Windscribe & Censorship

[Handsome Recluse]

Fake news is the deliberate attempt to publish disinformation for the purpose of profit or influence.

What's the practical difference if whether the fake news is deliberate or not?

 

[Arequire]

What's the practical difference if whether the fake news is deliberate or not?

If it's deliberate it implies malevolence; a deliberate attempt at deceiving others into believing a fabrication.
If it isn't deliberate then it implies laziness or incompetence; the refusal or inability to fact-check what's published.

 

[Handsome Recluse]

If it's deliberate it implies malevolence; a deliberate attempt at deceiving others into believing a fabrication.
If it isn't deliberate then it implies laziness or incompetence; the refusal or inability to fact-check what's published.

I meant what's the difference for the consumer. Not the definition.

 

[Handsome Recluse]

Wait? Why are they reporting that fairy tales are sexist?
Equally fake news since empirical evidence on the effects of implicit -isms affecting minorities are zilch. Making fairy tales non-sexist by definition of it not oppressing.
They should ideally censor both sides.

 

[Arequire]

I meant what's the difference for the consumer. Not the definition.

Nothing really. Whether it's pushed deliberately or not if someone believes it then whoever came up with the fabrication has successfully expanded their influence.

 

[Threadripper]

Windscribe combine tons of lists and then remove false positives using their own, if it's such a big problem they either don't use the fake news list or whitelist the sites you want instead of making it such a big deal.

 

[windscribe]

Currently, the only sources for the "Fake News" list are:

hosts/extensions/fakenews/hosts at master · StevenBlack/hosts

🔒 Consolidating and extending hosts files from several well-curated sources. Optionally pick extensions for porn, social media, and other categories. - StevenBlack/hosts

github.com

List of fake news websites - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You may notice that it's not "left leaning", as there are several liberal fake news sites on there. We're going to be expanding this list to include clickbait domains as well.

If you're not happy with the block list's content, simply don't use it, or whitelist the sites you actually wish to access. The choice is entirely yours.

 

[Burrito]

Beliefs are probably normally distributed.

But are they?

Staying with the political theme..

Think of a county with 4 relevant political parties... so while the distribution could be mapped in two groups, it would be more accurate to depict it in four groups. But if you combined them to try to map it in just two dimensions, I'd guess it would not be a normal distribution. It might actually end up kind of lopsided.

Or...

Global Climate Change

In the US, the percentage of the population that believes in it is far greater than those who do not. Listening to the political debate in the US, one might believe there is what may be approaching an equal distribution. But it's not even close. Nearly half of Americans are pretty sure climate change is real. But only about 7% are pretty sure it's not real. The rest aren't sure.

Americans Who Accept Climate Change Outnumber Those Who Don’t 5 to 1

e360.yale.edu

So.... I think that thought distribution possibly often is not a 'normal distribution.'

 

[37507]

Currently, the only sources for the "Fake News" list are:

hosts/extensions/fakenews/hosts at master · StevenBlack/hosts

🔒 Consolidating and extending hosts files from several well-curated sources. Optionally pick extensions for porn, social media, and other categories. - StevenBlack/hosts

github.com

List of fake news websites - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You may notice that it's not "left leaning", as there are several liberal fake news sites on there. We're going to be expanding this list to include clickbait domains as well.

If you're not happy with the block list's content, simply don't use it, or whitelist the sites you actually wish to access. The choice is entirely yours.

Thank you for the professional and great response. Way better than the one I received from one of your devs.

I was under the impression that this filter was one sided. I apologize. Cheers.

 

[codswollip]

Why use a "fake news" filter? Would I trust an algo that hasn't been personalized for my cognitive preconceptions, tastes, and biases? No thank you. I'll pick and choose for myself. It's not malware (OK... maybe it's malware for my psycho... but that's the least of my issues.).

FWIW I use a promo version of Windscribe (occasionally) with all "privacy options" disabled.

 

[ForgottenSeer 58943]

A lot of 'filters' seem to aggressively filter conservative news as fake news. Also if you want to see something interesting, look at the list Burrito posted, and then pick out the known CIA front news organizations and you'll actually find almost all of the CIA fronts actively liberal. I suppose this plays into the Problem->Reaction->Solution doctrine they use, and the perpetuation of division to further their agendas. Random Tidbit: MSNBC is a station to be careful of, both for visual content, and content you can't necessarily see.

Anyway, I have found Windscribe to be rather poor. Also, for some reason some UTM and DNS filters consistently pick up Windscribe and their domains as malware which doesn't comfort me at all.

 

[Cortex]

Pretty happy with the Windscribe filters that have not at this point caused me any problems.

 

[Arequire]

I still don't know who database they use to block ads, malware, and tracker.

I’d be interested to know this as well.

Their response:

We're using some of the sources behind the easy lists, so almost all the content will be the same.

So a modified version of EasyList & EasyPrivacy for ads and trackers. According to their website it's:

hand curated to remove false positives that plague most community maintained lists.

What they use for malware domain blocking wasn't answered.

 

[windscribe]

UTM

Their response:

So a modified version of EasyList & EasyPrivacy for ads and trackers. According to their website it's:


What they use for malware domain blocking wasn't answered.

We use over 10 different lists, which include malwaredomains_full.txt (Easylist), abuse.ch lists, and a few others. We're also gonna be expanding it to include the Spamhaus DBL list in the near future.

 

[windscribe]

Anyway, I have found Windscribe to be rather poor. Also, for some reason some UTM and DNS filters consistently pick up Windscribe and their domains as malware which doesn't comfort me at all.

Can you explain this in more detail? I've never heard of such a thing....

 

[Burrito]

We use over 10 different lists, which include malwaredomains_full.txt (Easylist), abuse.ch lists, and a few others. We're also gonna be expanding it to include the Spamhaus DBL list in the near future.

Yeah, and that methodology is fine.

 

[windscribe]

Not sure if sarcastic....?

 

[LDogg]

I definitely have no bad word to say against Windscribe. The best Free VPN service I've encountered in the market so far, you will get some that will praise or complain about anything, that is the same with everything however.

~LDogg

 

[Burrito]

Not sure if sarcastic....?

Not at all. Straight up.

There is nothing wrong with the methodology.

There is no conspiracy to diss anyone here.

 

[LoLs]

i live in country where censorship become too much. Even the tv shows were blurring woman cleavage, blurring sharp weapon, blurring cigarette smoke. And ISP company is so limited here, and not only blocked xxx, pirate sites, but they also inject ads through dns, And they sometimes showing up their company welcome pages plus ads. And when you visiting blocked site, they will shows up as blocked plus ton of crap advertising pages.
They even blocked NETFLIX for years maybe just so they can earn more income from their tv cable product. It just about few month ago they unban NETFLIX but some ip still blocked.

Simple DNScrypt - DNS over https helping me abit when i'm not on vpn,.. but some website still redirecting controlled by isp. And i really hate my ISP dns poisoning, i hate when i visiting a site and they redirecting to some crappy blocked warning pages with stupid ton of ads.

So my brother bought lifetime Windscribe years ago,. It's not perfect but i'm happy with it. The only problem is some server slow., maybe overcrowded but i can changes easily.. and its damn cheap., i bought on sale 49$ for lifetime vpn LOL. Thanks for MalwareTips, i got that promo from this site.

windscribe really help me with censorship problem, at least for my Internet..
and i don't use R.O.B.E.R.T


pardon my language, english isn't my primary