Hacker News with Generative AI: Censorship

RFK Jr threatens ban on federal scientists publishing in top journals (theguardian.com)
Robert F Kennedy Jr has threatened to ban government scientists from publishing in the world’s leading medical journals, which he branded “corrupt”, and to instead create alternative publications run by the state.
Science, Politics, Publishing, Journalism, Censorship
40 points by bookofjoe 30 days ago | 24 comments
The dystopia of '1984' is already here (elpais.com)
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Winston Smith, the protagonist of 1984, answers based on what his eyes tell him: there are four. Only the Party agent directing his re-education insists that there are five. By dint of electric shocks and various forms of torture, he begins to doubt his own perception, until at the end of the book he also perceives them: there are five, no doubt about it.
Dystopian Fiction, George Orwell, 1984, Censorship, Propaganda
48 points by belter 32 days ago | 11 comments
TorrentFreak is wrong about Google DNS notification (write.as)
Don't believe what you read in the medias, you already know that. In an article about DNS censorship, TorrentFreak claims that “However, unlike Cloudflare, there is no notification whatsoever [when Google public resolver censors a domain].“This is clearly false.
Google DNS, Censorship, DNS, Misinformation
58 points by Harvesterify 32 days ago | 9 comments
Apple Rejects My Name Because It Contains "Dek" – But "Dick" Is Allowed (ycombinator.com)
Apple, Censorship, Names, Technology, Humor
13 points by Kevin605 34 days ago | 1 comments
Muzzling Media Matters (status.news)
What began as Elon Musk’s personal vendetta against Media Matters has now escalated into a full-blown government-backed campaign, with Donald Trump’s FTC launching a probe into the non-profit group.
Politics, Media, Censorship, Government
8 points by doener 35 days ago | 0 comments
"C" Is for Censorship: PBS Cuts 'Art Spiegelman' Doc (documentary.org)
Twelve days before Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse (2024) was set to broadcast on April 15 across PBS stations nationwide as part of its strand American Masters, the filmmakers were told that a 90-second sequence—which shows the famous artist discussing an anti-Trump cartoon he created for the 2017 Women’s March newspaper—would be cut from the documentary.
Censorship, Documentary, Politics, Art, Media
6 points by colinprince 36 days ago | 0 comments
PBS Is Censoring a Film About Free Speech (theatlantic.com)
American Masters, an award-winning documentary series in its 39th season on PBS, promises to tell “compelling, unvarnished stories” about the nation’s most important cultural figures.
Censorship, Free Speech, Documentary Films, PBS
13 points by petethomas 36 days ago | 3 comments
Microsoft blocks emails that contain 'Palestine' after employee protests (theverge.com)
Microsoft employees have discovered that any emails they send with the terms “Palestine” or “Gaza” are getting temporarily blocked from being sent to recipients inside and outside the company.
Microsoft, Censorship, Palestine, Email, Protests
57 points by cebert 36 days ago | 27 comments
Sweden bans buying OnlyFans content (euractiv.com)
Sweden, Censorship, Content Moderation, Social Media, Online Platforms
13 points by GeoAtreides 38 days ago | 5 comments
Russia fines Apple two seconds of profit over promoting LGBTQ+ rights (appleinsider.com)
Apple has been fined $131,000 by a Russian court that found it guilty of breaking the country's laws on what it describes as LGBT propaganda.
Russia, Apple, Law, LGBTQ+, Censorship
6 points by docdeek 38 days ago | 1 comments
Constitutional Court Urged to End Piracy Blockades Now Hurting Millions (torrentfreak.com)
Cumbersome IP address blocking to fight piracy of LaLiga matches has also punished the innocent; an estimated 2.7 million innocent sites blocked during a single weekend according to recent data. Sounding the alarm over a potential threat to democracy, cybersecurity collective RootedCON has appealed to Spain's Constitutional Court to bring blocking to an end. Meanwhile, letters sent by LaLiga to journalists are being perceived as threats.
Copyright, Law, Spain, Censorship, Internet
8 points by gslin 39 days ago | 1 comments
California vanity license plate applications with reasons for rejection (2020) (github.com/veltman)
Warning: this dataset contains vulgar and offensive language (quite a lot of it).
California, Data, Government, Language, Censorship
77 points by networked 40 days ago | 83 comments
U.S.-Sanctioned Terrorists Enjoy Premium Boost on X (techtransparencyproject.org)
Accounts for sanctioned terrorists deemed a threat to U.S. national security are getting special service on X.
Social Media, Censorship, National Security, Technology
12 points by rbanffy 42 days ago | 0 comments
Grok's white genocide fixation caused by 'unauthorized modification' (theverge.com)
After xAI’s chatbot Grok spent a few hours on Wednesday telling every X user that would listen that the claim of white genocide in South Africa is highly contentious, the company has blamed the behavior on an “unauthorized modification” to Grok’s code.
Artificial Intelligence, Social Media, Controversial Topics, Censorship
199 points by doener 42 days ago | 157 comments
Leeks and Leaks (haxx.se)
On the completely impossible situation of blocking the Tor .onion TLD to avoid leaks, but at the same time not block it to make users able to do what they want.
Privacy, Tor, Censorship
123 points by mrmanner 42 days ago | 17 comments
Elon Musk's Grok AI Can't Stop Talking About 'White Genocide' (wired.com)
A chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence startup xAI appeared to be suffering from a glitch Wednesday when it repeatedly brought up white genocide in South Africa in response to user queries about unrelated topics on X.
Artificial Intelligence, Elon Musk, Social Media, Censorship, Racism
24 points by zzzeek 44 days ago | 4 comments
"Europe Is Jailing People for Online Speech," by Prof. Yascha Mounk (reason.com)
"Europe Really Is Jailing People for Online Speech," by Prof. Yascha Mounk
Free Speech, Censorship, Europe, Law
9 points by mdp2021 46 days ago | 13 comments
'Orwellian': planetary scientists outraged over deletion of research records (nature.com)
Science, Research, Censorship, Planetary Science
19 points by rntn 49 days ago | 2 comments
Wikipedia legally challenges 'flawed' online safety rules (bbc.com)
Wikipedia is taking legal action against new Online Safety Act regulations it says could threaten the safety of its volunteer editors and their ability to keep harmful content off the site.
Wikipedia, Law, Censorship, Online Safety
7 points by hmac1282 49 days ago | 0 comments
Wikipedia legally challenges 'flawed' online safety rules (bbc.co.uk)
Wikipedia is taking legal action against new Online Safety Act regulations it says could threaten the safety of its volunteer editors and their ability to keep harmful content off the site.
Wikipedia, Law, Censorship, Online Safety
7 points by todsacerdoti 50 days ago | 0 comments
Is a Smaller Internet Better? (ycombinator.com)
Internet, Technology, Privacy, Censorship, Social Media
3 points by sawyersweet 51 days ago | 0 comments
"Police state" search got censored in Italy (ycombinator.com)
In recent years, the Italian government has been applying laws "to ensure security" considered by many different methods to restrict the freedom of citizens, easily condemn at will people considered hostile (as with the new law that allows to arrest anyone who tests positive for substances in the table of illegal substances while driving in any case, without the person being actually altered or alterable) and in fact making Italy more and more a police state.
Italy, Censorship, Law Enforcement, Human Rights
28 points by richsnipe 51 days ago | 11 comments
Is Amazon Censoring 2010's Robin Hood in the United States? (edrants.com)
An eagle-eyed TikTok user noticed that the prologue text from Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood had been removed from the Amazon streaming version. I have confirmed that this is strictly an American Amazon issue and that the text is visible on other steaming platforms.
Amazon, Streaming Services, Censorship, Robin Hood, Movies
9 points by imperialdrive 53 days ago | 3 comments
Censoring Social Media (tbray.org)
In mid-April we learned about Bluesky censoring accounts as demanded by the government of Türkiye. While I haven’t seen coverage of who the account-holders were and what they said, the action followed on protests against Turkish autocrat Erdoğan for ordering the arrest of an opposition leader — typical behavior by a thin-skinned Führer-wannabe. This essay concerns how we might think about censorship, its mechanics, and how the ecosystems built around ActivityPub and ATproto can implement and/or fight it.
Social Media, Censorship, Turkey, Online Communities
29 points by DanAtC 54 days ago | 7 comments
Threat of tech bros, foreign interference & disinformation to press freedom (theconversation.com)
Media freedom has long been essential to healthy democracy. It is the oxygen that fuels informed debate, exposes corruption and holds power to account. But around the world, that freedom is under sustained attack.
Media Freedom, Democracy, Censorship, Journalism, Foreign Interference
13 points by billybuckwheat 56 days ago | 1 comments
Wikipedia's LTA (Long Term Abuse) List (wikipedia.org)
This page summarises a limited number of long term abusers, to assist members of the community who believe they may have cause to report another incident.
Wikipedia, Abuse, Community, Online Harassment, Censorship
30 points by simonebrunozzi 59 days ago | 2 comments
The Naval Academy Canceled My Lecture on Wisdom (nytimes.com)
For the past four years, I have been delivering a series of lectures on the virtues of Stoicism to midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and I was supposed to continue this on April 14 to the entire sophomore class on the theme of wisdom.
Education, Philosophy, Military, Censorship
23 points by rmason 59 days ago | 5 comments
FTC's 'Tech Censorship' Investigation Is Censoring Comments About 'Censorship' (techdirt.com)
The FTC’s politically motivated inquiry into “tech censorship” has managed to prove exactly the opposite of what it intended: the government agency is now actively censoring public comments from people complaining about being censored by tech platforms.
Government Regulation, Censorship, Social Media
51 points by hn_acker 59 days ago | 9 comments
Congress moves forward with new attempts at internet censorship (techdirt.com)
Here’s a puzzle: How do you write a law that’s so badly designed that (1) the people it’s meant to help oppose it, (2) the people who hate regulation support it, and (3) everyone involved admits it will be abused? The answer, it turns out, is the Take It Down Act.
Politics, Censorship, Legislation, Internet Regulation
20 points by theahura 60 days ago | 0 comments
The Chinese artist hated by the Chinese government – An interview with Badiucao (sfg.media)
Intolerance toward freedom of thought and expression, xenophobia, and censorship are hallmarks of any authoritarian regime.
Art, Censorship, China, Politics, Interview
4 points by suracii 61 days ago | 0 comments