alt Hacker NewsThe internet is not what’s being censored. The three platforms that everyone on the internet uses exclusively are being censored.
People then say, well, they can still access other websites! Everyone has a web browser!
Unfortunately the way people disseminate those URLs is via the main censorship platforms, and there are dozens or hundreds of domain names that form URLs which you can’t DM on Discord or Instagram, for example.
The internet as we know it is controlled centrally by Meta and Google and Apple and Microsoft and Amazon - what is done at the network layer is largely irrelevant.
Replies
commandersaki • yesterday at 9:54 PM
There is research on actual Internet censorship, worth following the ARMOR IRTF group.
> The internet is not what’s being censored.
Well there's that thing with some countries blocking like all of Cloudflare during sportsball matches, since Cloudflare deliberately makes it impossible to block only whichever of their customers are serving unlicensed sportsball streams.
And I think the "Great Firewall" is still a thing.
And IIRC there's a couple times I've heard about countries taking down connectivity entirely during civil-war / major-unrest type incidents.