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Venezuela's Government Blocks Access To Wikipedia (haaretz.com)
Haaretz (with contributions from Reuters and the Associated Press) reports:
According to NetBlocks, a digital rights group that tracks restrictions to the internet, as of 12 January, Venezuela largest telecommunications provider CANTV has prevented access to Wikipedia in all languages. The internet observatory told Haaretz the ban was discovered by attempting "to access Wikipedia and other services 60,000 times from 150 different points in the country using multiple providers."
Roughly 16 million people have access to the internet in the South American country ravaged by poverty and now facing a political crisis as leader Nicolas Maduro attempts to cling to power following a highly contested re-election last year. Wikipedia receives on average 60 million views from the country every month.
According to NetBlocks, the ban was likely imposed after a Wikipedia article listed newly-appointed National Assembly president Juan Guaidà as âoepresident number 51 of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,â ousting Maduro from his presidential status on Wikipedia... Alp Toker, the head of NetBlocks, explained to Haaretz that the block followed a string of controversial edits on the Spanish-language article for Guaido as well as other related articles.
Long-time Slashdot reader williamyf identifies himself as "a Venezuelan in Venezuela." He reports that "The method used seems to be to intercept the SSL handshake and not a simple DNS block," adding "the situation is developing."
In May of last year the government declared a "state of emergency" that authorized the government to police the internet and filter content, rights activists reported Monday. They added that now Venezuela's new leaders plan to introduce legislation requiring messaging service providers to censor content, and implementing other so-called "content security" measures.
Roughly 16 million people have access to the internet in the South American country ravaged by poverty and now facing a political crisis as leader Nicolas Maduro attempts to cling to power following a highly contested re-election last year. Wikipedia receives on average 60 million views from the country every month.
According to NetBlocks, the ban was likely imposed after a Wikipedia article listed newly-appointed National Assembly president Juan Guaidà as âoepresident number 51 of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,â ousting Maduro from his presidential status on Wikipedia... Alp Toker, the head of NetBlocks, explained to Haaretz that the block followed a string of controversial edits on the Spanish-language article for Guaido as well as other related articles.
Long-time Slashdot reader williamyf identifies himself as "a Venezuelan in Venezuela." He reports that "The method used seems to be to intercept the SSL handshake and not a simple DNS block," adding "the situation is developing."
In May of last year the government declared a "state of emergency" that authorized the government to police the internet and filter content, rights activists reported Monday. They added that now Venezuela's new leaders plan to introduce legislation requiring messaging service providers to censor content, and implementing other so-called "content security" measures.
always goes full censorship.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
That everyone who shouts "Socialism is a great idea", has to ignore.
We are at a point where there is simply no excuse to be a Socialist.
At this point there's no excuse to NOT be a socialist. Just look at what happened in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
Not really, because it is possible to count the places its working too. You can be socialist and fiscally responsible, or socialist and fiscally irresponsible (Venezuela). Look at somewhere like Norway, a social democracy with very high levels of social welfare spending etc, driven by natural resources. They have saved the money and not just spent it all as soon as possible. Obviously Norway had a different starting point, but look at Bolivia too, right next to Venezuela, also has natural resources, also a socialist democracy, but has been more fiscailly conservative and used money to diversify and invest in the economy rather than just using it for social welfare spending.
You can understand why a poor country's people see all this oil money and demand it gets spent on the people now. A clever government would spend it on the people later.
When socialism works the capitalist side of the economy is also healthy, so we seem to forget that there is a socialist underpinning that enables that.
Those countries aren't socialist though. If you don't believe me, take it from the mouth of their Prime Minister. Up until Trump's tax cuts, they also all had lower corporate tax rates than the United States. Sweden has loads of charter schools, which are obviously a well known feature of socialism.
Those countries aren't socialist though
Venezuella is also not socialist. They don't have a centralized planned economy. They instead have a capitalist system with a weak central government that uses income from export to maintain handouts.
Sorry, but you don't seem to know what you're talking about. The government took over the economy and the current result is not only predicable, it was predicted by those opposed to socialism, i.e. "For more than a decade people opposed to the government of Venezuela have argued that its economy would implode." was written in 2013.
Those in favor of socialism went on and on about how wonderful Venezuelan socialism was for people.
A "weak central government" doesn't nationalize huge parts of the economy, including all the most essential industries, like Venezuela had. That's (coincidentally, I'm sure...) when those industries then fell apart and stopped being able to produce nearly as much. A "weak central government" doesn't set wage and price controls with rationing and trying to make the government the sole provider for food.
All the attempts at having the government run the economy have ended the same way. It's not something which is even controversial among economists anymore. It's been proven by repeated experiment.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
They instead have a capitalist system
I suppose it's all privately owned right up until the government decides to nationalize it.
No we don't.
Wikipedia isn't "the media". And we haven't banned it here.
We haven't banned "the media" either, nor have we banned Twitter.
Over the last hundred-or-so years, almost all federal; state; and local laws banning speech have been knocked down or weakened. We've wiped out laws against pornography, we've made it easy to attack establishment religion (especially Christianity), and we've made it easy to support anti-establishment political movements of all kinds. House Unamerican Activities Committee? Gone. Senator McCarthy? Ridiculed, and gone. It's even possible to produce art calling for the murder of political leaders, police, and other public servants. People might not like you for doing so; regardless, there remains the option.
The United States is experiencing perhaps the greatest freedom of expression ever in the history of civilized humanity. We shall see if we use that freedom wisely.
There's no way that President Trump's blathering about the media is equal to Maduro's attempt to block Wikipedia in Venezuela.