *deserve* to have freedom they have right now. Freedom requires personal responsibility, and the average person is clearly unable to handle that.
Tightening things down is inevitable, cause we can't have nice things.
steganography and decentralized distributed anonymous systems
I agree, but do not be too quick to trust steganography.. There has been lots of research going into figuring out how to determine if any given imagine contains steganographically encoded data.
Sorry, I meant to add a hyperlink to an example of such research but mangled the HTML.
Soon to be joined by the population of the US - some time after 20JAN17.
1) free and open internet
2) government mandated web site fact checking
Did anybody get arrested for posting on Slashdot?