#digitalcensorship

[whattheduckdude]

Political Censorship and Digital Addiction: What is Hidden by One of the Most Popular Applications in the World?

TikTok is a unique platform. Of course, the very idea of such a system of video content consumption is not new, but the scale with which this platform has spread to the whole world is amazing. Someone may not like this application, but to deny the fact that it is a popular media platform, would be foolish. I used this application myself for a while, but now I am sick of it. The very design of the application and its functionality is configured to completely disable human perception and create addiction as if it were not a site with video, but heroin or cigarettes. Perhaps it is because of these factors, this application has become so popular. However, this is a topic for a separate study, and so I suggest that we stop there. TikTok positions itself as an entertainment application where there is no room for negativity and politics. However, the creators deny the existence of censorship in this application. But the facts say the opposite: originally in TikTok, it was impossible to speak negatively about China and its government. Now the resource has become more regionally oriented, and, for example, in the Russian segment, it has become undesirable to talk about Putin. At the same time, there is no prohibition to talk about drugs unless you disguise the most obvious elements of the description of illegal substances use. Although there is no need to even bypass prohibitions lately — I am increasingly seeing candid videos about drugs and their use. But talking about government or terrorism is still forbidden, the application has two main methods of censorship: blocking and freezing of displays. And the second method is the most unfair because the user can't understand why he doesn't have views: because of censorship or poor quality of content. Thus, TikTok's main censorship policy is that politics and terrorism are not fun, and they have entertainment content for teenagers. Why drugs and debauchery are fun, the creators of the application do not say. Fortunately, despite the bans, more and more social content appears on the site, and this is great. P.S. In this application, there was also censorship of the disabled to avoid them being bullied. Now it seems to have been fixed, but it was strange. *link*

[whattheduckdude]

Capitalism has won again.

I wrote a lot about the rules that media platforms themselves create. However, YouTube has a more interesting story about censorship. Of course, this video hosting has strict rules as well as other sites. For example, it prohibits videos and advertisements that contain information about the purchase of drugs, scenes of violence, calls to murder or content of a sexual nature. Nevertheless, even these rules, which seem to be spelled out in the legislation of many countries, are often violated without any punishment from YouTube. It is worth saying that content that obviously violates community rules is removed after a while. However, I personally have seen more than once videos with content for pedophiles (but not porn, because it would have been immediately blocked), as well as advertising of illegal in Russia drug sales service in the CIS countries before each video on this video hosting (it lasted for a month). But these are examples of classical censorship, which is present on many modern popular media platforms. On YouTube sometimes there are booms of the same type of content: when many channels start creating the same low-grade content to capture the media space and make profit. Such videos may not violate the rules of the site, but due to consumer dissatisfaction, many advertisers began to leave the site. Then YouTube, in order not to lose profits, began to delete all the videos and block the channels that were somehow involved in such booms. Thus, it is no longer YouTube, but advertisers decided what can and can not be shown on this platform. There are certain advantages to this — the garbage content was too annoying for many people, including me. The strangest thing YouTube did a couple of years ago was give people the right to decide what content should be blocked. Anyone could complain, and applications were checked by bots, not live people. The good goal turned into the destruction of popular channels by haters and the dissatisfaction of many content makers. It also affected the political situation in Russia: many opposition channels were blocked because of complaints from bots created by the government. Here, censorship violated not only freedom of speech, but also the sovereignty and inviolability of political life of a separate state. This can hardly be considered a good result of a "useful" innovation. To sum up, it is worth saying that YouTube has long ago become a capitalist conveyor in a bad sense. I do not support socialism, but true capitalism should not contradict itself as much as this site does. Since when does the platform decide who can violate the rules of the community and the laws of some countries, and who should remain silent? *link*

[whattheduckdude]

Censorship in my favorite computer games

I play online games every day to relax and have fun. I often play CS:GO and Valorant. These are online shooters in which communication plays an important role. Consequently, players often write to text chat or say something to voice chat. And recently, censorship has come to this place. 

In Counter-Strike, this appeared about a month ago. As usual, I got mad and wrote to my opponent what I thought about his foul play. And instead of the usual text, which has always been, I saw censorship in the form of the * symbol. In Valorant, there was similar censorship from the start of the game, however, only other players see censorship, and you see your messages the way you wrote them. There is no way you can turn off the censorship function.

However, it is just the tip of the iceberg. Both games now have a feature that lets you report a toxic player. Previously, you could mostly complain about cheaters using third-party software for an advantage in the game. Players with a large number of toxicity charges are subject to various sanctions. 

Of course, toxic players are bad. However, there is a difference between toxicity and harsh phrases. Sometimes harsh words can convey a more accurate meaning of your dissatisfaction with something. Thus, these games take away from me the ability to use the words that I want. Also, they take away from me the opportunity to disable such a function. And the worst thing is that any "vulnerable" player can write many complaints against you, because of which you will lose access to your account. Game creators do not get rid of toxicity thanks to this. Toxic players find ways to avoid censorship (look at the title of this blog). Developers are simply creating the appearance of a "right" community by cutting back on free speech and not removing the toxicity issue.

P.S. There is no voice chat in the game Valorant in Russia due to the Yarovaya law. This is how state censorship affected the comfort of the players.

[whattheduckdude]

A few words about the left-liberal platform called Twitch

I was familiar with this place for a long time, but now I am not interested in it. The last time I went there (which was a couple of days ago), all my favorite streamers have already left this platform. The answer to why they did this is similar to the answer to why I can no longer stream on this platform: internal rules. Yes, I have an official ban on streaming on Twitch. It is worth explaining that such bans are permanent – your face can't appear on the platform at all, even on other streamers, otherwise, they will be banned too.

There is a blockage for everything: you cannot say "wrong" words, show "wrong" things, convey "wrong" thoughts. It does not matter if you do it or your subscribers – the ban is waiting in any case. Of course, some things are not worth saying, but Twitch's censorship reaches absolute insanity. As someone who fiercely fights for true freedom of speech, I am disappointed with Twitch's policies following contemporary Western trends.

How do people try to bypass censorship? It is very difficult on Twitch. Streamers just do not say what is not worth saying. Channel moderators try to promptly delete chat messages that violate platform policy. Well, most of the streamers just leave the site, and the audience follows their idols. *tap*

[whattheduckdude]

Limitations of streams in VK

Today, September 20th, I stumbled upon a live broadcast of one of the local media by accident. I was just flipping through the VKontakte news feed and noticed this stream. Since I was very bored, and the title was quite clickbait, I joined this broadcast. 

The situation itself was not interesting to me. Besides, even if I wanted to understand something, the video and sound quality would not allow me to do it. For me, it would be more important to see what people write in the chat. And there I was surprised by the weirdest censorship workaround of all that I have seen: 

у 6 поликлиники въе-ало?

It should be noted that both in the community of this media and in general on live broadcasts of VK, obscene language is prohibited. In the VK group, this was done to maintain the image of the media, however, we will figure out why on all VKontakte streams abusive language is prohibited a bit later. It remains interesting why this person needed to use this particular word? Why try to get around the ban? We will also try to explain this behavior in the next posts.

P.S. Why did he ask about the name of the street when that information is in the title of the live broadcast lol ???

Link to source