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Comment by jpollock | Hacker News Reader

New Zealand has always had an official censor (Office of Film and Literature Classification [1]), responsible for what works are available in the country.

They already have an internet filter which blocks access to certain domains/ip ranges/etc. [2]

Of course they would require similar abilities once Facebook came to their notice by broadcasting a terrorist's murder spree. [3]

It would have been "You are selling to New Zealanders. We will have the ability to censor information passed to NZ IP addresses, or we will block the IP range, your choice."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_Office_(New_Zea...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_New_Zea...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings

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One important aspect is that NZ (and Australia as well IIRC), have always had laws that gave name suppression to people accused of a crime and its been illegal to publish names of accused if they were granted name suppression. I think this is one of the primary cases how some of the censorship laws have been used.

But that sort of censorship is fine. You submit the content for classification. With documentation. And they send it back with a detailed report of what needs to be censored and why.

(I used to submit for classification for adult content for distribution in NZ or streaming in hotels)

Edit: so HN wants Twitter moderation and censorship but a country censoring videos and text books is a big no no.

Do you understand the distinction between moderation and censorship?

Moderation is blocking content when the sender wants to communicate something the receiver doesn't want. Censorship is blocking content that both the sender and the receiver want.

Gmail running spam filters is moderation. The government blocking you from sending emails to journalists is censorship.

> Censorship is blocking content that both the sender and the receiver want.

Except when it isn’t. All media content goes through classification and censorship in New Zealand. You cannot air anything on tv without classification.

My comment was on the processor of classification and censorship that occurs during the classification process.

> Moderation is blocking content when the sender wants to communicate something the receiver doesn't want.

Then Twitter, Facebook, etc do not have moderation teams. They have censorship teams. Because they are blocking content people do want.

You might disagree with Trump. But removing his tweets and banning him is censorship as people do agree with him and do want his content.

>>Edit: so HN wants Twitter moderation and censorship but a country censoring videos and text books is a big no no.

This was your original comment. Yes, people want moderation of their platforms, otherwise they become unusable. Most people want some degree of censorship (CSAM is the obvious case). But there's a big difference between Twitter censoring something and the government doing it. For example Facebook can say "hey we don't want people posting nude photos" - that's censorship. And that's fine; they don't want to run a site that has nude photos.

>>Then Twitter, Facebook, etc do not have moderation teams. They have censorship teams. Because they are blocking content people do want.

Yep, they do both, in varying degrees. The government should be more restrained.

>>You might disagree with Trump. But removing his tweets and banning him is censorship as people do agree with him and do want his content.

Yes, it absolutely is censorship. And if twitter wants to do that I'm fine with that. I don't want the government doing that.

> This was your original comment.

Because people downvoted me to -4 before anyone commented. Since I only talked about censorship in regards to traditional media it was safe to assume people dislike censorship of traditional media. Which is a contradiction to wanting censorship and moderation on social media.

> Yes, it absolutely is censorship. And if twitter wants to do that I'm fine with that. I don't want the government doing that.

I agree but Twitter in the past is very inconsistent in its moderation and censorship. Stuff that’s an absolute violation of rules is allowed but borderline violations on the right are quickly dealt with. I’m fine with a private company doing it if it’s consistent.

So if Twitter or Facebook take something down that both the sender and the receiver want, but an advertising conglomerate doesn’t, based on worries about brand safety or whatnot, is it censorship or moderation?

when I do it's moderation, when they do it's censorship.

Between this and the matt taibi twitter discussion, the conclusion is that Americans overwhelmingly are for censorship of " the otherside", but wants to do it in such a way that it can't be called censorship. It's not that they don't want censorship, but they don't want to do it in a transparent way in which a government entity/clerk hands in a takedown request to fb/twitter, instead they want embedded partisan operatives operating through backchannels to takedown content they don't like in absolutely opaque fashion. The point is to claim - "see it's not censorship" even though the end result is the same. All it matters is how it looks like, not what it is.

“Moderation is blocking content when the sender wants to communicate something the receiver doesn't want. Censorship is blocking content that both the sender and the receiver want.”

These definitions don’t work, because there is always some (possibly extremely small) population that wants the content, ergo you could say all moderation is censorship to some people.

These are just language tricks. We aren’t censoring anything, we are simply moderating out the voices of our political opponents.

There are always trade offs but I think we are better off with zero censorship. What are we worried about? Will we become Jihadists after seeing a Taliban post? Are with that impressionable that anything we see sticks in the brain as truth? If so, perhaps we should try to solve the root problem.

I think there are different perceptions on what Facebook's tool does.

It could be "send to the front of the moderation queue." or, it could be "ban it immediately globally".

People's perception also probably depends on how far they believe a ban applied to Facebook extends. Does it extend to NZ only, or worldwide?

If I were designing this system:

1) Upon receipt of a ban request by a governmental org.

2) If legally required, immediately ban it to all IP ranges inside of that country/region - there is typically a SLA with penalties here, e.g. 1hr in EU.

3) Send it to the front of the moderation queue.

4) If it comes back marked "not allowed", ban it globally.

That way, the legal bans only apply to the smallest allowed region, but we then take that as a strong hint that it might not be allowable on the platform in general.

That allows us to operate in Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, New Zealand and the US, each country with different things considered "illegal speech".

If some readers think this is NZ deciding for the world what Facebook publishes, they will have a very different response to someone who thinks the takedown only applies in NZ.

Moderation on the internet is difficult problem. From past experience from submitting classification requests, they are pretty lenient on what gets classified. But it’s not like it’s done behind closed doors.

What I don’t like about some moderation tool on Facebook is that we don’t know what is moderated, by who, for who, and why.

I saw someone else say there should be a registry of sorts for moderated content so it’s visible which I think is good. (The moderation not the content itself)

> so HN wants Twitter moderation and censorship but a country censoring videos and text books is a big no no.

I have no big problems with websites limiting what users can post (HN is also ding this!), but I have big problems with politicians having ability to for example take down content criticizing them.

Content that should be made illegal to post anywhere at all is in my opinion extremely rare, and basically all censorship system should censor less. Sadly, some things needs to be blocked and once system exists it inevitably gets misused.

Not sure what the proper solution is.

> I have big problems with politicians having ability to for example take down content criticizing them

Is this a hypothetical? Because plenty of content on FB criticising New Zealand's politicians.

> Is this a hypothetical?

depends on a country

> Because plenty of content on FB criticising New Zealand's politicians.

This does not mean that no content was taken down solely for criticizing politicians.

Considering I can't prove a negative, are you able to prove a positive?

Because trust me, New Zealand's opposition parties, social media, and the real media, would be on that like flies on shit if there was even a hint that it had happened. All it would take is someone saying "Wtf, my FB post calling Jacinda Ardern a pretty communist was mysteriously deleted."

I guess it's good to live in a nation where corruption is low, and the rule of law applies to all, the media is free, and who deliberates on questions of law isn't decided by politicians.

Because I know that any of the behaviour you posit would be absolutely called out.

Like the time a New Zealand Prime Minister sent the Police in to find an investigative journalist's sources, because it embarrassed him and his government.

Or the time that the New Zealand Defence Force sicced the internal intelligence service on the same journalist to find his sources because he embarrassed them...

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/104638742/police-apo...

https://i.stuff.co.nz/opinion/130640313/the-dirty-politics-b...

The fact that a) these things happened concerns me but b) that it was exposed to the light heartens me.

So yeah, if you've got evidence of what you posit actually occurring, please share it.

> Considering I can't prove a negative, are you able to prove a positive?

Yes. In communist Poland "You submit the content for classification. With documentation. And they send it back with a detailed report of what needs to be censored" was used and designed to keep criticism of ruling class and ruling system out of public view.

----------------------------

Note that I am not claiming that NZ is currently abusing this system, or that NZ system is intended to provide such use.

I was responding to

> Because plenty of content on FB criticising New Zealand's politicians.

that is not really indicating anything, except lack of USSR-level censorship.

Maybe confusion was caused because I responded to

> But that sort of censorship is fine. You submit the content for classification. With documentation. And they send it back with a detailed report of what needs to be censored and why.

treating is a claim in general, not specifically about NZ

(I do not want to claim anything about NZ as I am not familiar with it)

> All it would take is someone saying "Wtf, my FB post calling Jacinda Ardern a pretty communist was mysteriously deleted."

The post saying that would also be deleted in that scenario.

No one cares if one domino falls over. But a whole bunch in a row is quite a spectacle.

Good thing there's more than one social network then.

No content was taken down solely for criticising politicians

New Zealand has very strong separation between policy makers (the government) and the agencies that enforce policies. The government can't tell the police what to do, they can't tell treasury what to do, they can't tell defence what to do, etc. All they can do is write policy, approve funding, and request help.

Therefore, they'll help set policy for what needs to be taken down, but a politician will not be able to take down content, they may request the censor office does this, but they won't be able to force them or do it themselves.

NZ is an outlier in the world, but it is a very strong liberal democracy. It has very low levels of corruption, very high levels of public confidence in government, very transparent ways of operating, and very strong media and public participation to hold the public sector to account.

Other countries might abuse this system, but I doubt New Zealand is.

> they can't tell defence what to do

The Prime Minister can only exercise control over the military by policy? They have no input to operations at all? Seems extraordinary. Wikipedia says that ministers exercise authority.

Yes, it's a bit of a stretch. The whole idea is that ministers do in fact make decisions so that somebody can be held democratically accountable for them. But sometimes we limit their decisions to appointments, i.e. choosing who to delegate power to. If that person messes up then we hold the minister accountable for putting their faith in the wrong person. The comment was pushing back on the idea that politicians are the ones doing the censoring. In that sense they are largely correct -- censorship is one of those powers you do not want to give directly to the politicians. And you can set it up so they don't get it. That's all.

Do Ardern’s political opponents feel the same way?

> New Zealand has very strong separation between policy makers (the government) and the agencies that enforce policies. The government can't tell the police what to do, they can't tell treasury what to do, they can't tell defence what to do, etc. All they can do is write policy, approve funding, and request help.

Seems like it is less a democracy than rule by a professional elite with a thin veneer of elections to keep the people happy.

No, there is a lot of transparency and oversight, including to any member of the public, and ultimately the government sets policy. I can just request any document, and in fact I used to work in the public service where a coworker would frequently request any correspondence about him by staff or managers under the official information act. He was paranoid but had the ability to do it.

An example is during covid, the government set policy around what could be done but the police were ultimately in charge with how they enforced it. Additionally New Zealand has a culture of egalitarianism and community. While there is growing inequality, there isn't an elite yet.

The government provides checks on the public service and the public service provides checks on the government.

Another example is the treasury prevents the government going into debt unless there are extreme circumstances and a plan to get back into surplus. The government can't just cut taxes and up borrowing to buy votes, they need to be fiscally responsible and that's controlled by the treasury.

Ultimately New Zealand has a reasonably direct, accessable, and transparent form of government which represents the community that it serves, it is rated top in the democracy list for a reason.

It's come a long way since the days when it was known as "the only command economy in the OECD", then!

The solution is for us Kiwis to decide. You can worry about your own government.

Twitter does not have the monopoly on violence

> so HN wants Twitter moderation and censorship but a country censoring videos and text books is a big no no.

Yes, that's actually very sensible.

> so HN wants Twitter moderation and censorship but a country censoring videos and text books is a big no no.

Yes, of course? I can choose not to use Twitter but I have no choice but to submit to censorship.

> We will have the ability to censor information passed to NZ IP addresses, or we will block the IP range, your choice.

I wish companies in the free world would unite to choose the latter option, and so force New Zealand to choose between giving in and allowing freedom of speech, or having their Internet become as useless as North Korea's.

All of the defenders of the policy reminds me of when Google's CEO Eric Schmidt in 2009(!) famously defended mass surveillance:

> "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

If what the gov is censoring is so important then they should publicly post a list of everything they censored (Google's public DMCA list is a good example). They have nothing to hide right? If it's for the public good then the public should have the option to see what they were being protected from.

Well, we have some knowledge; we know for a fact NZ has censored the manifesto and recorded video stream of Brenton Tarrant, the guy who elaborately planned and carried out a massacre of 51 people at a mosque in Christchurch. I believe they've done the same for stuff like ISIS and other terrorist materials, but I don't know the specific details of that.

In the Tarrant case we do know: the manifesto (not too hard to find) is about equal parts polemic and roadmap/planning document. The video recording is from a helmet-mounter camera and basically looks like a first person shooter video, except that all the targets are fleeing civilians. It's not impossible for people in NZ to see these materials; academics, journalists and so on can apply for permits to obtain and possess the material. Absent that, possession is, as I understand it, a crime, but one with a very low chance of being caught. The primary intent of the law is to have a strong sanction to prevent people distributing it and inciting similar incidents in the future.

I'm not convinced that forcing the materials fully out of circulation is a foolproof preventive strategy, but it certainly creates barriers to the acquisition/ collection of such material by wannabes, and collecting this sort of material is definitely A Thing among other mass shooters, who are quite a bit more social than most people imagine and have an online community of sorts.

So the free speech argument generally goes along the lines of 'we don't know what we don't know, allowing the free flow of ideas is the only rational way to ensure freedom of life and the discovery of new ideas without inhibition.' But from NZ's point of view, they definitely don't care for a repeat or innovation in the practice of massacres, and the surviving relatives and neighbors of the dead presumably don't care to see the murder of family and friends become a an entertainment commodity or be weaponized by trolls who use the material to traumatize them further (please, let's not pretend that this doesn't happen). And they've balanced their prohibition with exceptions for serious analysis and study with a straightforward application process, albeit a subjective one that is administered by bureaucrats rather than a mechanical system.

So there's a concrete example, with come added context (sorry, it's late and I'm not at my main machine so I'm not going to dig up a pile of links/documents to flesh it out to article quality). So, should we accord any weight to those considerations, including the exceptions, and if not why not?

I’m against NZ’s censorship because I decide what I get to read and hear, not the government. That such laws are rarely enforced is worse, not better. It means the authorities are engaging in favoritism and possibly going after their political opponents.

> It's not impossible for people in NZ to see these materials; academics, journalists and so on can apply for permits to obtain and possess the material. Absent that, possession is, as I understand it, a crime, but one with a very low chance of being caught. The primary intent of the law is to have a strong sanction to prevent people distributing it and inciting similar incidents in the future.

This is not accurate. After the incident the NZ police were demanding that websites turn over IP logs for people accessing the manifesto or video, using that to get subscriber info from ISPs, and then attempting to imprison people for up to 14 years just for mere possession of illegal information [0].

And the idea that someone would have to get a license to see that material is just fundamentally offensive to the idea of free expression and access to information. For one, anyone who does journalism is a journalist, whether they have a Twitter account or a CNN primetime show. The NZ government should butt right out of attempting to gatekeep the profession that holds them to account. There is an overwhelming public interest in the populace being able to access that material, despite its extremely horrific and offensive nature. For one, it is evidence used to convict a man for multiple murders. A fundamental principle of a fair justice system is an open court system, and that means allowing people to access and examine the court transcripts and exhibits, including the videos and documents. It was also just an extremely newsworthy event that affected millions of people in New Zealand (public policy changes) and at least hundreds of millions worldwide [1]. It's quite Orwellian to cite this as the inciting incident for restricting the right of free expression and seizing firearms, while not even letting citizens examine the evidence first-hand! That's how we end up with crazy conspiracy theories about crisis actors.

[0] - https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/397953/charges-laid-in-3...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_Call_to_Action_Su...

I think we should consider such arguments — but we must consider their inverse: what happens when they’re wrong or abusive?

And we’ve seen that answer during COVID: those tools will be used to silence qualified scientists engaged in civil debate by bureaucrats enforcing their preferred choice — an act of totalitarianism. That will lead to loss of life as QALY negative treatments are enforced with the might of the state.

There’s around 7,000 deaths per year in NZ (based on a quick Google) and the non-COVID death spike has averaged 10% for two years — so about 1,400 people.

Censorship then comes down to a question:

Do we prevent 28 Christchurch shootings for every COVID-style bureaucratic fuckup?

I’m not sure it’s entirely obvious either way.

> "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

Well great! Let's find out all the judgements of the secret courts, all the top secret info, where our money is going, etc. Government works for us right? I don't want to be nannied, I want the truth. What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.

Why should the government have privacy but the individual not? Very asymmetric no? Whenever the government does something wrong, we likely don't find out at all, but if we do we have to go to its courts or legal system to get it addressed. It, on the other hand, can fine us for vices where no one is harmed.

...you know there's many more positions than "libertarian utopia" and "North Korea", right?

Consider it a spectrum.

You're probably american and therefore have less freedom than us

I can share the video of the Christchurch massacre without getting arrested, can you?

https://www.factsinstitute.com/ranking/countries-ranked-by-f...

Considering that the topic being discussed is about the restraining of freedom id disagree. Regardless this is a cope

That’s such a ridiculous over exaggeration of the situation in New Zealand.

Frankly it’s disappointing the amount of people on HN posting knee jerk reactions about this article who also have no idea about New Zealand’s politics. Worsened by the irony that they are themselves living in countries with greater censorship than New Zealand (and at least New Zealand is transparent about such matters. Which is more than can be said for Britain or America).

The filter is voluntary for ISPs to join, and the Department of Internal Affairs (which runs it) doesn't have the power to make it mandatory.

Also the Office of Film and Literature Classification lets you look at the classifications for everything online (including stuff that is banned), IIRC with a reason as to why it was classified the way it was.

IP filters don't really work for something like facebook or twitter though - they block everything or nothing - really you need to get them involved to limit what they send to NZ clients

That sounds like exactly what jpollock is saying. jpollock says New Zealand threatened to block everything.

No, he's talking about the ability to install an IP block for packets coming into NZ, not in other countries - in the past, as I understand it this has largly been used to black hole child porn sites

I'm talking about NZ's history of censorship, the tools that they already have for Internet censorship, and why the NZ government considered it important.

The IP block is a tool. It is also able to intercept HTTP traffic for sub-domain blocks, but everything is https now, so that doesn't work.

That leaves IP blocking, which I'm pretty sure NZ would have done if Facebook had refused to block content deemed illegal to import into NZ.

NZ has blocked the importation of books and video going back to 1880 (according to Wikipedia)[1].

New Zealanders continue to decide to keep the Classification Office - none of the political parties consider it an "issue". It works for the kiwis.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_in_New_Ze...

The web content filtering thing was a bit odd.

It was several years ago, but as I recall, Some (not all) NZ ISPs installed the filtering system, which let most IPs through, but redirected some to web proxies which were configured to filter banned content.

It's optional for ISPs to implement, and it only filters CSAM.

NZ would have turned Facebook off, and said precisely why - Facebook wanted the ability to continue to distribute videos showing a terrorist murdering New Zealanders who were praying.

The NZ Government would have won that argument.

"Facebook refused to honour and respect our laws. They prefer to distribute illegal content, so we have turned them off at the border."

Then what? Facebook is banned and the country learns to use vpns and get around other content restrictions.

It wouldn’t happen. Facebook works because it’s more than social media. You have a market place, clubs, businesses, etc on Facebook.

When you take all that away because you can’t advertise your Facebook page. Or your parents can’t just open their phone to see photos of your baby. The effort outweighs the benefit and people won’t use a vpn to access it.

Just a fringe group of people who want the content no matter what.

Everybody already uses a VPN in New Zealand. Netflix bro.

How does that work with Whatsapp? It claims E2E. Yet Australia requires companies to develop backdoors if necessary to get access to private information.

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