Category Archives: Censorship

The San Francisco-based photo-sharing site Pinterest would seem to rank low on the list of potential threats to China. Beloved by fashion designers, photographers, cooks and hobbyists, the 7-year-old website is a global hub for the sharing of images, trends and ideas on topics ranging from living-room design to what to cook at a Saturday barbecue.

Unfortunately, Pinterests innocuousness couldnt save it from the same fate as other foreign internet companies in China, including Facebook and Alphabet (formerly known as Google). Earlier last month, the Chinese government blocked Chinese internet users from accessing the site. And that should make Pinterest of interest to the Trump administration, as well as China.

Pinterests troubles arent unique. Last year, China banned thousands of U.S. websites from China, including eight of the 25 most-trafficked global sites. Yet there was hardly a word of protest out of Washington against these systematic denials of market access. Similar restrictions against U.S. automakers, say, would almost certainly have prompted complaints to the World Trade Organization.

The costs imposed by this policy are adding up. In 2015, the global value of international data flows came to $2.8 trillion, exceeding the global flow of merchandise for the first time. The U.S. economy has benefited more than most from that trade. In 2014, the U.S. exported nearly $400 billion in digital services, accounting for more than half of all U.S. services exports and generating a $159 billion trade surplus in the sector.

Though its impossible to calculate what Facebook, Google and Twitter mightve earned in Chinas booming internet sector had they been allowed to compete, theres little question that they would have added measurably to that surplus.

The Chinese government is doubtless aware of the opportunities that online protectionism creates for domestic companies. In June 2009, China blocked Twitter; two months later, Sina Corp. launched a wildly successful knock-off microblog, Weibo, that has thrived for years in the absence of foreign competition. Likewise, when Google announced in May 2010 that it was contemplating the total shutdown of its Chinese offices, the stock of Baidu Inc. its leading Chinese competitor and a keen observer and imitator of Googles business rallied 16.6 percent in a single day, while smaller rivals enjoyed similar bumps.

Meanwhile, local Chinese versions of Pinterest have flooded Chinas market since 2012 with middling success. If the recent ban holds, at least one of those companies may enjoy a highly lucrative opportunity to become Chinas Pinterest.

Pinterests options, on the other hand, are limited. The Chinese government is notoriously opaque about why it blocks sites, and there are no formal procedures for appeal.

The idea of dragging China before the WTO to argue that its Great Firewall represents a trade barrier isnt a new idea. The European Union has contemplated such an approach since the late 2000s. And late last year, in a move that could lay the groundwork for a case, the Obama administration argued that Chinas worsening censorship posed a significant burden on foreign internet service providers. The next step, though a formal complaint and case before the WTO is up to the Trump administration.

Such a case wouldnt be a slam dunk. China has long cited WTO clauses that give countries room to impose measures to protect public morality and order. Even if it lost the WTO case, the Chinese government would be highly unlikely to abide by the decision in full.

But the WTO recently ruled against a Chinese attempt to invoke public morality as an excuse to restrict the import and distribution of American books, magazines, films and other published material. And any Chinese attempt to ignore WTO rulings would undermine its recent posturing as a champion of free trade. A negotiated settlement perhaps integrated into a long-delayed U.S.-China investment treaty that opens China to U.S. internet companies while acknowledging Chinas right to censor selectively (not wholesale) for morality and public order, might be the best outcome for all sides.

Adam Minter is a Bloomberg View columnist.

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China's 'Great Firewall' of censorship is yet another trade barrier ... - Press of Atlantic City

The influential social media site Reddit.com, which has hundreds of millions of users, came under fresh fire today for allegedly discriminating against users of the pro-Trump section of the site called/r/The_Donald. Critics accused Reddit ofunder-reporting how many "subscribers" the section has while telling advertisers that the section has a much higher number of users.

But Reddit tells Fox News that the flap was caused by a simple labelling error that Reddit made when it rolled out a new system for advertisers Thursday.

Reddit.comhas a live counter available to the public thatsays the pro-Trump section of the sitehas 385,000 subscribers. Reddit users closely follow such counters to gauge popularity. But between Thursday and Friday afternoon, if a user went to Reddit's advertising platform,ads.reddit.com, and expressed interest in advertising in the Trump subreddit, the user was shown a dramatically higher number of subscribers: more than 6 million.

The discrepancy was first reported by the blogRight Side Politics.Fox News confirmed the two differing Reddit counts.

PRIVACY ACTIVISTS WANT TO SELL TRUMP'S BROWSING DATA

Users of/r/The_Donaldsay this is just the latest example of Reddit discriminating against them. Reddit has takenother censorship measures in the pastand blocks most posts from the pro-Trump section of the site from appearing on the "front page" of Reddit.

A post in the Trump section Friday afternoon reads: "385,000 subscribers? TRY 6 MILLION... STOP LYING TO US."

Users also said thatReddit could be guilty of advertising fraudif it were to turn out that the 385,000 number were correct and the 6 million number were wrong.

Fox News asked Reddit about the discrepancy.

SOCIAL MEDIA SITE REDDIT CENSORS TRUMP SUPPORTERS

Reddit Director of Communications AnnaSoellner told Fox News that the high advertising counts were caused by a labelling error in a new service:

"When we released the new ads self-serve product yesterday, the ad interface said "Subscribers" in the targeting dropdown list. However, the actual number represented here was not "Subscribers" but was actually "Daily Unique Visitors" to the subreddit,"she said.

In other words, the advertising page was meant to say that the Trump section averaged 6 million unique visitors to the page each day; not 6 million subscribers.

She said the error has been partly fixed as of Friday afternoon.

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"We have just pushed out a change to rename this number Daily Impressions and will modify the numbers shown in the dropdown to show Daily Impressions."

"Daily Impressions" is the number of advertisement views available. Soellner alsolinked toadditional details about the difference between the three different terms.

As of 3 p.m. Friday afternoon, the Reddit advertisers page said the Trump section had 28 million "subscribers" -- but according to Soellner that should really (and soon will) read 28 million "daily impressions."

By 3:30 p.m. Friday, the page had been fixed to show 28 million "daily impressions." It no longer shows 6 million subscribers.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

Prior to the fix, other sections of the site also had apparent discrepancies between the advertising count and the normal count, but not nearly as big as for the Trump section. Reddit's politics section, for example, was listed as having 6.3 million subscribers to advertisers and 3.3 million to the general public.

Other sections actually had advertising counts that are lower than the public counts: The Reddit Science section was shown to advertisers as having 10 million users while the general public saw 16 million.

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Reddit defends against accusations of ad fraud and Trump censorship - Fox News

Recently YouTube has been swamped with controversy over a new filtering feature. Creating a restricted mode, the web streaming service was hoping to provide content for schools and more educational purposes.

However in its design, YouTube ran into a problem. The censoring feature, targeting videos with violent and sexual content, ended up hiding videos featuring LGBT themes. Examples include gay weddings, vlogs, and a variety of non-explicit content. On discovering this, various content creators, such as YouTube icon Tyler Oakley, expressed their frustration over social media, and YouTube was forced to backtrack.

This raises the broader issue of censorship on YouTube, something that is most assuredly bad.

A representative from YouTube, Johanna Wright, vice president of YouTube's product management, issued a statement saying The bottom line is that this feature isnt working the way it should. Were sorry and were going to fix it. And it looks as though YouTube is working to un-restrict these videos, as many creators who have complained have found their videos back to normal.

Most YouTube users arent watching from a school, or area where restricted mode would come into play. So the actual effects of this censorship are small. However this does raise the question of censorship on YouTube. After all, YouTube found its success because of the freedoms it gave creators. YouTube thrives on its differentiation from the culture of traditional television. Seeing censorship take over this medium known for its creativity is concerning to say the least.

Censorship isnt new on YouTube, theres been a gradual progression toward restrictions on content, however this is the first time censorship has affected creators with non-controversial content.

An example of censorship based on controversy happened last month to the current number one YouTuber, PewDiePie. Renowned for his video game commentary and more recently for his vlogs, the Swedish YouTuber found himself accused of being anti-Semitic after making radical jokes about the death of Jews. Given this bad publicity, Disney ended its affiliation with him, and YouTube stripped him of his status as recommended across its site, slashing his ad revenue as a way of trying to censor his content. In fact, YouTube went so far as to cancel his upcoming season on YouTube Red, simply for his comedy.

While anti-Semitism is certainly wrong, Pewdiepie is no Neo-Nazi. Hes an entertainer trying to make jokes. This sort of comedy wouldnt succeed on television, which is why YouTube is such an excellent medium for it; howeve,r even YouTube is beginning to let censorship slip into its policies. And while Anti-Semitism jokes arent ideal, and public backlash is certainly necessary to keep creators from crossing the line, YouTubes selling point is how its creators have more freedom than traditional media outlets.

Placing restrictions on what creators can do or say on YouTube is certainly the websites right, it's responsible for the content it displays. However, just because it possesses that right doesnt mean it should implement it. If individuals want to boycott or denounce PewDiePie for his humor, so be it. But when it comes to dilemmas like this its very hard to draw the line. As a result, when censorship enters the picture, individual expression suffers.

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COLUMN: YouTube must not censor - Indiana Daily Student

President Trump may be close to nominating Chuck Cooper to be U.S. Solicitor General.(Photo: stock photo)

A state judge has thrown outan order that censored The Trentonian newspaper, and attorneys for the publication on Thursday hailed the ruling asa victory for First Amendment rights in New Jersey.

Superior Court Judge Lawrence DeBello ruled in favor of The Trentonian on Monday, lifting an unusual "prior restraint" that had been imposedby another judge, Craig Corson.

At the request of the state Attorney General's Office, Corson issued atemporary injunction in October that prohibited The Trentonian from publishing articles based on a confidential child-abuse complaint obtained by one of its reporters, Isaac Avilucea. The document lays out how a 5-year-old boy from Trenton went to school carrying 30 packets of heroin in his lunchbox one day and crack cocaine in his school folder six weeks later, among other sensitive details.

DeBello, a more senior judge who took over the case andheld two hearings this year, issued an order vacatingthe prior restraint on Monday.

The Trentonian has continued to publishstories about the case, questioning why the boy was allowed to remain with his family after the first incident was reported to authorities. The boy, identified only as "N.L." in court papers, is now in foster care.

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"We want to thank Judge DeBello for affirming and protecting important First Amendment values today," David Bralow, an attorney for The Trentonian at the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton, said Thursday."From the time that the Trentonian learned of the unfortunate order, it has expended significant effort to protect its and its reporters First Amendment rights.We are vindicated today."

A spokesman for the Attorney General's Office did not respond immediately to a request for comment Thursday. The office may appeal DeBello's ruling.

Judicial orders imposing a prior restrainton a news organization prohibiting it from publishing information on a specific topic are extremely rare in the United States. Attorneys for The Trentonian and Avilucea argued that Corson did not take into account some of the U.S. Supreme Courts most important rulings on the First Amendment, which guaranteethe freedom of the press and impose a very high bar on authorities seeking to censor news organizations.

New Jerseys child welfare agency, the Division of Child Protection and Permanency, got Corson to bar The Trentonian from publishing "any information obtained from the filed verified complaint in any form." The complaint contained sensitive details and confidential allegations being filedagainst N.L.'s parents and paternal grandmother. Represented by the Attorney General's Office in court, the agency alleged that Avilucea obtained the complaint illegaly from the boy's mother, although criminal charges were never filed against the Trentonian or the reporter.

Attorneys for the Trentonian argued that the child abuse complaint was not marked "confidential" and that the boy's mother, Tashawn Ford, parted with it willingly.

"The judge basically found that the state presented no proof Isaac obtained the complaint unlawfully and no proof he encouraged release of the complaint in violation of the law," said Avilucea's attorney, Bruce Rosen of the law firmMcCusker, Anselmi, Rosen andCarvelli.

"I'm glad I'm not going to jail after months of being persecuted," Avilucea said Thursday."Journalism, and a journalist, was on trial for the last five months."

Censoring the press is more serious than a criminal penalty because it doesnt just chill speech; it freezes it altogether, one of the newspaper's attorneys, Eli Segal, argued in January.

Prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights, Segal argued, quoting from the U.S. Supreme Courts 1976 decision in Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart.

On behalf of the agency, Assistant Attorney General Erin OLeary argued that the freedom of the press under the First Amendment is not an absolute right and that Corsons order prohibiting The Trentonian from publishing certain information was necessary to protect N.L.s privacy.

The more that the world learns of this intensely private situation, the more likely he is to be ostracized by his peers, OLeary argued in January. Allowing confidential documents to be publicly disseminated also could hurt the states ability to investigate child-abuse incidents, she argued.

In a landmark 1971 decision, New York Times Co. v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court declined a request from President Richard Nixons administration to prohibit The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing stories based on the Pentagon Papers, a classified study of the Vietnam War. The governments interest in keeping that information secret could not overcome the freedom of the press to choose what to publish, the justices said. That ruling followed a 1931 decision, Near v. Minnesota, in which the Supreme Court said nearly all forms of prior restraint are unconstitutional.

Segal cited the Pentagon Papers case during the hearing and argued that the Trenton child-abuse case continued to be worth the publics attention. New Jersey state officials had not cleared the very high bar required by the U.S. Supreme Court for censorship of the press, he said.

Courts have allowed prior restraints on news organizations to prevent the publication of troop movements during wartime and when a magazine attempted to publish the secret to building a hydrogen bomb. OLeary argued that details about N.L.s case and other child-abuse investigations are similarly sensitive.

In an interview with The Record last year, Floyd Abrams, a leading expert on the First Amendment and one of the lawyers involved in the Pentagon Papers case, said the Trentonian was right to cite that case in its defense.The all-but-total ban on prior restraints exists as a critical protection of First Amendment rights, Abrams said.

Attorney General Chris Porrino's office at first offered to drop the case, provided that The Trentonian destroy the complaint and cease publishing articles about it. The newspapers management and attorneys initially decided to accept the settlement, but Avilucea refused,the agreement was not executed, and the legal battle continued.

"They offered a truce that I wasn't going toput my John Hancock on," Avilucea said.

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Judge lifts censorship order in victory for newspaper - NorthJersey.com

Public Records Sought to Expose Trump's Climate-change Censorship Common Dreams WASHINGTON - The Center for Biological Diversity filed four Freedom of Information Act requests today with the Trump administration's Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the National Oceanic and ... and more »

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Public Records Sought to Expose Trump's Climate-change Censorship - Common Dreams

This month, the rulers of Pakistan stepped up a campaign against blasphemy, frightening news from an Islamic nation where insulting the official religion is a capital crime.

From an American perspective, this would merely be another, distant nations horror if it werent for one aspect of the story.

As part of the crackdown, Pakistani leaders have asked executives of Facebook and Twitter to help them help root out people who post blasphemous material on social media sites from anywhere in the world.

In response, Facebook said in mid-March that it planned to send a team to Pakistan to discuss the governments request. Really?

And this week, Pakistans interior ministry claimed Facebooks administrators have been blocking and removing blasphemous content from the site. Really?!

Its heartening to read that Facebook said in a statement that, in considering government requests, it keeps in mind the goal of protecting the privacy and rights of our users.

However, the situation calls for stronger assurance that Facebook will do its part to defend the basic human values of free thought and free expression.

Its understood that social networking companies have a complicated challenge in dealing with an array of cultures and standards of freedom in countries all over the world.

But Facebook and Twitter or any American company facing pressure such as this from Pakistani leaders must bluntly refuse to cooperate in any way with a repressive regimes efforts to forcibly squelch free expression and dissent, even if their refusal means having access to their sites blocked in those countries.

As Michael De Dora, the main representative to the United Nations from the non-profit Center for Inquiry, said: We do not want to see the people of Pakistan cut off from such a powerful and far-reaching platform as Facebook. But we hope Facebook makes clear that it will not compromise its users safety or freedom through disclosure.

Pakistan is, sadly, far from the only country that doesnt understand the right to free speech that most Americans take for granted.

The Pew Research Center found last year that, as of 2014, 26 percent of the worlds countries and territories had laws or policies against blasphemy (that is, showing a lack of reverence for a god or sacred thing), and 13 percent had laws or policies against apostasy (the renunciation of a religion), the offenses calling for everything from fines to execution. Such laws are most common in the Middle East and North Africa.

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But Pakistans policies, and its leaders rhetoric, are worse than most. According to unofficial tallies, since 1990 at least 68 people have been killed there over allegations of blasphemy, including a provincial governor shot dead six years ago by a police guard who accused him of blasphemy after he defended a Christian woman who insulted the Prophet Muhammad; and currently about 40 people are on death row or serving life sentences for blasphemy. Last week, three bloggers were arrested on blasphemy charges.

In Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif calls blasphemy an unpardonable offense.

Here, the unpardonable offense would be failing to push back against such backward thing. Facebook and Twitter should help to lead the push.

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Censorship in Pakistan hits home in the U.S. - LA Daily News

Under censorships nefarious grip, cinema becomes not just a driver of social justice but a sophisticated tool of oppression.

There is, however, a positive side effect of censorship: Sometimes it inspires filmmakers to be more experimental, innovative and free-thinking. Case in point: Poland after World War II.

Under the Communist regime, Polish authorities raged war on moviemakers who tried to reveal that the states ballyhoo about progress was nothing more than propaganda. Any critique of the Soviet Union or the Polish Peoples Republic was silenced. For a new generation of filmmakers, young people disillusioned by the sacrifices made during the war, these laws became an invitation to rebela cinematic revolution handed to them on a silver plate.

Polish censors, under the primary censorship board at Gwny Urzd Kontroli Prasy, Publikacji i Widowisk (i.e. the Main Office for Control of the Press, Publications and Public Performances), were highly literary, capable of deciphering even the most sophisticated subversions in books, newspapers and other written formsbut they were quite impotent when it came to evaluating images. So beginning in 1957 with Andrzej Wajdas Kanal, Polish films started to develop and expand upon an intricate cinematic language of metaphors, allegories, symbols, poetic imagery and other means of non-verbal expression. In Kanals devastating final act, the dying fighters of the Warsaw Uprising represent different parts of Polish society, past and present. For censors, this sequence may have seemed like a condemnation of the insurrection.

Polish filmmakers were forced to learn how to say something without saying it directly, how to depict a reality that did not officially exist, says Ryszard Lenczewski, the Oscar-nominated cinematographer of Pawe Pawlikowskis Ida (shot together with ukasz al). Lenczewski began his career in 1970s, when the battle for Polish cinema was raging on many fronts. This was a responsibility we all felt: to create layered images, images with double meanings that dared viewers to interpret them differently.

Andrzej Wajdas 1958 film Ashes and Diamonds

Viewers were depended upon to be active participants, decoding hidden meanings. It was all in the detailslike using wider lenses to show things you would not be able to show any other way. Something may be occurring in the background, slightly blurred. Sometimes all the film needed was to not include something or someone in the frame. Or to show a person in an unbalanced manner, i.e. a drunken assistant to a town mayor in Ashes and Diamonds.

That film, Wajdas 1958 masterpiece shot by cinematographer Jerzy Wjcik, is filled with symbols and layered imagery portraying everything wrong with post-war Poland. It made the censors heads spin. They knew the material was dangeroussome of them tried to stop it from reaching a wider audiencebut ultimately had to back off. Unsurprisingly, some messages were too cryptic for international audiences to decipher. Yet a universal cinematic language resonated for viewers in different parts of the globe. In the films most famous scene, the protagonist lights glasses of vodka as if they were candles, and the world understood the symbolism.

Censors, perturbed by the growing international acclaim, grew more paranoid. After we finished The Wedding, the censors held the material for two or three weeks without uttering a word of explanation, remembers Sawomir Idziak, camera operator under cinematographer Witold Sobociski on that Wajda film. The Oscar-nominated cinematographer (Black Hawk Down) started his career at the end of 1960s. They supposedly watched the film shot by shot, comparing it to the novel by Stanisaw Wyspiaski on which it was based to see if something was added or missing in an attack of the Communist order.

Idziak shot Krzysztof Kielowskis 1988 film A Short Film About Killing. I shot the film in this hideous yellow-greenish color to subtly hint at the directors idea that the country could be a killer, just like the main character. I remember one reviewer in Cannes writing that because the screen assumes the color of urine, it encapsulates the reality of Communist Poland. That was beautiful.

Krzysztof Kielowskis A Short Film About Killing, shot by Sawomir Idziak

The paradox was that state funding of these films and the censors decisions on how they should be seen were intrinsically linked. The government valued art, and wanted to produce films, yet wanted art to be propagandisticso instead of denying moviemakers the ability to create movies, officials chose to marginalize those that they didnt agree with, or those who they suspected of being subversive. Polish films were huge outside of PolandAmerican auteurs like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola saw them as masterpiecesbut their directors sometimes had to be content for the titles to, domestically, only reach a handful of city intellectuals who were opposing the regime anyway, as Idziak puts it. The truth is, many of these internationally applauded films, now classics, were commercial failures in Poland.

2017 marks the 28th anniversary of the fall of Communism in Poland, and the beginnings of a differentperhaps harsher and less forgivingtype of censorship: the dictates of the commercial market. Yet Idziak and Lenczewski, both distinguished film educators, consider this a good test for their countrymen.

We had to work with many limitations and yet we managed to speak our own voices, says Idziak. Now, the limitation is only within yourself. MM

Darek Kuma is a cinephile, film journalist, translator, freelancer, husband, father and Camerimage Film Festival programmer, not necessarily in that order.

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Turning Censorship Into Symbolism: How State Censorship Defined and Strengthened Post-War Polish Cinema - MovieMaker Magazine

(Last Updated On: March 29, 2017)

In order to appease the growing trend of third-wave feminist requests to censor the sexuality of fictional female characters, many developers have opted to cover up cleavage, make sure that the women in fantasy games are fully clothed with realistic designs, and remove things like jiggle or boob physics to placate SJWs, similar to Mortal Kombat X. Well, the developer of the action-RPG Kings Raid, Vespa Inc, received a lot of backlash after they attempted to censor and cover up their female characters.

Censored Gaming covered the incident, showcasing how many of the female characters in the game were covered up from head to toe to either hide cleavage, or add extra articles of clothing to lessen the sex appeal of the character illustrations and in-game models.

A large enough segment of their fans rebuffed this decision, complaining about Vespa censoring the characters in Kings Raid, the mobile hack-and-slash RPG.

The complaints were made in such abundance that just a day after the update was released, Vespa made a post on Facebook on March 24th, 2017 stating

We are aware that the update on March 23 has upset many of our Raiders, especially regarding the change brought to the Heroes appearances. As it is our ultimate goal to support and enhance the players experience, we have decided to take your voices to revoke some of the changes to the Heroes appearances.

They showed an image of the characters that were censored in the previous update, and how they were going to uncensor them in the following update, following the fan complaints.

As you can see, not only did they alter the games anime-style illustrations but they also modified the characters 3D meshes, covering them up and attempting to make them more conservatively dressed.

The backlash over the censorship rippled through the reviews of the game as well, with people complaining about the change.

While a lot of fans thanked Vespa for uncensoring the characters, others complained that the game should be censored and that they also need to remove one of the staple features in Kings Raid: the boob physics.

One of the people on the Google Play store going by the handle of Narendra MC wrote

Well, in overall its good. I just saw some comments about censorship and i really think that it doesnt really matter to people who arent a bunch of horndogs. I support censhorship as it reduces the possibility of people becoming more attracted in to sexual stuff.

The Facebook page where the announcement was originally made is now a full sociopolitical argument over censorship, female sexuality and identity politics.

Many male Asian gamers like the boob physics and cleavage. Many European and North American gamers are complaining about the sexualization of the characters and saying that the original art caters toward perverted gamers. Awais from Ontario, Canada wrote

They didnt even do anything wrong. Cant believe how ridiculous most of you adults were over a little censoring. Absolutely ridiculous how no one appreciates a company for finally focusing less on satisfying the perverted gamers Nope, but its alright because as long as you get to drool over pixel tits, theres nothing wrong right? Shameless community cant think outside theyre horny little bubbles.

As evidenced on the Facebook page, Awais was clearly in the minority with his beliefs and was shouted down by a lot of other gamers.

Additionally, Censored Gaming pointed out that Vespa never actually stated the reasons as to why they made the change in the first place.

The Western release of Kings Raid is rather recent, though. It launched back in the middle of February, 2017. The Asian version of the game was available since the middle of last year in 2016. The game was quite popular for bringing hardcore hack-and-slash action to mobile devices with PS2-quality graphics and a lot of fan-service.

As showcased in the video below from Android Gameplay, the in-game characters, illustrations and dialogue sequences were filled with plenty of fan-service, lots of cleavage and jiggle physics.

Vespa may have weighed the complaints of Western gamers versus Eastern gamers and attempted to make the change. However, if the gamers who actually bought microtransactions are the ones who enjoyed the fan-service, then Vespa may have decided to revert back to the uncensored version of the game to appease the people who actually put money in their coffers.

However, all of the above is just speculation when it comes to the reasons behind Vespa uncensoring Kings Raid. Unless the company decides to share their reasons such as the Dragon Heroes developers who were forced by Google and Apple to censor their game we dont actually know why they censored and then uncensored the game, but it was pretty obvious a significant portion of the community was not happy with the censorship.

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King's Raid Devs Remove Censorship Following Fan Complaints - One Angry Gamer (blog)

Twitter has upped its censorship game and is now blocking certain terms from showing up on the platforms built-in search engine. The added filters are part of the companys plans to reduce harassment on the service. Some of these filters were deployed earlier this month when users were given the option to mute certain types of accounts.

As with previous efforts to convert Twitter into a safe space, free from wrongthink and uncomfortable opinions, the company that once branded itself as the free speech wing of the free speech party has offered little transparency on the terms it filters out of its search engine. Furthermore, its enabled by defaultand the settings to disable safe search are hidden away on the Search page, so you wont find them with the rest of your account preferences.

Users on the platform were quick to discover how looking up certain terms returnedzero results. Examples of prohibited terms include porn, BDSM, sex, and kink. Other censored words include hentai, and nsfwneither of which show up in the search results. Curiously, racial slurs like the n-word and terms like jihad still show up unfiltered.

Over the weekend, the terms marijuana and cannabis were also filtered out out the search engine. Butcomplaints may have prompted the platform to uncensor the term, as it now shows up.

The filtering system doesnt even work as its developers intendedsensitive terms are filtered out on the Latest tab, but youll still find some of them in the Top tab. Twitters censorship is confusing and lacks the transparency necessary to be useful to users.

Twitter is well within its rights to implement safety features, but so far, theyve only hurt usability. After all, who uses Twitter search to look for porn?

Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at@stillgray on Twitterand onFacebook.

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Twitter Censors Search Terms, Offers No Transparency and Mixed ... - Heat Street

#HandsOffSocialMedia: A PROPOSAL to regulate social media has been put forward by minister of state security, David Mahlobo and citizens are outraged.

An online petition by the Right 2 Know (R2K) Organisation against the proposal has garnered nearly 1,000 votes by South Africans who believe their freedom of speech under threat.

The independent courts, a vibrant civil society and critical media are essential to the democratic process, especially when state entities fail to act with integrity, transparency or accountability. It is the executives paranoia and abuse of power that undermines democracy and creates instability.

R2K has already raised concerns that SAs state-security structures have abused their surveillance powers and shown a disregard for democratic process. Mahlobos regime change mantra is part of a recycled narrative where members of the security cluster have tried to paint their critics as threats that must be targeted, read a statement by R2K.

People have taken to Twitter to express their opposition to the proposal with the hashtag #HandsOffSocialMedia.

Government wants to prevent the word of the common people so corruption can continue to rape our land. #Durban2022 #HandsOffSocialMedia

— Yashik Singh (@yashiks) March 13, 2017

https://twitter.com/Jiggasyd/status/841238372614057984

Better yet use those funds against some of the fiscal activities...unemployment... tertiary education funding #HandsOffSocialMedia

— Lotus? (@PhumiG) March 7, 2017

Social media law specialist, Emma Sadleir even commented on the situation:

In sum: The answer to bad speech, is more speech #HandsOffSocialMedia @DJFreshSA

— Emma Sadleir Berkowitz (@EmmaSadleir) March 8, 2017

The campaign packaged the plan to regulate social media among other bills as affronts to freedom from censorship.

It comes on the back of a range of existing, deeply problematic censorship policies, including the Film and Publication Boards internet censorship regulations, the draft Hate Speech Bill, and the new Cybercrimes Bill, which would hand the keys of the internet to David Mahlobo.

Regulation of social media already exists platforms like Twitter and Facebook have added self-regulation measures to empower users to take action against online harassment and cut down on the spread of fake news and propaganda. These systems are flawed, and users need to be empowered to engage with content critically and decide for themselves whether to trust the content they access.

Giving state security any role in regulation is a sure path to internet censorship.

What do you think about the proposal? Talk to us.

Do you have more information pertaining to this story? Feel free to let us know by commenting on our Facebook page or you can contact our newsroom on 031 903 2341 and speak to a journalist.

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#HandsOffSocialMedia as 'internet censorship' bill booed - Southlands Sun