Substack demanded my email and access to my phone’s camera. By David Evans.
This morning I went to a Substack account I visit weekly, and was confronted with this:
So I clicked the orange button:
Again I clicked the orange button:
At this point I gave up. Site unvisited.
The authorities want to know who is visiting the sites it disapproves of, and is making access difficult. Identify the nails that stick up, so they can be hammered.
If its “age verification” rigmarole is not rejected by overwhelming public pressure, it will spread throughout the West. And then it will spread to small sites like this. Then only the legacy media — easily controlled like in the days before the Internet — will be allowed.
Memo to Trump — get on the case. These Australian government pricks are worse than censors operating in Europe … Jump down the Australian government’s throat and tell them to stop this insanity …
New Australian Substack readers are asked to present ID proving they’re adults before they can access writers’ pages. …
The first level of ID proof is: take a selfie on your phone and show it. If the third party company (not Substack) which is handling this ID procedure doesn’t approve the selfie for any reason (which could include bad lighting, for instance) the reader is told to upload a government issued ID.
These two ID demands will turn away many readers. …
The Australian Substack writers won’t necessarily know what’s going on. They’ll only know the number of “article opens” are suddenly shrinking. So are the subscriptions.
But that’s not all. Here’s the big key:
The new Australian censorship acceleration doesn’t want “harmful or SENSITIVE content” to reach children. So any “sensitive content” in Substack writers’ articles that ranks as problematic is BLURRED ON THE PAGE until the reader shows acceptable ID. …
For example, an Australian Substack writer does a piece on vaccine harm. BOOM. No good. That is blurred on the page.
Perfect for the censors.
AND obviously, this blurring can’t be accomplished by hand, on an article by article basis. It has to be done by an algorithm. AI. The algorithm will “err on the side of caution”.
An Australian Substack writer .. criticizes the government? COULD BE BLURRED ON THE PAGE.
Here is the kicker. If Substack doesn’t blur enough material, it can get fined. Not little amounts. HUGE money.
So, Substack goes along with the Australian government. From what I can gather, there are no legal appeals that’ll work. …
Australia has a very strong regulatory body at work on this whole Orwellian program. This isn’t just a casual operation. It’s a fucking blanket of censorship.
Every online platform that has an operation in Australia is affected by this new program. …
Australia is the traditional testing ground for new psyops and mind control. The testing ground for other countries.
hat-tip David Archibald