Posts Tagged ‘censorship’
Facebook says Napalm Girl ‘protects the community’
Having banned Napalm Gil from Facebook – and sent us a warning that posting the image could lead to our Page being removed – the website has relented.
“Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed,” says Facebook in a statement. “It will take some time to adjust these systems but the photo should be available for sharing in the coming days. We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe.”
Oh dear. They want to keep the community safe from people in the, er, community.
Free expression means just that. Free. No buts…
Phuc Off: Zuckerberg and Facebook’s thought police erase Napalm Girl and you’re next
Facebook has a tricky relationship with censoring images. It recently censored a drawing of a human hand and banned Stephen Ellcock, who’d posted the image. But how do we stand of pictures of naked children?
Facebook’s boss Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of “abusing power” after Facebook deleted pictures of 9-year-old Kim Phúc, aka ‘Napalm Girl’, one subject in Terror of War, a Pulitzer prize-winning photograph by Nick Ut that showed children fleeing a napalm attack during the Vietnam war.
Norwegian Tom Egeland had posted the picture on Facebook as part of a wider debate on “seven photographs that changed the history of warfare”.
Espen Egil Hansen, the editor-in-chief and CEO of Norway’s Aftenposten, newspaper has used his organ’s front page to accuse Zuckerberg of “abusing your power”, adding:
“I am worried that the world’s most important medium is limiting freedom instead of trying to extend it, and that this occasionally happens in an authoritarian way.”
Egeland’s post earned him a one-month suspension from Facebook. Aftenposten posted the news on its Facebook page, including the offending photo. It received the warning:
“Any photographs of people displaying fully nude genitalia or buttocks, or fully nude female breast, will be removed.”
So what?
Facebook is a website – a very large one, but, nonetheless a website. You can post the picture on your own website if you like.
What Facebook should mind is that it’s dull. It thinks a startling picture of the pain and horror of war is too strong for its delicate readers. It thinks you might get sexually aroused by the image. Facebook has a pretty low view of its customers.
And what goes for pictures goes for words, too. At a 2016 event in Berlin, Zuckenberg vowed to work closer with the German police and look out for victims. “Hate speech has no place on Facebook or in our community,” he said, declining to explain what hate speech is and who gets to decide what is and what is not offensive. He expanded on his view of “protected groups”, saying that Facebook will “now include hate speech against migrants as an important part of what we just now have no tolerance for… Until recently in Germany I don’t think we were doing a good enough job, and I think we will continue needing to do a better and better job.”
Protect migrants seeking better lives in countries where they can think and speak freely by censoring people in those countries from doing just that, banning the natives from doing the very things that make those places desirable to the oppressed. Got it?
That’s the viewpoint from the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company like Facebook.
If you can be banned from Facebook for publishing a picture of a hand or a crying child, can you be banned for calling for a wall to be built between the USA and Mexico, saying ‘White Men Can’t Jump’, or stating that Nickelback fans are deluded?
Facebook is founded on human-to-human communication.
If you stymie that, the site loses its way. It becomes a safe space where only big corporations that play ball (and pay Facebook’s exorbitant fees to reach all of their own readers who ‘like’ their pages) show up on timelines. Then people will go elsewhere to talk freely and air an opinion.
Given the amount of time and effort we and many others have spent cultivating readers on Facebook – my own Flashbak page is soaring but not everyone who ‘liked’ it sees the thing – this is shaping up to be one of the biggest corporate pratfalls of all time.
UPDATE: Facebook will let this one go.
“Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed. It will take some time to adjust these systems but the photo should be available for sharing in the coming days. We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe.”
Protecting the community. Sheesh.
Posted: 9th, September 2016 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Don’t ban sugar just force the fat to run to the shops
Oi, fatso! David Aaronovitch has a plan to win the “obesity war”. He writes in the Times:
It’s not enough to fiddle about with food labelling and a distant sugar tax. Bans may be draconian, but they’re essential
Bans are for censors. No ‘may’ about it. They are draconian. They are not essential.
He adds:
Of course, we could try to attach the same opprobrium to being fat as to being a smoker.
Second-hand fat? We are getting fatter, yes. We are getting fatter because we do less. We have more down time. More of us live in small flats – stairs burn calories (just ask the aged who downsize). We have central heating. We have telly. Is there shame in being a smoker? No. although people who light up electronic cigarettes, especially the ones with the glowing end, do look like twats.
And what of the facts? Chris Snowdon notes:
All the evidence indicates that per capita consumption of sugar, salt, fat and calories has been falling in Britain for decades. Per capita sugar consumption has fallen by 16 per cent since 1992 and per capita calorie consumption has fallen by 21 per cent since 1974.
And Tim Worstall has an interesting aside:
One more little factoid on this: the current average UK diet has fewer calories than the minimum acceptable diet under WWII rationing. Quite seriously: we are gaining weight on fewer calories than our grandparents lost weight on.
Back then you could be fat and jolly. Now you must be fat and unhappy. The bitter and thin want revenge.
Aaronovitch adds:
Ban fast-food outlets from stations and airports. Ban the sale of confectionery and sugary drinks to the under-16s. Ban the sale of over-sugared products in supermarkets (as measured by a ratio of sugar to other nutrients). Ban the bringing into schools of unhealthy foods. Ban the presence in offices (like our own here at The Times) of vending machines that seem to sell mainly crisps and chocolate. Specify a weight-to-height ratio limit on air passengers wishing to avoid a surcharge.
In short: bash the poor.
Posted: 28th, July 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Body shaming balls: Sadiq Khan thinks woman are pathetic
Are you shamed by adverts featuring fit and lithe women encouraging you to look like them? London mayor Sadiq Khan says you are, or at least, you might be. He isn’t discombobulated by these sort of ads. He is strong of mind and self-confident. It would take more than an advert to shake him. But you might well be weak and easily wounded by a picture on a poster. So Khan will protect you from seeing fit and lithe women trying to sell you products by banning them.
Yeah, Khan’s a bansturbator. The Mail, which knows more than most about picking women to pieces, notes:
Ads that ‘shame’ Londoners over their bodies are to be banned from the Tube and bus network, Sadiq Khan has announced. The newly-installed mayor said there will be a block on adverts that ‘demean’ women or encourage them to conform to unrealistic shapes. The policy means controversial marketing campaigns – like Protein World’s ‘Are you beach body ready?’ poster that provoked a huge backlash last year – will no longer be allowed.
Perfect. Right now a load of creatives are wondering how to form a campaign that will get banned and noticed. Get it right and that ad budget will be a steal.
Posted: 14th, June 2016 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
EU commissioner Vera Jourova censors free speech
One more reason to vote to leave the European Union arrives. “The internet is a place for free speech, not hate speech,” says Vera Jourova, the EU commissioner responsible for justice, consumers and gender equality.
Jourova was born in 1964 Czechoslovakia. She grew up under Communist rule. You might suppose she’d know better than to meddle with hard-won freedoms. She says she understands what freedom means. Vera Jourova loves free speech. But Vera Jourova wants to censor free speech, to shackle it. The bits she does not like, she calls hate speech. These parts of free speech, says its champion, must be banned. And because the undemocratic EU works the way it does, what she says goes for every country in the bloc.
There’s a lot about European regulations, or regulatory intentions, that U.S. Internet giants don’t like. They hate being described and treated as monopolies, and a mention of paying taxes where they operate — as European countries have long wanted them to do — instantly puts them on the defensive. Yet ask Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube to censor their content, and they will happily oblige. Of all the U.S. rules that have allowed them to get as big as they have become, freedom of speech appears to be least important.
The four U.S. companies have accepted a European Union-dictatedcode of conduct, which obliges them to “review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content.” The reviewing is to be done by “civil society organizations” and “trusted reporters”: the EU and its member states are to “ensure access” to them…
Laws limiting free speech have a tendency to change in response to terrorist attacks, electoral upsets, changes in public attitudes. Russians and Turks can attest to how quickly anti-terrorist legislation can turn into a system of censorship and suppression. Europe is not immune to versions of these developments. The U.S. giants’ willingness to work with governments and advocacy groups to uphold speech limitations makes them unreliable as platforms.
On Twitter, a few see the dangers:
You can vote to change this. You can vote ‘out’.
Posted: 2nd, June 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Charlie Hebdo cover for the anniversary of the Paris massacre
This is the Charlie Hebdo’s cover for the anniversary of the Paris massacre: “The assassin is still out there.”
Don’t let the censors win.
Facebook banned these naked breasts but approved the racism
German photographer Olli Waldhauer wanted to highlight Facebook’s selective attitude to censorship. Why is Facebook quicker to block nudity than racism?
He posted this picture of a man holding a sign declaring: “Don’t Buy From Kanaken”. The picrure also shows a topless woman.
Kanken is a Nazi-era slogan about stores owned by Jewish people now applied to refugees arriving from the Middle East.
“One of these people is violating Facebook’s rules,” says the caption.
You can guess which by playing along with the #nippelstatthetze ((“nipples instead of hate speech”).
“I want Facebook to ban the picture not because of the nudity but because of the race-baiting,” says Waldhauer.
We’d rather Facebook banned nothing and let idiots be held up to ridicule. Calling for censorship is an odd position for an artist to take.
This, by the way, is ok for Facebook.
College censor Tara Schultz: ‘I expected Batman and Robin, not pornography’
Tara Shultz, 20, of Yucaipa, CA, wants to censor your library. She wants four graphic novels on the syllabus at Crafton Hills College banned. Why? Because Schulz thinks Persepolis, Fun Home, Y: The Last Man Vol. 1, and The Sandman Vol. 2: The Doll’s House will warp minds.
Now stand back and watch sales of thsoe titles rocket.
Schulz tells the Redland Daily Facts Newspaper – and this is phrase all anti-censors should get on a T-shirt.
“I expected Batman and Robin, not pornography.”
Says Tara Shultz:
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Connecticut teacher fired for reading Allen Ginsberg poem students can borrow from the school library
3rd July 1973: American poet Allen Ginsberg (1926 – 1997) with Anglo-American poet and playwright W H Auden (1907 – 1973). (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images) Auden wrote ‘The Platonic Blow‘.
Censorshsip is on the rise in the US. The ‘you can’t say that’ culture is undermining free speech and free thinking. National Coalition Against Censorship has news: “During an AP class discussion about gratuitous language, a student asked a teacher to read an Allen Ginsberg poem. He did. He’s not a teacher anymore.”
David Olio was sacked for reading a poem? Really?
In February two students complained about an Allen Ginsberg poem that, at the request of a fellow student, was shared in Olio’s AP English class at South Windsor High School in Connecticut. A media uproar followed, and Olio was essentially forced to resign.
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Censors force Cerne Abbas giant to lose his penis
“It seems a sad indictment of the times when a legendary landmark like the Cerne Giant – which any man, woman or child can visit any day of the week – must be covered up in a comic book,” says a spokesperson for Eco Comics, whose book on Dorset’s Cerne Abbas Giant has been censored. “Through pressure, our hand has been forced. Outlets, particularly in the US, refuse any form of nudity in comic books.”
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Free speech: feminist and LGBT groups run scared of University of North Carolina abortion debate
Campus life is an intoletant place. Kaitlyn Schallhorn looks at the story of one female Pro Life student’s dealing with feminist and LGBT organizations at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington.
Madison Marston invited UNCW’s National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), PRIDE, and the Women’s and Gender Studies Student Association (WSSA) to join the debate on Ratio Christi’s chat “Abortion and Human Equality: A Pro Life Defense of the Unborn”.
All the groups declined.
Fair enough. You don’t have to speak. But their response said much about how intolerance and the exchange of ideas is taboo.
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Campus censorship: read the ‘gay marriage’ blog post that got Professor John McAdams sacked at Marquette University
More on how university is all about being compliant and comfortable. Marquette University are censoring the speakers:
Professor John McAdams is being stripped of tenure by Marquette University for writing a blog post that administrators characterize as inaccurate and irresponsible.
Inaccuaray is bad form. But irresponsible? How? Says who?
McAdams is 69-year-old, a Harvard Ph.D. who taught courses on American politics and public policy.
Marquette University Dean Richard C. Holtz, explains:
The incident that McAdams blogged about happened on October 28, 2014. Cheryl Abbate, a graduate student in philosophy who was leading a class called Theory of Ethics, was teaching undergraduates about John Rawls. She asked for examples of current events to which Rawlsian philosophy could be applied.
“One student offered the example of gay marriage as something that Rawls’ Equal Liberty Principle would allow because it would not restrict the liberty of others and therefore should not be illegal. Ms. Abbate noted that this was a correct way to apply Rawls’ Principle and is said to have asked ‘does anyone not agree with this?’ Ms. Abbate later added that if anyone did not agree that gay marriage was an example of something that fits the Rawls’ Equal Liberty Principle, they should see her after class.”
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Ban Yik Yak: ‘We must indoctrinate a captive audience to particular controversial viewpoints’
Der Unterrichter (The Teacher), c. 1980 (drawing for Rigor Mortis, published in 1983 by Diogenes Verlag AG, Zürich)
“When Yik Yak was created it was intended to give everyone an equal voice. No one user would have an advantage over another based on followers or popularity and post,” so says the website for Yik Yak, a new app. where users can post anonymously.
The Badger Herald reports:
While Yik Yak activity at the University of Wisconsin has not become troublesome enough to warrant any response from officials, it is not the case at other institutions such as Clemson University, where, in response to concerns over racial insensitivity, the administration is considering a ban on the app, according to The Tiger News, Clemson’s student newspaper.
What are they saying?:
“I feel like it is really an outlet for people in the sorority system to make themselves feel better about what sorority they are in by putting down other ones,” she said. “It was very disheartening. We’d go to chapter and hear girls talking about what people said [about us on Yik Yak].”
She said the anonymity of the app caused people to write comments that are far more offensive than on other sites. “No one would ever tweet out or Facebook post the stuff they said on Yik Yak,” she said.
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Fragile ladies and raping males: welcome to life on University campus
Are all students rapsits and absuers-in-waiting? Spiked reports that 26 British univestities banned the Sun and the Daily Star as part of the ‘No More Page 3 campaign’; 21 student unions forbid the student body from listening to Robin Thicke song Blurred Lines on campus; Bristol University’s student union banned sales of Charlie Hebdo – the magazine that became the totem of free speech was banned because it would fail the college’s ‘safe space’ policy.
Eighteen per cent of unions have “safe space” policies, protecting students from material deemed offensive, and more than two-thirds of these were judged to place significant restrictions on freedom of speech.
Sheffield Student Union banned Eminem. Students at Oxford Univesity banned a debate on abortion. The UCL Student Union banned the college’s Nietzsche Club. King’s College Students banned Israel. The University of East Anglia Students banned a UKIP MP. The NUS banned free Speech and refsued to condemn for fear of looking Islamophobic. And our favourite was the London School of Economics, which banned T-shirts.
The assumption is that allowing anything that a loon or agenda-driven censor could decry as ‘racist’, ‘sexist’ or ‘homophobic’ would trigger race riots and convince slack-jawed male students that women’s rights, equality and debate are wrong.
It also assumes that the colleges will be complicit in any resulting crimes, having failed to police free thought they will make victims less aware of the perils to their physical and mental wellbeing. Student are no longer adults with free thhought and passionate ideas. They are idiots how must be coddled.
Ashe Schow is astounded:
For the past several years, activists have been telling us that any suggestion relating to protecting oneself from becoming a victim is victim-blaming. Tell a woman not to walk down dark alleys at night, and you’re essentially telling her that it’s her fault if she ends up being assaulted, robbed or murdered.
But now, outright bans on risky behavior — all in the interest of protecting women — are suddenly coming back into fashion.
First, sorority women at the University of Virginia were banned from attending parties with boys this weekend by their own National Panhellenic Conference. The reason for the ban, which carries undisclosed sanctions if broken, was “safety concerns,” due to sexual assault allegations in the past.
The message is clear: Keep women from partying and they won’t be sexually assaulted.
How is that not victim blaming?
As if the U.Va. ban wasn’t bad enough (it was based off of a discredited rape allegation in Rolling Stone, after all), Dartmouth has decided to ban hard liquor on campus — in part to cut down on sexual assaults.
It was just last year that telling women not to drink so much was considered victim blaming, but now it’s okay?
We seem to be going back in time; telling women where they can go, whom they can associate with — even what they can drink. At least it’s all in the name of protecting us poor, fragile ladies, am I right?
It’s not just the ladies. It’s all student minds.
Photo via.
Posted: 2nd, February 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Piss Christ! Associated Press censors library lest it provoke murderous Christianists
Piss Christ! Can we all say that in unison? Piss Christ!
Anyone shoot you in the face? Anyone threaten to murder you? Go on. Say it again. Louder. PISS CHRIST!
The Associated Press thinks nutters and victims of Christianophobia might be listening and driven to murder by hearing or seeing Piss Christ. To spare its clients the death threats and being murdered by Christianists, this bastion of free speech has removed Andres Serrano’s 1987 photograph Immersion (Piss Christ) from its image library.
Piss Christ (no exclamation mark) is a photograph of a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s urine. It is not to be mistaken for Christ Piss, which is used to describe the wine served at my niece’s Holy Communion.
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Pianist Uses EU ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ Rules To Censor Bad Reviews
WHEN did the internet become all about promoting censorship?
In 2010, Dejan Lazic got a mildly critical review in the Washington Post and now he wants it taken down so people who google him won’t see it anymore.
Lazi adheres to the EU’s “right to be forgotten”. In August 2014, Google removed 12 BBC News stories from its search engine under the EU’s controversial ‘right to be forgotten’ law. Robert Peston, the BBC’s former economics editor, criticised Google in July for removing a blog he had written.
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Posted: 4th, November 2014 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
Miley and Britney Banned From French TV
THE French are not known for being particularly prudish. Their great art is filled with tasteful nudes. They have the boobies on the beaches. Their accents make people orgasm on impact. We’ve seen Carla Bruni with no clothes on. The French, it seems, are comfortable with the human form.
Unless you’re Miley Cyrus or Britney Spears it seems, who have had their videos banned by French television.
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Posted: 20th, January 2014 | In: Celebrities | Comment (1)
Petition Asks David Cameron To Put An End To Dirty Music Videos
YOU may not know, but Robin Thicke is the first man ever on Earth to be featured in a clip with some naked women for spurious reasons. We checked on Twitter and the outrage confirmed it.
And his Blurred Lines video really caused a stink, to the point that it has prompted a petition urging Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron to change the law and ban children from watching dirty music videos online.
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Posted: 18th, December 2013 | In: Celebrities, Politicians | Comment
Google’s Tameside Hospital web search page censors an image of the Grim Reaper
A SEARCH for Manchester’s Tameside General Hospital on Google delivers a picture of The Grim Reaper lurking outside the building.
The image was created for the website Tameside Citizen, a blog about the area which has focused on the hospital’s death rates. The accompanying story tells readers:
Tameside is one of five hospitals to be subject to a probe in light of today’s Francis Report – which found that there were hundreds of avoidable deaths at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust between 2005-9.
Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director at the NHS Commissioning Board (NHS CB) will launch an immediate investigation into Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – as well as Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust, Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust – immediately.
The hospitals were chosen because they had the worst mortality rates according to the so-called Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator (SHMI) for two successive years to 2012.
This ends with a link the a full story at the Manchester Evening News. All fair and proper, then. It’s a worthwhile story:
Between October 2011 and September 2012, 18 per cent more patients at Tameside died than would be expected at a similar hospital, according to statistics.
But no. The MEN says the image rose to the top on Google’s for searches for the hospital. It does not name the blog that published it. It offers no link to it. It reports:
Google has now stepped in to take down the image – which was revealed to anyone typing the name of the hospital into the search engine – after being alerted by the M.E.N
A Google spokeswoman admitted the automatically-generated image had been ‘inappropriate’ and confirmed it had now been removed from its image database.
Why admitted? Is it a crime? And who decides what is and what is not appropriate? The Google worker, whose name is not given, says to the MEN:
“In this particular case, we have now updated the panel with a more appropriate image. All of our panels include a link so you can tell us when we may have an inaccuracy in our information.”
So. The natural search on Google – all those keywords and links – is a fix.
Tameside Citizen follows up:
M.E.N. attempt to censor Tameside Citizen.
The Image “THEY” want to ban!
The Manchester Evening News has claimed that they have succeeded in having the above image removed by Google after it was used by “a BlogSpot”.
“A Blog Spot”. Don’t they mean TAMESIDE CITIZEN, the blog that brought you the news that “The Advertiser” had meetings with local politicians with a view to “Suppressing sensationalist reporting” The same Advertiser which is owned by the Manchester Evening News!
Yet again it is the small independent Blog which shows the big business newspaper the meaning of the phrase “Free Press”
What’s so bad about the image? A fee commentators write back:
* The hoody pictured near the hospital does not look well.
* I have an interest in this issue. My father died in Tameside Hospital last year. My mother died six months ago in Willow wood hospice, 4 days after transfer from Tameside Hospital. The patients were clearly not getting the best treatment they deserved. The staff were giving the best they could. The big problem I could see was that there were not enough nursing staff. Even the best most dedicated nurse can not be at two bedsides at the same time.
* My own mother died in TH and there was one nurse running the ward. She told me she also served the patients meals as well.
Not exactly a death cult, is it? But because Google and the MEN don’t like the image or the messenger, they want to make it harder for readers to find the story. Local news is vital. It’s where the big stories start. You’d think the MEN and Google, which takes you content for free, would know that…
Spotter: Karen
Posted: 28th, June 2013 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
The 8 worse acts of censorship in TV history
CENSORSHIP reared its ugly head again this week, as the BBC cut a line of dialogue from the classic comedy Fawlty Towers, in which the ‘old-fashioned’ major tells Basil about the time he took a lady to see India play cricket at the Oval:
‘The strange thing was, throughout the morning she kept referring to the Indians as niggers. “No, no, no,” I said, “the niggers are the West Indians. These people are wogs”.’
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Posted: 25th, January 2013 | In: Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comment
Pakistan lifted YouTube ban for 3 minutes
WHAT did Pakistanis view on YouTube when the site was live for three minutes? The site was banned in Pakistan when some dicks uploaded the ridiculous film the Innocence of Muslims. Banning it might have made the film the must-see smash among Pakistani youth. But the censors were taking no chances. YouTube was banned in September. The experts waited until YouTube was made pure, rid of all and anything that could be deemed offensive to Muslims. Also porn.
The country’s interior minister then ordered that the block be lifted. The world had had plenty to time to comply. Three minutes the site was blocked once more.
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Posted: 31st, December 2012 | In: Technology | Comment (1)
Olly Cromwell – calling someone a ‘c*nt’ on twitter is now a crime
OLLY Cromwell, a blogger, is facing prison for calling someone “cunt” on twitter. Cromwell’s real name is John Graham Kerlen.
Olly Cromwell has been found guilty under Section 127 of the Telecommunications Act 2003 of making a grossly offensive and menacing comment on Twitter. He used the word “cunt”.
Kerlen wrote on twitter by a photo of a Bexley councillor’s home:
“Which cunt lives in a house like this. Answers on a postcard to #bexleycouncil”
The tweet was later followed by another tweet:
“It’s silly posting a picture of a house on Twitter without an address, that will come later. Please feel free to post actual shit”
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Posted: 14th, April 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
Libel and censorship on t’Internet – 190 countries control your words
LIBEL and censorship on the internet is big news. This new move by Twitter tells us something that most people don’t realise about this lovely playground that is the internet:
Twitter has refined its technology so it can censor messages on a country-by-country basis.
The additional flexibility announced on Thursday is likely to raise fears that Twitter’s commitment to free speech may be weakening as the short-messaging company expands into new countries in an attempt to broaden its audience and make more money.
But Twitter sees the censorship tool as a way to ensure individual messages, or tweets, remain available to as many people as possible while it navigates a gauntlet of different laws around the world.
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Posted: 27th, January 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
Web Censor Stephen Conroy Swears On The Web: Ban The Bansturbator
SENATOR Senator Stephen Conroy, Australia’s British-born Minister for Communications, tells the country’s National Press Club in Canberra:
“I love the debate about sovereign risk,” he said. “If a tax goes up, God, that is sovereign risk. But if a tax goes down, f*cking fantastic.”
Conroy is the man who want to censor the web. As he said:
“Most Australians acknowledge that there is some internet material which is not acceptable in any civilised society. It is important that all Australians, particularly young children, are protected from this material.”
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Posted: 14th, December 2011 | In: Technology | Comment
The Adventures Of Tintin Censorship: Belgian Detective Upsets British And Lebanese Racism Police
MORE often than not these days the name Tintin is followed by “racist”. Sure enough, in Tintin in the Congo, written in 1930 by the Belgian George Remi, Africans are depicted as submissive and simple minded. They often come across as not half as clever as Tintin’s companion, the dog Snowy. To contemporary sensibilities the cartoon character’s derring-dos in Africa are expressions of deep bigotry and typecasting.
Now, with the release of Steven Spielberg’s 3D-animated film The Adventures of Tintin: The Secrets of the Unicorn, the cartoon racism debate has intensified again, with renewed calls for censorship and bans. British stores recently moved Tintin in the Congo from children’s shelves to adult graphic novel sections, and the publisher Egmont has wrapped the book in plastic and added a warning sign about its “offensive” content.
Over in Lebanon, there have been some strong reactions to Tintin, too. But here the cartoon has been deemed as unpalatable for very different reasons. In one cinema, Spielberg’s name was blocked out from film posters. Apparently, Lebanese movie-goers need to be shielded from knowing that a Jewish man has been involved in the film they’re about to see.
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