HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ lynndotpy

Relevant conversation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28554400

Turns out .xyz domains are regularly blocked by carriers as well. I'm on T-Mobile and I can't send my own personal blog, because it's a .xyz. (I really need to change that...)

In my experience, T-Mobile also blocks messages over ddosecrets.com. They also block leftist sites such as Jacobinmag.com or itsgoingdown.org, so it'd be an interesting study to see what the cause is and if it's biased. (I confirmed these three and my own site just now.)

⬐ JobDestroyer

I was unable to replicate the block of Jacobinmag.com nor itsgoingdown.org. I was able to replicate the block on ddosecrets.com.

⬐ lynndotpy

This is really weird. They were blocked once, but I tried these again ~40 minutes after my original test, and they went through. Then, when writing this comment, I tried a third time, and they were blocked again.

First run: odysee.com, jacobinmag.com, itsgoingdown.org were blocked. I did these just before midnight EDT.

This second run: odysee.com, and freethestates.com (didn't try it the first time) were blocked, but jacobinmag.com and itsgoingdown.org are not anymore. I double-checked for spelling mistakes, etc. I also checked covidcarealliance.org and lichess.org, also blocked. I also checked goo.gl URLs (previously notoriously blocked by T-Mobile) and they are not blocked.

I did some looking into this, and T-Mobile employees have been surprisingly open about URL filtering in the past on their support forums. One example (see https://community.t-mobile.com/accounts-services-4/tmobile-i...)

> I’m taking care of this right now. I must say the domain is very amusing and creative! It’s flagging for a combination of issues: collocated with Amazon AWS with 5k other domains, registrar to Namecheap (poor reputation with DGA generated domains), and inserting both URL and email address in message body. (double whammy). Otherwise, you are following proper protocol with Twilio A2P messaging. > > I’ll have the vendor reputation resolved in a few hours. Thanks!

It's surprising to me that AWS and NameCheap are named as contributing factors.

In fact, writing this comment took so long that I tried the strange URLs a third time. jacobinmag.com was blocked again but not itsgoingdown.org. So, jacobinmag.com has flipped from blocked, to not blocked, to blocked again in the span of an hour.

⬐ zenexer

I appreciate the openness on their part. I can relate to the difficulty of crafting anti-spam risk assessment rules. It’s common to take these factors into account, and it would explain why .xyz is blocked; that’s on a lot of naughty lists because of early registry rules that were inadvertently amenable to malicious actors.

That being said, they’ve clearly got some serious false positives, so their rules need work.

⬐ JobDestroyer

When it comes to things like this, transparency prevents cancellations, so it makes sense to be more transparent about it.

⬐ drzaiusapelord

Yep this, xyz and other weirdo TLDs get blocked because they malware havens, but the right is going to play this up as "corporate liberals are blocking our sacred freedumbs." When instead we actually see targeted blocking of leftist resources frequently. Right-wing conspiracy garbage is allow to flourish on our networks because ultimately conservative causes empower the oligarchy who own media and create narratives to keep conservatives voting against their own interests and for the oligarch's interests.

⬐ dang

Please don't take HN threads further into political or ideological flamewar. It's tedious, repetitive, not what this site is for, and usually turns nasty.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

⬐ drzaiusapelord

I'm not "flaming" anyone and secondly this thread is full of political statements.

⬐ finite_jest

Do you mind checking l̶i̶c̶h̶e̶s̶s̶.̶c̶o̶m̶ lichess.org? It's a popular online chess website, as the name suggests. A Reddit post from a month ago claims it is also blocked. [1] I think that would be hilarious.

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/r0r2jh/tmobile_blo...

⬐ lynndotpy

I can confirm! It seems lichess.org (the legit url) is blocked, but lichess.com is not.

⬐ finite_jest

Thanks :-)) lichess.com was a typo on my part, sorry for that.

⬐ wingmanjd

FWIW, I'm on an MVNO of Tmobile, and I can reach lichess.org but not lichess.com.

I can't reach lichess.com on my home internet either (Service Electric, a subsidiary of PennTeleData, IIRC)

⬐ finite_jest

I believe they are blocking links to the websites in an SMS message.

⬐ zenexer

That’s unrelated. The issue here is that SMS messages containing particular links are blocked, not that the sites themselves are blocked.

⬐ lettergram

For those curious Facebook does the same thing in private messages

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Facebook-censoring-private-mess...

Politicians have been supportive of censoring text messages

https://nypost.com/2021/07/12/dnc-biden-allies-want-phone-ca...

⬐ calderwoodra

I've seen specific Jordan Peterson YouTube videos URLs blocked on messenger as well. Sometimes they're completely non-controversial as well.

⬐ grendelt

Yeah, I was recently discussing firearms with my brothers via FB Messenger and sites for finding ammo were blocked. We then tried several other types of sites to see if they were blocked. A lot of firearm related stuff, ammoseek, and piracy. PirateBay was blocked. Tor and Scihub were not. Porn sites were not but antivax sites were. Marijuana sites were not, but random liquor distillers were. Total hit and miss.

But a lot of gun-related stuff was.

⬐ int_19h

Conversely, I never had gun-related stuff censored in FB messenger, but links to some websites about weed would be blocked. Looked very weird, too - no message, no error, the (web) app just hangs.

I think they have some kind of blocklist that is, shall we say, "dynamic" wrt the current political environment.

⬐ lynndotpy

It must be really dynamic. I tried a number of URLs, and one of them, jacobinmag.com, went from blocked to unblocked to blocked over the span of an hour.

Perhaps the algorithm blocking takes into account individual activity. I almost never send SMSes, and now my phone is sending dozens at midnight.

⬐ jevoten

How were they blocked? When you sent a message containing "www.blocked-domain.com", what did the sender and recipient get? An (honest?) error message, or silent failure?

⬐ lelandfe

Late reply, but Facebook and Facebook Messenger both prompt the user that the URL you’re trying to send is not permitted. The message is never sent, you have to remove the URL. The URL checker even follows redirects, so e.g. a URL shortener won’t cut it.

⬐ sterlind

I stumbled upon a website of furries discussing 3D-printed firearms. sent a link to my friend. blocked. other 3D-printed arms websites were not. I wonder if they do some network analysis and automatically determine the furries are scarier? no idea.

⬐ shephardjhon

Would you EVER accept that first sentence as being reasonable to post publically if it was a right wing Muslim saying it? Would you accept it if Pakistan was NOT blocking sites that showed how to make untracable weapons? Sorry but some sites NEED to be blocked wben there is a terrorist threat, weather it be white supremist terrorists or Taliban.

⬐ logic_beats_pro

No sites need to be blocked. This entire notion of arbitrary censorship is authoritarian gobbledygook.

⬐ sterlind

I have nothing against furries or 3D-printed weapons. I saw nothing to suggest terrorism of any kind. 3D-printed guns are still mostly for gun nerds, it's easier and probably cheaper to buy guns in a store.

It's because I found their community interesting that I tried to link my friend to it, after all.

⬐ finite_jest

According to the video, links to Odysee (a YouTube alternative) and Free The States (an anti-abortion websites) are blocked. People on Reddit [1] also corroborate this. Corporate censorship exists, it is generally biased politically, and is not OK.

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/GoldandBlack/comments/rs2wqr/appare...

---

PS. Here are a couple of things that I think are worth clarifying:

* This about them blocking links to the websites in an SMS message, not DNS blacklisting or deep packet inspection.

* Their blocking system seems pretty dumb in general. Apparently, it is even blocking lichess.org [2], the whole .xyz TLD, and stochastically Jacobin (the National Review of the left).

[2]: Thanks to @lynndotpy for confirming this.

⬐ selimthegrim

The Reuters story linked in the Reddit thread has the FCC reassuring us this authority is for bulk messages only.

⬐ josephcsible

To be clear, for the benefit of those who are reading these comments before watching the video, this censorship happens even to single messages sent between individuals' personal phones, so it doesn't fall within that authority.

⬐ finite_jest

---

PS. Here are a couple of things that I think are worth clarifying:

* This about them blocking links to the websites in an SMS message, not DNS blacklisting or deep packet inspection.

* Their blocking system seems pretty dumb in general. Apparently, it is even blocking lichess.org [2], the whole .xyz TLD, and stochastically Jacobin (the National Review of the left).

[2] Thanks to @lynndotpy for confirming this.

⬐ xeromal

I just tested this with my wife and odysee is being blocked over SMS. If you send it over RCS, it works fine.

⬐ finite_jest

That makes sense, as Google's extension to RCS does have a form of "end-to-end" encryption.

⬐ Stratoscope

(Deleted, with apologies for the misunderstanding, and thanks to lynndotpy for the clarification.)

⬐ lynndotpy

To be clear, it's not T-Mobile censoring access, it's T-Mobile blocking texts with these URLs.

⬐ Stratoscope

Ah, I see, thank you. I just tested this with a text from my personal T-Mobile number to my work phone that included the URLs above. You are right, the text did not go through!

Then I sent the same text using Google Voice, again from my T-Mobile phone (on 4G, not Wi-Fi). This worked without any issues.

Regarding the OP video: at the risk of sounding selfish, this is a good reason why important information like this should be put in writing instead of in a video. I am often in a situation where I can't watch a video - or don't choose to - but if it were in writing I could easily review it.

⬐ None

None

⬐ dathinab

> system seems pretty dumb in general.

Yes it kinda a MVP "designed" to block spam, phishing and similar.

Which then is all the time abused to block other thinks.

Like the UK "adult content" (i.e. porn) filter is all the time abused to block other thinks (like the ticket website for the C3C in the past).

Or like CCP minions (1) sneak sensitive terms in lists of Chinese insults to block them.

And because all "censoring" of non-adult-only, phishing, etc. content is supposedly just a random mistake you can guess how that never ever has any consequences.

(1): Sometimes state sponsored people, sometimes CCP favoring Chinese nationalists etc.

⬐ gorgoiler

CCP nationalists is an, ahem, interesting concept.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuomintang

⬐ dathinab

Ok I didn't know this.

I meant people which put effort into hiding darker parts of there national and/or governments history without being payed in any way. But instead because of some form of their "national" pride.

⬐ champagnois

The censorship is an inevitable result of tollerating these tech companies and their promotion of content moderation.

If we are under attack from a foreign adversary, then the logical thing to do would be to firewall our social medias off into national siloes.

Instead, they use their positions to censor our speech amongst eachother, promote their own political ideologies, and cause everyone to live in a state of unknowingly being censored, shadow banned, algorithmicly limited, etc for having a very human opinion that differs from that which the platform seeks to amplify.

⬐ buddhaofdoubt8

Shhhhh... Dang will hear you...

⬐ champagnois

Dang?

⬐ akersten

Most likely machine learning gone wrong where enough people report messages with the same link as spam to cause anti-spam systems to auto-block it. Makes sense that the links are all political, these are the most likely type of domains someone would want to perform an ideologically-motivated confused-deputy attack on.

I doubt it's nefarious purposeful censorship. But the anti-spam system does need to be fixed to prevent this sort of abuse.

⬐ throwawaymanbot

Stop spreading doubt about it being nefarious. AI is trained. And if this is the future it’s still censorship regardless of if there’s an algorithm to blame or a human.

⬐ Brian_K_White

and regardless what the stated purpose was. You're still just as dead from friendly fire.

⬐ themitigating

He should be censored for spreading doubt

⬐ Brian_K_White

That comment was neither censorship nor advocating censorship. It was meeting speech with other speech.

⬐ egberts1

A poorly designed AI can appear to be … nefarious.

⬐ ribosometronome

How do you report an SMS message as spam to T-Mobile? Is that even something you can do? I've been receiving annoying blatant phishing texts from e-mail addresses as of late.

⬐ procrastitron

You copy the message and then send it to 7726.

You’ll get an automated response back saying something like “Thank you for reporting spam”

⬐ egberts1

sheesh! how come T-Mobile never let us know that THAT 7726 is the “anti-SPAM” mechanism?

⬐ mattkrause

In case it's not obvious, 7726 spells "SPAM" when using the letters on the keypad.

⬐ rootusrootus

Interestingly, there's an older discussion on the t-mobile subreddit that goes into quite a lot more analytical detail and is much less reactionary than HN is. What a role reversal.

⬐ sdwvit

None

⬐ lopatin

PSA: "Reactionary" doesn't mean what it sounds like it means.

re·ac·tion·ar·y (of a person or a set of views) opposing political or social liberalization or reform. "reactionary attitudes toward women's rights"

Edit: Here's the T-Mobile subreddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/rskfmx/video_evide...

⬐ jlund-molfese

I’m seeing the same thing on outgoing T-Mobile SMS messages.

The really nefarious thing is that T-Mobile doesn’t reject the text outright or notify the user. Instead, it pretends it was processed and the recipient just decided not to respond.

⬐ Brian_K_White

That might be the worst aspect of this worse than the censorship itself.

⬐ Reubend

Is it possible these were just anti-spam measures that are accidentally getting discovered by normal people as well?

⬐ x3n0ph3n3

Can confirm -- I've attempted to replicate this with multiple messages with and without URLs to my wife (on the same account). Messages with the documented URLs are consistently blocked while others are not.

⬐ dheera

Just don't use SMS.

I deprecated SMS 12 years ago in favor of e-mail, because it's carrier-agnostic and my e-mail address doesn't change even if I switch providers or roam to another country and change SIM cards.

And bonus -- no censorship.

⬐ x3n0ph3n3

I purposely do not want e-mail notifications on my phone. E-mail doesn't solve all communication use-cases.

⬐ dheera

Just have another e-mail account that's your instant messaging account. MUCH easier to filter, block, whatever you want.

⬐ tambeb

For what it's worth, messages I just sent to and from my Google Voice number to my Fi number (while on T-Mobile underlying) went through fine.

⬐ silisili

IIRC, SMS on Fi is handled like gvoice. I'd be highly surprised if TMO had much interaction at all with the message.

⬐ tambeb

I figured more or less the same thing (my results were expected, in other words).

⬐ tata71

Via SMS to a forwarder?

Or GVoice app/webapp?

⬐ tambeb

Between Messages app (Fi with RCS enabled, vs. the special Fi syncing system [1]) and GV app.

[1] https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6188337?hl=en&ref_topic...

⬐ jlund-molfese

Interesting, messages sent from my T-Mobile to Google Voice number are being filtered out as the video describes.

Maybe Fi has a special deal the other MVNOs don’t?

⬐ tambeb

My results were what I expected, and what I would expect for any MVNO. Are other non-Fi MVNOs being filtered/censored? I think that'd be a pretty big deal, unless it's just Boost Mobile or whoever it is they own that really isn't, practically speaking, an MVNO anymore.

⬐ bkallus

They also block all .xyz links. This is why I spent the extra money on a .org

⬐ userbinator

Related article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28554400

⬐ SahAssar

Does it block https://abc.xyz/ ?

⬐ dheera

I thought .com .net .org are the cheapest ... They're like $9 on NameCheap and I think I've seen $3 elsewhere

⬐ sofixa

Really depends on the domain - a short(ish) word or name combo won't be, and many .com, .net, .org domains are already taken. My personal blog is on .me ( Montenegro), the .com is parked and advertised at $4k, the .net is taken but unused and the .org is taken and used.

⬐ dheera

Oh, that's just because there are some hoarders and squatters on some .com domains who aren't doing anything with the resource and just want to make some money without doing real work.

The $4k isn't really the actual price of registration though, that's only a few bucks.

⬐ Thorrez

Namecheap says .xyz is $1 for the first year.

⬐ bkallus

I thought .org was more expensive than .xyz for the name I was looking for. Could be wrong.

⬐ duskwuff

A lot of registrars were offering .xyz domains at fire-sale promotional prices (like, $1 for the first year, or outright free with the purchase of another domain). This made them extremely popular with spammers.

The same goes for a lot of other new gTLDs.

⬐ Rizz50

thi

⬐ Rizz50

This is wild because I just saw an article about xyz on techcrunch. I even checked Spamhaus and they have a lower score than .com in spam. Im weary of these outdated filters than block new gtlds because they're new and automatically considered bad.

⬐ paulpauper

what other ones do they block?

⬐ ncfausti

Wait, what…How is that legal?

⬐ DJBunnies

Probably the same type of agreement that permits them to block spam calls on your behalf, deep inside the EULA.

⬐ VWWHFSfQ

it's not true

⬐ bkallus

No. It's true. I have T-Mobile, and I cannot send .xyz links over SMS. If you have T-Mobile, this is easy to verify: text yourself "abc.xyz" (or any other .xyz link) The message will show as sent but not received. If you text yourself any uncensored link, it will show as sent and received.

⬐ pxeger1

Why would it be illegal? T-Mobile is a private company, and they can do what they like. (whether they should...)

⬐ ryanmercer

In my experience as a moderator of several subs, Reddit actively blocks zerohedge links, they'll appear in our moderator queues and even if you manually approve them they just sit there in the queue, the only option that works is to remove them or mark them as spam.

They do some others too but zerohedge is the one I see every few days in /r/silverbugs and /r/prepperintel, and the only one I can remember by name.

⬐ daveevad

Someone on this board probably has access to the entire list of these domains?

⬐ xyst

Devil's advocate -- is it possible T-Mobile's anti-spam system is being overly aggressive? If this was truly a C-level executive decision to push some political agenda, wouldn't both the "freethestates" and "studentsforlife" sites be blocked? Looks like the "studentsforlife" went through despite having the same "pro life" themes. Although, at first glance the "freethestates" site does appear to have a very extreme anti-abortion view. Refers to the act of abortion as equivalent to the Holocaust.

⬐ arthur6667

I'm not seeing any of this on T-mobile cellualar or otherwise. This leads me to think it is either something enforced by the USA inside the USA, or something only allowed in the USA. (I'm in the EU to be specific)

⬐ josephcsible

You tried sending and receiving links to those exact sites over SMS, and the messages all came through? I ask because multiple other people in this thread accidentally tried just accessing those sites over T-Mobile's cellular data, which isn't what's blocked.

⬐ ece

You can check for yourself using the OONI app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openobserv...

Guessing here, but I think T-Mobile never got the memo that most of CDA 230 was stuck down, and they don't need to take down anything but actual violations of the law.

⬐ mc32

The result of the banality of slow-creep censorship which lots of people winked at because it was censorship they could live with.

Don't worry, they said platforms have a right to censor the content they carry, they are not "dumb pipes" and many other ways people dismissed the threat from censorship.

Now we have "dumb pipes" censoring certain services as well as content.

Of course politicians love this. They will not oppose censorship. Power loves censorship.

⬐ int_19h

Not the first time, either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral...

⬐ pkulak

I fail to see the slippery slope here. This kinda makes me dislike T-Mobile. Same as I would dislike any other corporation that does something shitty. And lots of them do shitty things all the time. Not saying you're doing this, but people seem to have a very tenuous grasp of the 1st amendment and apply it to private entities, thus elevating some nothing-burger issue to the level of a constitutional violation.

⬐ JaimeThompson

"slow-creep censorship"

You mean like the PMRC, fundamentalist religious censorship, and what happened to groups like The Dixie Chicks?

This isn't a new issue.

⬐ mc32

Exactly. Whither Tipper and Al and their PMRC?

And it continues today. People want to censor some songs, but not others, because presumably some are offensive in different ways.

⬐ JaimeThompson

I am curious as to why you didn't mention the other founders in your post.

"The women who founded the PMRC are Tipper Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice President Al Gore; Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker; Pam Howar, wife of Washington realtor Raymond Howar; and Sally Nevius, wife of former Washington City Council Chairman John Nevius. "

"The PMRC was founded in 1985, in the shadows of rising political conservatism under president Ronald Reagan, by a group of "Washington Wives" that included Susan Baker (wife of the then Secretary of the Treasury James BakerWikipedia, Peatsy Hollins (wife of Sen. Ernest HollingsWikipedia of South Carolina), and many other Washington socialites (such as Pam Hower and Sally Nevius). Most notably, the group included Tipper Gore, wife of then-Senator, later-Vice President and inventor of the Internet Al Gore, who became the group's most outspoken member."

From Wikipedia & RationalWiki

⬐ kevin_thibedeau

ISPs are not platforms. If they want to meddle with traffic they should lose all common carrier indemnity.

⬐ javagram

T-Mobile is supposed to block spam and scam texts like all providers, I thought? The instructions from the FCC for responding to text spam include forwarding the message to shortcode SPAM on the cellular provider, which presumably is to give them a database of spam to block in the future.

https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/blog/2020/03/02/mobile-phone...

⬐ mc32

This is not that. It censors alternatives to youtube for example --The landing page not any particular content.

Also, what ARE they doing (not doing) about scam/SPAM telephone calls? Nothing!

⬐ RL_Quine

That sounds like bad toupee fallacy. You don't know what the situation would be like if they were doing nothing.

⬐ wmf

AFAIK T-Mobile was the first carrier to implement STIR/SHAKEN to verify caller ID.

⬐ LocalH

Pretty sure they're not actually considered common carriers in the first place.

⬐ paulryanrogers

Certain FCC chairmen would say they should be. I might even agree.

⬐ tzs

This seems to be about SMS, which would be part of their telephone business, not their ISP business. I believe that telephone services are common carriers.

⬐ robgibbons

The FCC declared that wireless text messages (SMS and MMS) are information services (Title I), not telecom services (Title II), so this type of practice is unfortunately perfectly okay with the FCC.

⬐ nichos

Another reason to use signal, briar, etc...

⬐ ars

Censoring in SMS messages. Certain anti-abortion links, and a distributed youtube alternative are censored.

⬐ josephcsible

In particular, the links they tried were:

* https://odysee.com/ * https://freethestates.com/ * https://freethestates.org/ * https://freethestates.org/who-we-are/

Any SMS, whether incoming or outgoing, with any of these links is silently dropped.

⬐ loudlambda

Also: https://barnhardt.biz

A friend tried to send me a link to that blog back in June in regards to investing in cattle, and T-Mobile blocked it. Only noticed the missing message because the conversation didn't read right.

⬐ JobDestroyer

Other sites that are blocked are ddosecrets.com, canadiancovidcarealliance.org

⬐ megraf

It's the free part. Twilio will also flag patterns like this. We built a contactless workflow that was being censored, and it was due to a similar substring appearing in the link. It was a pain in the ass to figure out

⬐ markovbot

Other sites like ddosecrets.com and itsgoingdown.org are also affected. Neither have the string "free" in them

⬐ jlund-molfese

From the Reddit thread and my own testing, links like “ https://free-test.com/” go through fine from a T-Mobile phone. These URLs T-Mobile blocks appear to be individually treated differently, for whatever reason.

⬐ megraf

Interesting, thanks for checking it out!

⬐ _trampeltier

Does anybody ever heard of something like this on EMail? Both SMS and Email are not encrypted, so it could affect both.

And why they even bother to censor SMS. Almost nobody does use SMS anyway. So why?

⬐ showerrain

The same thing happened to .win sites including a popular one, post election.

I posted proof here (using another account) but it was immediately flagged because nobody cared. In fact many were happy about it.

⬐ dmead

for anybody reading. he means thedonald.win.

this entire thread is about t-moble censoring right wing and alt-right (white supremacist) websites.

hats off to them for doing the moral thing.

⬐ Brian_K_White

How do you discuss, examine, learn how bad something is, or what exactly makes it so bad, if you can't even refer to it?

This is a more idiotic position even than the positions espoused on those sites.

⬐ dmead

that already happened, en masse. that forum used to be a subreddit that was thoroughly understood and read by the entire internet.

perhaps you need another reading of mein kampf, just to be sure?

⬐ showerrain

Any association to mein kampf shows a profound misunderstanding of that forum.

⬐ dmead

There is no association other than these ideas are both clear rejects. I believe my point stands.

⬐ Brian_K_White

You had no point.

Your question implied that no one needs to read mein kompf, thus proving that it's ok to censor it, thus showing that it's ok to censor anything else you don't like.

Since all of those things your attempt at a point stands on are false, the point in fact does not stand.

It's not only wrong, it's unbelivably ignorant.

Perhaps I'm misremembering from so long ago in 1979 or 80, but I feel like they explained the fundamental problems with censorship, including reasoning such as you present, as early as 4th or 5th grade.

That's why I say unbelievably ignorant. How is an adult saying something that a 5th-grader k ows better? I guess literally I can believe that they allow kids to reach adulthood without ever being made to understand something so important, but I sure don't want to.

⬐ dmead

I think you're being ignorant to the realities of modern communication.

Censorship of libraries and press in the pre-internet era is completely different than preventing new copies of stormfront being shoved down everyone's proverbial throat on a daily basis.

⬐ showerrain

You keep making these wild associations. Again it has nothing to do with stormfront. Nobody is shoving anything down anyone's throat.

This is about two consenting adults not being able to exchange text messages with each other because the middlemen censors do not approve of the contents.

⬐ dmead

So what? It's a private company. they also probably censor CP.

I highly, highly doubt that anybody is going to the mat over this unless they believe in banning abortion. No definition of free speech includes what sms middleman can or can't do.

⬐ showerrain

Sure, who cares. They are my opponents. They don't deserve to talk amongst themselves. This will never happen to me, I am sure.

⬐ showerrain

They are our enemies and deserve it! It will never happen to us, that I am sure.

⬐ Brian_K_White

What does "private company" matter? It doesn't.

And it's not even quite true anyway. The phone system has federal mandates. It's recognized as a piece of infrastructure that that the state has an interest in, and so is not actually 100% free to do whatever it wants in the way that say, BestBuy is. And plain sms is part of that basic telephone service.

But even if they were, legally, free to violate the integrity of the communications they have been entrusted to carry, why in the world are you ok with that?

There are countless things that are legal and wrong, and I see no valid reason not to see something wrong and say "that's wrong".

⬐ dmead

sir that is a huge pile of nonsense

it entirely matters if it's a private company. this isn't 1995. there is no regulation anymore. you can't compel anyone to transmit whatever hate speech people deem "Free".

so, they are already expected to "violate the integrity of the communications" they handle (whatever that means).

this isn't 'nam, donney. there are rules.

⬐ Brian_K_White

so tomorrow, it is discovered that fedex and ups are opening all the envelopes, reading the documents, and silently throwing some away. They don't say anything to either sender or receiver. They keep your money, which by the way does not silently fail on them 10% of the time. You are obviously fine with this because they are private companies and you are not an odious hypocrite.

⬐ dmead

if that happened i'd say told ya so. should have funded the post office.

⬐ WaxedChewbacca

None

⬐ jeroenhd

I wouldn't call this "the moral thing". If it was a setting as part of their spam filter that you can turn on or off, then maybe it should be permitted, but it should definitely not be the default.

⬐ ycIsGarbage

No but see that was good censorship so it was ok.

⬐ shephardjhon

Some censorship needs to be accepted as anti terror measures. If you white people were ok with random brown people being pulled aside by TSA for random checks after 9/11, I as a brown progressive am ok with your Christian white Taliban organizing and propaganda being censored after 1/6.

⬐ BeFlatXIII

OK, George Bush.

Better opinion: both of those are bad policies.

⬐ logic_beats_pro

Do we even need a back and forth to point out how un-related these two things are and how they shouldn't be treated the same.

No, censorship should not be accepted.

⬐ lettergram

They kicked the sitting president off every social media platform. He was attempting to tell his supporters to "go home in peace" and they censored him.

The number of people who are censored is much much larger than people realize. I know tens of people personally who have been booted off of media, censored, etc.

They took the inventor of the mRNA and DNA based vaccines off of twitter --

https://www.theblaze.com/news/twitter-suspends-dr-robert-mal...

If people could hear and would listen to both sides of the debate(s) this wouldn't be happening, but here it is.

This is a war. A lot of people aren't recognizing it, but in 2016 the war was declared and the censorship is just one front. Lock everyone inside, censor all content you don't like, shutdown religious gatherings, algorithmically decide which stories people see, I could go on...

The sooner we recognize what this is the sooner people can prepare themselves.

⬐ WoahNoun

Quotes from his Jan 6 speech:

>And by the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? He had 80 million computer votes. It's a disgrace. There's never been anything like that. You could take third-world countries. Just take a look. Take third-world countries. Their elections are more honest than what we've been going through in this country. It's a disgrace. It's a disgrace.

>And I'd love to have if those tens of thousands of people would be allowed. The military, the secret service. And we want to thank you and the police law enforcement. Great. You're doing a great job. But I'd love it if they could be allowed to come up here with us. Is that possible? Can you just let him come up, please?

>And he looked at Mike Pence, and I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so.

>For years, Democrats have gotten away with election fraud and weak Republicans. And that's what they are. There's so many weak Republicans. And we have great ones. Jim Jordan and some of these guys, they're out there fighting. The House guys are fighting. But it's, it's incredible.

>No third-world countries would even attempt to do what we caught them doing. And you'll hear about that in just a few minutes.

>The American people do not believe the corrupt, fake news anymore. They have ruined their reputation. But you know, it used to be that they'd argue with me. I'd fight. So I'd fight, they'd fight, I'd fight, they'd fight. Pop pop. You'd believe me, you'd believe them. Somebody comes out. You know, they had their point of view, I had my point of view, but you'd have an argument.

>I read it about Bill Barr, that he's my personal attorney. That he'll do anything for me. And I said, "You know, it really is genius." Because what they do is that, and it makes it really impossible for them to ever give you a victory, because all of a sudden Bill Barr changed. If you hadn't noticed. I like Bill Barr, but he changed, because he didn't want to be considered my personal attorney.

>So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn't listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he's listening to.

>We won in a landslide. This was a landslide. They said it's not American to challenge the election. This the most corrupt election in the history, maybe of the world.

>So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give.

>The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.

>So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-s...

⬐ rfrey

> He was attempting to tell his supporters to "go home in peace" and they censored him.

This is a remarkable reinterpretation of history. Trump was banned on January 8 - two days after the insurrection. The specific posts that broke the camel's back are documented at https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio.... They are anything but "go home in peace".

⬐ lettergram

https://www.thetrumparchive.com/

That's somewhat out of context, I agree you can interpret them how you want, but there's nothing breaking the rules here.

EDIT: He was locked out evening of Jan 6 -- https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/6/22217686/trump-twitter-acc...

Which is what I was referring to.

Exact quotes from Jan 6 (reverse order):

> These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever! (6pm - after events, deleted)

> I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you! (3:15pm -- during events)

> Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful! (2:38pm -- during events)

> Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth! (2:24pm -- during events, deleted)

⬐ Guest42

Do you not recall him declaring the election was rigged and other false things of the sort that contributed to the ensuing events?

⬐ lettergram

> election was rigged and other false things

He was just using the wrong language, it wasn't rigged, the election was fortified.

https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

In all seriousness, questioning the election results is not the same as promoting violence. Hillary Clinton literally claims (present tense) the same thing for 2016.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/05/06/hillary-clinton-says-...

Her own party claims she rigged the primaries -- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

Trump regularly suggested and his final words in his speech on Jan 6 were "peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-peacefully-and-patri...

Clearly, some of his supports (and some argue the FBI[1]) incited a riot on Jan 6. But banning Trump off twitter didn't help that situation, it made it worse. He appeared to be trying to talk the rioters down.

[1] https://www.revolver.news/2021/12/damning-new-details-massiv...

⬐ Guest42

Manipulative lying shouldn't be dismissed as "wrong language" and HRC has nothing to do with this topic.

⬐ freen

Strange: you want the state to force private companies to host content? Can the government force your servers to host nazi forums?

⬐ dang

Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. We want thoughtful, substantive conversation, not battle cries, which will only lead (and did in this case lead) to tedious and repetitive battles.

We've detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29744909.

⬐ lettergram

Fair, apologies. Won’t happen again.

⬐ perryizgr8

It's a private company operating their private cell network. They have the right to operate it as they wish. If you don't like it you can use any other network, or start your own.

⬐ thakoppno

It’s the public’s invisible light.

⬐ poletopole

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Acrobatic_Road

⬐ 58x14

I can't figure out why you linked this user's threads.

⬐ selimthegrim

Probably meant to link their most recent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29733051

⬐ Acrobatic_Road

Hmn, not sure why anyone would care about my post history.

⬐ poletopole

It's not because I'm calling BS, just the timing of it, because it's not just domains and not just T-mobile. I got a random text message from an HN user I don't know personally, a few weeks back, but took a screenshot of the account's only comment several days BEFORE I received the text, because it was odd (the account is now deleted). I didn't even take the screenshot with my phone. It does grow more absurd, but I signed up for this so to speak. Well, three years of data down the drain...

Edit: I wasn't pointing fingers at the user in particular, but be wise HN, that's all.

⬐ ribosometronome

Not sure I am reading this correctly, are you saying that you received a text from someone who your only interaction with them had been visiting their HackerNews profile and taking a screenshot?

⬐ AniseAbyss

SMS lol what year is it...

⬐ _trampeltier

Sometimes it is the only thing to do. For ex. I have no Whatsup (because I don't wanna have anything from Facebook), just Signal, Threema and Telegram. So sometimes SMS is the only possible way to send a message to other people.

⬐ mattwilsonn888

The censorship is something but I think what we have to me more worried is these two young men having so much interest in all these anti-women's choice websites to begin with. MaYbE ThEy ShOuLd Be CeNsOrEd

⬐ zenexer

I performed the following tests for odysee.com, which is mentioned in the video. Google Voice is on a paid Google Workspace plan. AT&T is a Small Business plan. All others are typical consumer plans. Visible is a Verizon subsidiary. Google Fi is an MVNO that routes texts through T-Mobile.

Google Voice -> T-Mobile: blocked

T-Mobile -> Google Voice: blocked

Google Voice -> AT&T: allowed

AT&T -> Google Voice: allowed

Visible -> Google Voice: allowed

Google Voice -> Visible: allowed

AT&T -> Google Fi: blocked

Google Fi -> AT&T: blocked

T-Mobile appears to be the only provider blocking that particular website. (Google Fi routes SMS through T-Mobile.)

But it gets better. Odysee appears misspelled at first glance, so I decided to look it up to make sure it wasn’t a phishing site. I typed it into DuckDuckGo and…

…nothing. Just a bunch of completely unrelated websites. Not even a Wikipedia article. I tried again a few more times—same results. Tried again about 10 minutes later, and I’m finally seeing limited results. The Odysee website appears, but third-party sources discussing it, including Wikipedia, are nowhere to be found.

It’s pretty clear this is a controversial website, but I don’t appreciate this. It makes it orders of magnitude more difficult for someone such as myself to research the matter and communicate with other researchers.

Not only is the site itself being censored, but information about the site is being censored. I’ve noticed this happening quite a bit with DDG lately, particularly with right-leaning and libertarian websites. Google and Bing both show the expected results, but DDG will censor the bulk of it for about 10 minutes. Disabling safe search has no impact, but retrying repeatedly eventually yields valid results. I’m curious whether this is intentional censorship or an unrelated technical issue.

⬐ imglorp

I can't reproduce the DDG experiment on TMO.

I can reproduce OP video's experiment. TMO is absolutely blocking certain SMS content.

⬐ kmlx

i don't exactly know why you're using Bing/DDG, but Google has all the relevant links:

http://google.com/search?rls=en&q=odysee&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

⬐ pibechorro

Because google sucks in so many ways.

⬐ spiderice

You're saying that Google sucks because they aren't censoring (in this case)?

⬐ pibechorro

I am on tmobile, and searching odyssey via ddg gives me all the relevant results (the homepage, wikipedia, etc)

Google is the search engine I see most aggressively editing my results.

⬐ novaleaf

that is different. when you use the web everything these days is via HTTPS, which encrypts the content so tmobile can't see what's going on.

TMobile is censoring SMS texts, which is not encrypted.

⬐ lynndotpy

Are you sure about Odysee? When I search it on DDG, it shows Odysee as the first result. Every subsequent result on the first page is a post or article about Odysee, except for a URL to lbry.

FWIW I have safe search and advertisements turned off, region set to "All Regions" and language set to English. Re-trying with safe search strict and I still get the same results.

⬐ rendall

I have verified that every single result is relevant. I do not believe there is any censorship of these results in my case.

Anyone else? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Odysee&ia=web

The first results:

odysee.com https://odysee.com

apps.apple.com https://apps.apple.com › us › app › odysee › id1539444143

Odysee: The New YouTube for the Far-Right - GNET Search domain gnet-research.org https://gnet-research.org › 2021 › 02 › 17 › odysee-the-new-youtube-for-the-far-right

Odysee Overview - Reclaim The Net reclaimthenet.org https://reclaimthenet.org › odysee-overview

reclaimthenet.org https://reclaimthenet.org › odysee-better-than-youtube

Odysee: a new video platform backed by LBRY publish0x.com https://www.publish0x.com › ghastly-gaming › odysee-a-new-video-platform-backed-by-lbry-xpjklpk

Odysee aims to build a more freewheeling, independent ... techcrunch.com https://techcrunch.com › 2020 › 12 › 07 › odysee-launch

Free Odysee Video Downloader HD Quality Fast pastedownload.com https://pastedownload.com › odysee-video-downloader

LBRY - Content Freedom Search domain lbry.com https://lbry.com

Etc

⬐ kornhole

The answer to why some of you are seeing different test results from each other is context: you, your location, and other identifying information they can use in their firewall rules. If you are testing with SMS, the carrier knows who you are. DDG is supposed to be user neutral, but the Azure server serving the Bing results may have some information such as location. I do not know the relationship between DDG and MS and what data is shared.

⬐ _V_

I see exactly the same as you - located in EU.

⬐ rendall

I am located in the EU too. Maybe that's why we see uncensored results? As an American, I sure hope not.

⬐ ColinHayhurst

What is weird is that if you accept the suggested spell check: Search only for "Odysee"? You get an entirely different set of results, with Odysee filtered out. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22Odysee%22

⬐ therein

Yup, this is what is happening to me as well.

⬐ rendall

Can confirm. That is really weird

⬐ lynndotpy

That's weird but I still see results talking about Odysee in the results. Mostly blogs and whatnot with extreme fringe conspiracy stuff like "graphene razor blade" in vaccines and reptilians, pointing to various social media handles including Odysee.

⬐ zenexer

Yes, I’m sure. It’s been happening to me a lot with DDG lately. Unfortunately, I haven’t been keeping track of the circumstances, but it seems to correlate with my usage of iCloud Private Relay. I suspect it happens when I’m routed through either Cloudflare or Akamai, but not both. Waiting 10 minutes tends to result in a new route.

It’s very odd behavior, but when it happens, it’s as though a particular organization is scrubbed from the search results. I’m regularly researching controversial organizations, so I find this particularly inconvenient, but at least it’s conspicuous.

Occasionally it’ll happen to mainstream sites such as Hulu. That leads me to believe it may be some sort of regional or safe search glitch, but the correct results will eventually reappear without changing any settings. Regardless of the cause, it comes across as censorship—even Wikipedia will be missing from the results.

⬐ Arnavion

DDG's not giving me a Wikipedia result for Odysee, but I'm not surprised either, because DDG rarely gives me Wikipedia results for queries in general. Eg I just searched for "dog" and Wikipedia is not in the first page's ten results (two dictionaries, four lists of breeds, two youtube videos, a shelter, and "dog.com"), while it's number one in Google's results.

⬐ therein

Kagi seems to be doing great in this regard.

https://i.imgur.com/fHSbPra.png

⬐ squarefoot

Odysee (without .com) could be a generic name, hence the absence of a Wikipedia result. If I type "odysee" into DDG the 1st result is odysee.com, if I type odysee.com it also returns odysee.com as 1st result but also adds a Wikipedia reference to lbry.com on the right, which seems normal to me.