… and, in some cases, save lives. Report Websites that appear to be blocked from access at Herdict. That’s the new tool launched by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard.
In true crowdsourcing spirit Herdict is a combination of “herd” and “verdict.” Anyone with access to the Internet can help put global pressure on governments that attempt to censure news and information. The brain behind this
site is one of my heroes, law professor, Jonathan Zittrain.
He says, “It’s a civic technology, an attempt to get people to see themselves as global ‘netizens,’ engaged in a collective effort in producing humanity’s information medium.”
It is not just the usual suspects like China that appear to censor online communication. The Netherlands has “126 reports of inaccessible sites” at the time I posted this.