December 22, 2024 - Personal blog of Rick Giles

Vodafone Rebrand

June 24, 2023

By NZB3

Q: What do you think of this. Am I missing something: Vodafone to block child pornography sites? Or is it a warm up for hate speech?

A: It’s copying Countdown’s branding.

Remember how Countdown supermarkets brought in Kiri Hannifin came in to re-brand them as the Social Justice supermarket chain? Gone the assuring white male voice of Tim Balme and the white soap opera of The Colemans. Hannifin made Countdown political in order to shift goods, crossing a dangerous line. Ref. Countdown Kiri Takes Knives Away, NZB3

So, Vodafone New Zealand, recently re-braned as One NZ, is picking up the same routine now. CEO Jason Paris has just come out on Twitter saying that his platform is setting itself up to be a content auditor of the internet for Kiwis! Of course, this sort of censorship always starts out as going after something hateful such as child pornography. Once you cross this dangerous line as taking over from people the self-responsibility for what they consume why should it end with one ban?

I wont even go in to how practically impossible the Great Wall of Paris will be to enforce. You can’t stop the signal. All One NZ will be able to do is force their target vice further underground, make it more weird and stronger. “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it,” said John Gilmore. You’d think an ISP would be familiar with that. I think Paris will have been told this but he doesn’t care because he isn’t really trying to help the victims of child pornography at all. Like Kiri Hannifin, he’s there to sling product.

I’m proud that @onenzofficial will be the first telco in New Zealand to block Child Sexual Exploitation & abuse material at a network level to..” – Paris, Twitter (June 2023)

Free unlimited downloads for tampons and pride flags next!

Yesterday I saw in Countdown they even have a low sound low light shopping period to soothe minorities. And don’t forget the approved foods only checkouts!

Evidently One NZ means to grow and, for now, the way to appeal to the mainstream is to go Woke Woke Woke. So, we can expect to see more of this junk from Mr Paris in the very near future.

 

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