Category Archives: Censorship

While a brutal armed conflict rages on Ukrainian soil, an information war is unfolding online.

Russia is seeking to control the narrative by muffling dissent. Last month, the Kremlinblocked several social media platforms andthreatened lengthy jail terms for spreading false information about the invasion.

A series of domestic alternatives to American apps are now being promoted, from RuTube to Rossgram. Critics describe the latteras absolute shit.

The next service that may require a Putin-approved replacement is Wikipedia.

Regulators last week threatened to fine the site up to 4 million rubles (around $47,000) if it doesnt remove prohibited information about the special operation.

Russians are now rushing to secure the sites content before a potential ban. In March, the country had almost twice as many downloads of Wikipedia as any other nation.

These fears have caught the eye of advocates for web3, the nebulous term for a decentralized internet built on blockchains.

Proponents of Web3 argue that blockchain can eradicate censorship. Among the supporters areSwarm, an Ethereum-based decentralized storage platform, and Kiwix, an offline reader for online content.

The pair want to add a mirror version of Wikipedia to a peer-to-peer network thats always available even when internet access is restricted.

Kiwix says Wikipedias entire collection of 6 million articles with images can be compressed into just 80Gb, which could then be hosted on Swarm as a read-only snapshot.

Instead of storing the content on centralized servers, the data would be distributed across numerous nodes, which makes it censorship-resistant.

The idea is that we split the big file into chunks, and those chunks are scattered across the network, Swarms Antonio Gonzalo told TNW. As a host, you dont know exactly which files youre hosting, which can prevent sudden takedowns.

If the main domain was blocked, anyone running a node and connected to the network could still access and share the information. Users would cover the costs via a built-in incentive system enforced through smart contracts.

Some foundations for the project have already been laid. At a March hackathon, participants created read-only versions of Wikipedia and offline search tools for the site.

Russia is far from the only country thats tried to censor Wikipedia, but the Kremlins threats have provided a compelling use case for blockchain boosters.

The backers claim a web3 Wikipedia could provide provenance of facts, protection from authoritarian control, and financial compensation for contributors.

The vision has won support from crypto enthusiasts but not everyone shares their excitement.

Molly White is one of the prominent skeptics. The Wikipedia editor, software engineer, and creator of the website Web3 Is Going Just Great warns that paying contributors will distort the sites objectives.

The majority of people contributing to Wikipedia are doing so out of a desire to improve an encyclopedic resource, she told the Verge. With web3 you have a whole mix of motivations, including wanting to support a srupecific project, wanting to do good in various broader ways, and just wanting to make a lot of money. Those things can be in conflict a lot of the time.

White points to another for-profit online encyclopedia based on blockchain: Everipedia. Seven years after launching, the site is largely comprised of content copied from Wikipedia, articles contributors wrote about themselves, and crypto spam. Everipedia also has a reputation for publishing inaccurate information about tragic events.

These worries join more general concerns about web3s technical limitations, financial backers, and popularity with scammers.

Nonetheless, a decentralized Wikipedia could provide a useful service. It certainly sounds more appealing than a prospective Putinipedia.

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A web3 clone of Wikipedia may help Russians, but it's dividing the tech community - The Next Web

An unknown person on Top Channels show Top Storys Facebook page on Thursday sent shockwaves across Albania after claiming that the TV channels bosses had cancelled the airing of an important documentary entitled The Oligarchs of the Urban Renaissance.

This #Investigation sheds light on abuses and corruption in town centre reconstructions carried over the last eight years, the anonymous statement read.

Top Story staff have been under pressure from the directors, starting from the way in which themes were dealt with to the firing of the shows director, it adds.

Shortly after, Top Channel issued a statement naming former director Endrit Habilaj as the author of the Facebook post, and accusing him of blackmail. The channel called the statement defamatory and said Habilaj had been fired for breach of ethics.

Our legal team is preparing the documents and will forward them to the authorities to ascertain the legal responsibilities and damages that the individuals caused the company by using the profession and the show as a tool for extortion and threats, also misusing foreign donations, the statement read.

It claimed that the doc was axed for breach of ethics.

When the board analyzed the materials and observed serious ethical and professional breaches, it decided to not air this extortion, done in the name of two individuals who once worked for Top Channel but not in the interests of the truth, the statement added.

Habilaj, who anchored the show for four years, responded by accusing the CEO and owner of Top Channel, Vjollca Hoxha, of a list of extortion campaigns against other businessmen and state officials.

He did not deny, nor did he confirm authoring the statement on the shows Facebook page but dismissed claims that the canceled show was an act of blackmail.

Oligarchs of the Urban Resonance was not produced by me but by Esmeralda Keta, the winner of two EU Awards [on Investigative Journalism], Habilaj said.

This show was produced through an EU-funded project, he added, listing several alleged acts of blackmail carried out by channel owner Hoxha.

Habilaj is also an entrepreneur who owns two companies whose stated activities are media production, marketing and media buying.

A number of businessmen in Albania have been targeted as oligarchs in reference to their alleged sway over the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama.

Rama has claimed these oligarchs do not exist and has accused the media of using its own influence on public opinion to extort money from businesses.

Excerpt from:
Censorship and Blackmail Accusations Rock Albania's Top TV Station - Balkan Insight

By Alex Gonzalez

Justin Bieber brought his Peaches down to Sin City at the 64th Grammy Awards for a performance of the Justice cut.

Opening the performance with a stripped-back intro, the Biebs showed off his skills on the old 88s. As the beat transitioned, Bieber was joined by his Peaches collaborators Daniel Caesar and Giveon, along with a full band.

The audience vibed with the groove, bouncing to the beat of the song. Lady Gaga, Olivia Rodrigo, Lil Nas X, and Biebers wife Hailey could all be seen head-bopping and lip-syncing to Peaches. The performance proved to be a challenge for the censors, as they bleeped out portions of the songs chorus (presumably the thats that shit adlib).

Earlier on the red carpet, Giveon expressed his desire to collaborate with Adele in the future. Adele, if youre watching, I would love to do a powerful ballad with you, he said during an interview with Laverne Cox. We can talk about the specifics once were there, but thats it. Im putting it out there [in the universe.]

Peaches is nominated for four Grammys, including Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best R&B Performance, and Best Music Video. Justices Triple Chucks Deluxe edition is nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album and Album of the Year.

Stay tuned for continued coverage of the ceremony, and find the list of winners here.

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Justin Bieber Kept Censors On Their Toes With 'Peaches' Grammys Performance - MTV.com

On Saturday, a Brazilian political official ordered Lollapalooza Brazil to ban political demonstrations from its future events after Marina and other performers shared their distaste for the countrys government on stage the night before. Now, the Welsh artist is speaking out against artist censorship.

Censorship is still alive and well, she wrote on Twitter Tuesday, referring to the electoral judges order calling for a $10,500 fine for any artist who uses the Lollapalooza stage to address politics. Marina and Pabllo Vittar were among the artists who were named in the judges order after speaking out against the countrys far-right president Jair Bolsonaro during their sets at Lollapalooza in what the official called propaganda and premature campaigning. Brazils election is set for later this year.

We need to stick together. Im just sick of a certain kind of energy. Fuck Putin. Fuck Bolsonaro. Fuck him! Marina said on stage at the So Paulo festival on Friday. We are sick of this energy. We are sick of it. You are the new generation and things are going to change.

So many of us are sick of these old men who think they own the countries they lead They dont own anything, she wrote in a second tweet. And they are weaker than we think. When people feel they have no power they try to take it away from others.

Brazilian popstar Pabllo Vittar shared a similar message on stage when she performed at the festival, yelling, Get out Bolsonaro! She wore a red towel featuring the image of Lula da Silva, the leftist politician who is running against Bolsonaro and is poised to win, according to polls in Brazil. Rapper Emicida promoted voter registration during her set, before chanting, Hey Bolsonaro, take it in the ass, according to The Guardian.

Earlier this week, superstar Anitta laughed at the fine proposed by the Brazilian official, writing on Twitter, one less bag. She added, Does this law apply abroad? Because my festivals are only international.

Marinas sentiment seems to echo that of many young Brazilians and her fans, many of whom are queer who oppose the leadership of Bolsonaro in Brazil, who has espoused anti-gay rhetoric.

Her statements at the festival also align with the feminist, forward-thinking lyrics of her songs, Purge the Poison and Mans World. (Vittar is featured on a remix of Poison.) I want to see change, she toldPeople last year. The world we live in really lacks femininity. We need more feminine so we can connect with Earth and nature. So that we care again.

A rep for Lollapalooza did not immediately respond to Rolling Stones request for comment.

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Censorship Is Still Alive and Well: Marina Slams Brazilian Governments Attempt to Silence Musicians - Rolling Stone

Marvel Studios is getting ready to dive into slightly more adult content than what its been known for in the past, starting various conversations amongst fans as the MCU evolves. As the franchise moves to darker materiallike the recently released Moon Knight, on top of the recent addition of six Marvel Netflix shows, there are signs pointing to Marvel Studios embracing a more adult nature.

It seems inevitable that this will be the case even outside of necessary adult themes in projects like Deadpool 3, even though the PG-13 rated entries will also move in that direction. As Disney slowly makes these changes to its streaming service, however, fans are worried that this will lead to a more toned-down MCU than fans have seen even in Phase 4 with censorship adjustments.

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On Tuesday, March 29, fans noticed that "Episode 3" of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was altered on Disney+ to appear less violent, specifically with Doctor Nagel's less bloody death and the scene where a Madripoor bounty hunterwas stabbed with a pipe. This ignited controversy on social media among fans, who were concerned that censored edits could take away from the show's original intentions.

Now, following that shocking sight on the streaming service, it appears that Disney has noticed the issue and is on its way to fixing it.

The Hollywood Reporter senior staff writer Ryan Parker took to Twitter to provide an update on the recent changeto "Episode 3" of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+.

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Disney+ told Parker that this censored edit was accidentally caused by a"software control issue"on the Disney+ service and thatit will be fixed in the immediate future:

"Eagle-eyed fans were right, an episode of'The Falcon and the Winter Soldier' had been altered on Disney+.I hear from a reliable source it was a software control issue and the wrong file was recently published accidentally. Its being corrected immediately."

The Hollywood Reporter's Aaron Couch backed up this report, sharing that the original, uncensored version of the episode will be back on Disney+ soon.

While fans are still waiting for the original version of these scenes to come back to Disney+, this sets up an interesting conundrum about how Disney will allow its streaming subscribers to control theircontent.

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On the one hand, the positive of this news is that Disney and Marvel won't fully censor more violent material for good, worryingfans as the recent changes to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier went live. But this does hint that the company will give viewers the option to have more flexibility with the newly introduced parental control restrictions.

It seems that there may be two different versions of projects like those from the MCU that stream on Disney+ - one with less violence and adult content and one that's shown as it was originally intended. It remains to be seen how viewers will be able to switch back and forth between these options, but considering what was seen recently, Disney is looking to see if it works.

In the end, the issue behind the censorship of Marvel's Disney+ shows appears to have been rectified according to these reports. Still, fans will keep their eye out for how the viewing experience changes in the coming years.

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The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is available to stream on Disney+.

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Disney+ Responds to Controversial Censorship of Marvel Show - The Direct

On Saturday, Facebook deleted a video posted by the Socialist Equality Party of Germany opposing the German governments participation in the US-led NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

The video, titled No Third World War! Against the war in Ukraine, NATO aggression and German rearmament!, places the conflict in Ukraine in its historical and political context. It was viewed by 20,000 people before being removed.

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP), which produced the video, wrote to Facebook to demand an explanation for its actions. The SGP has yet to receive an answer.

There is no innocent explanation for this action from a company that, earlier in the war, changed its guidelines to allow users in certain countries to publish calls for acts of violence against Russians. It is an act of political censorship directed against anyone who opposes war and militarism.

Facebooks actions expose the official narrative that the Ukraine war is about defending Western democracy against Russian authoritarianism as a propaganda lie. Indeed, the ruling class in the imperialist countries is increasingly resorting to repressive measures because it fears the growth of opposition in the working class to its murderous policy in the interests of the rich.

The suppression of opponents of war has a long tradition in Germany. During the Franco-German war, the two workers leaders August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht were imprisoned in December 1870 because they had demanded a peace without annexation in the Reichstag. During the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht served lengthy prison terms. Carl von Ossietzky, a prominent opponent of German militarism, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 1932, even before Hitler took power, because he had uncovered the secret rearmament of the Reichswehr. After another six years of Nazi terror against the working class, the Nazis launched a new world war, leading to the greatest crimes in human history.

Opponents of war in Germany are now censored once again because the NATO powers are in a de facto state of war. As the censored video shows, NATO has long been a war party in Ukraine. It has deliberately provoked the reactionary Russian invasion and is continually intensifying its aggressive threats against Russia. The Ukrainian people are being sacrificed as pawns in order to advance NATOs confrontation with Russia. This confrontation, which can quickly lead to a nuclear war, is now escalating with breathtaking intensity, the video says.

On the weekend the video was deleted, US President Biden announced a decades-long fight, and openly stated that the goal of American foreign policy was regime-change in Russia. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a similar statement when he defended the tripling of the German military budget on television Sunday, saying that Germany must again be able to wage war against Russia. The rapidity with which the NATO powers are heading towards a world war is breathtaking.

The video is a thorn in the side of the ruling elite because it breaks through official propaganda and explains the real background and circumstances of the war. It shows that the main causes of the imperialist powers war policy are the fundamental contradictions of capitalism.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the US sought to establish its global supremacy. In the countless wars in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and many other countries, any threat to US hegemony was to be eliminated, the video explained. For its part, German imperialism reacted with a return to militarism and is now eagerly arming itself. The acute danger of a Third World War is the consequence of this policy.

The video concludes that the fight against war requires a fight against its roots, capitalism. A catastrophe can only be prevented by an international movement of the working class against capitalism, it explains.

Such a socialist perspective against war is being banned in Germany. Anyone who opposes the ubiquitous and deafening war propaganda is to be silenced. But as always in history, such a reaction is not an expression of strength, but of weakness. The censorship of opponents of war is a desperate response to the growing opposition of the working class to warmongering.

The drive to war is exacerbating all social contradictions. Food and energy prices are already rising rapidly as a result of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia. The interruption of supply chains is resulting in temporary layoffs and redundancies in German industry. The ruling class is intensifying its ruthless profits before life policy in the pandemic, which has seen governments let COVID-19 run rampant, by turning to war. Such a policy is incompatible with democratic rights, which is why censorship and repression are increasing.

The tech companies collaborate intimately with the governments and the state apparatus of the major imperialist powers. Facebook alone hired more than 20,000 employees for its security and enforcement team to monitor and censor the posts on its platform. Many of them are former intelligence and law enforcement officials, admitted Monika Bickert, head of Counter-Terrorism at Facebook, in January 2018.

In Germany, more than 1,000 people are employed to monitor the content on Facebook. Cooperation with the government is particularly close. With the Network Enforcement Act, the Federal Government has turned the large technology corporations into de facto Internet judges who can independently decide on the censorship of content and are even encouraged with the threat of high fines to delete more content rather than less. Hundreds of thousands of posts have already been deleted on the basis of this law.

The current censorship of the SGPs anti-war video is directly related to the Federal Governments attempt to criminalize the SGP and, with it, any socialist perspective.

In 2018, the Federal Ministry of the Interior included the SGP in the report of the Verfassungsschutz, Germanys secret service, for the first time and defamed the party as left-wing extremist. This move was later justified on the grounds that the SGPs fight for a democratic, egalitarian, socialist society and agitation against alleged imperialism and militarism were unconstitutional. The Berlin Administrative Court followed this antidemocratic line of argumentation in its first-instance ruling in December last year on a lawsuit brought by the SGP against its inclusion in the Verfassungsschutz report. Only a few months later, anti-militarist videos are already being censored.

These developments are not limited to Germany. In 2017, Google announced that it would give preference to authoritative sources in search results in the future. At the same time, socialist and anti-war websites, and in particular the World Socialist Web Site, were censored and banned from search results. Facebook tried twice last year to block pages and content of the ICFI but was forced to reverse its actions because of an outpouring of opposition.

The authoritarian and antidemocratic measures are aimed not only at the socialist perspective of the ICFI, but at every principled opponent of war. Julian Assange, a courageous journalist who has uncovered the war crimes committed by the NATO powers, is subjected to ongoing torture in Belmarsh maximum-security prison and is threatened with death if he is extradited to the US. Progressive journalist Chris Hedges, who is well known as an opponent of US-led wars and has criticized the government-dictated narrative of the NATO-Russia conflict, reported on Monday that all episodes of his show On Contact on YouTube were deleted without notice or explanation.

The fight against censorship and ruthless war policies must be based on the mass opposition to a third world war. It must give a voice and a socialist perspective to the deep-seated hostility to imperialist war in the working class. We strongly urge all our readers to spread this article widely and protest on all social media channels against censorship. Use the hashtags #defendSGP, #StopCensoringSocialism, and #SpeakOutAgainstWW3 to distribute the video censored by Facebook.

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Stop censoring the opponents of war! - World Socialist Web Site - WSWS

Alastair Donald is associate director of the Academy of Ideas and co-convenor of the Battle of Ideas festival.

As war rages on the ground in Ukraine, the last month has also been marked by an intensifying battle for control of information and over what can said about this major, possibly epoch-defining event.

Of course, it has long been said that truth is the first casualty of war. Military combat is regularly accompanied by sensationalist or misleading newspaper coverage. During the Vietnam War, the so-called first television war, access to stories was controlled by the US military. News management and propaganda also accompanied the birth of web-based news outlets in the 1990s at the time of the Yugoslav Wars.

Since the 2011 Arab Spring, the dramatic expansion in the scale and scope of social media means that today the focus is the online world. Upon the invasion of the Ukraine, Facebooks parent company, Meta was quick off the mark, banning Russian outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik from its platforms. Twitter declared it will label all posts containing links to Russian state-affiliated media outlets.

When Telegram, a messaging app created by two brothers who left Russia under pressure from President Putin, threatened to shut down channels related to the war because of rampant misinformation, they highlighted how news management today is often explicitly pursued around the new battlefield of online misinformation.

That battle goes way beyond the question of war in Ukraine. Last week, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries published the UKs Online Safety Bill, a gargantuan Bill that that places control of misinformation at its heart and aims to make the UK the safest place in the world to go online.

Since its creation over 30 years ago, the world wide web has led to enormous innovations in work, entertainment and social interaction. Today, however, confidence in the progressive potential of the web has faded. Instead, online platforms and apps are increasingly viewed as sites of potential harm. As Dorries put it, Terrorism, child abuse, cyber bullying, hate speech. These are among a few types of harmful online activity that currently saturate the internet.

But with Big Tech already at the forefront of controlling what can be said or viewed online, freedom has recently taken a bashing. During the pandemic, YouTube and other sites censored TalkRadio for alleged Covid misinformation, while a recent BBC Stephen Nolan podcast revealed the extent to which Ofcom, the official broadcast regulator, was willing to silence gender-critical views labelled hate speech.

The Bill introduces a new category of legal but harmful speech and empowers broadcast regulator Ofcom to further control Big Tech companies including by massive fines running to millions of pounds for platforms that fail to extract desired controls. No wonder many fear this is the end of the free internet as we know it.

An experiment by a civil rights group suggests such fears are valid. Using dummy accounts, Big Brother Watch posted to Facebook historic comments by Boris Johnson, Nadine Dorries and Angela Rayner. Subsequently, the comments by Johnson on burka letter boxes, Dorriess nail your balls to the floor tweet and Raynors shoot your terrorists and ask questions second remark were all removed for being offensive.

When even the comments of politicians who are introducing and supporting the Bill can be removed, surely this is cause for alarm. Dorries disputes this arguing Its not about cancelling anyone. In fact, it contains stringent new protections for freedom of speech and journalism.

This speaks to a Government at odds with itself on the one hand keen to promote itself as a defender of free speech, for example, currently piloting through Parliament a Bill on academic freedom. On the other, such freedoms are consequently sacrificed, for example when Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi recently promised to crack down hard on academics who question the Governments line on war in Ukraine.

Few would deny that the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories can in some circumstances have significant impacts. Or that online hate speech can be deeply unpleasant, sometimes even traumatic. But the transformation of the online world into a space to be feared due to anonymity, falsehoods, harms and excess, raises questions about where we draw the boundaries of control.

For those who harboured hopes and continue to believe that the online exchange of information and ideas could be a boost to knowledge and debate, and even fuel a more enlightened society, questions around misinformation and harm raise important questions as to how the online experience might be defended and developed as a site of potential liberation as it was once envisaged, and hopefully still can be.

Whatever your view, these issues are surely worth discussing.

Which is exactly what well be doing this Saturday at the Belfast Battle of Ideas.

Over the course of three panel discussions, well look at how we should respond to new controls on misinformation, what students and universities can do to create an atmosphere of free speech and open debate that benefits all on campus, and how, when cultural boycotts are proliferating, we can make the case for artistic freedom.

Everyone is welcome. Wed love to see you there.

The Belfast Battle of Ideas takes place from 2pm on 26 March in the Crescent Arts Centre as part of the Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics which runs until Sunday.

This is a guest slot to give a platform for new writers either as a one off, or a prelude to becoming part of the regular Slugger team.

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Misinformation, harms and the dangers of online censorship join the Battle of Ideas on Saturday #imaginebelfast - Slugger O'Toole

The history of American cinema in the twentieth century is understood today as a march from inhibition to expression. The films produced during the long reign of the Motion Picture Production Code, from 1934 to 1968, are assumed to be deficient for honoring limits on what could be seen and heard on the screen. Likewise, the frankness and explicitness that came to characterize films after the Code fell are assumed to be an unqualified good: Artists, we are told, should be free to depict whatever they want, and those who object to candid representations of sex and graphic displays of violence must be prudes or scolds.

We are told that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice; undoubtedly, the arc of the cinematic universe bends toward freedom. But at what cost? Most of us can recognize that the end of screen censorship had unintended social consequences, but few appreciate the artistic and aesthetic ramifications.

In a 2000 essay, filmmaker and film scholar Peter Bogdanovich noted that the period between the Codes implementation and its demise coincided with an era of artistic splendor in Hollywood: The code was in force . . . through much of what we now look back on as the Golden Age of talking pictures (1929-1962). These were the years of Citizen Kane (1941), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Singin in the Rain (1952). The Codes restrictions resulted not in movies intended exclusively for children, clergymen, or old ladies, but rather in sophisticated and civilized movies that, within reasonable boundaries, presented the human parade in all its richness.

The notion that movies should be able to show or say absolutely anything would never have occurred to the earliest practitioners of the medium. Long before the implementation of the Production Code, various forms of censorship, official and unofficial, were attempted, pondered, and sometimes put into practice. Social norms set limits on what any mogul would even consider filming.

The stakes were clear as early as 1915, with the Supreme Court ruling in Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio that the new art of motion pictures fell outside the protections of the First Amendment. It cannot be put out of view that the exhibition of moving pictures is a business, pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit, like other spectacles, not to be regarded, nor intended to be regarded by the Ohio Constitution, we think, as part of the press of the country, or as organs of public opinion, wrote Justice Joseph McKenna. The decision stood until 1953, when film distributor Joseph Burstyn succeeded in persuading the Court that freedom of speech should shield Roberto Rossellinis controversial short film The Miracle from censorship in the state of New York.

During the teens and twenties, the studios faced significant exposure, as films that flirted with controversial material or outre attitudes risked butting up against state censor boards. In 1922, in a bid to wrest censorship power from government agencies and rehabilitate an industry dinged by a series of unsavory scandals, former U.S. Postmaster General Will H. Hays was tapped to helm what was then known as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.

Several years of scattershot efforts to regulate content led, in 1929, to a more vigorous regime of self-censorship, the Production Code. The handiwork of Motion Picture Herald editor Martin Quigley, a Catholic, and Daniel A. Lord, a Jesuit, the Code was astonishingly comprehensive in what it asked filmmakers to omit. In the version approved in 1930, the Code predictably forbade nudity, graphic representations of violence, and profanity; it also prohibited scenes of drug trafficking, arson, disrespect to the American flag, and cruelty to children or animals. The Code could be over-the-toptheres no other way to read the warning against dances which emphasize indecent movementsand at times prejudiced in the manner of its era, as in its prohibition of portrayals of interracial relationships.

Yet the Code was more than a checklist. Contrary to popular belief, wrote film historian Thomas P. Doherty in his book Pre-Code Hollywood, the document was not a grunted jeremiad from bluenose fussbudgets, but a polished treatise reflecting long and deep thought in aesthetics, education, communications theory, and moral philosophy.

Early on, Hollywood opted for a laissez-faire approach to carrying out the Code. In fact, enough controversial pictures reached the public that this era is considered pre-Code. Anti-censorship voices speak of this period much as Christians refer to the Garden of Eden before the Fall. Gangsters ran wild in films like The Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface (1932), and sex was alluded to in films like Merrily We Go to Hell (1932)although, viewed today, these films appear only slightly naughty and moderately amoral.

We are accustomed to hearing, in regard to social or cultural matters, that you cant put toothpaste back in the tubebut in 1934, Hollywood did. Joseph I. Breen, also a Catholic (and, history tells us, a bully and an anti-Semite), was drafted to helm the Production Code Administration (PCA), which was granted authority to assure compliance with the Code by consulting with studios and then issuing seals of approval. The boisterous, Jazz Agestyle freedom of the pre-Code era was gone, but the push-pull between Hollywood and Breens iron hand didnt result in so much milquetoast. To the contrary, Hollywood entered its Golden Age.

Those who applaud the fall of the old constraints on movies, music, and television presumably believe that these media were, in some fashion, inhibited by those constraints. Some major filmmakers thought so. If you committed adultery, you were struck by lightning, or you fell down the wellyou were punished, George Cukor, who directed The Philadelphia Story, My Fair Lady, and a dozen other classic films, said in an interview with Bogdanovich. If you were punished and saw the error of your ways that was OK.

Certainly the Codes tendency to simplify human behavior is regrettable, but Cukor overstated the case. Films of ambition and complexity routinely navigated the Code; they were merely tethered to good taste in the same manner that public indecency laws enforce good taste on all of us (by requiring, for instance, the wearing of clothes). Among the moguls who defended the Code was Darryl F. Zanuck, who, as Frank Walsh reports in his book Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry, challenged anyone to name ten best-selling novels or stage plays that could not be put on the screen because of Breens office. As examples of risky material that had made it past the Code and into American theaters, Zanuck cited From Here to Eternity and A Streetcar Named Desire. Great directors became experts in alluding to what could not be shown. Fireworks accompanied a kiss between Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in Hitchcocks To Catch a Thief (1955), and since Grant and Ingrid Bergman, playing unmarried would-be lovers, would not be allowed to share a bed in Indiscreet (1958), Stanley Donen devised split-screen shots in which the performers talked to each other while occupying their own beds.

But to defend the Code is not merely to celebrate clever workarounds. At its best, the Code promoted an atmosphere in which goodness and virtue were always in filmmakers minds, regardless of whether the checklist was adhered to. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it, the Code decreed, and to look back at Hollywood during those years is to find films that, with remarkable consistency, upheld kindness, humility, chastity, and common decency, while denouncing malevolence, arrogance, wantonness, and bigotry. Films such as Ernst Lubitschs The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Vincente Minnellis Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and Frank Capras Its a Wonderful Life (1946) offered visions of the world as it ought to be. The genre of film noir, not to mention the thrillers of Hitchcock, certainly delighted in stylish and compelling villains, but those pictures plainly inhabited a movie dream world, a fantasy of fallenness. And the Production Code had room for pictures that presented ugly social realities: Elia Kazans Gentlemans Agreement (1947) and Robert Mulligans To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) confronted ills of the ageanti-Semitism and racismwith dignity and seriousness.

Would Fords The Searchers have been more powerful if filmed with Tarantino-style graphicness? Or Hitchcocks Vertigo more potent if Kim Novak had been given a nude scene? Most people, if theyre honest with themselves, do blanch when they see graphic violence, do feel embarrassed (or titillated) when they see an unclothed body. These reactions can easily overwhelm narrative and characterization. Films like The Searchers and Vertigo endure thanks in part to their artful indirection.

In the prescient but forgotten book Man in Modern Fiction (1958), literary critic Edmund Fuller contrasted the clinically accurate depictions of sex in contemporary fiction with the far subtler evocations of physical love in Tolstoys Anna Karenina. Where have these insights into the sexual experience of the human creature been surpassed? Fuller asked. What could be added to them by the four-letter-word or anatomical-chart approach? Such expedients could only diminish the effect.

The cultural vanguard, dissatisfied with playing inside the lines, agitated for freedom. In 1953, Otto Preminger released his, in hindsight, exceedingly decorous bedroom farce The Moon Is Bluecontroversial at the time merely for its use of words such as virginwithout the imprimatur of the Code. Increasingly, Code approval was given to films that tested its limits, including Premingers masterpiece Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Sidney Lumets brilliant portrait of a Holocaust survivor, The Pawnbroker (1964). These films were, as they should have been, accommodated by an evolving Code; Breen had left the PCA in 1954. But the center did not hold, and by 1968, the Code was no more. The ineffective ratings system still in use today sprang up in its stead.

Among the elite, this process was regarded as a natural, necessary evolution. In 1972, New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael praised the release of Bernardo Bertoluccis X-rated drama Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider as strangers seeking sex, as an artistic advance on par with the premiere of Stravinskys The Rite of Spring. Kael found in both works the same primitive force, and the same thrusting, jabbing eroticism. The movie breakthrough has finally come, Kael enthused. Yet Bertoluccis film has won no enduring audience. Its achievement has been to help to mainstream graphic displays of sex and nudity in later, and lesser, films and shows. Today, no one claims that Game of Thrones is a successor to a Stravinsky masterpiece.

If we accept Kaels premisethat the movies were in need of a breakthroughthen mass media is on a treadmill with no end. Yesterdays breakthrough is todays old news. For a film to startle audiences, as Last Tango in Paris did fifty years ago, it will have to be more explicit than what came before; this is how we end up with Boogie Nights, Shame, Midsommar, and the Saw series. One shudders to think that the entertainment industry will someday reach what might be called maximum offensiveness.

As films won the right to show more, they became, overall, less aspirational and more realisticthat is to say, grittier, grimier, often tackier and tawdrier. As Bogdanovich noted nearly a quarter-century ago, the Codes fall has not translated into a greater degree of maturity or artistry, but rather the opposite. It is not clear that Brando and Schneiders confused strangers in Last Tango in Paris depict reality with greater insight than, say, William Powell and Myrna Loys contented married couple in The Thin Man series. Last Tangos explicitness is taken by many as a token of sophistication, whereas, in fact, overt sex and violence have become media commodities valued above sophistication, which they eclipse.

In lieu of outright censorship, our lives today are ruled by ratings, age restrictions, content warnings, and trigger warnings. But, like the attempt of Tipper Gores Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) to affix warning labels to offensive CDs in the 1980s, these half-hearted attempts at censorship are unworthy of the name. Interrogating Gore and her critics on a 1988 episode of Firing Line, William F. Buckley expressed sympathy for her position but concluded, as we must, that her measures were insufficient:

Let us recall Hollywood under the Code and muster the determination not to be intimidated by the sound of censorship.

Peter Tonguette writes from Columbus, Ohio.

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The Golden Age of Censorship by Peter Tonguette | Articles - First Things

by Laurie Chen

Thousands of miles from a home consumed by conflict, a group of Ukrainians inChinahave found themselves on the frontlines of an information war, battling pro-Russia bias, trolls and censorship.

Around 300 volunteer Ukrainian translators, with some also based overseas, are relaying key events from Russias war on their homeland into Chinese.

Their mouthpieces are a website called Ukraine News, a Chinese edition of state news agency Ukrinform, and channels on messaging app WeChat and YouTube.

It is for the consumption of a Chinese audience otherwise fed a limited diet of broadly pro-Russian news on the invasion of Ukraine, in a country whose leaders are among Moscows few remaining friends.

We channel all our energy, anxiety and grief into doing something, Lidiia Zhgyr, a 29-year-old environmental educator from central Ukraines Cherkasy, told AFP.

Russias bloody invasion of Ukraine, now into its fifth week, has killed thousands and forced 10 million from their homes with more than 3.9 mn fleeing the country, according to the UN.

It has provoked widespread global outcry although not from Beijing, which has instead provided diplomatic backing for Russia.

During a phone call last week, US President Joe Biden warned his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping of consequences for any material backing of Russia.

But Washingtons attempts to isolate Moscow have so far failed to move Beijings leadership.

And in the gap, Ukrainian volunteers are battling to change Chinese public opinion.

After the initial shock of war, Lidiia decided to help address what she describes asChinas information vacuum on the conflict.

On a recent weekend in a hipster Beijing cafe, a small group gathered to discuss content for their Chinese-language YouTube channel, which gained over 1,000 subscribers in the week since it was launched despite needing a VPN to get overChinas Great Firewall.

The majority of people on Chinese social media support Russia, said Lidiia.

But I also believe the majority of people dont have access to objective information.

They have set up another channel on messaging app WeChat to post videos of the conflict with Chinese subtitles.

Many videos are blocked by censors even though volunteers avoid posting graphic content, and the apps mostly used by the Ukrainian diaspora are inaccessible inChina.

The huge disadvantage for us is that there are no official news (outlets) from Ukraine inChina, she added.

Meanwhile, Russian state media have several reporters based inChina.

Many Chinese media outlets have pushed Russian conspiracy theories about US-funded biolabs in Ukraine and blamed NATO for the crisis.

Equally, pro-Russia voices dominateChinas highly controlled social media environment.

Valeriia Litovka, a tech worker based in Beijing, says it is very hard to share truthful information about the war in Ukraine.

Still we fight for freedom, for the news, for truth, she told AFP.

We dont want to offend other countries and Ukrainians respect the rules here the goal is to give the message that people shouldnt be killed by someone else.

There have been small signs of a shift in Chinese state media coverage, with some recent reports acknowledging civilian casualties caused by Russian invaders.

The volunteers also say Chinese state media have quoted their translations of Ukrainian data on Russian military losses.

At least one person told me they changed their opinion, said Lidiia.

The Kremlin denies targeting civilians.

Chinas small Ukrainian expat community has dwindled to around a few thousand since the pandemic.

Some say they have received support from Chinese friends as their country has been devastated by war.

We feel guilty that we are not there, said Valeriia, whose relatives are hiding in bomb shelters in the city of Kharkiv.

Others have had to block acquaintances expressing pro-Putin views on social media.

Ukrainian wine trader Eugene has given up convincing Chinese people online, but helps the cause in other ways.

I posted several videos on WeChat but later decided to remove them, said Eugene, originally from western Ukraine, giving one name only for privacy reasons.

I never imagined I would encounter this kind of opposition it wasted too much energy.

While many pro-Ukraine viral posts and petitions have been censored, a few pockets of support remain including the two Weibo accounts operated by the Ukrainian Embassy inChina.

Pro-Ukraine Weibo users have translated news about the war into Chinese and debunked Russian propaganda, with some posts gaining hundreds of likes.

An immense volume of materials still needs translating and the volunteers are determined to gradually expand their reach.

My position is very clear I speak about the war that Russia is conducting over Ukrainian civilians, said Lidiia.

This is what I will not stop talking about.

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I wont stop talking: Ukrainians in China fight disinformation, trolls and censorship - Hong Kong Free Press

Supplied

Oliver Cain saw his online social media presence scrubbed because of an image depicting a shirtless man.

Virginia Fallon is a Stuff senior writer and columnist.

OPINION: I have to admit that when I saw first saw male nipples had been cancelled I thought it was funny.

Not really funny-funny but a sort of other-funny, an amusement that used to be rooted in anger long before it morphed into cynicism. Nonetheless, I laughed a little at the recent headline.

Womens nipples have been cancelled for ages, so its only fair male mammilla should follow suit. Theres not much difference between the little raised regions of tissue after all, and if one bare chest should be deemed offensive then equality dictates that so should all of them.

Then, dammit, I read the whole story, and it wasnt any sort of funny at all. Now Im just back to being angry.

READ MORE:* Instagram reinstates queer Auckland artist's page after 'homophobic' complaints* Artist's social media shut down after 'homophobic' complaints about cartoon nipples* Timaru painter's realist 'painterly' feel exhibition

Supplied

The social media ban was a nightmare for Cain, who lost access to clients and contacts across the globe.

Auckland artist Oliver Cains social media was recently shut down following homophobic complaints about one of his works: a stylised painting of the chest of a man with blue skin and bright pink nipples.

The work was intended for an exhibition as part of Aucklands Pride festival, though when Omicron saw many of the events cancelled, Cain went ahead with his own show, paying for a few sponsored Instagram posts to advertise it.

Because the exhibition had a light homoerotic theme, Cain chose what he thought was the safest painting to feature online because I know how some people can be. They were, and his account was blocked because hed been posting offensive content.

Compare that to all the other shirtless people on Facebook and Instagram, and it doesn't really make sense, he said.

His first appeal to reinstate his account was denied and a subsequent one ignored, though after Stuff ran a story hes back up and running.

Karoline Tuckey/Stuff

Photographer Mariana Waculicz had her work displayed at an exhibition in Levin removed due to complaints from the public due to the model's nipples being visible. Shes pictured here with another of her pieces.

Until I read about Cains experience I foolishly thought the only inoffensive nipples were those belonging to men. Now I realise theres a caveat: they have to belong to straight men.

Womens nipples are objectionable regardless of the sexual orientation of their owners, of course. Instagram bans them, and only permitted videos and pictures of breastfeeding in 2014 following pressure from activists. Even in the offline art world, Kiwis have long displayed the same prudish aversion to the tiny little things.

Photographer Mariana Waculicz had a work banned from a 2017 exhibition for depicting a topless woman in a river, and that same year The NZ Woman's Weekly refused to run a breast cancer awareness advertisement showing Aucklander Anete Smith topless after a mastectomy.

Smith's reconstructed breasts and nipples were displayed in a gorgeous re-creation of Rubens painting Samson and Delilah, something the magazines editor said could be deemed inappropriate by readers. Instead, they ran an ad featuring a different woman who did not have nipples after her mastectomy.

Its probably unsurprising I have a tale about the time a single nipple nearly got me cancelled.

While pregnant, I posed topless in a bath of milk for an exhibition about new and expectant parents, and the resulting image offended some viewers. The gallery owner demanded the picture be removed, the artist fought back, and the work remained displayed next to one of a newborn snuggled against his fathers naked chest. That was 21 years ago: look how far weve come.

The issue of cancelling nipples in art is about inequality, deep sexism, and perpetuating shame of our bodies. Gender and sexual orientation should have nothing to do with what makes nipples offensive, if indeed they ever are.

By the way, at that long-ago exhibition my young son stood before my photo and studied it silently for a very long time.

Thats a pretty picture, Mum, he said eventually, I like your smile.

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A ban on cartoon nipples is just the tip of our censorship problem. - Stuff