Banned! Censorship Reality - The Long Road To Grandma's House

 

censorshipˈsensərSHip/noun

1. 1.the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security."the regulation imposes censorship on all media"
2. 2.(in ancient Rome) the office or position of censor."he celebrated a triumph together with his father and they held the censorship jointly"

Now I suppose this is the last thing most people want to read right now, and it's probably not the first time anyone here has had to deal with it neither blatantly nor indirectly. I decided that I wanted to make this my first steemit post because not only because I find it relevant, (At least as far as I'm concerned it is something everyone should be concerned with) but also it has directly affected me and my career as a content publisher in every aspect whether it be adult related articles/vlogs or K-17 style audiences. 

Now i bet you're wondering to yourself "This idiot could probably avoid censorship if he'd just understand and abide by the rules set forth in the user agreements provided by any given network where his content will be deployed" and you'd be absolutely right. I Mean, what could one expect from repeatedly violating terms of service by posting obscene or offensive comments, photos, and or other media on Facebook or Pfft. . YouTube? 

But let us look a bit deeper. . . . 

Censorship. . .  According to the aforementioned definition (given to me by doing a simple google search) is quite loosely defined. We won't get into what politically acceptable even means considering that has far too many variables, but we'll touch on the last part of the first definition for a bit that states "or a threat to security " as it seems more relevant to my recent situation with a paid service provided by a large corporation (whom shall remain unnamed in favor of not making this seem like an irritated vent of some sort)... Meh, Fuck it, It was Google er Alphabet?

Now don't get me wrong, we have all relied on censorship policies from big companies to protect us from threats or otherwise malicious activities from some teenage booger in *Cough*  Prrusssia that decided he'd use his raspberryPi to install kali linux and wreak havoc on some unsuspecting Vlogger's Ubuntu WP box. But wait, what exactly happens when a "fellow" blogger sees you as a "threat"? 

 threatTHret/nounnoun: threat; plural noun: threats

1. 1.a statement of an intention to inflict pain, injury, damage, or other hostile action on someone in retribution for something done or not done."members of her family have received death threats"synonyms:threatening remark, warning, ultimatum"Maggie ignored his threats"
   • LAWa menace of bodily harm, such as may restrain a person's freedom of action.
2. 2.a person or thing likely to cause damage or danger."hurricane damage poses a major threat to many coastal communities"
   • the possibility of trouble, danger, or ruin."the company faces the threat of bankruptcy"synonyms:danger, peril, hazard, menace, risk

 The systems set in place to police or report abuse seem to be setup currently as a call to action approach. This means that not much is done prohibitively, and everything is done via community trust and support. 

Example:

`Little Brah Brah decides had been a member of YouTube for a year now and had successfully uploaded 20 or so videos with moderate popularity. He also uses YouTube to display the videos he's uploaded videos on his website. Lil Brah Brah decides one day that he wants to increase user engagement on his website and makes a live stream on YouTube for the first time. He has his chromakey setup, lighting is perfect, streaming at 1080p at 60fps and nails it with over 12,000 viewers and 2000 hits to his website in one hour. The Community seems to love Lil' Brah Brah, but wait. There was already some guy on Youtube who had gained a decent amount of popularity doing streams that contained similar content and subject matter as Lil' Brah's. Let's call him Vlogger A. In fact, there were several other vlogger's that also noticed Lil' Brah's live stream and even clicked the subscribe button in support of Lil' Brah's debut on the live streaming scene but not Vlogger A. Vlogger A chose a different route. He didn't vote it down (who does that anyway?)  Instead, he decided to click the report button on Lil Brah Brah's syndicated stream.

Oh but Vlogger A didn't stop there, nope . . . He had been on YouTube for quite some time now with a massive viewership and following. He also had some of his friends follow suit and do the same as he did but not just the recorded stream, he needed ALL of the videos on Lil Brah Brah's channel to be flagged . Before Brah Brah woke up the next morning , there were over 29 reports against his account, subject matter, and person claiming all sorts of things from copyright infringement to soliciting drugs, and inciting riots. He found that his account was suspended indefinitely while Youtube performed several reviews of his material in which they would allow him an opportunity to appeal and verify his validity and "safety" to the community. Furthermore, any content deemed unfit during this review would be destroyed by YouTube totally at their discretion. There is money to be made in this business and as far as Vlogger A is concerned, he'd rather eliminate the "threat" at it's inception rather than allow it to fester and eventually eat at his plate of magnificent YouTube ambrosia. 

Ultimately YouTube found it "Favorable to the community" to have Lil Brah Brah's videos removed and account banned. This invalidated at least 18 of his most popular posts at  his website since these videos were embedded amidst their pages. 

But let's dig deeper. What just happened here?

Lil Brah Brah fell victim to what i'd like to consider an attack. A quite effective one too similar to what is commonly called a "DDOS" but twisted. The attack was orchestrated by community members. . High ranked "contributors" mind you that took advantage of a tool readily available on every blog page of any of the popular social network distributions be it an app version or web based. How could this happen? We rely on these networks to enforce policies to protect us from harm, however their "Call to action" approach in doing so has provided a means for malicious users to attack completely innocent bloggers simply because they are deemed a threat. Furthermore, The common facility for reporting or flagging content on these networks allow for the "flagger" to remain anonymous. More information on these practices can be found here

This is just one example of censorship being used in a way that I know has happened to a lot of people but no one seems to talk much about. Another form of censorship I recently witnessed is where Google decided it would post a notice to any browser visiting a website that used certain SSL certificates. At first I didn't pay much attention to it until I saw that amazon's cloudfront.net default hosted certificates would be affected. Why does this matter you ask? Well, millions of websites use cloudfront.net as their content delivery URL's that's why it matters. More specifically, Symantec signed certificates which are default certs for cloudfront distributions are being deprecated by Google. This means that if your website is using one of these certificates after the censorship goes into effect, your website will discontinue working in Google browsers. . More On That Can Be Found Here

Reality. . . . 

  Who is honestly at fault here? Lil Brah Brah? Vlogger A. and his friends? YouTube? What responsibilities do the key holders of these platforms have when it comes down to determining the veracity of a report? What about the community? What responsibility do we have and how does one protect himself from this type of attack? Perhaps I'll make an amendment to this in the future notating some of the steps I've taken to defend myself and my content from this sort of thing.  Any thoughts are appreciated.