Posted by intunderflow 10/25/2024
Since then, we've seen a slow and steady march in the direction we all dreaded. Country after country has decided that they have the right to block content on the "free and open Internet", and business after business (even those who joined the SOPA protests) has complied. Someone looking ahead from 2012 would barely recognize the internet today as being the same thing, the way we just roll over to the threats that used to cause global outrage and defiance.
Were we naive even at the time? Have governments become more authoritarian? Or has our energy for resistance just been slowly whittled away?
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PI...
In the early days there was less gain from authoritarian actions, because you are more likely to be resisted by the users of any service.
The current users don't know how to bypass restrictions, and are generally more numerous. Making authoritarian actions more valuable.
Unfortunately this leads to previously useful sites declining.
Related, the same goes for TV, where I don’t try to avoid them by purchasing an even more exclusive access to TV content (such as streaming), I just choose not to watch it because mainstream TV has become infested by ads. So the idea is not to play the game, just to ignore it.
Nothing about an ad blocker stops you from limiting your exposure to ad-supported media but it makes it more bearable in the cases where avoiding it would be even worse.
>To be fair, Windows has an inordinate amount of access. We all trust Microsoft developers but I’ve never met them. So it’s a realistic risk but we (hope) not a threat.
I can keep going to point out how flawed this line of reasoning is, especially the second one with forced push for Recall.
Moreover, small projects can be purchased more easily. See PIA. Users need to stay updated about ownership changes. It might be viable for us, but not for everyone.
They're not as powerful as the ones that are able to inject content into visited pages or programmatically inspect and block/alter HTTP requests, but personally I think it's a reasonable tradeoff for the reasons you mentioned.
Chrome/Google got a very bad rep for pushing this change, and I don't want to speculate about their actual motivations, but the security aspect of it seems sound to me.
With uBlock Lite (which uses MV3), it's also possible to additionally grant "full site access" on a site by site base in case the rules-based blocking alone isn't enough; that seems ideal to me.
There's basically two ways to have safe web extensions: Carefully control their entire supply chain (which could easily cause big antitrust problems for Google as the vendor of the most popular browser), or minimize the things they have access to.
I'm sure it's happened, but I haven't heard of an extension suffering from a significant "unpatched vulnerability" and being exploited in the wild -- I have heard of things like this click-jacking issue in Privacy Badger: https://blog.lizzie.io/clickjacking-privacy-badger.html No wild exploits afaik, just the PoC, and the ultimate worst-case impact was just (reversibly) disabling the extension for the page or a site, which isn't very severe. Perhaps a more advanced extension like Ruffle that uses Rust and WASM has a more severe attack surface than the majority of extensions written in JavaScript, but even if it does, it must be exploited by a malicious page targeting it, vs. the alternative of auto-updating to a malicious version and doing whatever it can get away with immediately.
Extensions getting taken over or just transferred to new owners and updating to do something new and malicious is quite routine and multiple examples come readily to my mind. The first to come to mind is Stylish, several years ago: https://robertheaton.com/2018/07/02/stylish-browser-extensio... (I was not impacted because I didn't update the extension during its vulnerable window, which was months, and apparently over a year for Chrome.)
The safe way to handle these issues is to let users turn off auto-updating, and to have actual policies to mitigate the damages from malicious extensions. Firefox itself will disable extensions that become known to be defective in someway, this can be independent of whether the issue is an unpatched vulnerability, whether there's a patch/update to address it, whether the extension isn't just bugged but doing something malicious, whether it always was malicious from first install or just suddenly became malicious... See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-cause-issues-ar...
uBlock Origin is open source.
I'm not saying ad blockers are bad, but it's not like we didn't have extensions being subverted in the past.
I'll take the potential bogeyman over the real one, thanks.
Your observance of it is open source in the case of ublock. The list should still be scrutinized, it’s a local system with an unverified source. That’s all.
- Richard M. Stallman, 2011, writing in Der Spiegel
He was right. He was always right. About all of it. People didn't listen, or perhaps were never introduced to his ideas. Software grew faster than the idea of free software (on some level this was inevitable, since the latter is by definition a subset of the former).
And so, the noose tightened a little more every year.
The remedy has never changed: you must explain to people why freedom is important, and what the terrible consequences are of non-freedom. Refer them to the free software ecosystem, Linux and the FSF. Many will not listen. But whether they listen is to some extent irrelevant. Life is more fulfilling when it is lived ethically. By doing your part to advocate for freedom and against its enemies, you are at least making your own welfare better, and hopefully someone else's too.
"Linux" is not banning anybody. They must comply with the sanctions against Putin regime that many governments in the world raised, in response to insane Putin's behavior.
Linux is not banning people based on nationality, is banning people based on their employers that is a different question. Linux has every right to ban somebody that would be working for a cartel, for example. This is a win-win for the people banned also, because protects them to be targeted and forced by the Russian regime to participate on war crimes.
Calling about "mafreedom!" and "your lack of ethics" just looks deranged and out of the reality. "mafreedom to kill you (and you must help me to build the bombs or are a very bad guy)" is preschool level material. Not even funny as a joke. They really think that we are so stupid?
> Linux lacks ethics
Since 2022 the Russian president is sending 1000 Russians a day to a sure death, could stop the carnage at any time, and couldn't care less about it. Most Russians support him and don't care also. I will not accept any lesson on ethics.
Could you spell out the exact relevant conditions that you believe disqualify someone from delivering a "lesson on ethics"? It seems a priori unlikely that you could find criteria that are not obviously tortured and self-serving while also granting this qualification to a typical US citizen, especially one who has worked for any major tech company (as is the case for many posters here).
Nonsense.
If your concern is that a maintainer might be strongarmed into getting surreptitious changes in the linux kernel, that's a misplaced concern because:
1- the maintainer in question didn't have access to approve changes across the whole linux kernel, but only on the drivers that they were maintaining (mainly Baikal electronics hardware, I assume. I.e. the Russian government could sabotage the drivers for hardware developed inside Russia itself, not exactly something that we'd truly have to worry about)
2- just because an individual, working in the open and with a clear/known identity (and association with a bankrupt Russian hardware design firm) has been excluded, it doesn't mean that a government might give up trying to sneak in changes. They can just create new personas (just like with "Jia Tan" of xz fame)
I understand that the Linux kernel got their hand forced, but this is just stopping a volunteer from contributing (and feeling welcome), in an open source project in which they had been involved for several years. It's a win for the Linux kernel (because they are not going to get a slap on their wrists), but it's not a win for the affected individuals
1- the affected maintainer has any concern of potentially being strongarmed
2- the affected maintainer appreciates being excluded from a project in which they worked on for several years
Just read their goodbye message in lkml:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/2m53bmuzemamzc4jzk2bj7tli22ruaa...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikal_CPU#Bankruptcy
I'm not arguing for/against the exclusions due to sanctions. I think the benefit of banning people who used to work for a banned entity is minimal, but after all, if they are still using an email address provided by that sanctioned entity (alumni access?) of course they haven't disentangled themselves fully from that entity
The civil liberties you take for granted, in a major war, they will be gone. They will die in one day and it will take decades to get them back if ever. Remember that in WW2 America was throwing Japanese citizens into internment camps and the other side was doing far worse. Things that are unfathomable today but in a war with sufficiently high stakes they will happen again and more.
The Japanese descendants/citizens living in the USA were treated different because of racism. You can argue that having a racist government isn't compatible with being "liberal", but it's a matter of degree. Having a democracy that doesn't allow non whites to vote is still more "liberal" than having a monarchy / dictatorship
False: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_America...
If you mean "a place where many of a certain category of people are held", then yes, we did. If you mean "place where many of a certain category of people are held and killed", then no, we didn't.
Technically, the first definition is at least as correct as the second one. But colloquially, the second one is what many people understand.
You cannot compare the camps that German citizens were held in by the US to Dachau.
And in any case, the leader of an open project should do everything to keep the project open, including defying an immoral and unjust law, or at the very least doing bare minimum compliance. They certainly shouldn't happily jump on the bandwagon.
change began with smartphone release and accelerated.
the old internet with only the top half of the iq chart participating was better.
You can make playlists in it and track your history (locally), so I don't think it's inferior to the official app. On the contrary.
Also, these new Android phones have the option to modify which app opens youtube links by default, so it's easy to just list Newpipe instead of the official app.
The only downside are downtimes a few times per year when YT changes something and Newpipe devs are making a fix, which never took more than a few days.
I've been permanently banned from Reddit for really dumb reasons more times than I can count. The first time, I was sad. Now, I know it's a war between users and admins, and an individual account isn't worth very much.
Yes, there are some extra steps involved in loading unsigned programs, and the process is designed to make it sound a bit scary. I think that's the right tradeoff, reasonable people may differ.
But we're talking about the App Store vs. not-the-App-Store, and again, there is nothing which could reasonably be described as a restriction involved in installing the same binary from either of those sources. The only difference is the details of where it comes from and how to install it, and clicking on a dmg or pkg is still a fully-supported workflow with no warnings or other interference.
And that people actually have less control over their actions than anyone is willing to acknowledge or believe.
The trolling and brigading is alive and well there.
Thats the reason i stopped contributing.
As my name would suggest, I live in a hotly contested part of the world and I have hundreds of pages in my watchlist.
The amount of "bjp it cell" work they put in to portray their world view on Wikipedia is astounding.
Ithought naively for a few years I could fight them but I simply couldnt.
They just March across pages, make edits with their clear intentions and make you the enemy.
I remember a time when I had a particular "pronoun" ish word on certain pages and that was swiftly being edited out as soon as I changed it.
It became hopeless.
Besides, they just go "Well since this is "Indian" page, we are responsible to maintaing it in our image".
I dont really use Wikipedia these days because of their hate.
I'm not Indian, I have no specific interest, I'm reading to pick up PoVs outside my own:
BJP IT Cell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BJP_IT_Cell
a department of the Indian political party BJP that manages social media campaigns for the party and its members.
According to Washington Post, 150,000 social media workers spread posts aimed at exploiting the fears of India’s Hindu majority across a vast network of WhatsApp groups.
BJP orchestrates online campaigns through its social media cell to intimidate perceived government critics. Sadhavi Khosla, a BJP cyber-volunteer in the BJP IT Cell said that the organisation disseminated misogyny, Islamophobia and hatred.
edit: i had a relative who was borrowing a photographer friends camera and taking those news worthy shots for lulz and out of sheer boredom. next thing we know, he is on twitter doing some discussion and the was doxed, threatened with calling the cops and his past dug up just because he used a handle that had links to his afk name. it was terrible for him. and i would say it was all state sponsored.
he had to nuke a lot of his online presence and this was around 4years ago when he was around 20. you can imagine.
this was all thanks to that BJP it cell. these minions even say as much because they literally are the law. Paid for by the state so they do represent the power of the state in covering their asses and decimating their virtual opponents.
as i said, its hopeless
Reddit also has similar turfing efforts for Sino related news and content.
The only time this ever gets over turned, is when some news article gets traction during EU/US consumption hours, and gains its own following.
200 people of that minority were killed.
I do not deny there was a mass exodus but to say a minority was ethnic cleansing is disengenous.
Again, my comment was not about the exodus but regarding the politics regarding the last 500 years and more specifically the last 70-90 odd years of history. That has nothing minority-majority issue you are claiming it out to be.
On the topic of exodus, you know it was the governor who ordered that the minority to be removed from their homes ? I know because I was there. You might not.
Regarding the edits, I wont attempt to assume that the other side are right. But there is a sensitivity around the politics and history there, with the backdrop of the secessionist movement and the genocide/ethnic cleansing. So can see possibility of differing views there, with conflicting narratives being pushed.
> On the topic of exodus, you know it was the governor who ordered that the minority to be removed from their homes ? I know because I was there. You might not.
Really! A whole population just packed their bags and left their livelihoods, homes and properties to go and live in refugee camps, just because a governor asked them to. And not because gun toting terrorists supported by the local population where roaming around targeting them for rape and murder ? I will take the words of the people who had to flee, rather than those who were complicit in the genocide/ethnic cleansing.
You take the struggle of a region and turn it into a religious struggle (The indigenous movement in the 90's was your username.substring(2) movement), smartly the "majority" there drives out the "minority" and enjoys capture of their properties (oh just a few hundred people who moved out you know, they will not return.). Sadly, you also have the audacity to say only 200 of that minority
Blame it on the Governor (look ma..., a central government appointee did it, was not us). Super convenient. We were just informing peace loving friends from across the border where our neighbours lived. I was there and so I know
As Mahatma Gandhi said, the progress of a state is how it treats its minorities. Guess you made good "progress" treating them "....well...."
There are as many usefully curated sites, as sites where state actors curate content to hide the reptile led barcode truth from the normies.
The part that I miss is we had things in public, collaborations between everyone who was interested in spending the time to access the space. This barrier was enough to keep things feeling like a community, with most of the things like this that came up being able to be addressed by internal arguments.
Now everything has to be robust to the idea that you will have neckbeards and normies interacting, and that curation is required. You have passive users, who's eyes are valuable... contributors, with divergent motivation, some pure for the joy of the project, some who want to put their agenda in front of the first group... And even external state actors pushing things at a scale that's hard to understand.
Isn't "normie" a pejorative word (genuine question)?
It does have a negative connotation for that group in some contexts, but the usage is pretty common and softened now.
It depends on the context. It can be a synonym for "average" (mostly neutral) or "mediocre" (pejorative).
The posison slug strategy.
Nah, this stuff has been going on forever. See the death of Socrates for example for 'corrupting the youth of Athens' by his speech. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Socrates)
Or more recent and a very good movie (imdb all time #61) is Lives of Others about trying to smuggle some info out of East Germany. And a million other examples.
The internet has made things much easier as the tech is hard to censor.
Judging by the various misinformation legislation they're rushing to adopt, yes. The free internet said too many things that powerful people didn't like.
An Australian example: https://x.com/SenatorRennick/status/1834455727764869593#m
Australia has to be the least free country in the anglosphere.
The US only has privacy rights for Americans. As a non-citizen traveler, they routinely belittle, humiliate, and violate such privacy, demanding access to people's phones at risk of detention (or at best being sent back home) being exactly one of the things they do. Ask almost any Canadian what they think about the border in the last 20 years.
I've also had them mock and belittle me for no reason ("what event are you going to?" "that sounds stupid."), just petty stuff.
I wipe my personal data when traveling to the US, which I pretty much only do for work. (And likely won't even do that anymore if Nov 5 goes to Trump)
Australia is worse than the US for this, and worse than any other anglo country.
> The US only has privacy rights for Americans.
Yes, and Australia doesn't even have privacy rights for Australians. Hence worse.
> As a non-citizen traveler, they routinely belittle, humiliate, and violate such privacy, demanding access to people's phones at risk of detention (or at best being sent back home) being exactly one of the things they do. Ask almost any Canadian what they think about the border in the last 20 years.
The Australian border force isn't any better for this, you just don't see it because I presume you're an Australian citizen. The UK and Canada can be pretty bad as well. Shitty border personal are not unique to the US.
> I wipe my personal data when traveling to the US, which I pretty much only do for work.
The difference in the US is if you are a citizen or green card holder you can tell them to go suck eggs, and the worst they can do is confiscate your device.
In Australia, even if you're a citizen, you face IIRC a $5000 fine and possibly some jail time. So that's much worse.
https://galballyparker.com.au/can-australian-border-force-se...
In my experience and by my reading of performance stats US Border force are far more intrusive and over bearing than Australian Border forces.
What is the bar for a legal basis? In practice it seems equivalent to the way cops claim to smell weed as grounds for a search.
> In my experience and by my reading of performance stats US Border force are far more intrusive and over bearing than Australian Border forces.
Anecdotes will be anecdotes, but I flew in and out of the US for years before becoming a citizen and never had issues. Honestly I found UK immigration to be the rudest and most intrusive but that was just my experience.
Also stats don't mean much since IIRC Australia stopped recording or at least making public the number of devices they search.
See link.
> In practice it seems equivalent to the way cops claim ...
How many times have you been asked to hand your phone over exactly? In any case, you're free to challenge, etc. See link.
> Anecdotes will be anecdotes, but I flew in and out of the US for years before becoming a citizen and never had issues.
Like most people then. Whether crossing US or Australian borders.
> I found UK immigration to be
So Australia's not the worst "anglo country" then?
> since IIRC Australia stopped recording or at least making public
Do you recall correctly? Did Australia stop? Are there Australians that have access to raw stats on health, border incidents, etc?
A blog article from a law firm isn't a great source here, especially when contrasted with the numerous accounts of people that have been forced to unlock their devices without legal basis.
> In any case, you're free to challenge, etc. See link.
Not if a 'legal basis' is claimed.
> Like most people then. Whether crossing US or Australian borders.
Yup.
> So Australia's not the worst "anglo country" then?
Is the term anglosphere such an unfamiliar term you had to put anglo country in quotes?
Australia is the worst country when it comes to searching devices without justification, objectively going by laws and user experiences.
The UK is the worst country for being treated with a lack of respect and being asked intrusive questions in my experience.
> Do you recall correctly? Did Australia stop?
You're being overly defensive, lad.
Maybe put your patriotism/tribalism aside while having this discussion?
I read a few articles recently that said Australia had stopped recorded, so yes, fairly certain I am recalling correctly but not about to go and look it up either.
Lol you post was quite reasonable until that reveal.
Actually, I guess if you don’t want them to know you won’t tell me now either xD
I don’t like the idea of handing out my password any more, but wiping my PC is too much effort.
You get that's not the point, right?
Sure, it’s retarded in general, but that was not what I was talking/asking about.
They apparently both have a need to travel to Australia, _and_ data on their PC that requires wiping. That makes me curious what kind of data that could be.
All data requires wiping because no government has a right to it without a warrant or as part of an investigation, no matter what the data is.
It's all good until the leopards start eating their face, then suddenly they understand the problem.
> CCDH also held meetings with federal legislators while pushing for “change in USA” toward a censorious proposal it calls the “STAR framework,” which would create an “independent digital regulator” that could “impose consequences for harmful content.” STAR’s core concepts are similar to Europe’s just-instituted Digital Services Act and Britain’s even more stringent Online Safety Act, which puts the national media regulator Ofcom in charge of determining fines for uncooperative platforms.
The whole article is worth a read, where many people were targeted for innocuous stuff or in at least one case, for reporting on an article in JAMA:
https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/election-excl...
Apologies for the Substack link, but it covers (and cites) material you otherwise need a dozen links to discover.
Nothing at all? We saw how that idea worked out in the USA.
There’s an image around the internet of a dog in a burning house saying ‘this is fine’. That’s the kind of fine I have in mind when I hear that.
Beyond that, no, "misinformation" is only a problem for those who want to control others.
It's not just governments. It's people that support grandiose efforts against "misinformation", "disinformation" and "malinformation".
> Or has our energy for resistance just been slowly whittled away?
People don't have energy to hear wrong and dangerous opinions anymore. Everything dangerous to the current order should be banned, otherwise fascism is inevitable.
Have we? I can only think of wartime censorship (which, even if it was sold for protection from enemy propaganda, was always about morale, so doesn't apply here), and authoritarian regimes, which also don't apply here.
Again, when? Concrete examples if there are so many!
> if you think the public is not smart enough to be trusted with figuring what is true and what is false by themselve
I mean, whatever one thinks of censorship this is objectively true. We have flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, people who drank bleach against Covid, people who believe Ukraine started the war against Russia, the pizzagate nonsense, people who believe in the magical powers of rhino horns and shark fin soups and on and on and on. There are, objectively, a lot of very stupid and/or impressionable people out there in the world.
We were told mass surveillance against US citizens doesn't happen. It did and still is. We were told healthcare reform will not force people to change their insurance coverage and healthcare providers. It turned out to be "a lie of the year". We were told US law enforcement supplying guns to drug cartels is crazy talk. It was true. We were told FBI, CIA and DOJ heads would never lie to the Congress. They did, and suffered no consequences. We were told the inflation is a temporary phenomenon that is going to go away very quickly, and is insignificant. It never did, and was very significant. We were told the hypothesis of COVID originating from Wuhan lab leaks is insane fantasy which no scientists have ever believed and it has no evidence at all behind it. It turned out to be not so. We were told migration restrictions as a way to reduce the impact of the pandemic is a racist bigotry. Then in a short time it became a mandatory policy. We were told masks are useless and nobody but medical workers should use them. Then there were mandated for everyone. We were told COVID is nothing to worry about and is less dangerous than the flu. Then 2020-21 happened. We were told lockdowns are vital and even sole person daring to go to an empty beach should be arrested because it is necessary to prevent millions of deaths. Then the same people endorsed mass protests where thousands of people gathered together. We were told 2020 protests were "mostly peaceful". They were anything but. We were told we need just a two week lockdown to flatten the curve. It turned to be many months. We were told closing the schools is absolutely necessary or our kids will die. It turned out not to be so. We were told COVID vaccines prevent the spread of the virus. They did not. We were told Hunter laptop is a Russian disinformation operation. It wasn't. We were told rumors of US government working with social media companies to censor dissenting opinions are total lies. Until the documents confirmed that's exactly what happened. We were told rumors of Joe Biden being unfit to rule are absolutely false and he's never going to be replaced as a candidate. He was.
These are just some random examples, only from recent years, I could have many more, especially if I dug deeper into the modern history. The press and the government are lying to us constantly, incessantly, brazenly. And the only way we even know they do and can challenge them on it is because they don't yet have the total control over the information. And that's why they want it.
> There are, objectively, a lot of very stupid and/or impressionable people out there in the world.
There are. But that doesn't mean some self-appointed guys that get paid for bloviating in public are now some magic geniuses that have the right to tell us all how it really is. They do not possess any such capacity and they are just as fallible as the rest of us. Except that they have been already caught, many times, lying to us.
Media has always been salacious nonsense — at least, judging from the 1880s English newspapers I’ve read as part of a research writing class: they’re full of complete lies about Jack the Ripper, for instance.
Most of the discussion from government is using that perennial fact to justify suppressing true information — eg, suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story or people’s personal experiences with the COVID vaccine. Even though that collapsed both trust in media and trust in medical institutions.
> Starting in 2021, news outlets began to authenticate some of the contents of the laptop. In 2021, Politico verified two key emails used in the Post's initial reporting by cross-referencing emails with other datasets and contacting their recipients. CBS News published a forensic analysis which examined a "clean" copy of the data obtained directly from Mac Isaac. It concluded that the "clean" data, including over 120,000 emails, originated with Hunter Biden and had not been altered
His mom really influenced his behavior, so it has to be a conspiracy: William J. Murray III is an American Baptist minister, and social conservative lobbyist. Murray serves as the chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition, a non-profit organization in Washington, D.C. that lobbies Congress on issues related to aiding Christians in Islamic and Communist countries.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/business/media/hunter-bid...
Excerpt:
> The laptop and some of its contents played a visible role in federal prosecutors’ case against the president’s son, who was charged with lying on a firearm application in 2018 by not disclosing his drug use. A prosecutor briefly held up the laptop before the jury in Delaware, and an F.B.I. agent later testified that messages and photos on it and in personal data that Mr. Biden had saved in cloud computing servers had made his drug use clear.
Don’t rule out a lame duck pardon, either. Both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton pardoned their ne’er-do-well relatives, and it’s very common for Presidents to issue pardons during their final days in office.
Biden was asked if he would pardon his son, and he said no. But this is entirely beside the point, because Trump would pardon his son without a second thought and Trump supporters wouldn't blink.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-tells-muir-wouldnt-par... https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/06/politics/biden-will-not-p... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c133mdjkl7go
This is the classic far-right nonsense of the enemy is both super weak and to be crushed, and super dangerous and powerful.
The mistake is to analyze this kind of discourse from a position of looking for justice or other classical liberal concepts. Authoritarian right or left start from an entirely different positioning, similar to that of a schoolyard bully: if you cry injustice, you're already weak. Winning is most important above all, not being right. And if the winner is doing something "wrong", then what is wrong is redefined.
Epstein is evil because he was weak and got caught, so his accusers&victims are right... but if allegations are made against Trump for the same things, those making the allegations are liars, because Trump is strong. There's literally no way to make an accusation against him without being, yourself, cast as a villain.
Even Christianity itself is redefined, its core moral precepts rewritten from "turn the other cheek" and "blessed are the meek", to prosperity gospel and "God's favoured nation"
And it's a simple consequence of scaling that the more massively you scale a communication system like the internet the more pathways there are for person A to harm person B.
So naturally there end up being more cases evaluating harm that involve the internet. Some of those cases will involve ordinary judicial things like injunctions.
And all of that is true regardless of whether you believe any one particular injunction is justified or unjustified. It's just a matter of what happens at scale.
You can, of course, try to give up the notion that liberty ends when you start causing harm, and many people have gone down that path. But for those of us who are still in the liberty camp, these questions are difficult and involve weighing a number of concerns and claims. And anyone who thinks they have easy answers is probably just deeply confused or high on rhetoric.
Feelings are the reason people get up to live in the morning.
I get why we used to make that statement. In a way it’s about rationality mattering, and how feelings being hurt are different from actual hurt.
In the context of this conversation, I’ll argue its an un-pragmatic dismissal of a pertinent fact.
I’ll make this argument: “At the scales we are talking, and across the breath of human cultures, feelings end up mattering.”
Your "fact" is merely a matter of opinion.
Obviously we shouldn't start riots, but if you make hate speech, there may be consequences accordingly.
Freedom of speech absolutely does mean not being prosecuted for your speech.
Paraphrased, the law does not concern itself with trifles. Mean words causing hurt feelings qualify. I acknowledge that it can be a very big deal for the person on the receiving end: it's the sort of thing we should (and do) socially discourage, or moderate (or not) at the platform level.
But no, I don't think it rises to the level of harm, in that there should be no remedy under law, criminal nor tortuous.
then imagine living with free speech vs with no free speech. One is clearly better.
combining the two ideas, there is always going to be a gray zone in the middle. It is not obvious at all that where you want to draw the line is optimal.
Anyway, I'll believe that "progressives" actually care about how others feel when they start treating those not on board with their ideology with anything other than scorn or schadenfreude.
And this is of course not what anyone is talking about, thanks for the useless strawman. It's stuff like football players being told to die, compared to monkeys, and mannequins with their names being hanged from bridges (Vinicius Jr) only because their skin colour is black. Or monkey chants and bananas being thrown at them.
And no, celebrities getting unwanted attention is not a harm or even an issue that anyone should care about. They can go wash away their tears with the stacks of cash they leech from forced public broadcast fees and other puplic funds for all I care. Or just go play for their own country.
Defamation and similar concepts are ancient. Ostracization, excommunication, etc are also harms committed primarily by using (or withholding) words that have been recognized throughout almost all of human history as ways to significantly harm someone.
So I think one would have to work pretty hard to come up with a theory where only bodily harm counts.
They were always like this. 20 years of state funded education doesn't go into depth on this topic though. 1984 is a warning about a possible future tyranny, right?
Law and Govs are not so bad that we should get rid of it. They do add value to society compared to a fully lawless anarchic community/tools/etc. There is a place where freedom does have to stop and trespassing that frontier will have consequences.
We don't need to through all our laws and Gov (especially in Western countries where really it's not so bad). But instead, we need better law, law enforcement, etc... The key part is it's up to us to fight for it.
Think it depends on how large you want your communities to be. It should be fine until some 200 people.
In the end, the real service social networks offer is moderation.
I otherwise agree that authoritarianism is on the rise, across the board.
Instead of Napster letting you download any song anyone ever bothered to digitize, we now have a dozen different music streaming services giving you access to the music from whichever publishers they managed to sign deals with and you have to pay a monthly fee and can only use a number of devices at the same time and not share with friends and family unless they also pay for the access.
Yes, of course there are good reasons for this: without paying, the artists don't get paid and that means making music becomes no more than an expensive hobby and yadda yadda but that's my point: we may have corporeal justifications for the scarcity we impose on the Internet but the scarcity exists and we deliberately created it and use the police and military to enforce it.
In my experience people are more than happy to share if left to their own devices.
Simply, put, politics is not limited to matters of finitism. And the example I gave, is a perfectly fitting example of where politics is evident.
Yes, naive to think that we could live in a world without fences. The internet makes it very cheap to tear down fences. Yet, good fences make for good neighbors. It was always naive to think that governments would let a torn-fences world, remain untouched.
No it doesn't. And neither do we need regulation for what I can say at a family gathering or on the street.
Thought policing and other neo-puritanian movements can go fuck themselves.
It's slightly different, since you don't do your banking, taxes, business, information gathering at that family gathering; nor can malicious actor effortlessly spam misinformation/scams at every family gathering/street.
Especially considering we know multiple countries have extremely active operations online trying to sway opinions their way, it's naive to compare the internet to a neutral public place.
Don't give in like that. Let those normies get hurt. It's their personal problem.
1. The Streisand effect. No-one on HN gave a monkeys about this dodgy news agency till today. Now half of us have read the archive about how they promote propaganda & fake news. Your reputation takes a hit
2. There is no absolute definition of “freedom”. Wikipedia is a fantastic resource for humanity in general and I think should be defended. But as more and more of humanity come to live more and more online, then the legal and cultural norms will shift and shuffle - courts for two hundred years have assumed they can order anyone in their jurisdiction around and often not in their jurisdiction- and that’s kind of the point of courts. So what is freedom? It’s what we the demos and the courts agree …
3. An example is in the order (I mean on the Streisand effect - when the %#}#% hell would I ever read a court order from India ?!) - it says “herein to take down/delete” - this bespeaks a failure to understand the world on the level of “who are the Beatles”. Take down - fine this is part of how we agree norms and limits of courts. Delete. Are you kidding me. Does that imply from everywhere else? Wow.
I enjoy reading Wikipedia sometimes, but it's a broken system, a lot of truths missing in it's articles because of crap editors and political propaganda. Also it's admins are toxic and abuse their little power they have over every editor there.
Try editing some articles there, and you will see the dark side of Wikipedia.
It's about as reliable it gets. It cites sources, has whole history available, has little conflicts of interest and has transparent editorial guidelines and process.
Many people are probably shocked to find views in WP that aren't aligned with what their newsmedia reports and frames.
The key point, which perfectionists miss or more likely just don't agree with, is about being less wrong. WP is time and again show to be less wrong than supposedly trusted or more formal resources.
When it started many people would look to the Encyclopedia Britannica as more reliable yet research showed that on average it contained more errors and that's with the occasional inexperienced/ rogue editor on the WP side.
EDIT: fixed my own typo! (relatable -> reliable)
It’s also worth pointing out that it could be you who has blind spots, not the contributors. And if you’re certain they are wrong you can always try to correct them, or create a competing topic?
> Wikipedia is often wrong once you stray from mainstream topics.
So it’s a good source for topics with the largest audience. That alone shows how beneficial it can be. At the very least, it’s a good starting point for further research.
I’ve tried that before, and it’s often not worth the time. The lord of the article is often an expert Wikipedia Editor and rules lawyer with endless time to argue and revert even when they have no expert or even basic knowledge about the subject.
I would argue the opposite, since consensus from reputable sources is not the same as consensus of the general public, and unless it's a subject of study in multiple fields, the consensus in their field is their area of expertise.
Academic scholarship is generally preferred over lay sources, though there are caveats and individual instances of primary research are rarely considered indicative of consensus (usually review articles and other secondary sources are significantly preferred). However, if you do disagree with any information on Wikipedia, even if it's based on only your own primary research, I would strongly encourage you to at least tag the statements with a {{dubious}} or {{disputed inline}}[1] tag so that it can be discussed, or make an edit request[2] if you're not comfortable making the change yourself.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Disputed_inline [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Edit_requests
In practice, it doesn't work. The bias and delusional behavior of the editors is infectious, widespread, and has even been criticized by Wikipedia's own co-founder Larry Sanger as being overrun by "left-wing propaganda essays." He even went as far as to call it the "most biased encyclopedia in history" in an interview with Glenn Greenwald. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR6dO8U8okk)
Frankly, it does seem (following stereotypes) that left-wing people have a stronger tendency to be writers from being white-collar; while more right-wing folks are too busy with blue-collar jobs and physical labor to be writing rebuttals. A very simple example is how Wikipedia approves Vox, Slate, The Nation, Mother Jones, Jezebel, The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Jacobin as sources, but Fox News is considered "unreliable." Permitting Jacobin and Jezebel, but not Fox, is delusional. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...)
Maybe you could clarify your concern by pointing to something where the public consensus from reputable sources is distinct from what Wikipedia presents, by matter of policy?
https://web.archive.org/web/20241001193736/https://www.busin...
No, it's not me who has the blind spots in the cases I have seen, sorry. Also, they are not worth the work to correct, since the overlord of the niche is usually someone with far too much time on their hands to argue, even when presented with incontrovertible proof. They also often have "Wikipedia editing" as a hobby, and know all the nitpicking rules of the site that they will use against you if you encroach on their domain. And yes, I tried this once for an obvious error in a math article (with no citation in the original article, mind you).
> So it’s a good source for topics with the largest audience.
Also not for topics of any political bent, but sure, if your target audience is at a high school level or below and you can separate out the facts from the editorialization, it's not bad.
At this point, I want Encyclopedia Britannica back. I would take it any day of the week over Wikipedia. The golden age of Wikipedia, when that was reversed, seems to be over.
Tangentially, I use Wikipedia strictly for topics of a scientific nature and usually find that it's relatively accurate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...
Here is an example of a Wikipedia admin who spent years harassing a blogger (and a community the blogger belongs to), and it took a lot of effort and a lot of luck to make other admins admit that this was a bad thing and that it should stop.
(This is not the worst example I know of, but it is an example where Wikipedia changed its mind later, so you can agree that this was bad even if you trust Wikipedia.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0L-3FfkXfM
Let's just say Wikipedia made an absurd lie, for years from an obvious misunderstanding, and a viciously protective editor got involved...
This is what lecturers and teachers a tell us.
Yet it’s far and away the most accurate and comprehensive resource I know of. When I search the few topics I think I deeply understand, it’s very rarely wrong. I corrected the last error I found. It was a small one and wouldn’t have tripped the unwary.
For a more specific example of wiki’s biases, think of the average Reddit bias - like their insistence of “if you can’t prove it it doesn’t exist”. A lot of people in the world would be very sad if they learnt that their god supposedly vanished.
The book become a basis for a romanticized novel he published for western audiences, which I believe inspired the production of Netflix animation for the same character. From then on, the view that Yasuke was a samurai gained foothold, which caught some Japanese historians off-guard.
He's also had his hand on the Britannica article of the same title, and now Wikipedia cites the Britannica article too, thus completing the cycle.
After unifying Japan in 1590, Toyotomi Hideyoshi did not become Shogun because he was born a peasant. Only Samurai could become Shogun, and Hideyoshi was famously not one. You couldn't become a samurai, you had to be born one.
It is temporary as heck. People will forget about anything, no matter the extent of Streisand effect and go onto the next tictok video or whatever.
Who gives a flying fk anyways about an article on wikipedia.
The name of the Streisand effect is from exactly the situation of a photo nobody cared about of Streisand's house from decades ago. The fact that it can be superficially referenced is evidence of its longevity.
Right now only a few people in India know about the ongoing dispute between ANI and Wikipedia. A country-level block is going to bring everyone's attention to the issue which I don't think is something ANI and the incumbent party (the BJP) would want to happen.
India routinely blocks many websites, including many porn sites, but blocking something as big, popular and useful as Wikipedia is not going to go unnoticed by the Indian media.
https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/23/10/2024/6718fc469...
When they show an advertisement of, say, some asian company to a russian user, they are still making money, aren't they?
However, the article is still there in the database, and everyone not in India can see it. And anyone in India can ask a foreign friend to send them a copy. (Maybe someone will make a website on a different domain that will contain the banned articles from Wikipedia, making them visible for everyone.)
Basically, comply with the bans in a Streisand-effect way.
without dwelling into the nuances of this case and who's on the right, it would be myopic to think that the block is not a realistic possibility.
it has been over 4 years since the TikTok ban (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679286), and while it might be apple and oranges, it does not remove from the fact that a major site was blocked, reported widely, and is still standing to this day.
Let me see if I understand this correctly. It seems below is the sequence of events you are advocating for:
1. Wikipedia is allowed to legally represent themselves in the court of law. 2. Court looks at the case presented by ANI and Wikipedia, and decides that ANI is right and Wikipedia is wrong 3. Wikipedia should take this out on average Indian citizens, and make them pay because Wikipedia was found to be at fault in a court of law.
Makes sense
ANI wants Wikipedia to provide the names of the editors that added the details to the article. Once Wikipedia reveals those names, ANI will presumably sue them for defamation and force them to remove their contributions. While the edit history will remain, few are likely to read it.
Suing the editors and forcing them to retract their edits on Wikipedia will have a chilling effect on anyone Indian that tries to point out what ANI and similar organizations are doing. But if Wikipedia blocks India and the issue blows up in the media, ANI will be forced to back off and the article will stay up. Wikipedia then unblocks India. Is it a given that things are going to pan out this way? No, but it's quite likely.
They’re complying within the rules fully, but if they decide the rules are too onerous or compromising on their core mission, the legally correct thing to do is to take their ball and go home.
The rest of us not in India don’t want to be affected by the rulings of a Delhi court.
If the citizens of India don’t like this outcome, it’s up to them to fix it.
If following the law is such a burden on them then they should by all means pack up and leave. This is also what the Delhi High Court said after Wikipedia chose to ignore its order. This applies to all western institutions and corporations. If the expectation is that, Indian courts and the Indian public should continue to bend over then that is not going to happen.
> The rest of us not in India don’t want to be affected by the rulings of a Delhi court.
How wikipedia choses to follow rulings of Delhi High Court is not India's problem. This is 100% on wikipedia to implement it without a geo block, so maybe you should take this up with Wikipedia.
That's a pretty aggressive stance on this that is not warranted. Wikipedia is pursuing its mission of providing an uncensored source of information created by an open community for the public. Posing the situation as aggressively as you have makes it seem as if you are the one trying to make someone or something "bend over" (or whatever gross turn of phrase you'd like to use).
This makes it seem like your reply isn't in good faith.
So feel free to twist my words as you please, add your own interpretations to it, and accuse me of whatever you want to accuse me with. I am done discussing this topic with you specifically.
I initially read:
> Wikipedia should take this out on average Indian citizens, and make them pay because Wikipedia was found to be at fault in a court of law.
> Makes sense
As sarcasm (which I acknowledge is tricky to parse on the internet! But it still strongly reads that way).
But from your later comment that was not the case?
As to my reply to your comment, I recognize Wikipedia's right to not conduct their business in India if they chose to do so, for whatever reason. I interpret your comment as saying that there would be nothing wrong in Wikipedia exercising this right - which I agree with. So I stated my point earnestly that while I agree there is nothing wrong in exercising this right. It seems what it amounts to is that either the court rules in their favor, or they withdraw from India. If that is the expectation that India courts should just rule in their favor (even when they are in the wrong), then I am sorry but that is not acceptable.
Hope that clarifies things. Either way, I am going to withdraw from this discussion as well
Step 3 would be to broadcast to all of India this corrupt ruling.
The defamation case is still ongoing. But I guess any ruling that isn't favoring Wikipedia will automatically be "corrupt"
"In July 2024, ANI filed a lawsuit against Wikimedia Foundation in the Delhi High Court — claiming to have been defamed in its article on Wikipedia — and sought ₹2 crore (US$240,000) in damages.[16][17][18] On 5 September, the Court threatened to hold Wikimedia guilty of contempt for failing to disclose information about the editors who had made changes to the article and warned that Wikipedia might be blocked in India upon further non-compliance. The judge on the case stated "If you don't like India, please don't work in India... We will ask government to block your site".[19][20] In response, Wikimedia emphasized that the information in the article was supported by multiple reliable secondary sources.[21] Justice Manmohan said "I think nothing can be worse for a news agency than to be called a puppet of an intelligence agency, stooge of the government. If that is true, the credibility goes."[22]"
I suppose that this might not be the most objective article on Wikipedia. I don't have context for these statements. The way that Wikipedia quotes the judge makes it sound like he's threatening to order the Indian government to block Wikipedia because Wikipedia says that ANI is government propaganda. Is that really what's going on? If so it seems extremely ironic, to the point of tacitly admitting ANI's links to the Indian government. I know hacker news has many Indian readers; can they provide some context or an alternative perspective?
The main problem in this case is that Wikimedia hasn’t complied YET with high court orders of revealing people who did the edits. ANI just went ahead and filed contempt of court case before Wiki legal team could respond. I’m not sure if initial order came with some sort of deadline or not. I guess they are trying to leverage the delay in their favour.
In my opinion, ANI and many media houses in India are partially controlled by incumbent party ( BJP ) either by incentives or manipulation, you can read about Income tax raid on BBC and some other media outlets for understanding their methods.
- Judge Mahesh Sharma told TV channels that "the peahen gets pregnant" only by "swallowing the tears of the peacock".
- The Delhi High Court granted anticipatory bail to a rape accused government accused after the survivor’s mother expressed that she has no objection to the same.
- In a bizarre order, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court granted bail to a man accused of raping and impregnating a 17-year-old girl under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act on a condition that he marries he after she attains the majority age of 18.(Tamil Nadu)
- Granting pre arrest bail to a rape accused, Karnataka High Court took sexual violence jurisprudence back by decades.The court speculated why the complainant did not approach the court earlier when the accused was allegedly asking her for sexual favours. The court also questioned why the complainant went to her office late night and did not object to consumption of alcohol. The court said that the complainant’s explanation that she fell asleep after the alleged crime is “unbecoming of a woman; that is not the way our women react when they are ravished”.
Just memorizing law to a great extent doesn't elevate judges above societal prejudices and backwardness.
[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-40116001
[1]: https://sabrangindia.in/article/delhi-hc-grants-pre-arrest-b....
[2]: https://sabrangindia.in/madras-hc-grants-pocso-accused-bail-....
[3]: https://sabrangindia.in/article/falling-asleep-after-being-r...
>> "In my opinion, ANI and many media houses in India are partially controlled by incumbent party ( BJP ) either by incentives or manipulation, you can read about Income tax raid on BBC and some other media outlets for understanding their methods."
By the Indian court standards, HN would be compelled to globally take down this topic.
Wikipedia almost exclusively words things as if they are know facts (because they usually are), which means they lose the safety of it being an opinion
Wikipedia is saying it's a known fact they've been accused of that, which this subthread shows is true as someone accused them of it.
I don't know, and you might, but we mostly live blissfully unaware in the undergirding bueracracy that surrounds us.
And if Liechtenstein calls for my head for saying that I know nothing about them, fantastic. I'll still never hear about it. The have no power where I am.
But a government threatens an internationally beloved and fundamental institution built by the volunteering work of individuals across the globe for the pure love of sharing knowledge because it accurately made a statement? The Indian high court may as well allow universal atrocities for all the respect for sovereignty it will generate at home and abroad.
If you go murder someone in Liechtenstein, there are only a small handful of places in the world where you are not guaranteed to be arrested and extradited back to Liechtenstein to face trial, at their government's request, should it ask and should you be found.
In that small handful of places, it's still a crapshoot.
Extradition costs are generally paid by the interested state, by the way.
And yeah, it is a fantasy because Liechtenstein isn't a backwards and stupid place like India is.
Interpol has 196 member states.
I don’t like whataboutism as much as anyone else, but if we’re going to criticise one country I’d like to point out that with Murdoch et al, you’ve got the same stuff happening in a lot of countries (US/UK/Aus off the top of my head) too. And unlike some places like the US, in India the judges are relatively much more independent politically.
What you’re likely missing is that a significant chunk of the population itself (and likely some judges) hold such views. You don’t need to politically cajole a judge if they already share the same view, do you?
Also a bit stupid to ask someone to not work in India if they point out they have no legal presence there. If they really have no presence in India it might make most sense to just call their bluff. The government does indeed have the power to block the webpage but there's no winning against a government that is willing to go that far. One can only hope that blocking wikipedia is unpopular enough to give the government pause.
As a discerning reader, you learn to avoid mainstream media that quotes ANI (don't even consider watching a TV channel). You seek out alternate information sources. As the entity aligns closer with the ruling party and the mega-corporations like Adani that are aligned with it, you basically witness an octopus take over all information communication in India.
Then you get harsher and harsher laws regulating social media. You get no new laws protecting your speech. You witness a general fatalism set in on the few Indian comment sections that still think this stuff is wrong. But one day you see it on HN and realise everyone is basically powerless here.
Foolish maybe, but I genuinely hoped the open and open-sourced side of the internet would transcend borders. There must exist an information ecosystem that is above government. But Linux bans Russian devs, wikipedia is blocked worldwide because they wouldn't reveal an editor's biodata to India, social media platforms regulating information appoint information officers to enforce dictatorial government orders.
Where is the technology that can challenge this? At what point can the principle of "code is law" support free human expression instead of serving the whims of the latest oppressive regime?
I would implore any devs making open-source censorship-proof tools to consider the Indian context as ground zero.
The devs weren't banned, they were removed from the maintainers list
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/10/russi...
Law is a social concept, it has many parts, the statutes, that serve as mementos for past power struggles, the active part which consist of the courts, prosecutors' discretion, enforcement, and of course society itself, as the workings of these reified components reflect society itself.
Code can of course model some of these, be part of law, and even it can try to complement or supplant certain roles and/or functions from the aforementioned ones, but as long as there are humans in the loop code will not be itself law.
Sure, soon we'll probably end up with RoboCops patrolling the streets, and maybe even AI writing much of the statutes, and eventually even AI making most of the law, but even then code won't be law.
As a matter of sovereignty, a state can exercise judicial jurisdiction over its territory, over its nationals, over national security concerns and over the most grave crimes.
A state’s jurisdiction can apply even to foreign people/companies who have no presence in said state at all. What the state’s courts can’t do is enforce their decisions abroad.
I know nothing about Indian law, but I know it has the right to set its own judicial jurisdiction. Accordingly, it can surely grant courts the power to order worldwide content bans. The real questions at stake in this case are:
1) does Wikipedia have any presence in India, so that Indian courts can compel it to follow their orders?
2) which countries where Wikipedia operates are able to receive requests from Indian courts and take enforcement action based on them?
It might not be fair, or right, but that’s the way it is. Thankfully, the obstacles to enforcing absurd orders abroad are usually high enough that they discourage said orders, or render them ineffective.
Sorry, but VPNs exist, Wikipedia is inherently clonable and downloadable. Silicon rock beats Indian paper courts, any way you slice it, unless Wikipedia chooses to back down.
They shouldn't.
It’s very unfortunate, but there is more to this case than simply negating a country’s jurisdiction or encouraging nationals to challenge it.
Yes, India can make ridiculous unenforceable laws, same as any country, but that doesn't actually do anything: Laws only matter when they can be enforced.
In this case India trying to enforce a worldwide ban on this story is clearly unenforceable. And because of VPNs that means that enforcing a national ban on this story is clearly unfeasible. However, because the people who make the laws are ignorant of the technical reasons why it's unfeasible they'll carry on and do it anyway. The Australian PM was in the same boat, made the same mistake, and was widely ridiculed for it.
[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathema...
Yes, people can use VPNs to circumvent the order if the banned content is available elsewhere. But the law and judicial orders do more than just attempt to constrain behaviors.
Legally, those within the reach of India’s enforcement jurisdiction can be punished for disobeying the order. And since we’re all discussing things from a practical standpoint as well, we should keep in mind that states often uphold their interests abroad — even illegally. See the recent diplomatic row involving India and Canada, for instance.
I insist: both in legal and in practical terms, there is more to this case.
This is why it is so important to spread the knowledge of how to make IEDs.
> Hi everyone, I spoke to the team at the WMF yesterday afternoon in a quick meeting of the board. [...] note that I am not a lawyer and that I am not here speaking for the WMF nor the board as a whole. I'm speaking personally as a Wikipedian. [...] I can tell you that I went into the call initially very skeptical of the idea of even temporarily taking down this page and I was persuaded very quickly by a single fact that changed my mind: if we did not comply with this order, we would lose the possibility to appeal and the consequences would be dire in terms of achieving our ultimate goals here. For those who are concerned that this is somehow the WMF giving in on the principles that we all hold so dear, don't worry. I heard from the WMF quite strong moral and legal support for doing the right thing here - and that includes going through the process in the right way. Prior to the call, I thought that the consequence would just be a block of Wikipedia by the Indian government. While that's never a good thing, it's always been something we're prepared to accept in order to stand for freedom of expression. We were blocked in Turkey for 3 years or so, and fought all the way to the Supreme Court and won.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/1253528244#C...
India, much like Nazi Germany, is a culture that views position over all else; simply being in power is enough to make your word greater than anyone else's truth.
To compare the largest democracy in the world to a genocidal regime is utterly disrespectful to the 1.5 Billion Indians.
a) increased my credence that this is a bot b) increased my credence that you're spreading ideological bs claims not worth investigating further, despite being initially curious to learn more the first time I read this
Copy pasting a comment everywhere not a good look IMO. It shows a general lack of engaging with fellow humans in dialogue and makes you look like you might just be spreading something trying to reach as many eyes as possible because you're being paid to do so.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias
Now, those are further down in the list than I would've expected, but I suppose that the answer is that many Indians are contributing to English Wikipedia in the first place, due to greater exposure and fluency in that country.
There is certainly extensive coverage of Bollywood, cricket, and other topics of great appeal to Indians at home and abroad.
India has no right to control what the rest of the world sees.
Presumably they don't want India to ban all of Wikipedia, so they're playing ball.