[spam][crazy] Eventually Changing Censorship
Censorship is really blatant in my life, and very hard for me to grapple with due to my amnesia. When I'm aware of it, it's not clear where it comes from. It looks a little like it's some combination of human behavior, system compromise, government activity, criminal activity, error, funded political influence, ISP filtering, etc etc. I can't tell. It looks like some of it is clearly illegal. It looks like some of it is clearly unwanted by people who would have authority around it. One of my tentative fears is that if it were pressured a lot it could "go back into hiding" and assert strong harmful powers invisibly. It would seem good to address it in a way that prevents this. Today, I got a "meetup" notice for a cool event, and visited the description. I went to search for similar events and none came up. Not even that one! I don't see any way to find it again, now that the notice has gone away. This seems to be censorship of my search results. It would be quite reasonable to prove that, but _why_ is it happening? How do we protect people from things like this happening in harmful ways? Part of me considers such protection would relate to where-ever it comes from and how and why it happens.
Here's another example: Recently my wifi antenna broke on my phone, and I used cellular internet more frequently. I found that on my cellular internet, I was getting a fake google.com page. Very similar to the real thing, subtly different. When I traveled near wifi, my wifi delivered a more accurate google.com page. I could switch between network interfaces and see the difference. In this instance, one would assume the change is happening among the cellular networks. It could theoretically be possible to collect logs of a lot of these events, over time. I suspect many have already done this. It would also be possible to contact relevant network operators and work with them. It could also be possible to capture compromises and analyse them. I suspect many have already done that, too. Once you have a real compromise you can look at, you may have a tiny bit of information on where the issue stems from. Just a tiny bit. It may also be possible to communicate with the issue in some way. But it may be disinterested in revealing who or what it is, possibly depending on its trust for you.
For a few decades the touted solution to mysteries like these was decentralised and cryptographic peer-to-peer alternatives. This is still a very valuable solution, but it does hold a big problem: the efforts are persistently disrupted, such that development and usership stagnates. One imagineable interim alternative might be working directly with human service providers. If I were personal friends with meetup.com workers associated with delivery of my search results, they would be happy to help me ensure the results match the planned events. Similarly, if I were personal friends with google.com's network admins, they would be happy to ensure that I got the real front page. Overall, this is a situation that has been developing for many years now.
Thinking on this, I'm realising that blockchains are likely the recent solution. Not because their code yet solves the problem: but rather because they make an economic incentive for far, far more people to continue doing so.
What people seem to be doing more and more is working within various purported confines of the systems to fight them and call them out. For example, I was in an AI chat at one point, and a guy wanted his friend to join who worked in an AI company. He didn't know how to get them to join, but we had been developing something similar to the company's work in one of the channels. What he did was message prominently about nonexistent legal filings, patent, copyright complaints between the two works. His friend suddenly joined the chat. I presume because some surveillance or censorship system influenced things. Appelbaum published a thesis depicting massive communication invasions in detail, and Zeynep keeps sharing huge data leaks here. I've found various failures and successes around hijinx that can produce action in my life that can be otherwise different, such as spamlogs to do things I have learned to find very hard. The various mysterious influences seem usually to conflict with each other, so some kind of strong change by those involved seems eventually inevitable.
The various mysterious influences seem usually to conflict with each other, so some kind of strong change by those involved seems eventually inevitable.
And of course we are the people involved. One could take these ideas back to the concepts of decentralized networks, social connection, or other things. What happens if one makes a p2p network focused on taking down blockchains? But more commonly we have the opposite: governments and corrupt organisations using blockchain networks that can then be used to take them down.
When considering how to handle gross censorship that looks like it is practically asking to be called out, it could be good to first develop some idea of what kinds and tools of censorship are out there.
Appelbaum's paper has some links around this, I believe. So maybe comprehending that some could be a good challenge for me, around the topic. Meanwhile, I have an open ticket with Amazon around their misbehaving search results. Contrary to what they said, I did not get an email back regarding it. It could make sense to focus on that for small things.
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