Zhang Zhan, a 37-year old journalist in China, has been sentenced to 4 years in jail for reporting about the COVID-19 outbreak in China. Read more ⟶
Stop using Apple Devices and Software!
Apple appears to have become the monster that they initially set out to fight. Read more ⟶
More censorship coming to the Internet Archive, Mailchimp, GitHub and other platforms
The Internet Archive posted on their blog about implementing “fact checks” and “context” notifications on the Wayback Machine, similar to how various social media platforms such as Facebook have implemented for a while now. You may recall that I blogged a few months ago about censorship on the Internet Archive by requiring users to login to view certain content. Read more ⟶
Censorship by Google Drive and Google Docs
Back in June 2019 I had warned about relying on cloud platforms for your business and for storing your (personal) data, with some examples of what could go wrong. With all the recent online censorship related to the COVID-19 ‘pandemic’ more examples are piling up showing what can happen when you rely on the current centralized Software As A Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platforms. Read more ⟶
Censorship on the Internet Archive by requiring login
A few weeks ago I had noticed for the first time that the Internet Archive started requiring people to login before they are able to view certain content. To be clear, the login is not required for all content but only for specific content. Also, the login requirement is placed on the content after a while — probably when they receive complaints about it. Read more ⟶
A recent April 6th 2020 David Icke interview by Brian Rose from London Real has been taken down by YouTube shortly after it was streamed live to hundreds of thousands of viewers on the platform. Read more ⟶
The COVID-19 Deception
It’s very sad to have to watch the world be swept towards mass hysteria on the basis of misleading figures concerning the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. How many people realize that the figures for the number of infections and deaths worldwide give a distorted view of the real situation? Read more ⟶
China’s “New IP” sounds like Orwell’s “New Speak”
The criminal government of China, through one of their working arms called Huawei, are proposing to replace the underlying protocol of the Internet with a new protocol they call “New IP”. And if you’re a regular reader of my blog you know that this is serious cause for concern as neither the criminal Chinese government nor Huawei can be trusted. Read more ⟶
Archive and save this website!
Yesterday I posted about the fact that censorship on the Internet is getting worse and that the criminal governments around the world are increasingly more often trying to censor parts or all of the Internet to stifle dissent. Read more ⟶
Internet Throttling is being used for Censorship
Private Internet Access blogged about a recent report by Access Now (February 24th 2020) titled “2019 #KeepItOn – Targeted, Cut Off, and Left in the Dark” (PDF) where they look at Internet shutdowns by criminal governments globally for the year 2019. I highly recommend reading the whole report to get an idea of how bad the situation is in various countries and the world in general. Read more ⟶
GitHub shadow bans user and blocks access to repos
A software developer from Russia found out recently that his account on GitHub had been shadow banned. He was the only one still able to see his account and access his repositories; all other users got a 404 message in their web browsers. In an article titled “How GitHub blocked me (and all my libraries)” (March 11th 2020), ironically published on Medium, he details his experience with GitHub. Read more ⟶
Examples of Authoritarian Blindness and the Danger of Censorship
An article on The Atlantic titled “How the Coronavirus Revealed Authoritarianism’s Fatal Flaw” (February 22nd 2020) discusses specific examples of what they term “authoritarian blindness”. A virus that could have been contained instead resulted in a global crisis because important information was being censored by an authoritarian system. Read more ⟶
Hello slaves. I’m leaving most social media platforms today, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Twitter. For now, I’ll still be on LinkedIn and GitHub. Back in 2017 I had already decided that I was going to leave the major social media platforms because of all the censorship going on. Things have only gotten worse when it comes to censorship, and in addition we have all the privacy violations, tracking and security issues.
I’m leaving most platforms effective immediately; I’ll leave the accounts online for now but will not be monitoring, posting or commenting. Do not contact me there and do not expect a response. I’m using a longer grace period for WhatsApp of a month or two, but have already moved to using Signal for instant messaging; WhatsApp cannot be trusted anymore.
For the latest updates follow my blog through the RSS feeds listed on the sidebar on the blog homepage, and/or subscribe via email to updates using the subscription form there. For the latest contact information visit the contact page on my website.
Censorship and Shadow Banning on Reddit
Censorship, shadow banning, deboosting and deplatforming are hot topics these days on the Internet, especially when it concerns the major social media platforms. I’ve blogged about this often in the last few months, and this time I want to detail one of my recent experiences on Reddit so that others can learn from it. Read more ⟶
Pointing out mental illness appears to be “hate speech” on Facebook
Well here you have it, pointing out serious forms of mental illness appears to be “hate speech” on Facebook. A link to my recent blog post “LGBT pride month: There is no pride in mental illness” is being censored by Facebook, probably after being reported by people who suffer from the described forms of mental illness. Read more ⟶
Google manipulates search results for mass social engineering
A few days ago Project Veritas released some videos and internal documents from Google showing exactly how Google is manipulating the public in what can only be described as a mass social engineering effort. You can hear employees from Google, who were apparently recorded without their knowledge, describe what they are doing and why. Read more ⟶
Made in China, Exported to the World: The Surveillance State
An interesting article on The New York Times discusses how China is exporting its surveillance technology to the rest of the world: Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has vastly expanded domestic surveillance, fueling a new generation of companies that make sophisticated technology at ever lower prices. A global infrastructure initiative is spreading that technology even further. Read more ⟶
Medium suspended my account
Here’s another example showing why you can’t trust and rely on the major content publishing and social media websites these days. Two days ago I received an email from Medium that they suspended my account (which I’ve had at least since February 2016). I didn’t receive any warnings beforehand nor a chance to possibly correct any mistakes. Read more ⟶
Deboosting and Shadow Banning on Facebook and other social media platforms
Project Veritas published an interview with a former Facebook employee revealing, among other things, the fact that Facebook has been censoring information on its platform with functionality called “deboosting”. This functionality enables Facebook to actively limit the reach certain information has by blocking (groups of) people from seeing it — the opposite effect of boosting content on Facebook. Read more ⟶
The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America
The Verge published an interesting article about what the people at Facebook in charge of censoring content experience while doing their “work”. I found the following quote hilarious: The moderators told me it’s a place where the conspiracy videos and memes that they see each day gradually lead them to embrace fringe views. […] A former employee told me he has begun to question certain aspects of the Holocaust. Read more ⟶