Please read this first post before casting your vote. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- How restricted do you think your internet is to access all the information available in the web? Here are the short descriptions of each poll option above: Extreme Popular websites also get blocked. Very High Educational websites relating to non-family friendly contents also get blocked. High Websites with seemingly innocent contents also get blocked. Moderate Only websites with commonly considered as inappropriate contents get blocked. Low Most websites with commonly considered as inappropriate contents are easily accessible. None No apparent form of censorship ever encountered. This poll covers only the internet access for home use. Environments which are designed to be restricted such as school, university, public library etc do not count. Also, this poll does not apply to self attempted censorship by the usage of web filtering, web ratings, firewalls and any other means in which you have control over the instruments. For the sake of relevancy and the life span of this thread, please don't post highly specific information such as, but not limited to: the name of your ISP, your residing location and your political views. Thank you. EDIT: I've explained my definition of internet censorship in post #11 below should it is required.
Once in a while I run into a site that I just can't get to. I can't say if it's the result of actual censorship, a DDOS attack, or a failure of the net in between me and the site. On a few occasions I've found sites inaccessible by direct browsing but easily available via Tor. Same type of situation. Nothing that points directly to censorship, just can't get there.
I chose "None." But what does "blocked" mean? That a message appears stating that the site is blocked? Or if the page just doesn't load (404 error)? If a page doesn't load now, but does later, I assume it's not censored, rather, a temporary glitch. How is one to know that a web site which is completely inaccessible is being censored, or has been removed by the author, or has changed locations with no referral? I find inaccessible pages all of the time when clicking on links from a Search Engine. I don't assume they have been censored. How will we know that if someone in this poll chooses one of your censorship options, that censorship in fact was involved and not something else? I don't think this will be a very scientific survey as it is currently set up. ---- rich
Extremely self-censored. I'm assuming this thread is in the area of this type stuff: https://www.ivpn.net/internet-censorship/
It is difficult to answer as theoretically there is no censorship on the Internet except for well-known countries like China and North Korea. In practice when information appears and has provocative contents that might have political, military, top secret connections, it is silently terminated. I have experienced such occurrences particularly with issues related to energy and U.F.Os. Videos are blocked with a general statement relating to copyright infringement or withdrawn from the source, websites won’t connect anymore because of an error, dead links etc. People often refer to these interpretations as conspiracy theories, but it is actually used by affected parties to introduce an element of uncertainty, and create an environment with very few plausible scenarios leading people to dismiss the whole thing as too farfetched. Of course there can be many reasons for things to disappear, sometimes it is technical, but I am convinced that there are people who have the authority to act on the Internet when deemed necessary unfortunately.
Agree. I voted None, but I never tried illegal or " sensitive " ( political, military, industrìal research... ) sites, so I can't really say, and I believe too that there are people that have the authority and the power to block, delete, make not appear.
None. The government here where I live is illegitimate but to this day, they haven't touch the internet. I think I would know if my searches or browsing was being censored. As far as I can tell, my internet is as unrestricted as it can be. Bo
Okay, okay... it looks like I failed to make myself clear on the first day. I'm sorry for that. Put it this way, it is called censorship if it met these criteria: - you end up in a redirection page when trying to access a website - you can access a blocked website by using a VPN, a web proxy, Tor etc A simple 404 page could mean anything, so it does not necessarily mean your government is trying to restrict your internet access everytime you have a 404. A little bit. The poll's scope is more limited than that. I'm not going as far as imprisonment.
Where does it fit in if you click on a page and it never loads? There's no 404, no error, etc, the connection just never completes? DNS appears to work. I have run into instances where I couldn't access pages directly but could reach them via Tor.
Well yes, but there's no indication whether the page was intentionally blocked or not, right? I myself had encountered a lot of them. My point was, when you go accessing a website and see a page saying things like "STOP! This is FBI and the website you are trying to access has been affiliated with drugs and gambling" and when you try to access it with Tor's exit nodes overseas, you can open it, then your internet is restricted.
That's the problem. There's no real way to tell. Another instance that comes to mind is when the TrueCrypt site changed. I got a different page via Tor than I did connecting directly.
I see. A redirection page saying nonsense such as "protecting you from bad websites" is the best I've got to describe the non-extreme situations, though I'm not saying extreme censorship wouldn't have redirection pages. But obviously enough people should be able to tell if they're on the extreme level if they can't access Twitter as a whole even without encountering any redirection page.
Restrictions by my ISP: None by my DNS: Moderate, I use it it mainly to block porno, but it also blocks bloody stuff I like and privacy related webpages, because they fall into proxy category. by my browser: Low, it notifies me about dangerous webpages, but I have had to disable malware protection, because it actually prevented me from visiting them.
“Censor: a person who examines books, movies, letters, etc., and removes things that are considered to be offensive, immoral, harmful to society, etc.”(Merriam-Webster). Following this definition there is no censorship on the Internet, occasionally some websites are rightly obscured because they have broken the local law, and it doesn’t constitute censorship, it is rather a remedy to criminal activity. Nobody will ever censor anything explicitly, that is invoking some kind of authority, because nobody has the right to do so, and could be challenged in a court of law. Therefore when it’s happening it is necessarily done anonymously. By the way I voted moderate...
Extreme: Facebook, Twitter, Google, and many other sites and services are blocked here and everything else except Chinese sites run slower (fwiw, I consider that censorship). Chinese alternatives might be fine (spying aside), but they are harder to use for me because I don't speak Chinese. Of course I use a VPN to get around it, but it's still a major PITA.
My ISP's DNS blocks one site I know of. Easily bypassed by using a different DNS--Google's work's fine--, or a VPN or a proxy. I censor every bit of advertising I possibly can at the browser level and I'm moving it slowly to the router level. Does amazing things for privacy, security and bandwidth.
@Osaban The thing is, I don't use Merriam-Webster's definition of censorship. To rehash my point, by censorship I meant: any resulting attempts to limit the interaction of the users to the outside world which are not being done nor being desired by the users themselves, indicated by the presence of a redirection page or another form of warning. @pajenn May I ask if you get a redirection page when you try to access a blocked website when not using a VPN?
If anyone is not sure what Internet censorship is, read about internet censorship in Cuba, you ll get a good idea how bad and restricted it can get. Bo
You know Bo, when I saw your post about internet censorship in Cuba I became curious and went checking it myself. Aside from knowing that Cuba is very evil, I stumbled upon a related link posted in the article which provides quite a good reading (at least to me anyway): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_by_country I honestly didn't expect Wikipedia to have this.
