If they censor too much it's "problematic" because they're overreaching and deciding for the people. If they don't censor enough then it's "problematic" because they're culturally insensitive to the local sense of decency, they're imposing western standards or somesuch. They're damned if they do, damned if they don't.
I think that's BS. They're an American company, providing a product that people can feel free not to use if they're so inclined. They're not imposing western standards; that's like saying McDonald's is "imposing" a western diet by selling hamburgers in Riyadh.
A better analogy might be a western outlet which, outside of that country, normally sells something which is considered illegal.
"Damned if they do and damned if they don't" doesn't mean damned by the same parties. They are in hot water with the authorities if they bring in the contraband, and vilified by some of the local users and human rights activists if they don't.
India is the first country in the world where McDonald's
does not offer any beef or pork items. McDonald's has
developed a menu especially for India with vegetarian
selections to suit the Indian palate, and has also re-
engineered its operations to address the special
requirements of vegetarians. Special care is taken to
ensure that all vegetable products are prepared
separately, using dedicated equipment and utensils.
As examples, look at Kong Qingdong in China and Vladimir Zhirinovsky in Russia. Two of the better known people who like to make these sorts of arguments.
That's why I think the Tor project is so important.
It gives people within those cultures an ability to access information they're not supposed to be able to, while also helping protect them from those in power.
Yes - I think it'd be great if American companies didn't build the censorship or surveillance infrastructure for these countries and I think it's wrong that American companies enable these governments to do this to their own people, but at least through Tor we can side step the cultural imperialism argument.
Only those who want it will seek it out.
Edit: If you're interested in running a non-exit relay, check out this guide I made - it's pretty easy to do (plus you get a cool shirt after 60 days).
American companies also support their own government's efforts to imprison people for visiting the wrong websites (gambling, piracy, child porn, etc). Isn't it a bit arbitrary to accept that in America but not other countries? You may think free political speech is important, but it can cost a lot of lives if it leads to a civil war or widespread riots. Not all countries are stable enough to cope with those risks.
> There is absolutely no excuse for a company—particularly one that has made commitments to free expression by being a founding member of the Global Network Initiative—to regulate speech beyond that which is required.
Absolutely is a big word. Here is a technical excuse: the search index is collected and classified by algorithms. The algorithms are not perfect in their classification, and so there has to be a margin for error.
> Neither Egypt nor Lebanon, for example, block most sexual content or require intermediaries to do so.
See, weasel word: most. So they do block some sexual content? If you want a fine-grained filter to just block that particular sexual content, you have to improve the robots. That costs time and money, and creates risk. Maybe it's easier and legally safer to just block all sexual content and be done with it. In other words, over-zealous filtering, or at least some of it, could be the consequence of cool pragmatism and nothing more deeply sinister.
Yes, the default is "SafeSearch" enabled. Bing and Google filter for everyone... it's not opt-in. You opt-out, as would people living in "strict markets".
I don't believe bing/google are required by law in the U.S. to do this (correct me if I'm wrong)... so the e.f.f. arguments are a bit hypocritical by not including, essentially, the rest of the world.
There is absolutely no excuse for a company—particularly one that has made commitments to free expression by being a founding member of the Global Network Initiative—to regulate speech beyond that which is required.
Your search results aren't speech. While I am opposed to almost all censorship, I can't get too worked up about this, because Microsoft understandably doesn't want to get prosecuted/ sued/ protested against in countries with much more conservative social norms. Of course, Bing is just a delivery service for information about what sort of things exist on the internet, but given the well-known human proclivity to 'blame the messenger' and Microsoft's global reach caution is understandable.
Maybe this points to a larger problem - the primary way to navigate the web today is centralized search engines. So much so that when you disable the address bar search features in browsers, people stumble quickly. While search results aren't speech, they are how people get to speech.
While search results aren't speech, they are how people get to speech.
At least in the USA -
You aren't guaranteed a platform for your speech, and you aren't guaranteed other people will listen to you. All you are guaranteed is that the government won't persecute you for saying it.
So a private company that does not promote your speech, is not a violation of the 1st Amendment.
Absolutely. It's a real problem and if I were in a country where search results are censored (by the government) or restricted (by the search vendor) I would certainly be doing whatever I could to find a way around that. This is unfortunate because now all the legal risk falls on me (eg if I am caught using Tor or somesuch) and a search engine operator is much better able to bear the legal risk and uncertainty than individual citizens of a repressive country or region.
On the other hand, I don't think the search firm is obliged to put itself or its employees in legal or political harm's way by exporting their home country's standards of free speech. Even in the US, I see Google is regularly blamed for providing results that are deemed racist or offensive even when those results are skewed by the behavior of users, deliberate or otherwise.
I think you misunderstand the case in question, but I'm also responsible for a poor choice of words.
If you're talking about the Coastnews case, then the speech in question is that of the search engine operator, eg Google, Bing or whoever - not that of the person conducting the search. This is what I meant when I say 'Your search results' but on re-reading I can see that this only confused matters.
So let me put it this way: Your search results are not part of your free speech, but of the search engine operator's. If a firm chooses not to share information with you because of where you live, the firm is exercising its own right to free speech, notwithstanding the fact that you end up getting less information than you hoped for and that this is undesirable for you.
A lot of websites are censored around the world, and it's not just from search results: you can't access the actual sites. In the middle east, it's porn. In China, no Facebook. In France, it's Netflix. I see no reason why this is on Microsoft.
Don't dating sites have an 18 year age limit despite different states having different ages of consent, etc? It's just easier than making a fine grained filter.
Not sure. Although I have seen many sites and companies have contests where it's not applicable to certain provinces or states. Also I think states vs countries is a bit different. Why not then just apply the saudi standards to our content as well?
Regimes like that already did and they already do. And besides, how do you ask shareholders to accept just pulling (which is what this would be) from a market on ethical grounds?
No, you'd have to get a law from the US government to make companies take such losses on ethical grounds. Some companies might of course pull from the US market to avoid pulling from the world's dictatorships, but probably not the big American ones.
More accurately, it's set as default and requires a user changing their region to turn it off. Still not great for freedom of information, but not quite as bad as mandatory.
If you want to come into my house and use the internet, that's fine. But you will do so through my firewall. If the EFF then writes an article about my 'restrictive' firewall. I'll tell them to politely fsck off.
I am not condoning the filtering of search results, and never will. In the grand picture we all know that this censoring gig never works. But where does the EFF get this idea that they have the right to berate a company and insinuate that they disobey a governments rules/laws/standards in their own country? It's a bit much 'aint it?
>"There is absolutely no excuse for a company—particularly one that has made commitments to free expression by being a founding member of the Global Network Initiative—
to regulate speech beyond that which is required" .
You are misunderstanding the EFF - they are not asking Microsoft to disobey the government but for Microsoft to not go overboard with the censoring. Currently they are censoring more than they are being asked to ('beyond that which is required' bit).
It's like they are adding more restrictions to your already restrictive firewall - restrictions that you didn't ask for. To answer your question: no, it's not a bit much.
If they don't censor countries will just block them, it's the same fiasco Google had with Google years ago. Frankly I think it's better to censor and be there than to not be there at all. At least then people can maybe find ways around the filters to get the information they deserve to have unfettered access to.
During the Reddit debacle many people were pointing out that private companies are free to remove anything they want and it doesn't constitute censorship. So this is certainly not a free speech issue if MS goes above the bare legal requirements, right? They're just removing/hiding objectionable content.
Seriously, pornography counts as "free speech" now? Please guys, can't we fight for something worthwhile?
If I had to give my opinion, I'd say that I actually find it quite laudable that Microsoft bothers to heed local values. It shows respect (and a good sense for business), kinda like not selling pork in the UAE...
I live in a harmonized country where we get to use a harmonized version of bing. It filters out many legitimate search requests, not just porn. You might search for something completely innocuous that happens to have the word girl in it (e.g. the TV series golden girls from the 80s), and it will be harmonized, I mean censored.
The filters are necessarily inaccurate and will affect legitimate search queries. You probably wouldn't use them in your western country even if you were a conservative Puritan.
I understand that it can be a pain for the users - but unless the filter out a lot more than the original article says, I find the label of "censorship" and "free speech impediment" highly exaggerated.
About 5% of my searches are blocked based on keywords alone, and none of those are meant to be pornographic. I believe, and have found from my own experience, that censorship is impossible without collateral damage. It is unavoidable.
Yes absolutely everyting counts as free speech. That's the whole point. Neither you, nor anybody else gets to have an opinion on the content on behalf on anyone else. Porn is merely an example. Once you allow one through there's always a way to expand it. We've seen this often enough now for it not to be a simple platitude or a slippery slope argument.
Of course in addition to trusting someone else's opinion you also have to trust their competence.
I want to know what you are doing that you not only ran across tons of CP, but cross-compared the amount of CP on Google and Bing? And are now telling tons of people about all the CP you've seen?
I have no idea why you'd discuss this with a deputy (who has no power to do anything), but refuse to discuss it with the FBI (because they "obviously know"), I also don't know why the heck your post contains a strange offtopic diatribe about the Challenger Disaster, or why you've lamenting under $5 in postage.
The whole post is super strange and disjoined. I don't even follow the thought process.
I know a woman who was held in sexual bondage for five years by a serial killer. I believe her because I know her quite well and because I once met the serial killer.
She went to the FBI but they did not believe her.
My plan is to substantiate her claims then turn the evidence over to law enforcement. The reason I have not already done so is opportunity cost.
I know many unusual people, not just my friend and her sexual predator.
A while back I did report the murder of a drug informant. I dont know how that turned out because law enforcement officers do not discuss their investigations with the public until after they make an arrest.
I also scared the crap out of an FBI agent by explaining how to make a high explosive detonator out of any flavor of Kool-Ade mix other than lemon. There are other precursors but all can be purchased at any supermarket.
I know several convicted murderers; some are good friends of mine. A few I met in the forensic unit of Western State Hospital in Lakewood Washington. Were they to overcome their madness they would be discharged but that is uncommon.
Law enforcement officers appreciate the assistance.
The reason I discuss the Challenger Disaster was to explain my ethical stance on who is really to blame when something bad happens. When a bad person does a bad thing I regard them as doing what comes naturally; those who I regard as morally reprehensible are the ones who were in a position to prevent the problem, or to fix it afterward yet chose not to.
My server logs tell me that a whole bunch of people who are in a position to fix this problem just read my essay.
The draft I presently have is quite half-baked. It's hard for me to write not because the topic is so painful but because I have persistent insomnia; the insomnia causes bad headaches.
> While most blame NASA for shady engineering I blame Morton Thiokol engineer Roger Boisjoly. He recommended the launch be scrubbed when he filed a safety report with his management.
> I regard Boisjoly as ultimately responsible because he knew the o-rings were out of thermal tolerance yet he failed in his effort to get the launch scrubbed.
You're saying we should blame lower-level employees when their managers deliberately ignore their advice? No, just no. Management's job is to take the advice given and choose how to act. If we follow your philosophy then not only are we putting blame on the wrong people, but you're basically telling people they need to constantly try to undermine their supervisors, because it'll be their ass on the line if they fail to push a certain course of action.
The reason that American Civil Engineers require a Professional Engineer license is that an incompetently designed gas pipe exploded and killed three hundred people. There are other kinds of PEs as well - aerospace, mechanical, chemical engineers and so on.
In Canada, one must have the Canadian equivalent of a PE to practice as an engineer of any sort. That includes MCSEs; the Ontario Society of Engineers just loves to sue MCSEs and their exam "preparation" schools - and the OSE always wins its cases.
In all seriousness and concern for your well-being, please consider seeing your doctor or mental health professional. As someone with affected family members, your writing is coming across as extremely schizotypal and a serious episode is something I wouldn't wish on anyone.
Among the reasons that I am busted flat is that I regard publicly traded companies as a profoundly bad idea. I am very strongly in favor of investment but feel the investors should be paid with dividends, as well as by the growing value of their equity.
Value and price are quite different things.
Despite that I was - until recently - unemployed, I avoid applying either to publicly traded companies or privately held ones whose investors intend to exit.
The company I work for now is a privately funded partnership. Thats how it commonly works in most fields other than tech. There are lots of privately held tech companies too but they are hard to find because they dont get much press.
I wrote Living with Schizoaffective Disorder specifically to help people like you.
That is, many work tirelessly to help mentally ill people such as me. But I myself work tirelessly to help those such as yourself who are not mentally understand people like your family, as well as to point out to the sane that reality is not as concrete as it commonly seems.
Consider that of all those who "shed their vehicles" in the 1997 Heavens Gate mass suicide, only one was truly mentally ill. The the minds of the others were captivated by their cult leader Marshall Applewhite.
I once escaped what should have been a veryy, very secure osychiatric intensive care unit by inducing a psychiatric nurse to hallucinate. I did so not to hurt anyone but so I would have a topic for yet another essay. There was an All Points Bulletin out fir me all over the San Francisco Bay Area. San Mateo PD Officer Wayne Haas pissed himself laughing when I dropped him a dime to explain that I had been staying in the guest room if a wealthy friend, dining in the very finest restaurants and posting new drafts if my essay from one of my very favorite cafes.
Thatbessay is no longer online but I will repost it, tonight maybe but I am very tired as I exoerience chronic insomnia.
I have been discussing this with law enforcement since 2013, and with my shrinks since 1985.
In 1979, when I was in the youth conservation corps an electrical fault set fire to our dormitory's payphone. That being our only phone I figured everyone would exit the building. Instead everyone including the adult staff sat quietly as the flames grew. Our only exit was through the flames.
So finally I grabbed a paper bag out of a trash can, covered my hand with it then slapped my palm over the melted burning plastic, cutting off it's air supply.
Everyone else called me a hero. I pointed out that I was taught how to put out fires when I was a Boy Scout.
It is quite common that a Boy Scout gives his lfe to save that of another
