Hi, I'm from belarus and seeing how the belarusian protests are such a big deal i wanted to comment on the current situation. I'm from Minsk and there is total chaos in some parts of the city. Lots of cars are piling up in huge rows and signaling as a sign of protest, even now we can hear the signaling and occasional flashes but if you don't go out in the evenings then you should be safe. it's only bad when it gets late, really. it seems obvious that people are sick of Lukashenko and the fact that he made himself look like he got 80% of the votes is ridiculous. i mean, if that actually happened then wouldn't everyone be celebrating his victory on the streets instead of protesting outside? I don't know about the internet situation with other people but here it seems like everything google-related as well as news websites and famous social media has been blocked. it's stupid because i can just log onto another browser that isn't google and search up the things i need. reddit seems to work though. Thank you for all the support and the attention that has been brought up to our country's situation!
Edit: I didn't at all expect this post to blow so much and i am very thankful for all the feedback and help everyone is trying to provide. Thank you people!
I was looking through these recent /r/technology threads:
https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/apcmtf/reddit_users_rally_against_chinese_censorship/
https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/apgfu6/winnie_the_pooh_takes_over_reddit_due_to_chinese/
And it seems that there are a lot (probably most) of people completely clueless about the widespread censorship that already occurs on reddit. And in addition, they somehow think they'll be able to tell when censorship occurs!
I wrote about this in a few different subs recently, which you can find in my submission history, but here are some main takeaways:
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Over the past 5+ years Reddit has gone from being the best site for extensive information sharing and lengthy discussion, to being one of the most censored sites on the internet, with many subs regularly secretly removing more than 40% of the content. With the Tencent investment it simply seems like censorship is officially a part of Reddit's business model.
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A small amount of random people/mods who "got there first" control most of reddit. They are accountable to no one, and everyone is subject to the whims of their often capricious, self-serving, and abusive behavior.
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Most of reddit is censored completely secretly. By default there is no notification or reason given when any content is removed. Mod teams have to make an effort to notify users and cite rules. Many/most mods do not bother with this. This can extend to bans as well, which can be done silently via automod configs. Modlogs are private by default and mod teams have to make an effort to make them public.
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Reddit finally released the mod guidelines after years of complaints, but the admins do not enforce them. Many mods publicly boast about this fact.
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The tools to see when censorship happens are ceddit.com, removeddit.com, revddit.com (more info), and using "open in new private window" for all your comments and submissions. You simply replace the "reddit.com/r/w.e" in the address to ceddit.com/r/w.e"
/r/undelete tracks things that were removed from the front page, but most censorship occurs well before a post makes it to the front page.
There are a number of /r/RedditAlternatives that are trying to address the issues with reddit.
EDIT: Guess I should ment
... keep reading on reddit ➡
Belarus is the only country in Europe that is not under nation-wide quarantine. Their sporting events are still being held and, get this, the fans are allowed to be there. I find it surprising that no one mentioned Belarus as the place for UFC 249. People say South Korea, UAE, International waters but I think Belarus is possible choice. What do you think about this?
https://twitter.com/EnesKanter/status/1216769014480982016
>Very Sad! This is how Turkish basketball Websites in Turkey censor me now during @celtics games. I feel bad for @NBA fans in Turkey. They can’t watch basketball properly because of dictatorship.
Interesting how they're doing it. Wonder how they'll run things in the playoffs.
E: Apparently there are no Celtics games broadcast in Turkey, and this is a meme Kanter shared
My taste in music seems to align with the ESC fans except for when it comes to Belarus. Their song to me sounds decent enough to deserve some sort of interest but they’re second to last in the odds and the Eurovision Community app voting has them only 4 places above last position.
Are there other reasons for the song not doing so great or is it really just me liking a song that no one else seems to like in comparison to the rest of the entries this year?
https://www.reddit.com/user/jre-mod
It seems some powers that be don't like the support Bernie, Tulsi and Yang have gotten (biggest talk show in the world)
First, this mod has started deleting all theeada unless you have enough activity (only 8 threads todays and at least 40 deleted maybe more)
Then all politcal discussion was banned.
Sounds like a conspiracy to shut down conversation.
