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New Zealand Mobile Carriers Block 8chan, 4chan, and LiveLeak
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New Zealand Mobile Carriers Block 8chan, 4chan, and LiveLeak
Following the Friday mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, multiple internet service providers (ISP) in the country have blocked access to websites that distribute gruesome content from the incident.
[...] At least three internet companies operating in New Zealand have made this decision voluntarily and enforce it on a temporary basis against sites that still publish the sensitive materials. Spark NZ, Vodafone NZ, and Vocus NZ agreed to work together to identify and block access at DNS level to such online locations. 8chan and 4chan are currently unavailable to New Zealanders trying to load them through a connection from the three telcos. At the moment, visitors trying to get to these forums through Spark NZ, Vodafone NZ and Vocus NZ see the message "The URL has been blocked for security reasons."
Some users reported that LiveLeak video-sharing platform was also blocked in the region, along with other websites, including file-sharing service Mega. The block is not permanent, though. As soon as the horrific content from the Christchurch incident originating from the terrorists is removed, access to the website is reestablished.
The Dark Night of Censorship falls on New Zealand
Everybody keeps waiting for the dystopia to arrive, well wait no more for it has made an appearance in New Zealand. Zero Hedge reports that New Zealand is dropping the hammer on all discussion about the recent shooting. The list is growing and will almost certainly be larger by the time this story goes live.
Current banned sites seem to be: Dissenter.com (the new service from Gab yet gab.com is still reported as available.... for now), "all" of the "chans" are banned, and Zerohedge itself is now banned.
Subscribers who ask their ISP are reporting being told sites will stay banned until they become "censorship compliant." Sites not banned: Facebook.com, which live streamed the attack, and Twitter.com, which hosted the original link to the shooter's "manifesto." Guess they are "censorship compliant."
Suppression of Christchurch shooting video
After Christchurch, Reddit bans communities infamous for sharing graphic videos of death
In the aftermath of the tragic mosque massacre that claimed 49 lives in Christchurch, New Zealand, tech companies scrambled to purge their platforms of promotional materials that the shooter left behind. As most of the internet is now unfortunately aware, the event was broadcast live on Facebook, making it one of the most horrific incidents of violence to spread through online communities in realtime.
As Twitter users cautioned others from sharing the extraordinarily graphic video, some Reddit users actively sought the video and knew exactly where to look. The infamous subreddit r/watchpeopledie was quarantined (making it unsearchable) in September 2018 but until today remained active for anyone to visit directly. The subreddit has a long history of sharing extremely graphic videos following tragic events and acts of violence, like the 2018 murder of two female tourists in Morocco.
[...] The subreddit remained active until some time late Friday morning Pacific Time, when Reddit banned the controversial community.
How 'hashing' could stop violent videos from spreading
Some experts say tech companies should more broadly adopt a technology they're already using to combat child pornography and copyright violations to more quickly stop the spread of these types of videos.
[...] Facebook (FB) says it took down the livestream "quickly," but hours later, re-uploads of it were still circulating on the site. Twitter suspended the original account in question and is working to remove other versions on the platform. YouTube said it is utilizing "technology and human resources" to remove content that violates their policies.
Technologists say digital hashing, which has existed for more than a decade, could be better used to prevent the re-upload of videos. Hashing wouldn't have been able to catch the original live video of the attacks, but it could stop re-uploaded copies from spreading.
Social media platforms were used like lethal weapons in New Zealand. That must change now.
Editorial judgment, often flawed, is not only possible. It's necessary.
The scale and speed of the digital world obviously complicates that immensely. But saying, in essence, "we can't help it" and "that's not our job" are not acceptable answers.
Friday's massacre should force the major platforms — which are really media companies, though they don't want to admit it — to get serious.
After New Zealand Attacks, Muslim-Americans Call For Action Against Rising Bigotry
"The New Zealand shooter was able to livestream a 17-minute video of his murderous rampage that continues to spread like wildfire online. This is flatly unacceptable. Tech companies must take all steps possible to prevent something like this from happening again," Khera said.
Previously: 49 Dead in Christchurch, New Zealand Terror Attack
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3 Original Submission #4
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 17 2019, @04:10PM (11 children)
Bittorrent for the immediate need of preserving the video. It's easy to find at the friendly, local pirate bay. My copy just finished and is on permaseed. (The capitalists don't want us to have it, and so while at the moment I'm not sure why I want it, because I won't watch it, the fact of the capitalists not wanting me to have it is good enough.)
Then we need distributed social. GNUSocial and Diaspora* come to mind. XMPP for messaging.
Those social networks could be modified to work independently of the DNS system on the clearnet. This may also be a use-case for darknets like i2p, which (and I have not looked at the code for Tor and i2p in detail) seem to be a way of getting around the DNS problem. So perhaps we should spin up some social nodes on i2p and make sure that GNUSocial and Diaspora* will function correctly on a darknet. (And if not, we're a bunch of programmers here, so let's roll up our sleeves for great justice.)
There is also freenet, which is document oriented and would make a good archival resource in addition to bittorrent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 17 2019, @06:33PM (5 children)
..and this is where I'd say it's okay even though I think removing this video from websites are okay (not blocking the sites). I don't want the videoclip to go out of existance, but it shouldn't be in peoples face.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday March 17 2019, @06:38PM (4 children)
That's fine. The video is clearly against the TOS or community guidelines of YouTube, Facebook, etc. It seems that New Zealand wants to take it a step further. We'll see how "temporary" the censorship measures turn out to be.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday March 18 2019, @11:03PM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 21 2019, @02:49AM (1 child)
New developments [arstechnica.com] have happened since the story was posted, but there is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_New_Zealand#Freedom_of_speech [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday March 21 2019, @11:42AM
Fuck it, you can finish that sentence yourself, the first half of it has put my brain in a spin.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19 2019, @04:04AM
1984 was not temporary
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 17 2019, @07:27PM (3 children)
It's not Capitalists trying to censor in this case. Their domain of censorship involves copyright and information "ownership".
This is closer to the work of the progressive left, communists, etc., who try to censor to keep people from learning anything harmful to their agenda or party, whether it's true or not. Their agenda includes censorship and disarming their citizenry, but they need support for it, and shocking events like this allow them to finally clamp down further and use it as justification.
All they have to do to is wait for every next event to whittle your freedoms and ability to fight it down to nothing.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 17 2019, @07:54PM
Do you ever listen to yourself? I mean you sound like a complete moron.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 17 2019, @07:59PM
yes and so the politicians and media can lie and misrepresent the motives of the attacker. god forbid they just post the fucking manifesto.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @07:09AM
Mind you, snuff is already illegal.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday March 18 2019, @12:11PM
For those of you looking for a footnote, the "*" in Diaspora*" is part of the name, not a footnote indicator.