Like just have our ISPs serve up DNS redirects to government-hosted pages proclaiming the site is blocked and detailing why, with links to things like private, non-partisan analysis as supporting evidence.
and you will have created a new machine for the carnival barkers to point at and say “see how much they want to hide the truth from you!”
I dont have a solution, but fail to see how this may be one. censorship is almost always a tool that will eventually remove the hand of the wielder.
The point isn’t to win back the disingenuous nor the fools they’ve captured, but rather to head neutral people off at the high-traffic gateways to alt-right pipelines. The first thing cultists will try to do is isolate people from legitimate support systems, and in this case that means discrediting institutions by attributing malice to every action.
But they’re going to say something bad no matter what is or isn’t done, and aren’t bound by the truth anyway. So I say play the numbers game and focus on the undecided, not the cultists. We won’t know what impact it has until we try and then measure the results (like metrics on DNS lookups, from which we can probably estimate drops in Canadian traffic to those sites vs drops in Canadian traffic overall which would signify people switching to other DNS servers).
Censorship is a risky tool to be sure, but realistically the authoritarian risks are pretty far removed from Canada’s political center, and we already do it for various reasons that the general public widely accepts. As long as we’re staying within a good legal framework, to me it’s only a question of results and specifically the result of keeping fascist movements marginalized and its members surrounded by rational people who were given the benefit of forewarning.
well considered reply. thanks. I am currently trapped in the dystopian hell that is the USA, but I hope my canadian peeps find a way out of the trap that ensnared people here.
as a non-canadian (with family in canada) I can only offer my sincere best wishes and support as the current us administration continues its criminal belligerence towards you. whatever you choose, do it carefully with full knowledge that what your country looks like on the other side of the decision matters greatly to you and the world.
and you will have created a new machine for the carnival barkers to point at and say “see how much they want to hide the truth from you!”
I dont have a solution, but fail to see how this may be one. censorship is almost always a tool that will eventually remove the hand of the wielder.
The point isn’t to win back the disingenuous nor the fools they’ve captured, but rather to head neutral people off at the high-traffic gateways to alt-right pipelines. The first thing cultists will try to do is isolate people from legitimate support systems, and in this case that means discrediting institutions by attributing malice to every action.
But they’re going to say something bad no matter what is or isn’t done, and aren’t bound by the truth anyway. So I say play the numbers game and focus on the undecided, not the cultists. We won’t know what impact it has until we try and then measure the results (like metrics on DNS lookups, from which we can probably estimate drops in Canadian traffic to those sites vs drops in Canadian traffic overall which would signify people switching to other DNS servers).
Censorship is a risky tool to be sure, but realistically the authoritarian risks are pretty far removed from Canada’s political center, and we already do it for various reasons that the general public widely accepts. As long as we’re staying within a good legal framework, to me it’s only a question of results and specifically the result of keeping fascist movements marginalized and its members surrounded by rational people who were given the benefit of forewarning.
well considered reply. thanks. I am currently trapped in the dystopian hell that is the USA, but I hope my canadian peeps find a way out of the trap that ensnared people here.
as a non-canadian (with family in canada) I can only offer my sincere best wishes and support as the current us administration continues its criminal belligerence towards you. whatever you choose, do it carefully with full knowledge that what your country looks like on the other side of the decision matters greatly to you and the world.