Backstory: The “RKI-Files”(Robert Koch Institute) are internal protocols of Germany’s Federal Health Agency. They were obtained through legal action under the Freedom of Information Act(FOIA). The files show that politicians ordered the experts to make up stories and narratives so as to support the government’s preconceived measures.

RKI Files: ZDF and Der Spiegel Falsify Their Reporting Ex Post

The RKI Files that Multipolar has obtained via a FOIA request have been the topic of all major media since the weekend.

The breakthrough came with a factual and solidly researched [state broadcaster] ZDF report, which was subsequently rewritten in a misleading manner, although it is still unclear by whom.

A Spiegel article published shortly thereafter was initially worded neutrally, but defamatory false statements [we used to call these lies] were subsequently added without marking them clearly. Meanwhile, [Germany’s biggest tabloid] Bild reports without defamation—and on the front page of its Monday edition.

By Paul Schreyer, Multipolar Magazin, 25 March 2024 [source]

...

• channel url: https://www.youtube.com/@DoctorBoz/videos

Today I made a post about an hexbear rule I found strange, many comrades agreed but shortly after a debate ensued, the thread is still up, although locked, so anyone who wants can take a look and judge. One of the people I was arguing with is a moderator of lemmygrad, I got banned shortly after for being "disrespectful" and a lot of my comments were removed. Anyone who wants to judge should look up the post on the community "leftist infighting" they called me stupid, they strawmanned me and yet, who was banned? Me! I will leave some pictures in the comment so you can judge

https://mobile.twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318

Time for me to find another search engine. Maybe yandex.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/184431

Version longue en français: https://www.bortzmeyer.org/coupure-russie.html

Several ISPs in France have started censoring rt.com via their DNS resolver.

Why are they doing this? I guess officially they'll say it's because of Russian propaganda about Ukraine, and that's partially correct.

But also worth pointing out is that despite very uncritical propaganda from the regime about what happens in Russia, RT is one of the only mass media (non-independent publication) where you can have decent news about social uproar in France (gilets jaunes, anti-police-abuse riots, etc).

We haven't reached the point where posts to RT are censored on social media (where it's most popular) so i can't exactly say we have "one side" to the news yet but it's getting closer.

This message is both a fuck you to french ISPs engaging in censorship (remember Sci-Hub? TPB?) and a reminder to all the Putin fanboys around here what "there's only one side to the news" really means: Russia is already there (there's a few independent publications but they've been struggling for years with State censorship and journalist assassinations) and France is getting closer (on the other side of the narrative). The rest of you who live in countries with more free speech can't even realize what information control means so please don't take these words lightly.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/103280

Of course, US and EU propaganda accounts have not been suspended :)

The operations used photos and images, shell and potentially automated accounts, and fake Uyghur profiles, to disseminate state propaganda and fake testimonials about their happy lives in the region, seeking to dispel evidence of a years-long campaign of oppression, with mass internments, re-education programs, and allegations of forced labour and sterilisation.

“The target is not actually people who are sceptical of the Chinese government, but is giving content to people who trust Chinese state media and are sceptical of western mainstream media,” said ASPI researcher Albert Zhang. “It’s propaganda appealing to the base.”

ASPI found 97% of the identified accounts had fewer than five followers, and 73% of accounts had zero. While 98% of tweets had no likes or retweets, the remainder were often boosted by Chinese diplomats and officials, spreading the content and giving it legitimacy.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/103276

Across China, queer college societies, which had been rare spaces to safely push boundaries, were being swiftly erased from the Chinese internet. In July, 14 of the largest and most prominent accounts were banned, cutting connections between thousands of members scattered across the country and casting them adrift.

The struggle has worsened. Things that were acceptable to speak about online before can now open you up to attack. It’s not just LGBTQI issues, in Mei’s view. Anything rights-related is now a target.

When the country went online in the 1990s, so did many queer people who wanted to find others like them. Gay sex was decriminalized in China in 1997, but by then, there was already a thriving online community. (...) “Censorship wasn’t as strict,” he said of those early years. “It gave you the false belief that things would get better.”

Though these apps present themselves as allies to the gay community, they have aligned with the censors. Blued assigns each user “rainbow credits,” which they deduct if users violate community regulations. Leo has found this includes trying to organize an activity. When a user loses credits, their profile faces more restrictions, the final stage of which is being frozen. Blued’s parent company is increasingly gathering a monopoly over queer online interactions — in August 2020, it bought the largest lesbian dating app, Lesdo, which it shut down this year.

If Internet algorithms can't tell the difference between criticism and advocacy, what's safe to report? Why one filmmaker believes "YouTube is unfit for the purpose for hosting journalism."

Posts:

1. https://mastodon.online/@gmate8/106358893643588970

2. https://pounced-on.me/@dogo/106369207349096797

Facebook (Messenger) Activly Censors things from Social Media places not controlled by big tech

The problem is that publishers are not actual creators of these works, scientists are – they do all the work, and academic publishers simply use their position of power in the Republic of Science to extract unjust profits. Sci-Hub does not enable piracy where creative people are deprived of the reward they deserve. It is a very different thing.

Any resemblance with 1984's Ministry of truth is pure coincidence.

This is the story of Li An, a pseudonymous former employee at ByteDance, as told to Protocol's Shen Lu.

My job was to use technology to make the low-level content moderators' work more efficient. For example, we created a tool that allowed them to throw a video clip into our database and search for similar content.

When I was at ByteDance, we received multiple requests from the bases to develop an algorithm that could automatically detect when a Douyin user spoke Uyghur, and then cut off the livestream session. (...) We eventually decided not to do it: We didn't have enough Uyghur language data points in our system, and the most popular livestream rooms were already closely monitored.

Streamers speaking ethnic languages and dialects that Mandarin-speakers don't understand would receive a warning to switch to Mandarin. (...)

The truth is, political speech comprised a tiny fraction of deleted content. Chinese netizens are fluent in self-censorship and know what not to say. (...) We mostly censored content the Chinese government considers morally hazardous — pornography, lewd conversations, nudity, graphic images and curse words — as well as unauthorized livestreaming sales and content that violated copyright.

But political speech still looms large. What Chinese user-generated content platforms most fear is failing to delete politically sensitive content that later puts the company under heavy government scrutiny. It's a life-and-death matter. (...) ByteDance does not have strong government relationships like other tech giants do, so it's walking a tightrope every second.

Many of my colleagues felt uneasy about what we were doing. Some of them had studied journalism in college. Some were graduates of top universities. They were well-educated and liberal-leaning. We would openly talk from time to time about how our work aided censorship. But we all felt that there was nothing we could do.

When it comes to day-to-day censorship, the Cyberspace Administration of China would frequently issue directives to ByteDance's Content Quality Center (内容质量中心), which oversees the company's domestic moderation operation: sometimes over 100 directives a day. They would then task different teams with applying the specific instructions to both ongoing speech and to past content, which needed to be searched to determine whether it was allowed to stand.

During livestreaming shows, every audio clip would be automatically transcribed into text, allowing algorithms to compare the notes with a long and constantly-updated list of sensitive words, dates and names, as well as Natural Language Processing models. Algorithms would then analyze whether the content was risky enough to require individual monitoring.

Around politically sensitive holidays, such as Oct. 1 (China's National Day), July 1 (the birthday of the Chinese Communist Party) or major political anniversaries like the anniversary of the 1989 protests and crackdown in Tiananmen Square, the Content Quality Center would generate special lists of sensitive terms for content moderators to use.

Influencers enjoyed some special treatment — there were content moderators assigned specifically to monitor certain influencers' channels in case their content or accounts were mistakenly deleted. Some extremely popular influencers, state media and government agencies were on a ByteDance-generated white list, free from any censorship — their compliance was assumed.

It was certainly not a job I'd tell my friends and family about with pride. When they asked what I did at ByteDance, I usually told them I deleted posts (删帖). Some of my friends would say, "Now I know who gutted my account." The tools I helped create can also help fight dangers like fake news. But in China, one primary function of these technologies is to censor speech and erase collective memories of major events, however infrequently this function gets used.

This is pretty puzzling as we know Signal is reputed to be secure (apart from having to provide a phone number to register) and although Telegram's default settings allow access to metadata and even message content ultimately, both have been banned because they have been proven before not to release any user data.

But why was WhatsApp not banned in Iran, and neither in Russia previously either? This is what is really puzzling many people? It would be pure unfounded conjecture to speculate whether WhatsApp provides metadata about who contacts whom, locations, etc to authorities as we've not seen evidence of this yet as far as I know. We do not know this but all the same, the question does need to be asked.

If you are in Iran I'd recommend though that you install XMPP, or P2P apps such as ManyVerse or similar anyway as centralised apps are just too easy to monitor or disable.

See https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/26/iran-blocks-signal-messaging-app-after-whatsapp-exodus

#technology #privacy #rights #instantmessengers #iran