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Facebook admitted Sunday that it had blocked links to the Wikileaks trove of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee.
In a Twitter post late Saturday, WikiLeaks accused the social media giant of "censorship" and gave its followers an online workaround, saying "try using https://archive.is."
The WikiLeaks allegation followed a firestorm of controversy that erupted earlier this year when former Facebook workers admitted routinely suppressing conservative news.
Source: https://nypost.com/2016/07/24/facebook-admits-to-blocking-wikileaks-links-in-dnc-email-hack/
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Facebook Admits to Blocking Wikileaks Links in DNC Email Hack
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You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jmorris on Tuesday July 26 2016, @10:46PM
Systems like Facebook and Twitter are simply too big to be allowed to exist. There is no way you can prevent them from being misused, the target is simply too big and attractive. It -WILL- be abused because the reward is large and the risk of meaningful punishment small whether the punishment comes from the government or the market. Pissing fights over -WHO- gets to abuse the power concentrated in these systems is pointless, they must be replaced with decentralized tech.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday July 26 2016, @11:29PM
Or perhaps just ensure they do not censor *any* posts, regardless of how much any person or government dislikes it, including the US.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JNCF on Tuesday July 26 2016, @11:53PM
I agree that they are too big to exist, I just apply that thinking to the federal government as well.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." --Richard Buckminster Fuller
The sad truth is, we haven't made a decentralised system that satisfies users as much as twitter does, or that occupies territories as well as the federal government. We need better decentralised tools, and it's frankly quite difficult and time-consuming to build them. Most people can't, and those who can are usually spending their time working on other projects (or just being humans). There is a lot of work to go around if we're going to decentralise human societies, and we may fail. The centralists are more organized, self-apparently.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by quintessence on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:57AM
Eh, no.
Twitter has a degree of first mover advantage to which as long as they never fuck-up too badly, they will always have a percentage of that market. It takes time and effort to change platforms, and most people won't do it as long as the current thing is good enough. Even if you build a perfectly viable decentralized replacement, there is no compelling reason to change.
On the other hand, the next big shiny new fad is always around the corner. There is little doubt in my mind that Twitter is a blip in the scale of things. There is much hand wringing due to the end of history illusion, but everything eventually moves over for the Next Big Thing.
or that occupies territories as well as the federal government
This is a slightly different problem, as the federal government actively destroys any challenges to its power.
Hell, there are workable means to diffuse the power of government right now, but you will end up dead or in jail if you try too hard to make them a reality.
Organization is its own worse enemy, and even now Western democracies are on the cusp of the Age of Aftermath.
You are better off floating around the periphery, never appearing threatening to the powers that be, and refining your own adaptations.
Essentially, you are already decentralized.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday July 27 2016, @04:53PM
Eh, no.
Hm, yes.
Twitter has a degree of first mover advantage to which as long as they never fuck-up too badly, they will always have a percentage of that market. It takes time and effort to change platforms, and most people won't do it as long as the current thing is good enough. Even if you build a perfectly viable decentralized replacement, there is no compelling reason to change.
Part of user satisfaction is determined by network effects. That is the hurdle every new contender has to cross, and yet facebook undermined MySpace. Find a compelling reason to change, or your decentralised solution isn't good enough. It's difficult, I know.
This is a slightly different problem, as the federal government actively destroys any challenges to its power.
Which is another way of saying that they're good at occupying territory.
Hell, there are workable means to diffuse the power of government right now, but you will end up dead or in jail if you try too hard to make them a reality.
Well that doesn't sound very workable then, does it? I'm not arguing there aren't ways to theoretically rearrange society. I'm arguing that if you try to declare yourself independant the government will invade and they will win. We don't have decentralised systems capable of defending territory against federal governments, which is another way of saying that you can't buy nuclear weapons over the darknet yet.
(Score: 2) by quintessence on Wednesday July 27 2016, @08:28PM
And yet MySpace is still around, Facebook is having to branch into other markets to stay relevant and compete with the likes of Snapchat and Instagram, and even 4Chan has lost users through their own initiatives.
Also:
The volatility of social networks was exemplified in 2006 when Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal launched an investigation into children's exposure to pornography on Myspace; the resulting media frenzy and Myspace's inability to build an effective spam filter gave the site a reputation as a "vortex of perversion". Around that time, specialized social media companies such as Twitter formed and began targeting Myspace users, while Facebook rolled out communication tools which were seen as safe in comparison to Myspace. Boyd compared the shift of white, middle-class kids from the "seedy" Myspace to the "supposedly safer haven" of Facebook, to the "white flight" from American cities; the perception of Myspace eventually drove advertisers away as well.[12] In addition, Myspace had particular problems with vandalism, phishing, malware and spam which it failed to curtail, making the site seem inhospitable.[44]
These have been cited as factors why users, who as teenagers were Myspace's strongest audience in 2006 and 2007,[45][46] had been migrating to Facebook.
I would call malware a pretty good reason to migrate.
And even though Slashdot has a larger user base by far, you are here because...
>Which is another way of saying that they're good at occupying territory.
Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan... have I missed any of the major ones in the recent past? The US has been pretty good at bombing those places though. Hasn't the US normalized relations with Viet Nam?
>I'm arguing that if you try to declare yourself independant the government will invade and they will win.
See above.
Nope, what you are arguing for is rebranding one power structure with another. Let's call it decentralized, even though organized crime and like has continued pretty much unabated much to the chagrin of the US.
Get this- they can't even secure their borders.
Right now you already have several decentralized networks who simply ignores the government. When you speak of acquiring nukes, you're arguing for regime change rather than anything changes to the power structure.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday July 27 2016, @09:31PM
I've always suspected that the messy custom backgrounds were a big part of MySpace losing to facebook.
I would call malware a pretty good reason to migrate.
I'd think the same thing about spyware, but for some reason people haven't left facebook for Diaspora yet. I suspect facebook is doing some things very competently, given their goals. And I think they own Instagram now.
And even though Slashdot has a larger user base by far, you are here because...
I feel like SoylentNews has a self-selected user base; those who were crazy enough to leave the green site on a little red raft and start paddling. It's a small community that violently objects to itself at every opportunity, and I like that. I like seeing the opinions of old geezers who have been in the tech industry for decades. It's both profoundly interesting, and a really good reminder that you shouldn't get hung up focusing on things that happened to be particularly relevant in your youth.
Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan... have I missed any of the major ones in the recent past? The US has been pretty good at bombing those places though. Hasn't the US normalized relations with Viet Nam?
I'm not convinced that we intended to occupy those places longterm. Those wars might have just been pretexts to help certain American industries that lobby heavily. The last time any states tried to secede from the union, they were invaded and federal powers were increased drastically. When they really want to occupy territory, the only thing that can stop them is another centralised government.
When you speak of acquiring nukes, you're arguing for regime change rather than anything changes to the power structure.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
No, because I'm talking about everybody having access to them rather than a select handful of governments. This is power distributed. Your obvious line of argument is that I'm MAD and this will kill us all, or that random individuals can't be trusted to maintain nuclear weapons properly -- not that existing power structures would simply undergo a regime change. That's just ridiculous.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday July 27 2016, @05:14AM
There are actually a lot of decentralized projects being created, and some really good progress already done. So far the majority seem to be targeting javascript in order to make sure any browser would be able to access the systems.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday July 27 2016, @07:08PM
There are actually a lot of decentralized projects being created, and some really good progress already done.
Yeah, what has been done is great. I'm just impatient, and would prefer there to be more. Torrents, Bitcoin, and CJDNS all stand out as the best examples to me (I like BitMessage, too, but it can't possibly scale well). Of those, I would only argue that torrents are ready for mainstream adoption (and that comes with the caveat that escaping government/corporate surveillance is difficult). Some would argue that iOS apps have mostly solved the usability problem of Bitcoins, and so far they haven't been proven wrong, but if iOS sandboxing is compromised ahead of schedule you're gonna see comments on every Bitcoin related article whining about lost coins. Folks still ignorantly act like MtGox is a black mark on Bitcoin's record, not realising that having placed their decentralised currency in centralised hands is a sign of their own incompetency and nothing more.
So far the majority seem to be targeting javascript in order to make sure any browser would be able to access the systems.
I go back and forth on how reasonable this is. Users seem to love being able to access something through a browser, so that's a huge point for it. But with modern browsers, the application can only be decentralised after the initial WebRTC connections have been made. This seems... not ideal. Do you have any particular thoughts on the issue of whether or not decentralised tools should be made to work in browsers instead of being standalone applications?
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday July 27 2016, @07:48PM
The sticky part is always the crypto, and with a proper api it shouldn't be hard to make clients in other languages. On the extremely paranoid side, I don't like the idea of trusting the javascript engine packaged in whatever browser. I'm simply not sure I'd trust my private key to a browser.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday July 27 2016, @08:24PM
The sticky part is always the crypto,
I don't follow. Sticky part of what is the crypto? Decentralised systems in general, or a specific subtopic?
and with a proper api it shouldn't be hard to make clients in other languages.
If you mean languages other than JavaScript, asm.js/WebAssembly is the obvious answer. I'm super excited about those.
On the extremely paranoid side, I don't like the idea of trusting the javascript engine packaged in whatever browser. I'm simply not sure I'd trust my private key to a browser.
inorite? There aren't many choices of browsers with WebRTC and IndexedDB support at the moment. That should improve with time.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:16AM
It's not that they are too big to exist, it's that they are private entities, with no obligations whatsoever to the public, but some people insist on pretending that they are some sort of public utility when they are not. Facebook has no more obligation to the wishes of the public than the New York Times does - sure, it might be nice for their business model, but it's entirely up to the business what they want to do.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:18AM
It's not that they are too big to exist, it's that they are private entities, with no obligations whatsoever to the public,
So you think they would be more open if owned by the government? I'd laugh if such ideas weren't so widespread and so utterly dangerous.
Do you really want a Facebook as political as the IRS? Worse, an IRS directly tied into Facebook?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:57AM
No, I'd like them to be either some kind of open protocol, or managed by an NGO of some kind. I'm thinking something more along the lines of the Apache Software Foundation.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday July 27 2016, @03:25PM
So you want the worst of all possible solutions. Zero accountability, maximum social justice.
At least corporations are answerable to market pressure and shareholders. An NGO is answerable to nothing. The Apache Foundation survives because it has no resources to attract the SJW locust and they can't figure a way to benefit directly from controlling any of the Apache projects. Yet. Contrast to Moz Corp. Or even the GNOMES got access to enough resources to attract locust.
Any non-profit or NGO who suddenly found themselves controlling a platform as powerful as Facebook or Twitter would almost instantly be converged to Social Justice. Just imagine the pressure to implement anti-hate speech protections, anti-cyber bullying, etc. And any platform with the user numbers of FB or Twitter -would- be monitized, see Moz Corp. Once there was also money flowing along with the potential for 'doing good' you could start the countdown clock until total convergence at one year.
Unless you have a magic formula to 100% keep out SJWs that no other organization has yet discovered.
Decentralized is the only way. The only way to prevent SJW convergence is to prevent the formation of attractive piles of cash and levers of control just calling for someone to use them 'for good.' Facebook can't avoid it, if Zuck wasn't already an SJW he would be quickly replaced by one.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Wednesday July 27 2016, @02:10AM
Systems like Facebook and Twitter are simply too big to be allowed to exist.
Too big? Exactly how big is too big? Who gets to decide the magical number of users that kicks a system into the "too big" category, who is going to be in charge of oversight, and how much is it going to cost to enforce it?
These things get to be the size that they are because people are FUCKING LAZY. I'm sure any number of useful, creative and innovative sites come in to being all the time and they go broke. Why? Because people heard of google, Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Skype, Windows, or WHATEVER and these things work (sometimes barely), and people are TOO LAZY to look for something else, switch to something else, or spend time convincing others to use something else, etc. It's human nature. We are wired for the low hanging fruit. So it's pretty pointless to blame those who exploit their positions of power when it's us who are so lazy that we happily give them that power in the first place.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday July 27 2016, @03:35AM
I doubt any government could break Twitter or Facebook at this point, they could rally more political power than any politician.
The people who made the Internet are going to have to solve this problem, create a decentralized replacement and make a client that is backward compatible. Pray it achieves critical mass sufficient to send Facebook to the same Hell Myspace is roasting in.