Comments on: Gedolim of Israel called to close all chareidi-related websites.

By: עירא

עירא — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

It’s a way of trying prohibition after people started gaining “too much knowledge”. As a source of lots of apocryphal information the internet is scary to most traditional communities (See Dan Dennet’s talk at TED about “Dangerous Memes”).

But as we all know, prohibition doesn’t work, especially with information.

By: bahaltener

bahaltener — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Those who made the proclamation aren’t necessarily involved in financial plot behind it (if there are any). But they can be manipulated by the interesants. This already happened more than once (for sure in case of phones campaigns).

This can also be caused by the coalition which is opposed to professional education (there is such one in Erets Yisroel, and pretty powerful). I.e. they understand that Internet today is one of the primary sources of professional information, and by banning it they try to prevent people from becoming professionals.

By: Moishe Beshkin

Moishe Beshkin — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t want to believe in a theory of plot, but it really sounds like that.
To forbid community to hear other opinions is a kind of political protectionism.

By: bahaltener

bahaltener — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

In my opinion such proclamation is impractical and negative. I’ll dare to say it’s an antihasidic view. Talmidey Baal Shem Tov long ago said, that the length of the Golus will cause people to fall into exessive khumroys. This falls into such category.

Even more to the practice, than to theory – it might very well be caused by those who want to hurt competition. The same story was with banning mobile phones (except the “approved” models) and etc. Someone ripped money on that. This sounds pretty much the same kind of a deal.