Imagine if ITV had to offer an option to let viewers opt out of adverts whilst continuing to watch for free. There would soon be no ITV. Yet the EU cloud cuckoolanders are trying to force the internet to offer that same option
The Spanish government has quietly begun censoring the entirety of GitHub in response to mounting Catalan protests, causing problems for those developers that use the Microsoft-owned service for their work projects.
While the issue is easily remedied by using a VPN, the fact that the Spanish government has been quick to try to censor such a valuable tool speaks volumes for the increasingly prominent but authoritarian idea that mass censorship is the best way
to crush dissent.
One new pro-independence group, Tsunami Democratic, organizes digitally online and is known for the mass occupation of Barcelona's El Prat airport by an estimated 10,000 protesters. In addition to other social media it has a website hosted on
Github as well as an encrypted communication app that's also available on Github.
The Android app uses geolocation and end-to-end protocols to make sure that only trusted and verified users have access. Verification takes place through the scanning of a QR code of an already-verified member. The app isn't available via
Playstore so the APK file containing the app needs to be downloaded and manually installed on a phone.
It's for this reason that the Spanish government has begun to block GitHub in the country, cutting off access to all users. Over the last week, several Spanish internet service providers have blocked access to the service.
