this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
51 points (100.0% liked)
Public resource but access restricted and exclusive
46 readers
2 users here now
This community tracks restricted access resources (generally websites) that are supposed to serve taxpayers and the general public, but they fail in that duty by imposing arbitrary restrictions on access. This is where we document these cases.
Most often, it is the Tor community who is marginalised by incompetantly implemented infosystems. This community will be mostly littered with references to tor-hostile public resources to a fatiquing extent, but this is expected. It is not necessarily limited to Tor. Any demographic of people who are refused service would have a relevant story here. E.g. someone traveling outside their country and being denied access to a homeland website on the basis of presumed IP geolocation.
This is very closely related to the !digi_fiefdom_required@lemmy.sdf.org community. But there are some nuanced differences. Not all fiefdoms are necessarily always restricted access. E.g. some rare Facebook pages are reachable to non-FB users.
And not all manifestations of restricted access entail a fiefdom. E.g. it’s increasingly common for a gov website to block Tor visitors at the firewall without involving a digital fiefdom.
Cases of Cloudflare, Facebook, LinkedIn and the like can be crossposted in many situations. They are a fiefdom walled garden and also commonly configured to restrict access. IDK.. use your best judgement. Might suffice to just post in !digi_fiefdom_required@lemmy.sdf.org in those cases.
Also related: !netneutrality@sopuli.xyz
Scope and rules:
What is not relevant here:
- NGOs
- non-profits
- anything in the private sector
This community is focused on tax-funded government programs and services like public education, social services, voter reg, courts, legal statutes, etc. NGOs and non-profits may exist for the pubic benefit, but if they are not funded by force (taxation) then they are not really relevant here.
Recommended style:
- the title should mention the jurisdiction (state/province and/or country)
founded 2 weeks ago
MODERATORS
Filing a FOIA is free, but the agency is allowed to charge for gathering the info and sending it to you. They should tell you how much it will cost before they do it.
Sounds like a FOIA doesn’t help then. If they are compensated sufficiently for their labor and cost, then FOIA reqs would fail to pressure them to make their website more accessible. That sucks. It means (AFAICT) we have no push back mechanism against lousy/enshitified gov websites.
I suppose we can make requests on paper (not expressed as a FOIA), but then they can simply ignore it. Which is the case with some gov offices (yeah, I already tried.. sec of states generally ignore requests for info that come by mail).