The Closed WEB

For some time I’d kept an image from Google.com.cu (which opens from Cuba), without gmail; and Google.es (which I struggle to open when I connect, literally sailing against the current) with gmail and many other things (especially in the search engines). For weeks we still don’t have MSN, and a friend warned me that I might have to leave Facebook, because in the new declaration of rights and responsibilities for Facebook it says that:

4.3 You cannot use Facebook if you’re in a country under the embargo of the United States that forms part of the SDN (Specially Designated Nationals) list of the Treasury Department of the United States.

An absurd contradiction with this principle, also in Facebook

10. One World
Facebook service must pass national and geographic barriers and be available to the whole world.

It’s unfortunate that it facilitates in this way the work of the Cuban government, and unfortunately not only the Cuban government but other governments in the world which, like Cuba’s, maintain their power at the cost of censorship and lack of freedoms for their citizens, that flaunt certain social achievements like flags to hide the true repressive and corrupt character of their regimes.

I maintain communication with a friend who lives in China; in recent weeks their emails are flooded with phrases such as: “I cannot enter because it’s blocked,” “Do you have a proxy to send me?” and even a surprising, “the connection often drops me.” I decided to do an interview to better understand how censorship works, which is the same in these two worlds so far apart and in a sense so similar. The interview will be anonymous to protect the safety of my friend, and will be published in the next entry.