Senator Roger Wicker's (R-Miss.) PRO-SPEECH Act, introduced last Thursday, takes a novel approach to one of the most pressing threats to our democracy: Big Tech's control of our political discussion. While previous congressional efforts have focused on reforming Section 230, this bill takes a different tack and makes it an unfair trade practice to "bloc[k] or otherwise preven[t] a user or entity from accessing any lawful content" or to discriminate against any user "based on racial, sexual, religious, political affiliation, or ethnic grounds." The unfair trade practices approach in Wicker's bill offers a creative path forward to countering Big Tech's censorship.

The PRO-SPEECH Act empowers the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to handle any complaints of newly designated unfair trade practices. Relying on the FTC for enforcement has clear advantages. The agency could craft detailed, fact-specific settlements for the complaints it receives. It can also adapt more quickly than Congress to changing circumstances in the social media environment. Similar to the way in which it developed rules for online privacy and data breaches, the FTC could proceed in a methodical, small-steps approach to ensure fair practices and meaningful competition in the social media space.

Another one of the bill's strengths is its detailed disclosure requirementsan idea first put forth by the Trump administration's National Telecommunications and Information Administration Section 230 petition. Improved disclosure practices will help bring to light the ways that dominant platforms control public discourse through the promotion or silencing of certain content. The FTC here too could play a very useful role in setting forth the inevitably technical and complex rules that effective disclosure will require.

One final creative provision is worth noting. The act creates two exceptions from its prohibitions against blocking access to lawful content. One is for small platforms, and the other stipulates that prohibitions "shall not apply to the extent that an internet platform publicly proclaims to be a publisher." The bill essentially gives dominant social media platforms a choice: they can either choose to operate as a platform and be required to provide users access to all lawful content, or they can publicly declare themselves publishers and lose their immunity protections under Section 230.

Notably, these exceptions do not hold for the other unfair trade practices outlined by the bill. Whether a platform chooses to operate as a platform or publisher, it must abide by the bill's nondiscrimination and transparency requirements, as well as its prohibitions on unfair methods of competition.

The bill does have some areas for improvement, however. It could, for instance, go one step further to address the effects social media has on children. In what is perhaps the greatest and most ignored child experiment in human history, social media companies allow formation of accounts for minors without parental consent or mandatory parental control. If anything should qualify as an unfair trade practice, then recruiting, marketing to and profiting off of minors, all without parental consent, surely must.

The FTC has in the past taken the lead in responding to "Joe Camel" and Big Tobacco's marketing of harmful and addictive products to children. But it has so far been silent about Big Tech's marketing of the highly addictive product of social media to children. As psychologist Jonathan Haidt has demonstrated, social media use by minors leads to increased childhood depression, obesity, mental illness, emotional fragility and decreased school performance and social engagement. Wicker's bill suggests an approach by which government, at last, could muster a response to the myriad harms of social media on children.

Another issue the act could address is that of obscene or otherwise undesirable content. By prohibiting platforms from blocking access to any lawful content, the PRO-SPEECH Act would potentially make, for instance, Facebook's policy against nudity illegal, since most nude pictures are not illegal. Most platforms' current terms of service would become unlawful. Thus, the bill's critics claim that it would render social media a wasteland of pornography, profanity-laced trolling and annoying spam.

These are legitimate concerns, but there is a relatively simple solution. Wicker's bill could take one additional step, and incentivizeor requirethe platforms to hand the reins of their content-blocking or moderating tools to users themselves. Users could block pornography or other types of legal but unwanted content from their feeds. This solution to lawful, but unwanted, content would maximize consumer choice and free expression. Platforms' desire to centralize control over users' experiences and access to content is unjustified, except of course, insofar as it allows them to more easily segment markets for their advertisers and increases the power of their owners. They might at last be forced to give users the power to selectively filter and moderate what they see on their feeds.

Senator Wicker's thoughtful and innovative bill tackles these platforms' unjustified control and censorship head-on. Many of its provisions seem inspired by Justice Clarence Thomas's recent Supreme Court opinion, with an aim to stand up to legal scrutiny. There are areas where further improvements could be made, but overall, the PRO-SPEECH Act offers a strong, creative solution for protecting speech and competition in social media. Wicker has shown there are more strings for legislators to pull to curb Big Tech's censorship.

Adam Candeub is professor of law at Michigan State University and senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America. He was previously acting assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information. Clare Morell is a policy analyst at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where she works on the EPPC's Big Tech Project. Prior to joining EPPC, she worked in both the White House Counsel's Office and the Department of Justice, as well as in the private and nonprofit sectors.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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The PRO-SPEECH Act is a Creative Solution to Censorship | Opinion - Newsweek

New VOD release Censor is meta-horror, but dont let that frighten you off. Director Prano Bailey-Bonds stylish directorial debut springboards off Britains video nasty controversy in the 1980s, when gory slasher flicks were targeted for supposedly corrupting children (wont SOMEBODY think of THE CHILDREN) and allegedly inspiring real-life copycat violence. A new censorship board was formed in 1984 to screen videocassette releases, since they were easier for young audiences to watch and thats where this movie starts, with Niamh Algar (of HBO series Raised by Wolves) playing a censor who brings a bit of psychological baggage to work with her.

The Gist: Eye gouging must go, Enid (Algar) writes in her notebook. Theres a question about a decapitation scene, a mention of screwdriver stuff and a light passing brush up against something to do with genital cuts, and I didnt care to discern if those were literal cuts as in with a blade or cuts as in film edits, because, you know, eek. Anyway, Enid is very exacting and detailed in her work, which involves watching some pretty cool terrible movies all day and determining which bits need to be lopped off in order to make them suitable for ages 15 and up or 18 and up, stuff like that. If this all seems terribly subjective, well, thats because it is, but Enid seems to be quite good at it, and is calm and collected in the face of an avalanche of disturbing blecch. She works long hours wouldnt you, if you got to screen amazing garbage 80s horror movies all day? then goes home and does crossword puzzles by herself and doesnt answer the phone while Baroness Thatcher goes on about this and that on the telly.

A crack begins to show in Enids facade when she has dinner with her parents (Andrew Havill and Felicity Montagu). They have a death certificate. Many years ago, Enids seven-year-old sister disappeared and was never seen again; cue some vague, bleary scenes of young Enid and her sibling, apparently lost in the woods. Its time for closure, Mum and Dad insist, but Enid clings to a miniscule thread of hope that her dear sibling is still alive out there somewhere. This is the opening rumble for a perfect storm thats about to soak Enid right through her poofy 80s blouse and loosen her hair bun. Things at work start getting bumpy; a while back she passed a movie titled Deranged, in which a man eats someones face, and now a real-life man has eaten a real-life face and somehow, her name got leaked to the press as the censor. If you have a rather myopic view of things and reality and the like, its quite obvious that its all her fault.

And then, a film producer named Doug Smart (Michael Smiley) oozes into the office to be a male chauvinist pig with rapey vibes, and to drop off Dont Go in the Church, which he promises to Enid will be a real bowel-gripper (my words, not his). And its true, because Enid fires it up and starts losing her shit while watching a scene in which two young girls get lost in the woods. She runs to the loo and barfs. No spoilers, but I will say that Enid will soon inspire a co-worker to comment, Someones losing the plot.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I havent liked a new horror film this much since Amulet, or maybe His House. Censor shows a bit of Argento-Suspiria giallo (the opening credits feature a Goblinesque score), scenes in a subway tunnel tickle the undercarriage of That Scene From Possession and Bailey-Bond cops many an old-school atmospheric vibe from stuff like Evil Dead and Halloween.

Performance Worth Watching: Algar is terrific as a buttoned-up protagonist who builds a wall of oh-so-British reservedness thats destined to crumble. Her characterization isnt outwardly TUT-TUT like a stereotypical conservative its more understated than that, and goes deeper than we may expect.

Memorable Dialogue: A decontextualized doozy via Enid: Thank you for the whiskey. Ill see myself out.

Sex and Skin: None. Having any such stuff in the movie sure would seem to clash with its intent.

Our Take: Ooh, tongues feel so nicely when theyre in cheek, dont they? Co-writing with Anthony Fletcher, Bailey-Bond doesnt weave the tightest narrative, but she slamdunks the tone, assuring that Enids psychotrauma carries some dramatic weight within an overall satirical context. And she doesnt Mank the crap out of things by making a smart-arsed movie about movies. Rather, Censor is stylish homage, winking pastiche and relevant commentary on the root cause of violence: not art, be it trashy or otherwise, because its never arts fault for doing what art does, namely, and specifically in the case of horror films, indulging the darkness within humanity, and/or humanitys fascination with that darkness.

No, the assertion the film makes is that a damaged mind left untreated is doomed to malfunction; its a serious champion for mental-health awareness. As the sides of the screen begin to narrow, so tighten the screws on Enids sanity. And Bailey-Bond shows us how ones mind may deteriorate into delusion with confident visual savoir-faire, playing with color, subtly referencing slasher classics, toying with aspect ratios and lightly fetishizing a/v static and the whirr and clunk of a VCR. She also implicates the sexual politics of the business of making gory movies notably, all of which feature human-on-human wickedness, not vampires or aliens or chupacabras by depicting lurid male filmmakers as exploitationeers who subject women to gross debasement. Some of you movie producers out there should give Bailey-Bond a blank check for her next project.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Censor is provocative and funny, boasting a smartness-to-cleverness ratio of 75:25, which is just about perfect.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

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Stream It Or Skip It: 'Censor' on VOD, a Provocative Horror Film About a Woman Who Cuts Up '80s Slasher Flicks - Decider

The horror genre has long been a space for cultivating creativity and pushing boundaries often early in a filmmakers career. George A. Romeros first feature Night of the Living Dead kicked off the modern zombie film genre, Robin Hardys name became synonymous with his cult classic, The Wicker Man, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez shook the film industry with their bare-bones found-footage-style film, The Blair Witch Project and Jordan Peele spoke to the horrors of racism with his groundbreaking Get Out. This summer, a new trio of directors who chose the horror genre for their first features hope to make an impact.

Prano Bailey-Bonds Censor (now in theaters), which was a breakout at this years Sundance Film Festival, is about a by-the-book censor in 1980s London who starts seeing parallels between a disturbing video and her own life. In exploring Britains video nasty era, which launched intense public debate around the notion that slasher films would poison minds, Bailey-Bond wondered: If a movie could be considered so terrible that it drives society to commit crime, what effect would it have had on the censors in the room? The premise allowed her to create a handful of original video nasties for her film, one of which was inspired by 1970s folk horror, like The Blood on Satans Claw, and another that emulated the work of the Italian giallo director Lucio Fulci.

By the time Bailey-Bond turned to filmmaking, after studying performing arts, she had already internalized many of the classics, like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Evil Dead and Basket Case, the latter of which was also a feature directing debut. I was drawn to darker characters, or trying to understand the parts of ourselves that we push away, she said. I hadnt come to the genre thinking, Im making horror. It was almost like horror chose me.

As she embarked on a series of short films, she found freedom within the genre. Theres this imagination that you can kind of let rip in horror, she said. That imagination took her down dark and rich visual paths with Censor that stretched as far as her mind and budget were willing to go.

She said that making a horror film about the genre itself sparked something in her. The relationship we have with the things we see onscreen I find fascinating. To be able to really explore that communicates something about who I am as a filmmaker.

For S.K. Dale, the drive behind his debut feature was to tell a visceral, edge-of-your-seat story. Till Death (in theaters and on demand July 2) fit the bill. The script (by Jason Carvey) made the 2017 BloodList, a list of the top unproduced horror screenplays. In the film, a woman, played by Megan Fox, is handcuffed to her dead husbands body in what is part of a cruel revenge plot against her.

Dale credited filmmakers like James Cameron and Steven Spielberg with sparking his interest in the horror/thriller space. Like them, he hoped to find his voice and visual style within the genre before moving onto bigger projects. For Dale, horrors appeal, particularly for his generation of filmmakers, comes down to its embrace of originality. Its one of the final genres where an audience is willing to see an original story, not based on I.P. or a book or comic or anything like that, he said.

With his directing experience having previously been limited to shorts, Dale had to sell himself and his vision to the producers. For them to bring me onto the team, they really wanted me to have a strong idea of what the story should be, he said, and that took a lot of brainstorming.

Join Times theater reporter Michael Paulson in conversation with Lin-Manuel Miranda, catch a performance from Shakespeare in the Park and more as we explore signs of hope in a changed city. For a year, the Offstage series has followed theater through a shutdown. Now were looking at its rebound.

Dale said that over weekly meetings, he threw every type of scenario possible at the producers. It was really finding what worked. Carveys original script, written with a lower budget in mind, was more contained than the final product. Dale said that when the two completed a rewrite together, they were able to go bigger with the third act, expanding the action beyond the walls of the house.

As the pandemic has given us a new lens through which to view stories of isolation, fear and existential dread, the director Sean King OGrady wanted a project that could contemplate these ideas in a thoughtful and personal way.

His film, We Need to Do Something (streaming at the Tribeca Festival), deals with a family stuck inside a bathroom during a tornado warning, something the writer Max Booth III experienced in his own life. Family bonds unravel and shift as isolation and a fear of whats behind the door settles in.

I realized that this was it, OGrady said. It captured all the anxiety and all the terror that I think wed all been feeling for several months at that point, but it also wasnt a pandemic movie. He emphasized the importance of making sure it would entertain. I wanted people to walk away from this having a good time, he said. I think that if you can feel all of that emotion, if you can be scared one minute, if you can be laughing the next minute, thats absolutely what we were going for.

Working in a cramped garage-turned-soundstage in Michigan had all the trappings of a horror film for these times. For 15 days, the cast and crew walked over from the adjacent hotel and spent hours on end together in a small space. But it made things easier, too, since they shot sequentially and without giving too much away the set became progressively more lived in.

For OGrady, making his debut with a horror feature was everything he ever wanted. You really get to flex your muscles. If youve wanted to be a filmmaker since you were a kid, and you wanted to elicit an emotional reaction from an audience, you get to do that with horror. If youve wanted to do special effects, you get to do that with horror. And he hopes that his work will be recognized like some of the talented first-timers that have come before him. Theres just a great history of people making fantastic first films in the horror genre. Who doesnt want to be a part of that legacy?

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Three New Directors Welcome the Freedoms of Horror - The New York Times

The act of delegitimising professional journalism undermines news medias status as the fourth estate

For nearly two decades, I have been concurrently looking at the annual Reuters Memorial Lecture delivered at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, and the Pulitzer Prizes for journalism administered by Columbia University. While the prizes represent the best practices in informing the public, the lecture deals with a critical issue facing the news industry and is delivered by someone at the highest level of journalism. The concurrent reading, in a sense, becomes a form of SWOT analysis. The lectures and prizes give insights into the current status of journalism and provide valuable clues on navigating its choppy waters.

It is disheartening to record that this year, both the Reuters Memorial Lecture and the Pulitzer Prizes have become veritable documents of the vulnerability of journalism. In April 2020, Nadja Drost wrote a long-form report in The California Sunday Magazine titled When can we really rest? It was on migrants crossing the Colombia-Panama border, which is said to be one of the most dangerous journeys in the world, to reach the U.S. On June 11, 2021, Ms. Drost, a freelance writer, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her article, which the Pulitzer committee described as a brave and gripping account of global migration that documents a groups journey on foot through the Darin Gap, one of the most dangerous migrant routes in the world.

The tragedy is that The California Sunday Magazine no longer exists. Last June, it stopped its print edition. And as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to take its toll, the magazine stopped publishing online and posting on social media at the end of September. Kristen Hare of Poynter pointed out the historic significance of this development. She wrote: At least in the last 10 years, this is the first example we can find of a publication closing before it won a Pulitzer. She also pointed out that in the U.S., during the pandemic, more than 75 newsrooms closed, including some that were more than 100 years old. This pandemic-induced bloodbath in journalism is evident in India too.

If the Pulitzer Prize has gone to a defunct publication that was dedicated to long-form journalism, the Reuters Memorial Lecture brought out the multiple pressures faced by journalists in pursuing their vocation in a free and independent manner. On June 8, Brazilian journalist Patrcia Campos Mello delivered the annual lecture drawing from her series of investigative pieces on the rise of disinformation in Brazil. While the focus of her talk was Brazil, it is impossible not to draw parallels with what we are witnessing in India. She said: Lies are the foundation of the health tragedy we are going through and lies are the cornerstone of our incoming political disaster. Professional journalism is one of the last barriers against the collapse of democracy in Brazil and in many other countries struggling with an avalanche of lies. Meticulously checked information, careful and balanced reporting, and in-depth investigations are the only hope to bring back reality to many countries where facts became malleable and often secondary to opinions and beliefs.

This is true in India too. We have seen gross under-reporting of the rate of COVID-19 infections and mortality. We have seen numbers, including on the availability of vaccines, being fudged. We are in an unenviable position where the Union government has issued a directive asking the States not to divulge the details about the vaccine stock in hand as these details are sensitive information.

Ms. Mello pointed out that today, the muzzling of the press has taken on a different hue. She called it censorship by noise and defamation. It is a trait that has been normalised in India. She said: Censorship, in this new world, doesnt require the suppression of information. On the one hand, populist leaders flood social media, messaging apps, and the internet in general with the version of facts they want to prevail so that it drowns out investigations and negative news. Its the so-called censorship by noise. Then, for that manipulation of public opinion to succeed, these digital populist leaders need to delegitimise professional journalism.

The act of delegitimising professional journalism undermines news medias status as the fourth estate and denies it the crucial watchdog role. This blatant institutional capture not only ruptures our democratic fabric but also irreparably damages it.

readerseditor@thehindu.co.in

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Censorship by noise - The Hindu

The Centre on Friday sought public comments on its draft Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2021, which proposes to bring back its revisionary powers over the Central Board of Film Certification. This would empower the Centre to order re-examination of an already certified film, following receipt of complaints.

In November 2000, the Supreme Court had upheld a Karnataka High Court order which struck down the Centres revisional powers in respect of films that are already certified by the Board.

The draft Bill also includes provisions to penalise film piracy with jail term and fine, and introduce age-based certification.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said it wanted to add a provision for granting revisionary powers to the government on account of violation of Section 5B(1) of the Act (principles for guidance in certifying films).

Since the provisions of Section 5B(1) are derived from Article 19(2) of the Constitution and are non-negotiable, it is also proposed in the Draft Bill to add a proviso to sub-section (1) of Section 6 to the effect that on receipt of any references by the Central Government in respect of a film certified for public exhibition, on account of violation of Section 5B(1) of the Act, the Central Government may, if it considers necessary, direct the Chairman of the Board to re-examine the film, it said.

It said that under Section 6 of the existing Cinematograph Act, 1952, the Centre was empowered to call for the record of proceedings in relation to certification of a film and pass any order thereon. This means that the Central Government, if the situation so warranted, has the power to reverse the decision of the Board, it said.

However, it noted that the Karnataka High Court had stated that the Central Government cannot exercise revisional powers in respect of films that are already certified by the Board, a decision which was upheld by the Supreme Court on November 28, 2000.

But, the I&B Ministry said, the Supreme Court has also opined that the Legislature may, in certain cases, overrule or nullify the judicial or executive decision by enacting an appropriate legislation.

In this regard, it is stated that sometimes complaints are received against a film that allude to violation of Section 5B(1) of the Cinematograph Act, 1952, after a film is certified, it said.

The notification, which sought comments by July 2, said the provisions relating to certification of films under unrestricted public exhibition category are proposed to be amended so as to sub-divide the existing UA category into age-based categories like U/A 7+, U/A 13+ and U/A 16+.

On film piracy, the ministry said: In most cases, illegal duplication in cinema halls is the originating point of piracy. At present, there are no enabling provisions to check film piracy in the Cinematograph Act, 1952

The draft Bill proposes to insert Section 6AA which prohibits unauthorised recording. According to Section 6AA, notwithstanding any law for the time being in force, no person shall, without the written authorisation of the author, be permitted to use any audio-visual recording device in a place to knowingly make or transmit or attempt to make or transmit or abet the making or transmission of a copy of a film or a part thereof.

It said that if any person contravenes the provisions of Section 6AA, he shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than three months but which may extend to three years and with a fine which shall not be less than Rs 3 lakh but which may extend to 5 per cent of the audited gross production cost or with both.

It said the new Bill will also make the process of sanctioning of films for exhibition more effective, in tune with the changed times and curb the menace of piracy.

To tackle film piracy, the Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2019 was introduced in Rajya Sabha in February 2019. It was sent to the Standing Committee on Information Technology (2019-20), which presented its report in March 2020.

The observations/recommendations made by the Standing Committee on Information Technology in the report have been examined and it is proposed to suitably revise the clauses in the Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2019 based on the recommendations made by the Committee, the ministry said.

It said the recommendations of the Justice Mukul Mudgal Committee of 2013 and the Shyam Benegal Committee of 2016 had also been considered.

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Centre plans Bill to order censors to re-examine a cleared film - The Indian Express

We all know about the censorship by social media companies, but how this got started has never been explained.

Most people think that the Big Tech companies did this on their own because of their protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Well, I have had in my possession some documents for several months that came from the congressional office of U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, on his congressional stationery and signed by him.

These documents reveal that on April 29, Schiff sent a letter to the presidents on Google, YouTube and Facebook, suggesting that they could use their position to reduce or eliminate information on the internet that was contrary to the reports of the World Health Organization. It is reasonable to conclude that when Big Tech got the green light to censor people about COVID-19 that they saw the opportunity to use the same means to censor the president and so on.

I have provided the documents to various political and legal figures.

Everyone had assumed that social media was immune from prosecution because of Section 230. It is now clear that the Big Tech firms were acting as an agent for the federal government through its agent, Congressman Adam Schiff. As such, that eliminates the protections and makes them subject to a civil lawsuit.

This is the same legal principle as someone borrowing your car. If you loan your car to a third party for the benefit of the borrower, there is nothing wrong with that. But if you give this person the keys to your car so that he can pick up something for you, then he is acting as an agent for you and any negligence he commits is imputable to you, such as in the case of Congressman Schiff.

So when you get angry about the censorship of social media companies, remember who got all this started and vote the Democrats out of office and teach them a lesson.

Editors note: According to several news accounts, including CNBC, Congressman Schiff sent a letter to the CEOs of Google, YouTube and Twitter asking them to be more like Facebook about removing misinformation about COVID-19. Facebook was already directing its users to COVID myths debunked by the World Health Organization.

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Big Tech acting as Schiff's agent in its censorship - The Daily Advance

Censor is a disturbing, beautifully shot British horror film that takes us back to the mid-1980s, the era of video nasties. It debuted at the 2021 Sundance Festival, and following its theatrical release on June 11, it will be available to watch on demand.

Censor is a story told through the lens of a young woman named Enid, who is a video censor tasked with watching violent, bloody films on video tape, and recommending cuts to them. For example, in the opening scene, she and her co-worker discuss whether or not eye gouging or tying intestines in knots should pass inspection, or if the film should be rejected altogether.

We as the viewers are subjected to seeing some of the graphic and extremely violent scenes Enid is watching, and here is where I give a trigger warning to those of you who, like myself, are incapable of watching eye trauma onscreen. I can watch a lot of gory sequences without flinching, but when the human eye is poked or prodded, I have to cover my own.

We are given a glimpse into the trauma in Enids past when she meets her parents for dinner, and they gently inform her that they are finally declaring her sister Nina, who disappeared as a young child, dead. Enid is upset by this, and we are gradually clued in that she was with Nina on the day she vanished.

A scene from CENSOR, a Magnet release. CPL/SSF. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.

As if this news, along with her stressful job are not enough problems to bear, Enid and a co-worker are blamed when a film they passed is held responsible for causing a man to commit murder. This is a lot of pressure on a woman who seems to be a workaholic, and its pretty clear that Enid is teetering on the edge of a breakdown.

A sleazy film producer named Doug requests that she review his film Dont Go In the Church, which was directed by Frederick North. Enid finds that the opening scene brings back memories of the day her sister disappeared, and she tracks down another banned film by North. She becomes obsessed, convinced that the lead actress in this film is her sister Nina.

In the interest of abstaining from spoilers, I dont want to give away any other plot points, but suffice it to say that most of this movie made me question whether Enid was really onto something, or if she was losing her mind.

I know that many members of the horror community will be really upset about it. I was frustrated at first, and my friends and I left the theater stating that we really needed to think about it for a while before we made up our minds as to how we felt about Censor as a whole.

It was a lot to unpack, but I have to say that this film has been on my mind all day, which means that it definitely made an impact. The acting performances are uniformly good, but Niamh Algar is outstanding as Enid. Even when she appears to be stark raving mad, you sympathize for Enid, and every reaction, every facial expression was authentic. She pulled me into the story 100%.

The look of Censor is fantastic, with the final third looking much like the films Enid and her co-workers watch on the daily. And the gore scenes are very well-done, appearing to be practical effects rather than CGI (always a plus in my book).

If you can handle an ending that isnt tied up neatly, check out Censor. Its a dark, unsettling, well-acted and well-portrayed story with some intense jump scares.

Are you a fan of films with frustrating endings, or do they leave you cold? Let us know all about it in the comments section.

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Censor takes us back to the age of bloody video nasties - 1428 Elm

On the outskirts of this city in a poor, mountainous province in southwestern China, men in hard hats recently put the finishing touches on a white building a quarter-mile long with few windows and a tall surrounding wall. There was little sign of its purpose, apart from the flags of Apple and China flying out front, side by side. Inside, Apple was preparing to store the personal data of its Chinese customers on computer servers run by a state-owned Chinese firm.

Tim Cook, Apples chief executive, has said the data is safe. But at the data center in Guiyang, which Apple hoped would be completed by next month, and another in the Inner Mongolia region, Apple has largely ceded control to the Chinese government. Chinese state employees physically manage the computers. Apple abandoned the encryption technology it used elsewhere after China would not allow it. And the digital keys that unlock information on those computers are stored in the data centers theyre meant to secure. Internal Apple documents reviewed by The New York Times, interviews with 17 current and former Apple employees and four security experts, and new filings made in a court case in the US last week provide rare insight into the compromises Cook has made to do business in China. Apple now assembles nearly all of its products and earns a fifth of its revenue in the China region. But just as Cook figured out how to make China work for Apple, China is making Apple work for the Chinese government.

Cook often talks about Apples commitment to civil liberties and privacy. But to stay on the right side of Chinese regulators, his company has put the data of its Chinese customers at risk and has aided government censorship in the Chinese version of its App Store.

Chinas leader, Xi Jinping, is increasing his demands on Western companies, and Cook has resisted those demands on a number of occasions. But he ultimately approved the plans to store customer data on Chinese servers and to aggressively censor apps, according to interviews with current and former Apple employees. Apple has become a cog in the censorship machine that presents a government-controlled version of the internet, said Nicholas Bequelin, Asia director for Amnesty International, the human rights group. A Times analysis found that tens of thousands of apps have disappeared from Apples Chinese App Store over the past several years, more than previously known, including foreign news outlets, gay dating services and encrypted messaging apps. It also blocked tools for organising pro-democracy protests and skirting internet restrictions, and apps about the Dalai Lama.

And in its data centers, Apples compromises have made it nearly impossible for the company to stop the Chinese government from gaining access to the emails, photos, documents, contacts and locations of millions of Chinese residents, according to the security experts and Apple engineers.

The firm said that it followed the laws in China and did everything it could to keep the data of customers safe. An Apple spokesman said that the company still controlled the keys that protect the data of its Chinese customers and that Apple used its most advanced encryption technology in China . Apple added that it removed apps only to comply with Chinese laws. These decisions are not always easy, and we may not agree with the laws that shape them, the company said.

No Plan B

In 2014, Apple hired Doug Guthrie, the departing dean of the George Washington University business school, to help the firm navigate China, a country he had spent decades studying.

One of his first research projects was Apples Chinese supply chain. Guthrie concluded that no other country could offer the scale, skills, infrastructure and government assistance that Apple required. Chinese workers assemble nearly every iPhone, iPad and Mac. Apple brings in $55 billion a year from the region, far more than any other American company makes in China. This business model only really fits and works in China, Guthrie said. But then youre married to China. China was starting to pass laws that gave the country greater leverage over Apple, and Guthrie said he believed Xi would soon start seeking concessions. Apple, he realised, had no Plan B.

Golden Gate

In November 2016, China approved a law requiring that all personal information and important data that is collected in China be kept in China. It was bad news for Apple, which had staked its reputation on keeping customers data safe. While Apple regularly responded to court orders for access to customer data, Cook had rebuffed the FBI after it demanded Apples help breaking into an iPhone belonging to a terrorist involved in the killing of 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif. Apple encrypts customers private data in its iCloud. But for most of that information, Apple also has the digital keys to unlock that encryption. The location of the keys to the data of Chinese customers was a sticking point in talks between Apple and Chinese officials, two people close to the deliberations said. Apple wanted to keep them in the US; the Chinese officials wanted them in China. The cybersecurity law went into effect in June 2017. In an initial agreement between Apple and Chinese officials, the location of the keys was left intentionally vague, one person said.

But eight months later, the encryption keys were headed to China. It is unclear what led to the change.

Documents reviewed by The Times do not show that the Chinese government has gained access to the data. They only indicate that Apple has made compromises that make it easier for the government to do so.

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Censorship, surveillance and profits: A hard bargain for Apple in China - Business Standard

There has been a dramatic increase in the censorship of Palestinian political speech on social media over the past two weeks, during the period of intense fighting between Israel and militants in Gaza.

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have all been used by Palestinians to share information from, among a variety of areas, the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah where families face eviction.

However the report from 7amleh, The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, shared exclusively with The Independent, argues that social media companies moderation attempts and codes of conduct have resulted in numerous citizens accounts being taken down.

It comes in the context of huge criticism surrounding the Israeli governments military decisions, which include displacing 52,000 Palestinians via air strikes, causing the deaths of numerous children, bombing the Associated Press and Al Jazeera building, and, on social media, the bizarrely flippant tone of its Twitter account.

Overnight, Israel and Hamas have since entered a mutual and simultaneous truce, after Israels security cabinet agreed to put an end to heavy bombardment which has killed more than 230 Palestinians.

Twelve people have been killed In Israel, including two children and a soldier. The Israeli military said 4,340 rockets were fired at Israel by militants over the course of the 11 days of fighting.

It is unlikely, however, that this will be the last time the conflict rears its ugly head, or that social media companies moderation decisions will not exacerbate future battles in the region as seen by their long-ranging and concerning approaches to Palestinian content in the past.

7amleh documented 500 cases of what it calls the digital rights violations of Palestinians between 6 May and 18 May this year through a form shared via its social media channels with the support of partners including MPower Change, Adalah Justice, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Eyewitness Palestine. These violations include content being taken down and accounts being removed or their visibility restricted.

Half of the 500 instances were on Instagram, the report states, with 179 cases on its parent companys platform Facebook; Facebook also apparently increased geo-blocking, where social media companies target the geographical location of content to help their moderation efforts, with a number of these cases [documented] for activists from the occupied Palestinian territory.

The organisation states that 45 per cent of all reported violations on Instagram were due to deleted Stories, with users receiving no prior warning or notice. While Instagram did not respond to 7amleh about 143 of the cases submitted, it confirmed that only one case violated the community standards. Instagram admitted the removal issues on 7 May, but 7amleh says the majority of reports (68 per cent) occurred after the problem was seemingly addressed.

As well as these holistic problems with content moderation, there have been specific, dramatic cases of harmful flaws in the companys content moderation, such as Instagram removing or blocking posts with hashtags for the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in the Islamic faith, as its moderation system mistakenly deemed the religious building a terrorist organisation.

We know there have been several issues that have impacted peoples ability to share on our apps, including a technical bug that affected Stories around the world, and an error that temporarily restricted content from being viewed on the Al Aqsa hashtag page. While these have been fixed, they should never have happened in the first place, Facebook told The Independent in a statement.

Our policies are designed to give everyone a voice while keeping them safe, and we apply these policies equally, regardless of who is posting or their personal beliefs, the company added. Our dedicated team, which includes Arabic and Hebrew speakers, is closely monitoring the situation on the ground. It added that it was continuing to review 7amlehs reports.

There have also been instances of Facebook blocking the accounts of Palestinian journalists, a critique which has been also levied at Twitter on which there were 55 cases of violations of Palestinian content, 91 per cent of which were suspension of accounts, according to 7amleh.

Our automated systems took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error by an automated spam filter. We are expeditiously reversing this action to reinstate access to the affected accounts, many of which have already been reinstated, Twitter said in a statement, adding that it had an appeals process for such accounts.

Twitter also temporarily restricted the account of Palestinian-American writer Mariam Barghouti, who was reporting on Palestinians being evicted from Sheikh Jarrah. "We took enforcement action on the account you referenced in error. That has since been reversed," Twitter said in a statement, changing Barghoutis account to say that it was temporarily unavailable because it violates the Twitter Media Policy.

Twitter said that if an accounts profile or media content is not compliant with our policies, we may make it temporarily unavailable and require that the violator edit the media or information in their profile to comply with our rules. We also explain which policy their profile or media content has violated. Twitter did not explain to The Independent which policy was violated.

The issues around social media moderating content, specifically about Israels war against Palestine, are long-running. In 2016, the Israeli government announced a formal collaboration with Facebooks Tel Aviv office, that were meant to force social networks to rein in content that Israel says incites violence.

Internally, Facebook listed globally protected vulnerable groups including homeless people, foreigners, and Zionists a person who supports the re-establishment of and support for a Jewish state in the Holy Land, currently located in Palestine - in documents revealed by The Guardian in 2017.

In January 2021, Facebook apparently proposed a revision of the term Zionist that would make it a proxy for Jew or Jewish, although the company said that no decision had been made. An anonymous Facebook moderator who spoke to The Intercept said the policy, in practise, leaves very little wiggle room for criticism ofZionism.

That decision was criticised by Rabbi Alissa Wise, Deputy Director at Jewish Voice for Peace, who said that restricting the word prevent[s] its users from holding the Israeli government accountable for harming Palestinian people.

Facebook said it understand[s] that the word Zionist is frequently used in important political debate. ... thats why we allow critical discussion of Zionists, but remove attacks against them in specific instances when context suggests the word is being used as a proxy for Jews or Israelis, both of which are protected characteristics under our hate speech policies.

It added: We always work to apply our Community Standards as accurately and consistently as possible, and dont remove content that doesnt break our rules. We have a clear process for handling requests from governments and regulators, which is the same around the world. Were public about how many pieces of content we restrict locally for breaking local law, and publish these numbers in our Transparency report twice a year.

However, much like how western news media headlines have slanted towards pro-Israeli language, reflecting the foreign policies of their national governments, many of the policies put forth by American companies are informed by US culture and norms, Jillian York, Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Independent.

She added that the US has historically been a strong supporter of Israel and has long dehumanized Palestinians, so it isnt surprising that corporate policies would align with that worldview.

For Facebook its more important to censor terrorism than it is to ensure that Palestinians can speak freely, York continued. Amidst the pandemic, this has only gotten worse, as content moderators in some countries are still stuck at home. As such, were seeing more bugs, more keyword filtering, more shadowbanning and other subtle enforcement tactics that arent simply takedowns.

It is for this reason that social media is so important in reframing the conversation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, allowing messages that may not come through traditional media to reach the general public.

Snapchats Snap Maps feature, for example, has been used to demonstrate in real-time the difference in the effects of the conflict between Tel Aviv and Gaza, as have TikTok memes.

Snapchat Maps video compares situation in Gaza and Israel

Both companies present a challenge to Facebook and Twitter but, York says, the network effect of these companies is still hard to disrupt and when it comes to bold decisions, such as banning President Trump, many follow one another.

Facebook's rules related to Israel-Palestinian have always been opaque and one-sided. Marwa Fatafta, a policy manager at Access Now, told The Independent.

It's no secret that Facebook often bows to government pressure and converts such demands into rules governing online speech. But thats only half of the story [as] social media platforms rely on algorithms to moderate speech at scale and being blind to context as they are, lots of legitimate content get flagged and taken down. Such issues stress the need for algorithmic transparency, which Fatafta says is clearly biased.

At some big technology companies, employees are very conscious of this power. This week both Jewish Google workers and Apple staff have called on their respective executives to recognise that millions of Palestinian people currently suffer under an illegal occupation,.

In affecting change, 7amleh recommends a number of practises to improve social media companies moderation in the end of its report.

These include hiring fact checkers specifically for Israeli and Palestinian content, allowing people access to geo-spatial information needed to respond to the humanitarian crises, providing transparency on voluntary takedown requests, and conducting human rights assessments that includes the impact of Israel on Palestinians in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.

Censorship and bias have been issues for years, however, and the escalation of violence over the past two weeks only scaled it up and made it more pronounced, Fatafta says.

Social media has been a life-linefor Palestinian activists deprived of access to mainstream media, and the despite of the ceasefire, the reality of occupation and oppression continues. So Palestinians will continue to use social media to organise and dissent. The main question here is: would social media companies learn their lessons this time?

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Palestinians digital rights violated by censorship on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, new report claims - The Independent

In the early 80s, a loophole in film classification laws allowed a series of so-called video nasties think low-budget horror and exploitation offerings like Blood Feast and The Burning to hit the market without any sort of regulation. The response to these films was swift and expected: public panic, supposed moral outrage, and eventually heightened censorship and regulation. Such is the world of Censor, a gory and clever horror feature about, well, horror films. Sort of.

Per the films official synopsis: Film censor Enid takes pride in her meticulous work, guarding unsuspecting audiences from the deleterious effects of watching the gore-filled decapitations and eye gougings she pores over. Her sense of duty to protect is amplified by guilt over her inability to recall details of the long-ago disappearance of her sister, recently declared dead in absentia. When Enid is assigned to review a disturbing film from the archive that echoes her hazy childhood memories, she begins to unravel how this eerie work might be tied to her past.

Censor stars Niamh Algar as the censor of the title, Enid, and was directed by Prano Bailey-Bond in her feature debut (she also wrote the film alongside Anthony Fletcher). The film debuted at this years Sundance Film Festival, where IndieWires Eric Kohn called it a disturbing debut steeped in 80s horror.

In his review, Kohn wrote:The movie unfolds with elegant atmospheric dread, as Enid contends with a brutal, male-dominated work environment in which her opinions rarely hold weight. When a lunatic murders his family in a manner based off one of the movies she was forced with cutting down, the world turns against her. Thats when she sees a particularly unnerving exploitation movie called Dont Go in the Church, with an opening slasher bit featuring an actress that bears an unmistakable resemblance to Enids missing sibling. At least, thats what Enid thinks, as she journeys down a rabbit hole of theories and detective work that may or may not hold together.

Magnet Releasing will release Censor in theaters on June 11, with a VOD rollout to follow on June 18. Check out the first U.S. trailer and poster for the film, available exclusively on IndieWire, below.

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Censor Trailer: Video Nasties and Real-Life Horror Meld Together in Disturbing Sundance Chiller - IndieWire