This is a great way to use a service worker to circumvent censorship:
After the visitor opens the website once over a VPN, the service worker is downloaded and installed. The VPN can then be disabled, and the service worker will take over to request content from non-blocked servers, effectively acting as a proxy.
Using ligatures to create a s*** font that f***ing censors bad language automatically.
A report by the Digital Currency Initiative and the Center for Civic Media. Download the PDF or read the executive summary.
In this report, we explore two important ways structurally decentralized systems could help address the risks of mega-platform consolidation: First, these systems can help users directly publish and discover content directly, without intermediaries, and thus without censorship. All of the systems we evaluate advertise censorship-resistance as a major benefit. Second, these systems could indirectly enable greater competition and user choice, by lowering the barrier to entry for new platforms. As it stands, it is difficult for users to switch between platforms (they must recreate all their data when moving to a new service) and most mega-platforms do not interoperate, so switching means leaving behind your social network.
This looks like an interesting network-level approach to routing around the censorship of internet-hostile governments like China, Turkey, Australia, and the UK.
Rather than trying to hide individual proxies from censors, refraction brings proxy functionality to the core of the network, through partnership with ISPs and other network operators. This makes censorship much more costly, because it prevents censors from selectively blocking only those servers used to provide Internet freedom. Instead, whole networks outside the censored country provide Internet freedom to users—and any encrypted data exchange between a censored nation’s Internet and a participating friendly network can become a conduit for the free flow of information.
If you feel you are being watched, you change your behavior. Big Data is supercharging this effect.
Some interesting ideas, but the tone is so alarming as to render the message meaningless.
As our weaknesses are mapped, we are becoming too transparent. This is breeding a society where self-censorship and risk-aversion are the new normal.
I stopped reading at the point where the danger was compared to climate change.
I think this might be the first large-scale practical demonstration of the InterPlanetary File System: routing around the damage of Turkey’s censorship of Wikipedia.
Fortunately there’s a back-up on the Internet Archive, but this tale of Google’s overnight destruction of fourteen years of writing is truly infuriating.
When we use their services, we trust that companies like Google will preserve some of the most personal things we have to share. They trust that we will not read the fine print.
When you pitch your tent in someone else’s walled garden, they can tear down your home whenever they want.
Two weeks ago, writer and artist Dennis Cooper was checking his Gmail when something peculiar happened: the page was refreshed and he was notified that his account had been deactivated – along with the blog that he’d maintained for 14 years.
This is why the Indie Web exists.
His advice to other artists who work predominantly online is to maintain your own domain and back everything up.
Shane gave a talk recently where he outlined his reasons for publishing on the indie web:
Most people reading this will probably have an account at most or all of these sites: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Tumblr, Wordpress. Many also had accounts at Friendster, Tribe, MySpace, Delicious, Magnolia, Gowalla, Geocities. But no one has an account at any of those (on the second list) anymore. And all of the content that we created on those sites is gone.
All of those super emo feeling you posted to MySpace, they’re all gone. Some of the great web designers of our generation got started on Geocities. That stuff is gone forever. And sure, it was sparkling animated GIFs and neon colors. But that’s important history. Yahoo bought it, left it alone for a while, and then decided one day to turn it off.
I have to admit, my initial reaction to the idea of providing free access to some websites for people in developing countries was “well, it’s better than no access at all, right?” …but the more I think about it, the more I realise how short-sighted that is. The power of the internet stems from being a stupid network and anything that compromises that—even with the best of intentions—is an attack on its fundamental principles.
On the surface, it sounds great for carriers to exempt popular apps from data charges. But it’s anti-competitive, patronizing, and counter-productive.
I love Tim Bray’s idea for naming the response code for censored content on the internet in honour of Ray Bradbury.
Google’s datadump makes for a fascinating—and worrying—bit of data dumpster diving.
The network will interpret SOPA as damage and route around it …with SCIENCE!
A superb piece of writing from Jeffrey, scorching the screen with righteous anger. THIS. IS. IMPORTANT!
SOPA approaches the piracy problem with a broad brush, lights that brush on fire, and soaks the whole internet in gasoline.
If you live in the States, please, please, for the love of the internet, write to your representative at fightforthefuture.org/pipa
The story of Professor Myers' foiled attempt to see the creationist propaganda movie, Expelled.
Sounds like Prince is being a bit of a twat. And Flickr have become complicit with the twattiness, to a degree.
Here's an API for accessing material that is censored in countries like China or Iran.You can use this API to republish that information on other sites, circumventing the censorship.
Anina, the blogging model, is told by her agency to stop blogging because "fashion and technology do not go together". Asshats.