The Ethereum community is more giddy than usual. On weekly Zoom calls dedicated to technical matters, Ethereum developers have been celebratingeven singingas they advance toward the mergean event hailed as the most important technological upgrade in the history of crypto.

But what exactly is the merge? Those who follow crypto news have likely heard about it, and are aware it represents a shift to something called proof of stake. But there are few detailed accounts of the technical process, and the merges implications for the larger crypto ecosystem.

To that end, Fortune spoke to Ethereum core developers to craft a detailed overview of the mergecurrently slated for mid-Septemberand the controversies that have surrounded it. Heres all you need to know.

Eth2, Ethereum 2.0, ETH 2.0The project has been called many things in the past, but earlier this year the Ethereum community settled on the merge.

Most simply, the merge is a long-planned Ethereum upgrade aimed at improving the network. Such upgrades are commonplace, but this is the most important one to date, and its success will pave the way for developers to introduce a host of new features to the network.

The merge will, well, merge the current Ethereum mainnetor the main public Ethereum blockchain used by everyonewith something called the Beacon Chain. Currently, both chains exist in parallel. But only the Ethereum mainnet, which currently uses a mechanism called proof of work, is processing transactions.

Once the merge is complete, the Ethereum mainnet will shift away from proof of work and instead adopt the Beacon Chains proof-of-stake mechanism.

Proof of stake (PoS) is a type of consensus mechanism that differs from the traditional proof-of-work (PoW) one.

A consensus mechanism describes the way Ethereumor other blockchainsdetermine the legitimacy of transactions posted to its network. It is how a blockchain governs itself.

Ethereum can be seen as a distributed database of nodesor computers that run software to verify blocks and the transaction data within them. To reach consensus on the network and make a decision, the majority of nodes must be in agreement, and the choice of consensus mechanism determines how they do that.

Once Ethereum shifts to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism post-merge, the network will rely on trusted entities known as validators to verify transactions and add new blocks to the blockchain. A validator will be chosen at random each time a new block is to be added, which will occur every 12 seconds or so post-merge.

Anyone can apply to be a validator by depositing 32 Ethereum (about $61,000 at mid-August prices)a sum intended to ensure that participants have a stake in the success of the networkand run up-to-date software.

As the Ethereum Foundation explains, prospective validators will then be added to an activation queue that limits the rate of new validators joining the network. Once a validator is activated, it will be eligible to review and approve new blocks the Ethereum network proposes to add to its blockchain.

In return for securing the network, validators will earn Ether as reward.

While the 32 Ether staked as collateral serves as a major incentive to behave appropriately, there are also punishments for validators that are incompetent or malicious. Namely, they can be penalized with the loss of some or all of their deposit.

The merge hasnt happened yet, but the Beacon Chain already has over 415,000 validators.

Proof of work is another consensus mechanism that has been used by the Ethereum mainnet since its genesis. Other older blockchains, most notably Bitcoin, continue to employ it.

The work in proof of work comes in the form of mining, where miners expend energy in the form of computing power. Though its supporters (mostly Bitcoiners) love proof of work, saying its the most secure mechanism, the process is notably bad for the environmentwhich has been a key factor in prompting Ethereums shift to proof of stake.

For one, Ethereum is the most-used blockchain and powers Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, with a $202 billion market cap. Ethereum also hosts numerous decentralized applications (dApps) and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and establishes the authenticity of millions of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

This means the outcome of the merge will affect not just the Ethereum blockchain, but a wide constellation of products and services that rely upon it. And given Ethereums size and influence, the fate of the merge is likely to have a ripple effect on the broader crypto industry.

Meanwhile, the switch to proof of stake will affect thousands of people who mine Ether, many of whom have expended significant capital in the endeavor. Most will probably turn to mining other proof-of-work coins, but the merge is still likely to hurt their bottom line.

But while the merge is bad news for miners, the vast majority of the Ethereum community and beyond see the end of mining as a good thinghelping both the planet and Ethereums reputation. The switch from proof of work to proof of stake [will] reduce overall energy consumption of Ethereum by 99.9% or more, Ethereum core developer Preston Van Loon told Fortune. Thats no joke.

Another important consequence of a successful merge will be a reduction in the issuance of new Ether. After the merge, Ether is likely to become the largest deflationary currency, according to Lucas Outumuro, head of research at blockchain intelligence firm IntoTheBlock.

In his latest newsletter, Outumuro predicts that because the cryptocurrency will no longer be awarded to miners, the amount of new Ether issued will drop by approximately 87%. ETHs net issuance is now projected to range between 1.5% to 0.5% based on the last three months of data, compared to 4.5% to 0.5% using Q1 to Q2 numbers, he wrote on Aug. 19.

This decline in issuance, in turn, means Ethereum could eclipse Bitcoin in market cap over the next 12 months, according to an Aug. 12 report by research firm FSInsight.

Finally, the merge is viewed as a critical step for Ethereums overall development. According to Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, the network is now about 40% complete, and after the merge, Ethereum can go up to being 55% complete, he said.

Also on Ethereums road map are four other phases happening in parallel that developers are calling the surge, verge, purge, and splurgeall of which aim to make Ethereum much faster, safer, and more decentralized. At the end of this road map, Ethereum will be a much more scalable systemBy the end, Ethereum will be able to process 100,000 transactions per second, Buterin said.

While most of the Ethereum community strongly supports the merge, a vocal minority is denouncing it as a colossal mistake. While some of this criticism is rooted in self-interestnamely, miners concerned about lost incomethere are also ideological concerns.

Namely, critics say proof of stake will make Ethereum more centralized and less secure, and point to the dominance of a few entities holding staked Ether (Ether deposited on the Beacon Chain).As data firm Messari has pointed out, Lido Finance controls a whopping 31.2% of all staked Ether on the Beacon Chain, while Coinbase controls 14.7% and Kraken 8.5%.

The large positions of Lido and others reflect the fact they are custodians for thousands of smaller Ether holdersand dont actually own most of what they holdbut the centralization fears persist nonetheless.

These concerns include fear that law enforcement may treat validators as a target for censorship or surveillance. Buterin himself addressed this on Twitter. He signaled his support in burning the stake of any validators that censor the Ethereum protocol if asked by U.S. regulators.

I believe the Ethereum community is strong enough to fight off base-layer censorship, EthHub cofounder Anthony Sassano tweeted on Aug. 16. Bitcoin is prone to the same censorship risks as Ethereum isit doesnt matter if its PoS or PoW.

Even Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong suggested on Aug. 17 hed rather stop the cryptocurrency exchanges staking business than comply with any potential censorship sanctions.

Another concern surrounds MEVMaximal Extractable Value (formerly Miner Extractable Value)and potential MEV-Boost issues post-merge.

MEV is the profit a miner or validator can make by picking, excluding, or reordering transactions within blocks. MEV-Boost is an optional software built for proof-of-stake Ethereum. It allows validators to sell blockspace to so-called block builders and outsource block production to maximize their rewardeffectively subcontracting some of their validating duties.

Though there are upsides to MEV and MEV-Boost, both can also be used by bad actors in a malicious way. Specifically, some within the Ethereum community are worried about censorship of MEV-Boost relay operators, or entities that connect validators to block builders, among other things.

Questions surrounding MEV and MEV-Boost post-merge have increasingly consumed the attention of countless users on crypto Twitter, to the point where it was even addressed during the most recent Ethereum Core Developers meeting. Though developers understand the concern, theyre hopeful that MEV-related issues, especially involving censorship, will not be prevalent threats, and remain focused on building Ethereum as a censorship-free protocol.

Finally, there are other fears over proof of stake, notably the risk of a 51% attackwhere bad actors conspire to take over more than half the computing power of the network, and tamper with the blockchain record to steal tokens. But with proof of stake, an attacker would need majority ownership of staked Ether to pull this offand that would be incredibly expensive to obtain.

Buterin himself doesnt see a 51% attack as fatal, and the Ethereum community has likewise downplayed the concern, reminding others of the ability to slash a validators stake, among other things.

No.

Gas fees refer to the cost of carrying out a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain. Gas fees are paid in Ether (denominated in the smallest unit of Ether called gwei), and have frequently spiked during busy periods because of higher demand for transactions to be processed.

Gas fees are considered a big pain point for Ethereum users. This is unsurprising since, during the busiest periods on Ethereum, gas fees can reach hundreds of dollars, making the network unviable for many.

The merge will shift Ethereum to proof of stake, but it will not expand network capacity. Therefore, it will not impact the price of gas fees.

Buterin predicts gas fees will drop in the future, though. He estimates that in time, after the merge, gas fees could be as low as $0.002 to $0.05 owing to roll-upsa so-called Layer 2 technology that rolls-up a multitude of transactions off-chain, processes it, and then records a compressed version on the main Ethereum blockchain. And as the Ethereum Foundation says, The transition to proof of stake is a critical precursor to realizing this.

Yes, there are many.

For one, the merge wont speed up the time it takes for Ethereum to process transactions. Though timing for new block creation and settlement (or finality) will change slightly post-merge, it wont be substantial enough for Ethereum users to notice, the Ethereum Foundation says.

Another misunderstanding about the merge involves the time frame during which investors can cash out their staked Ether after the upgrade.

Investors wont be able to withdraw their staked Ether immediately after the merge occurs, and will have to wait until the Shanghai upgrade, which is the next major upgrade following the merge, the Ethereum Foundation says. This means that newly issued ETH, though accumulating on the Beacon Chain, will remain locked and illiquid for at least six to 12 months following the merge.

To Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko, the biggest misconception about the merge is that you need 32 Ether to run a node, he told Fortune. You dont. Running a node is free, he said. Thirty-two Ether is only needed to run a validator, as mentioned earlier.

Validators also cant change protocol rules, Beiko said. All the nodes validate protocol rules, hence validators cant single-handedly change them.

A lot.

To prepare for the mergeand any other Ethereum upgrade for that matterdevelopers rely on Ethereum test networks (testnets) to practice running code before they deploy it on a mainnet. Testnets are similar enough to the Ethereum mainnet that developers can run tests and check for bugs or security holes to prevent such shortcomings from impacting the main blockchain.

Prior to the upcoming merge, testnets Kiln, Ropsten, Sepolia, and, most recently, Goerli all underwent the transition to proof of stake as dress rehearsals for the real event.

Additionally, Ethereum developers introduced a handful of changes to the blockchain known as hard forks to pave the way for the merge, including the so-called London hard fork in 2021. London had a few purposes: It aimed to stabilize transaction fees by permanently destroying (burning) a portion of such fees, removing that Ether from circulation. The London hard fork also delayed the so-called difficulty bomb, a mechanism intended to incentivize the network to move away from proof of work by exponentially increasing the difficulty level of puzzles required for miningmaking continued mining unviable.

Following London, other forks like Arrow Glacier and Gray Glacier pushed the difficulty bomb off further and changed its parameters. There was also Altair, which upgraded the Beacon Chain.

Developers have conducted as well 10 mainnet shadow forks where they ran through the merge using a small number of nodes. This proved helpful since the shadow fork process is minimal enough to not disrupt the mainnet, but useful enough to assess any potential issues prior to the big mainnet merge. As developers continue to prepare for the merge, theyre planning still more shadow forks.

The process of the mainnet merge activation itself is intricate and involves three big steps, as Christine Kim, research associate at Galaxy Digital, explains.

To start it all, an upgrade called Bellatrixnamed after a star and not the villain from Harry Potterwill happen first and set things into motion. It will prepare the Beacon Chain for the merge. Next, the network will need to reach a final Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) value, which represents the potential difficulty level for mining, once the Bellatrix upgrade is complete. Nodes will watch for it, and once reached, it will prompt the final step, called the Paris upgrade. Paris will remove dependence on proof of work mining and mining difficulty, among other things, readying the network for the Beacon Chain and proof of stake.

Given the complexity of all this, the process will definitely not happen overnight. Ethereum developers predict that there will be a 14-day period between Bellatrix and the mainnet merge.

Many things can go wrong, and its difficult to predictdespite years of tests and preparation.

Ultimately, the merge is far from a slam dunk, and various issues may ariselike hiccups with clients or software verifying transactions, and application breakdown, among othersthat are so complex they can be difficult to plan for. Bad actors might also try to sabotage the process as well.

But Ethereum developers and engineers are working to be ready for any potential problems, and contend that theyre prepared.

No. Be very wary of anyone telling you otherwise.

As the Ethereum Foundation says:

As a user or holder of ETH or any other digital asset on Ethereum, as well as nonnode-operating stakers, you do not need to do anything with your funds or wallet before the merge.

Any funds held in your wallet before the merge will still be accessible after the merge. No action is required to upgrade on your part.

As we approach the merge of Ethereum mainnet, you should be on high alert for scams trying to take advantage of users during this transition.

Some people unhappy with the merge may try to branch off and create their own projects and variations of Ethereumbut anything of the sort will never be Ethereum.

For example, a cohort of miners are planning an Ethereum hard fork post-merge to create what they call ETHPoW, in an attempt to continue a proof-of-work chain and retain their income. But even though this project sounds like ETH, and somewhat includes Ethereum in its name, it is not correlated with Ethereum, and will have its own token and applications if it succeeds.

Ethereum developers are targeting the week of Sept. 15 for the merge, with TTD set to 58750000000000000000000.

Nonetheless, many factors may change that time frame. The Ethereum developers made clear that the timing is an estimate and nothing is finalized yet.

But, its safe to say that Ethereum is closer than ever before to proof of stake. As artist Jonathan Mann sings after every successful merge test on each developer call, Ethereum wont be resisting the urge, the urge to merge.

Originally posted here:

Ethereum merge will change crypto forever: Everything you need to know - Fortune

With the U.K.'s Conservative Party closing in on deciding who will inherit the mess left by Boris Johnson's tenure as prime minister, that country's governing apparatus will soon get back to the important business of intruding into people's lives.

At the top of the to-do list is the long-coming Online Safety Bill which, as has become traditional for legislation, does nothing that its title suggests. In fact, those who offend the government with their online speech or efforts to protect privacy may soon be a lot less safe.

"If the Online Safety Bill passes, the U.K. government will be able to directly silence user speech, and even imprison those who publish messages that it doesn't like," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Joe Mullin cautioned last week. "The bill empowers the UK's Office of Communications (OFCOM) to levy heavy fines or even block access to sites that offend people. We said last year that those powers raise serious concerns about freedom of expression. Since then, the bill has been amended, and it's gotten worse."

The Online Safety Bill is sold as a measure to protect children from predators and pornography, society from terrorists, and the public from all sorts of vaguely defined "harmful" content that might offend sensibilities, but it takes on that enormous task in an inevitably broad way. Mullin is far from the first civil liberties advocate to warn of the dangers inherent in allowing the British government's regulatory Office of Communication, commonly called Ofcom, sweeping powers over people's use of the internet.

"There are many reasons to be concerned about the #OnlineSafetyBill, the latest manifestation of which has just been launched, to a mixture of fanfares and fury," Paul Bernal, a lecturer at the University of East Anglia Law School, warned in March. "The massive attacks on privacy (including an awful general monitoring requirement) and freedom of speech (most directly through the highly contentious 'legal but harmful' concept) are just the starting point. The likely use of the 'duty of care' demanded of online service providers to limit or even ban both encryption and anonymity, thereby making all of us lessand in particular childrenless safe and less free is another. The political control of censorship via Ofcom is in some ways even worseas is the near certain inability of Ofcom to do the gargantuan tasks being required of itand that's not even starting on the mammoth and costly bureaucratic burdens being foisted on people operating online services."

That's a lot to worry about packed into a few words. But that's because the Online Safety Bill takes on a vast challenge in trying to make the internet "safe" from a vast array of dangers real, potential, and imaginary. Bernal attributes the overreach to lawmakers' obsessive concern with the online world's flaws. He likens it to a fixation with warts on a human face "and a desire to eradicate them with the strongest of caustic medicine, regardless of the damage to the face itself."

Bernal may be excessively charitable in attributing this massive piece of legislation to an honest misunderstanding of the online world. In June, Jacob Mchangama, founder of the Danish think tank Justitia, noted that the Online Safety Bill is part of a wave of legislation around the world that seeks to control the internet, including the European Union's recently adopted Digital Services Act.

"These regulatory efforts follow in the footsteps of the German Network Enforcement Act of 2017 and oblige online platforms to remove illegal content, including categories such as hate speech and glorification of terrorism, or risk huge fines," Mchangama wrote. "However, in liberal democracies committed to both equality and free expression, this approach raises a number of questions and dilemmas. Moreover, current hate speech laws have already caused collateral damage to political speech and protests in Europe. Further restrictions risk significantly suffocating pluralism and open debatethe flow of vital oxygen without which democracies cannot thrive."

Notably, the U.K. isn't exactly short of censorship powers even before adopting the Online Safety Bill. Earlier this year, Reason's Scott Shackford highlighted the case of Joseph Kelly of Glasgow, who was criminally convicted for mocking the death of 100-year-old Captain Sir Tom Moore, a military veteran and high-profile fundraiser for the National Health Service. In the United States, under the protections of the First Amendment, such behavior would have earned criticism. In Britain, that drunken tweet brought prosecution and community service in lieu of jail time.

Yet, British lawmakers think they have insufficient power to punish people on the internet.

Like the German Network Enforcement Act (widely known as NetzDG), the Online Safety Bill would offload much of the enforcement burden to social media companies and online services. Under that approach, government bureaucrats slap private companies with stiff fines if they fail to intervene to the government's satisfaction. The EFF's Mullin points out that the bill grants exceptions for "recognized news publishers" and other established media; smaller operators, then, are at the greatest risk of scrutiny and penalties if they guess wrong about officials' opinions of what content promotes terrorism, child abuse, or "psychological harm." That creates an incentive to muzzle more rather than less.

"The Network Enforcement law and its imitators create big incentives for social media companies to overregulate online speech and risk pushing extremists towards platforms that are even harder to survey," Justitia's Mchangama observed in 2020.

"When governments around the world pressure websites to quickly remove content they deem 'terrorist,' it results in censorship," Mullin adds. "The first victims of this type of censorship are usually human rights groups seeking to document abuses and war."

At least for now, the First Amendment shields Americans from similar attempts to control online activity. But North America as a whole isn't entirely immune. When the Online Safety Bill was first introduced last year, Canada's ruling Liberals proposed a similar measure. It died as the government called a general election, which the ruling party (barely) won. The government threatened to reintroduce the legislation, but that plan has been delayed by the inability of experts to agree on what should be regulated and how. Some members of the panel seem concerned about intruding on freedom, while others want private communications controlled, not just public postings.

"The advisory panel tasked with making recommendations for Canada's pending legislation on online safety has failed to come to an agreement on how online harms should be defined, and whether dangerous content should be scrubbed from the internet altogether," the Toronto Star reported July 9.

But an inability to define harmful speech and the legitimate boundaries of regulation didn't stop German and EU lawmakers, and it's not really slowing legislators in the U.K. Canadians are well-advised to look to Britain and Europe to see where their country is likely to go in terms of online government intrusion. The U.K.'s Parliament is expected to resume consideration of the Online Safety Bill this fall. If the measure becomes law, as seems likely, Britons online will be a little less safe.

See the original post:

U.K.'s Online Censorship Bill Causes More Harm Than It Prevents - Reason

The World Economic Forum (WEF) proposed a new way of censoring online content that requires a small group of experts to train artificial intelligence on identifying misinformation and abusive content.

The WEF published an article Wednesday outlining a plan to overcome frequent instances of child abuse, extremism, disinformation, hate speech and fraud online, which the organization said cannot be handled by human trust and safety teams, according to ActiveFence Trusty & Safety Vice President Inbal Goldberger, who authored the article. Instead, the WEF proposed an AI-driven method of moderating online content, where subject matter experts provide training sets to the AI so it can learn to recognize and flag or restrict content that human moderators would deem dangerous.

Supplementing this smarter automated detection with human expertise to review edge cases and identify false positives and negatives and then feeding those findings back into training sets will allow us to create AI with human intelligence baked in, Goldberger stated.

In other words, trust and safety teams can help the AI with anomalous cases, allowing it to detect nuances in content that a purely automated system might otherwise miss or misinterpret, according to Goldberger.

A human moderator who is an expert in European white supremacy wont necessarily be able to recognize harmful content in India or misinformation narratives in Kenya, she explained. As time goes on and the AI practices with more learning sets, it begins to identify the kinds of content moderating teams would find offensive, reaching near-perfect detection at a massive scale,

Goldberger said the system would protect against increasingly advanced actors misusing platforms in unique ways.

Trust and safety teams at online media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, bring a nuanced comprehension of disinformation campaigns that they apply to content moderation, said Goldberger.

That includes working with government organizations to filter content communicating a narrative about COVID-19, for example. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised Big Tech companies on what types of content to label as misinformation on their sites.

Social media companies have also targeted conservative content, including posts that negatively portray abortion and transgender activism, or contradict the mainstream understanding of climate change, by either labeling them as misinformation or blocking them entirely.

The WEF document did not specify how members of the AI training team would be decided, how they would be held accountable or whether countries could exercise controls over the AI.

Elite business executives who participate in WEF gatherings have a track record of proposals that expand corporate control over peoples lives. At the latest WEF annual summit, in March, the head of the Chinese multinational technology company Alibaba Group boasted of a system for monitoring individual carbon footprints derived from eating, travel and similar behaviors.

The future is built by us, by a powerful community such as you here in this room, WEF founder and chairman Klaus Schwab told an audience of more than 2,500 global business and political elites.

The WEF did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundations request for comment.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Link:

World Economic Forum Wants To Use AI To Automatically Censor Speech On The Internet - Daily Caller

Charita Goshay wrote one of her usual insightful articles in The Repository on July 24about the proposed "divisive subjects bill" ("Ohios divisive subjects bill a dangerous drift toward censorship"). She outlined rightful concerns that the bill would stifle the horrid parts of our history and would lead to censorship.

Based on the framework she detailed in her article, I don't see incompatibility between teaching history and eliminating hate in the curriculum. The history of slavery should be taught. Part of that lesson would be the justification used by slaveholders to practice slavery. The only reason for exposure to that rationale for slavery would be to expose how terribly wrong it was, not to defend it. End of the history lesson.

If the curriculum were then to go on to promote the idea that because some whites owned slaves all white people are oppressors, that would be prohibited, according to Charita's outline. It should be prohibited as being terribly wrong and terribly divisive.

As for censorship, it's here. Many news media and social media outlets already filter, slant, or ignore items they don't wish to feature. Recently, President Biden wanted to establish the Disinformation Governance Board. It had a narrow purpose, but many things with a narrow, well-intentioned purpose morph into something ghastly. Who knows where that would have gone? Fortunately, the effort has been paused. Censorship has no place here, but it is becoming more commonplace.

Donald J. Groom, Plain Township

Continue reading here:

Letter to the editor: Don't filter history or news; that's censorship - Canton Repository

A

ctivist and debut novelist Florence Given says she doesnt think young authors have to self-censor when creating fiction, despite the fears of literary grandees such as Anthony Horowitz.

Alex Rider creator Horowitz said this week that writers are running scared of creating characters who are a different gender or race than themselves for fear of criticism online, calling the trend worrying and saddening. Nobel prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro has raised similar concerns.

Speaking at the launch of her novel Girl Crush in Kings Cross, Given said she felt able to write anything. I like to be as expressive as I am in my work as possible. I hate the idea of self-censorship she said.

Given did qualify that writing based on her own lived experience was likely to have more depth than lives she knows less about. If I was to write a protagonist who was a black disabled woman, I dont think that would be very interesting she said. But she said that the whole point of fiction is to escape reality and to feel empathy, and people should be able to both write and read outside of their personal experiences.

The writer, who rose to fame after sharing feminist illustrations on Instagram, did admit she is has been sharing less with her 600,000 followers recently. I am definitely leaning more into privacy and I really like it that way she said.

However, she was adamant that this move towards privacy is not motivated by fear of being cancelled. Its a strange thing to have lots of people witnessing your evolution, but its not going to stop me from doing it. [My image] is changing every day, even in terms of how I express myself, my fashions, my gender, she said, adding Ive never been comfortable being something that Im not online.

The writer was recently labelled the voice of a generation, but she told us that she resented being put on such a pedestal. I dont want to do that and in fact, its embarrassing. It also just makes you look a bit silly because it makes you look like you think that about yourself. She continued, I feel like we cant let women make art that is popular without calling her the voice of a generation shes never going to live up to that title.

More:

Florence Given: I hate the idea of self-censorship - Evening Standard

MONICA HOOPERmhooper@nwadg.com

Henry Rollins will open the Innovation Speakers series at the Fayetteville Public Library with Libraries Are Punk Rock on Aug. 12. Rollins, the front front man from Black Flag and Rollins band, is an author, actor, activist, writer and more.

In choosing speakers for the series, we make selections based on criteria that include relevancy to Center for Innovation technologies and programs (podcaster, film maker, actor, producer, musician, photographer, maker, fabricator, entrepreneur, etc.), scope and range of work, and overall connections to libraries, says Melissa Taylor of the FPL Center for Innovation. Are they supporters or advocates for libraries? Do they support free speech and anti-censorship? Are they working on a project that promotes literacy and or education?

Rollins answered these four questions for Whats Up!

Q. The name of the program is Libraries Are Punk Rock. In what ways do you think libraries are punk rock?

A. I think libraries are libraries but perhaps the idea of access to information in a quest for clarity and truth, which is what punk rock means to me at least, can be realized at a library.

Q. I saw a couple of your talks during the G.W. Bush administration. At the time, many people thought that was the worst it could be, but now here we are in the not quite post-Trump era. While its easy to get caught up in how terrible everything is, I wonder what if anything still gives you hope that things can get better.

A. I think the USA was founded on a less than honest premise. When slave owners, with a straight face, are telling you all men are created equal, how well do you think things will be going forward? When women have to get the right to vote by a Constitutional Amendment only a little more than 100 years ago, you really have to take a look at your country. After doing so, I dont think anything happening in the USA presently is surprising as much as eventual. My optimism resides in young people and how theyll hopefully address the errors of the past, the misogyny, homophobia and racism of the present and correct them. Past that, Im not optimistic about the future of the USA as in its current concept and operation; its sustainability is predicated on a lot of people knowing their place and staying in it. Thats just not holding like it used to, hence some peoples desire to make America great again. Thats what theyre talking about. From the Supreme Court to whats happening on the street, youre witnessing progress struggling against regression. I predict a lot more gun homicides and mass casualty events.

Q. Since you are speaking at the library, what book(s) are you reading now? Whats the best book that youve read so far this year?

A. Ive not been reading much this year outside of my own work as Im trying to turn two manuscripts around. As well, Im writing a lot, or at least trying to, for a few other projects. Ive been finding the older I get, the less Im reading and the more Im writing. Im less interested in uploading and more interested in outputting. Also, being on tour, reading is difficult as Im either preparing for the show, coming down from one or trying to work on the aforementioned before and/or after the show. That being said, Im reading a collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories called Id Die For You: And Other Lost Stories, Im re-reading a biography on Sun Ra by Szwed, I read some of the Trump disaster books, which I tried to avoid but they seemed too interesting to resist. The ones by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig and the one by Bob Woodward. Over the last several months, I also read The Devil You Know by Charles M. Blow. I havent had the chance to get a best book read so far this year. Usually I have one. I will say the last book that really knocked me out was We Were Eight Years In Power by Ta-Nehsi Coates.

Q. And finally, what bands are you excited about right now?

A. I really liked an album by a woman named Tamar Aphek on Kill Rockstars called All Bets Are Off that came out last year. The new Liz Lamere album Keep It Alive on In The Red is great. On the same label, the new Dion Lunadon album Beyond Everything is good. The new Automatic album Excess is great. The last several years have been really good for music.

Rollins returns to Arkansas for a show at 8 p.m. Sept. 24 ($29-$39) at TempleLive in Fort Smith. Keep up with him at http://www.henryrollins.com.

__

FAQ

Innovation Speakers:

Henry Rollins

WHEN 6 p.m. Aug. 12; line up at 5:15 p.m. to allow daytime patrons time to exit at closing time

WHERE Fayetteville Public Library Event Center, 401 W. Mountain St.

COST Free

INFO faylib.org/event/6867883

FYI The next Innovation Speaker will be Mixerman (Eric Sarafin) on Sept. 23.

More:

Henry Rollins talks free speech, censorship, technology and more at FPL The Free Weekly - The Free Weekly

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Disney+ Middle East announced that the company will not release "Lightyear" or "Baymax" on its platform.

The decision stems from the platform not releasing Pixars "Lightyear" in the region, due to the film featuring a same-sex kiss. The Disney+ series "Baymax" will also not be released since it includes LGBTQ characters.

"Lightyear" stars Chris Evans as the infamous space traveler that fans grew to love in Disneys animated film "Toy Story," released in 1995.

"Lightyear" stars Chris Evans as Buzz Lightyear from "Toy Story." (Getty Images / Getty Images)

However, Disney+ Middle East content will align with local regulatory requirements, and the platform will reportedly modify its content to avoid regional sensitivities, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

PIXAR'S 'LIGHTYEAR' SEES LOWER DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE SHOWING TIED TO HOST OF PROBLEMS

Despite Disney+ Middle East not showing kid-focused content with LGBTQ references, the platform will include films such as "Doctor Strange and the Multitude of Madness" which was banned from theaters in select Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

This image released by Disney/Pixar shows character Buzz Lightyear, voiced by Chris Evans, and Sox, voiced by Peter Sohn, in a scene from the animated film "Lightyear." (Disney/Pixar via AP, File / AP Newsroom)

Over the past year, Disney has censored several movies across the Gulf, as films including "Thor: Love and Thunder," "West Side Story," and "Eternals" did not release in theaters due to their features of LGBTQ scenes and topics.

The move seemingly comes on the heels of the release strategy for the platform with the standards of the United Arab Emirates.

Disney+ Middle East will reportedly modify its content to avoid regional sensitivities. (iStock / iStock)

Although "Lightyear," "Baymax" and "Doctor Strange and the Multitude of Madness" failed to reach cinemas in the region, UAE culturally sensitive content for adult-focused audiences played in theaters.

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According to reports, the "Doctor Strange" sequel and "Eternals" were released in UAE cinemas, but with modifications as Chlo Zhaos movie "was edited to remove all public displays of affections."

"Content offerings differ across our many Disney+ markets, based upon a number of factors. Content available should align with local regulatory requirements," a Disney spokesperson told the outlet.

Disney+ offers parental controls for families to determine what children and other family members watch.

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Disney did not immediately respond to Fox Business' request for comment.

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Disney+ Middle East aligns with censorship policies, Lightyear won't stream on platform - Fox Business

Express News Service

BENGALURU: Scientists from across the globe, including India, who are refuting the Big Bang theory on cosmology are facing resistance and censorship from journals and archives of international repute where they get their research papers published for peer review.

The Big Bang theory holds that the universe was born out of a highly compressed, dense and microscopic point (called singularity), which exploded with a huge force some 13.8 billion years ago, resulting in everything arising from that singularity moving outwards in all directions. From this, all cosmic matter (as we know it today) was formed at different stages through time until now.

Twenty-four astronomers and physicists from 10 countries including reputed astrophysicist Jayant V Narlikar of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics , Prof Sisir Roy of National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) and Prof Amitabha Ghosh of Indian National Science Academy (INSA) from India are among the scientists protesting the censorship of papers that are critical of the Big Bang hypothesis by the open pre-print website arXiv.

As scientists engaged in the study of the cosmos and the relation of phenomena in space to those here on Earth, we strongly protest arXivs censorship of controversial papers on cosmology and specifically on the Big Bang hypothesis. Run by Cornell University, arXiv is supposed to provide an open public forum for researchers to exchange pre-publication papers, without undertaking to peer-review them. But in June 2022, arXiv was rejected for publication in three papers which are critical of the validity of the Big Bang Hypothesis.. No specific reason was given for these rejections, the scientists wrote.

Prof Roy, Arindam Mal of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Ahmedabad, and Sarbani Palit of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata also faced difficulty in having their research paper Redshift Periodicity and its Significance for Recent Observation, which counters the Big Bang Hypothesis published in standard peer-reviewed journals like Astronomy and Astrophysics Journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society etc.

This was the sequel to our previous paper already published in Astronomy and Astrophysics Journal challenging the Big Bang Hypothesis, Roy told The New Indian Express.

In this paper, we analyzed the redshift data from galaxy-quasar pair and confirmed the periodicity of redshifts, which counters the Big Bang theory. This was first observed by the American astronomer Prof Halton Arp in the sixties of the 20th century. He had observed the physical association of this type of galaxy-quasar pair, said the Indian scientist.

According to the Big Bang Hypothesis quasars are considered as the objects situated at the farthest distances than galaxies. But according to Arp, if in the galaxy-quasar pair the galaxy is physically associated with quasar, then the galaxy and quasar are situated almost at the same distance. This observation contradicts the tenets of the expanding model (like the Big Bang model), said Roy.

Essentially it raises the question whether redshift has an alternate explanation to Doppler mechanism, according to which, the shift of the frequency (towards longer wavelength called redshift or towards lower wavelength called blue shift) occurs due the relative motion of the observer and the source. The expansion of the universe is explained using essentially the Doppler mechanism. However, the discovery of Emil Wolf from University of Rochester, USA clearly establishes that this shift of frequency of light may occur even in the absence of relative motion of the observer and the source, said Roy.

In the present paper we have shown that the redshift of the galaxy-quasar pair as observed by Arp and other astronomers is quantised and it challenges the validity of expanding or the Big Bang model using our methodology for the data analysis. We sent this paper to various leading international journals for publication but it was rejected without any critical review. Then we tried to publish it in an archive of Cornell University. The archive support team sent us a peculiar reasoning rejecting publication, said Roy. After much persuasion, they accepted the paper with a caveat that we must get it published somewhere if we want to have future submissions accepted on arXiv, he added.

This sort of censorship of scientific research is unfair and unfortunate, said Roy.

Whats the Big-bang theory?According to a NASA explainer, the Big Bang theory indicates how the universe beganas just a single point, then expanded and stretched to grow as large as it is right now. It is still believed to be stretching

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Anti-Big Bang theory scientists face censorship by international journals - The New Indian Express

By Arzu Geybullayeva |

( Globalvoices.org ) Turkish authorities are increasingly censoring content online that does not fit Turkeys religious values, morality, and family values in recent years. The most recent example is an investigation launched by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutors Office against Spotify.

The prosecutors office claims Spotify approved the playlist names.

The Office claims the music streaming platform, approved playlists that were insulting religious values and state officials. According to reports, the decision to launch the probe came after the Presidential Communication Center received a large volume of complaints that the playlists were fostering Islamophobia by insulting religious values and state officials.

Some of the playlist names include Songs Recep Tayyip Erdogan listens to when drinking raki, Songs God listened to when throwing Adam out of heaven, Songs prophet Ali listens to when driving high speed, and a podcast called Devlet Bahceli [leader of National People Party] concept hotel, Love with a girl wearing Shakira belt, according to Bianet reporting. It is not the songs specifically but the names of playlists that is drawing officials ire.

The prosecutors office claims Spotify approved the names of playlists, but according to Spotify rules, an individual user can create as many playlists as they wish without Spotifys approval or oversight.

One Twitter user shared the names of other playlists too, among them Gods ringtone, or Eve did not hear Gods announcement about banned fruit because she was listening to this playlist.

Others joked about which other platforms are next:

windows, excel and winzip are next!

Fear us!

Spotify facing investigation allegedly for insulting religious values and state leaders. Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutors Office launched an investigation against Spotify due to playlists names.

of course we will be investigating spotify when we have no issues thanks to our stellar justice system.

Spotify learned its lesson from generation Zs humor when creating playlists. Its managers must be in big shock, because this is probably the first time, they have ever faced an investigation of this nature.

This is not the first time Spotify finds itself in hot water in Turkey. In May 2021, the platform was ordered to remove inappropriate content from its site. In an interview with ArabNews, Cathryn Grothe, a research associate at Freedom House, said, Streaming services such as Spotify create a unique space where people can express themselves, relate to loved ones and friends over shared music or podcasts, and engage on a range of important issues, including human rights and politics.

Screenshot of Netflixs official Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous trailer via YouTube

Also in August 2022, the Chief Censor of Turkeys Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTK) launched a probe into Netflixs animated Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous series. We are determined not to allow content that may negatively impact our children and youth and that disregard our values, tweeted the head of RTK, Ebubekir Sahin. The show reportedly features LGBTQ+ characters.

In December 2021, RTK fined Netflix over the film More the merrier, claiming its plot and characters were immoral. The chief censor said the movie was based on a fiction in which homosexuality, incest relationships, and swinging are intensely experienced. In addition to getting a fine, the streaming platform was ordered to remove the film from its platform in Turkey.

In 2020, Netflix said it wont proceed with the local production of a film called If only (Simdiki Aklim Olsaydi) because RTK failed to approve the script of the show in which one of the characters was gay.

In 2019 RTK was granted powers to monitor online broadcasting ranging from on-demand platforms such as Netflix to regular and/or scheduled online broadcasts to amateur home video makers. Since then, online broadcasters have been required to obtain a license from RTK, meaning the organization frequently censors or rejects content it disapproves of. Netflix applied for a license the same year, while Spotify did so in October 2020 after RTK threatened to ban them otherwise.

Arzu Geybullayeva is Azerbaijani columnist and writer, with special focus in digital authoritarianism and its implications on human rights and press freedom in Azerbaijan.

This post is part of Advox, a Global Voices project dedicated to protecting freedom of expression online. All Posts

Written by Arzu Geybullayeva

Globalvoices.org

Featured image: Pixabay

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In Turkey, religious Values are used to censor online ontent - Informed Comment

(Se puede leer este artculo en espaol aqu.)

The US government employs many strategies to try to justify its intervention in the internal affairs and violation of the sovereignty of foreign nations. Chief among these deceptive tactics is Washingtons weaponization of accusations that its adversaries violate the freedom of expression.

This is quite ironic, given that the United States is the worlds leading violator of press freedoms, according to any consistent definition of the term.

And unlike the countries that Washington claims supposedly repress the freedom of expression within their borders, US government censorship of independent media outlets and suppression of alternative voices is global, hurting people across the planet.

The Joe Biden administration has in particular gone to great lengths to depict itself as a defender of civil liberties.

In May, the White House published a statement commemorating World Press Freedom Day. The purpose of the declaration was to portray Russia as a leading violator of free speech and the United States as its noble protector.

But the reality is Washington is guilty of exponentially more persecution of journalists than anything Moscow is even accused of.

There is no more gruesome symbol of the ludicrous hypocrisy of the United States portraying itself as a protector of press freedoms than its authoritarian persecution of the most famous journalist on Earth: Julian Assange.

The US governments ruthless attack on Assange, the founder and publisher of whistleblowing journalism website WikiLeaks, is likely the worst blow to freedom of speech carried out by any government in history, with dangerous implications for all human beings on the planet.

The US case against Assange essentially amounts to a criminalization of journalism.

Washington is seeking to extradite and prosecute Assange, an Australian national who has never lived in the United States, for the crime of publishing truthful information exposing US war crimes in other words, for doing the kind of journalism that any good reporter should do.

Assange is facing up to 175 years in prison on 18 charges. If it succeeds in the extradition process, the United States will likely throw the WikiLeaks publisher in a medieval-style dungeon, where he will be held in solitary confinement for the rest of his life.

Due to persecution by the United States and United Kingdom, Assange has already been essentially imprisoned for a decade. Starting in 2012, the WikiLeaks journalist sought refuge in Ecuadors embassy in London. He would end up being trapped there for seven years.

Journalist Julian Assange trapped in Ecuadors embassy in London in 2012

In 2015, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention determined that Assange had been arbitrarily detained and should be released and given compensation.

The British government ignored the UN legal experts. Instead, in 2019, UK authorities violated Ecuadors territorial integrity, entered the embassy, and kidnapped Assange (who by that time was a naturalized Ecuadorian citizen, in addition to his Australian nationality).

Since 2019, Assange has been subjected to draconian treatment in Britains maximum-security Belmarsh prison, held alongside people convicted of terrorism, murder, and other violent crimes.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention once again condemned the UK government in 2019 for violating the freedoms and fundamental rights of the Australian journalist.

In Belmarsh, Assange has been held in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours per day. UN legal experts have repeatedly stated that this kind of prolonged solitary confinement, which is routinely carried out by the United States and Britain, amounts to psychological torture.

In other words, Julian Assange has been effectively imprisoned for a decade, has been subjected to grueling torture, and will likely spend the rest of his life in a US prison, all because he committed the crime of doing journalism.

It is impossible to imagine a tyranny more absolute than this. With the Assange case, the United States is establishing a precedent that says it can imprison any journalist or really any person on Earth, regardless of their nationality, throw them in a dungeon for the rest of their life, and torture them. All Washington needs to do is fabricate charges and claim that that individual violated its domestic laws.

Assange is not the only victim of this kind of Kafkaesque persecution by the US regime. The United States holds multiple political prisoners, including Black revolutionary journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Although it has less than 5% of the worlds population, the United States has nearly 25% of its prisoners.

In its May statement onWorld Press Freedom Day, the Biden White House condemned Russia for passing a disinformation law intended to silence those speaking the truth.

The hypocrisy could hardly be any more ridiculous. The US government has used the canard of disinformation to censor news outlets and journalists from around the world, erasing their work and removing them from digital platforms.

While Washington accuses Moscow of violating the freedom of speech inside Russia, US censorship harms the entire planet.

In March, the US government forced YouTube to censor Russias major media network RT in every country on Earth. The European Union likewise banned Russian news outlets RT and Sputnik.

Washington and Brussels insisted this draconian violation of the freedom of speech was necessary because Moscow was supposedly spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine. Their own media outlets, meanwhile, have constantly been exposed for disseminating fake news and misleading propaganda to justify illegal Western wars of aggression which explains why just 11% of North Americans trust television news, and only 16% believe newspapers.

YouTubes censorship of Russian media outlets did not just affect people in North America and Europe, but rather the entire world. And YouTube is not just a private company; it is owned by Google, which is inextricably linked to the US government.

All major Silicon Valley companies are US government contractors. Google, Facebook (which owns Instagram and WhatsApp), and Twitter have many billions of dollars of contracts with the US government agencies such as the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency (NSA), Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as police departments.

The US government uses Big Tech corporations in Silicon Valley as arms of soft power, censoring information that is inconvenient for its foreign-policy interests, violating the free speech of billions of people in foreign countries.

This censorship is often directly overseen by veterans of the US national security state.Google and Facebook have hired dozens of former CIA agentsand NATO press officers. Twitter has recruited many former FBI officers, and the top official overseeing Middle East-related content on Twitter is also a member of British Armys psychological warfare unit, which admits to waging information warfare.

Silicon Valley censorship has silenced countless media outlets and journalists in China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Syria, and other countries targeted by the US empire for destabilization

Iranian media outlets have been constantly censored by the US government and its soft-power arms in Silicon Valley. The US Justice Department has even seized the domain names of dozens of news websites that it alleged were being run by Iran and Yemen.

Irans top networkPress TV has had its social media accounts censored dozens of times. The US regime likewise robbed its domain name presstv.com.

The US Justice Department seized Irans domain name presstv.com.

This social media censorship nearly always serves US government interests.

Just a week before Nicaraguas elections in November 2021, Silicon Valley launches a coordinated purge of pro-Sandinista accounts on social media.

Hundreds of profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook were censored. All of them were pro-Sandinista. Not a single account was from the US-backed right-wing opposition. On the contrary, Nicaraguans from the US-backed right-wing opposition are constantly promoted on social media, and verified while leftists are suspended.

The same was clear in the US-led coup attempt against Venezuela. Representatives from Venezuelas democratically elected government were suspended on Twitter, whereas US-appointed coup puppets like unelected putschist Juan Guaid and his gang of corrupt cronies were all verified and promoted.

While using vague allegations of disinformation to justify censoring these independent voices on social media, Silicon Valley corporations simultaneously take money from US state media outlets to run ads promoting propaganda against Washingtons adversaries.

In addition to direct censorship through suspensions, there is also more subtle censorship by Silicon Valley mega-corporations.

Google, for instance, distorts its algorithm in order to promote mainstream corporate media websites, and has a blacklist of outlets that it hides in search results. This means that independent media publications, especially left-wing and anti-imperialist pages, are severely hurt by the Google algorithm and get significantly less traffic.

Even DuckDuckGo, which markets itself as a Google alternative that protects privacy, engages in this political censorship. After Russia initiated its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, the website announced that it would be demoting in its search results any websites that it accuses of being pro-Russian.

While the United States persecutes journalists that expose its crimes and aggressively censors independent media outlets that operate inside its borders, Washington ironically claims to support independent media abroad.

In its May statement on World Press Freedom Day, the Biden White House called for supporting so-called independent media in foreign countries.

CIA cutouts like the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have poured many millions of dollars into bankrolling media activists in countries where the United States seeks regime change.

The US government claims it is supporting civil society, but in reality it is funding political opposition groups that use the media as a weapon to destabilize Washingtons adversaries.

By definition, these media activists are not independent they are receiving funding from the US government in order to advance its political interests. They are essentially indirect employees of the US State Department, and instruments of Washingtons soft power.

These media activists constantly spread fake news, disinformation, and propaganda, and have played a key role in violent coup attempts in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Hong Kong, Syria, Belarus, and beyond.

The absurd hypocrisy of Washington persecuting independent journalists at home while funding them abroad highlights the deep cynicism of the US regimes information warfare tactics.

Washington may depict itself as the beacon of freedom and democracy, but its global empire is authoritarian and ruthless.

US government repression impacts everyone on Earth. As long as the United States maintains its empire, and continues to try to control all of the planets political and economic affairs, no country, and no individual, can ever be completely safe.

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US govt is worlds worst violator of freedom of press, not its protector - Multipolarista