Soviet Censorship

[Kamaji]

Soviet Censorship

If algorithms built to spy exist, they will be used.

Katya Sedgwick
Jan 24, 2023

There has always been an urge among us Soviet refugees to tell the story of socialism as a warning to the world. Leftist politicians in the United States may smother their ideas in do-gooder rhetoric, but we know from personal experience that any nation embarking on the road of central planning will inevitably cripple its soul.

In the past decade, however, the idea that it can get as bad here has given way to the realization that it may actually get worse. In large part, this has to do with the capabilities available to a surveillance state in the age of digital communications. Although the Soviet state suppressed free speech, the act of suppression does not guarantee the desired outcome of total thought control because, in the physical world, people always found ways to circumvent repression.

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Here and now, we have traded undetectability for the speed and ease of digital communication. We can’t even tell jokes; we only share memes. Yet if the physical world has a certain God-given bias toward liberty our interactions in today's America leave digital marks, and these records can be stored forever for future access. At the same time, we believe ourselves to be free and are therefore less cautious than the Soviets, rarely changing our language for privacy reasons.

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In the digital world, all thieves are caught; the only question is who will face consequences and when. One of the lesser revelations of the Twitter Files was that the publisher has the ability to spy on our direct messages. It was less shocking than manipulating an election and, in any event, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise—most of our emails and texts are not encrypted either. But even in the rare cases when they are encrypted, there is no guarantee that the company providing the wires won’t change its practices. Freedom of speech and privacy are now graces allotted by media conglomerates and these conglomerates are in communication with the national security apparatus.

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Uncensored internet platforms are a fiction. Creation and maintenance of a real-life spy network is an uneasy chore, even in a totalitarian society. Meanwhile, algorithms and the accumulation of data are the basic facts of digital communication. If they exist, they will be used. We need to create a culture that discourages spying and canceling and erect legal barriers to storing and retrieving online communications.

The built-in bias of digital society is toward autocracy. As of yet, nobody has gone to prison over the Twitter Files. And if nobody is getting punished for it, then government censorship is de facto legal.



Source:  https://www.theamericanconservative.com/soviet-censorship/

[Fishrrman]

Ms. Sedgwick writes:
"Uncensored internet platforms are a fiction"

There are parts of Usenet (the internet news groups) that remain uncensored.

Some groups are moderated, but others are not. You can post anything you want in them, and no one will remove it.

That may be one of the reasons that nearly all ISP's dropped their Usenet feeds.

But Usenet is still there. Perhaps the best way to access it today is "by the gigabyte". I use blocknews.net. There's no content that's "blocked" -- rather, you buy a "block of bytes" and have access until you've "used it up" (then you can buy more). Much better than paying "by the month"...