The New York Times Web site is experiencing technical difficulties. We expect to be back up shortly.
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 14, 2013
Breaking: Website of @NYTimes is under #cyber attack, source tells @FoxBusiness - $NYT #DDoS
— Matt Egan (@MattMEgan5) August 14, 2013
@nickconfessore Did the NYT go out of business?
— True News (@unitedNYblogs) August 14, 2013
So, Facebook.com likes to censor its users, who post information, links, or other media, such as photographs or videos, which are deemed too political in nature (or, more appropriately, too offensive to its advertisers or tax authorities). Facebook sometimes suspends user accounts for a period of time, mainly, for 30 days, according to recent examples of two of my "Facebook" friends. Considering how short-lived Myspace.com was, for all its clunky and anti-music file sharing obsession it became in its final years of relevancy, many users on Facebook.com look forward to the emergency of a new Web site, to which disaffected Facebook.com users can migrate.
For all those activists, who are "superusers" of Facebook.com, who use features like creating events for demonstrations or meeting planning, creating pages for activism campaigns, for creating groups of like-minded activists, and for creating public (or private) profiles for doing all this work, perhaps one emerging suggestion may make sense :
Seeing as how new Web sites, such as SumofUs.org, are emerging, where activists can participate in some limited function online activism, it might be fascinating to explore whether the owners-developers of Web sites, such as SumofUs.org, could add on social networking and other social app-like modules, extensions, or functionality, so that disaffected Facebook.com users can just abandon Facebook.com and just embrace one, fully-dedicated non-profit Web site, such as SumofUs.org, for their online activism and social media experience.
Imagine what online activists could do in a Web-based environment, which supported a safe space for online activism and social networking ? We wouldn't have to deal with the arbitrary censorship by Web sites, such as Facebook.com, we wouldn't have to deal with ever nebulous privacy policy changes to placate advertisers, there wouldn't be tracking, surveillance, or face recognition issues....
I imagine it would only take a small team of creative minds to mount an effort like this....
Then, we would have a newly, self-empowered community for online activism. And we could let our old Facebook.com accounts join our old Myspace.com accounts in the digital morgue of the past.
High-level U.S. government officials, including Clinton and Biden, demand for the assassination of Assange and to list WikiLeaks as a terrorist organization. In this country, do we prosecute whistleblowers ?
It is a shame to see how blogs and YouTube videos, which discuss critical news about SAIC and the billion-dollar high-tech deals that give birth to insider dealing and mega corruption, can be labeled with adult warnings, but I've seen clips of John Waters' movies on YouTube with nudity and self-gratification scenes, but that's deemed perfectly funny by our admittedly raunchy online standards.
But as soon as a blogger starts talking about RICO charges and triple damages and civil and criminal trials, then we focus our eyes and attention on boobs, and we find reasons to restrict access to information that no msm outlet is putting out there. I wonder what would happen if I shaved my chest and put on a pair of falsies under a bikini top ? Would you give me a free pass, like topless YouTube clips of Edith Massey ? Would I finally get some attention focused on my Kickstarter project ?
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/louisflores/roots-of-betrayal-the-ethics-of-christine-quinn
But then again, I'd probably get labeled as adult content by your same sick and twisted double standards, and I'd only succeed at getting warnings on my online content.
Just because all men stare at Suzannah's boobs don't mean we should drape a digital full-body cloaks (aka ''adult warnings'') on her YouTube videos -- against her will.
Did I miss something, or isn't this exactly what you are doing to her work ? She's too sexy even in clothes, so let's drape her videos in adult warnings like a quasi "e-burka."
Update : True News From Change NYC Blog Has Been Restored
Google Blogspot Blog Has Been Removed For No Reason ; Blogger Community Suspects Political Censorship ; Call To Action
Please send an e-mail to press@google.com and copy Gary Tilzer, the owner of the censored blog, at Gtprinter@aol.com -- demanding that the True News blog be restored.
True News is a blog dedicated to reporting about government scandals, politics, and transparency. (Here is the cached version of the True News blog.)
This is not the first act of censorship against Mr. Tilzer. Before the 2010 election, a YouTube video that Mr. Tilzer produced was banned by NBC/YouTube and had to be replaced with an edited version. In the last couple of years, others have faced incidences of cyber censorship or retaliatory activity. One and a half months before the 2009 election, the YouTube channel owned by the artist and political commentator Suzannah B. Troy was likewise censored, until bloggers and a lawyer intervened on her behalf. In 2010, this blogger was attacked by computer viruses 3 or 4 times, including on the day this blogger reported to the New York Department of State Committee on Open Government an act of censorship committed by Brad Hoylman.
Flashback : Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed Internet freedom as tool to ‘spread truth and expose injustice’
We need your help to keep courageous bloggers, like Mr. Tilzer, doing what they do. If you are reading this, it is because you are turning to the Internet for reliable information. For it to be here, bloggers, like Mr. Tilzer, have to be able to do their work without fear of retribution or censorship.
