Thanks for the additional context. A lot of Americans in this thread are conflating their own country's issues with what's going on in the rest of the world.
Given how given to certain narratives some of these services are, I’m not surprised and I would predict more governments will do similar things pre-election.
Now of course most of the governments that would do this would be authoritarian and would look to control their own narrative, I think this illustrates how unbalanced and agenda-driven these media and social graph services have become who bring in foreign values to local elections.
This interference used to be called neo-imperialism not too long ago by the same people who now advocate for these narratives.
This is a watershed election for Uganda. In some small hyperbole Uganda could become the next Rwanda or the next Sudan, depending on whether or not the incumbent is unseated.
I would focus on the regional peoples' politics rather than the technocracy or American politics.
I firmly believe your thrust is irrelevant to the core issue, if not solely for the immediacy of a democratic threat.
I'm not an expert on this, but my family and I have been following this revolution for the past few months. To me, it's a promise to the people that things can get better.
I appreciate you pointing this out. The article says very little about the political context of this election and Uganda in general.
From what I understand, not being an expert either but having spent quite a few months in Uganda in the last few years, Museveni has been the president since 1986 and brought a lot of stability to the country, aka brought peace after lots of conflict under Idi Amin. Some people have expressed gratitude for that and fear that Uganda will go back into the violence it faced before and yet seem very tired of the way Museveni has been running the country and want new leadership. Recently, there has been stronger opposition and in the last few years, a popular musician, Bobi Wine, decided to get involved in politics and declared to run for president.
I imagine, if I were in government, I might be afraid of the US, China, Russia, or other countries bringing their political influence into the country through the internet. I might fear revolutions like the ones that happened in Tunisia and Egypt and other countries. I may also just fear my own citizens and what they want. It's hard for us in the US to know how much of the political discourse here is from the citizens vs external sources vs government sources, and I could imagine even harder sometimes in other countries to figure that out.
That's the tricky part with this decision, it could be to stop foreign influences, it could be to stop local influences, it could be to amplify government influences, or a combination of all three.
Snarky, but interest reading dissecting the agenda behind WSJ article. Choice quote:
>The WSJ doesn't say how it obtained the documents, though it does reveal that Wine was recently in Washington DC where he had briefed the US government on events in Uganda and had received offers of assistance.
TLDR; Washington upset Huawei prevented them from meddling in domestic Uganda affairs. Huawei lawful interception implementation erodes US influence operations abroad. No surprise tech sovereignty is gaining momentum in any place that is able.
Ah I didn't know about this. I appreciate you linking the articles. So it's probably a combination of US, Chinese, and local influences pushing and pulling on politics.
Makes me think just how antiquated the idea of geography-based government could be when we have instant communications with people around the world. I think national, regional, and local governments really have no idea how to deal with internet interactions that cross geographical jurisdictions.
> Now of course most of the governments that would do this would be authoritarian
Would they be? Consider what just happened in the USA: All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country.
Now imagine if some similar subversion were attempted in another country, say Ecuador? Would these social media companies be as willing to silence a faction in another country?
What if it were to happen in a more important country, say Australia? South Korea? Japan? Germany? At what point should these companies be interfering through censorship, and at what point are the issues too blurred or difficult to figure out who's right and who's wrong? Sir Richard Wharton in Yes, Minster once quipped: "Once you start interfering in the internal squabbles of other countries, you're on a very slippery slope."
Naturally, these companies will resist the push towards becoming arbiters of Truth (until they actually BECOME such arbiters, then god help us all).
So non-American governments will have no recourse but to plead with Youtube, and then block them when the answer is "no".
Calls for violence and election-critics were encouraged by current social media in some countries. It looks like many social media platforms have bias based on the political affinities of their owners.
I see no reason for any government or any party to trust the social media, mobile OS platforms and messaging anymore. A new set of tools is about to loom hopefully.
Yes. People never handled daily small talk with their friends and family via the Letters page of e.g. The Times, so it was never antisocial to change newspaper, to boycott a newspaper entirely, or to go without any daily paper at all.
There are plenty of direct messaging apps and services people can use to continue to do so such as iMessage, WhatsApp, SMS, email and many more.
The issue is publishing services with discoverability where anyone can see or subscribe to your feed, those are more like a letters page and service providers have a clear interest in what they are publishing for you.
It's an interesting point I had not yet considered that most private internet censorship seems to relate to some political issue or moral value that primarily plays in the U.S.A..
That, and of course financially complying with pressure from the Chinese government to be tough on whatever independence movement it struggle with now — Catalonia was of course free to chant it's independence.
That's because you have no idea what's happening elsewhere. Here in Czechia we have our own version of the problems USA faces (regarding "censorship"/deletion of content), and nobody has any idea what's happening in the USA.
I merely noticed that much of the censorship and cultural policing on large platforms such as GitHub, or even the new Linux code of conduct seems to be mostly applicable to situations that pertain to the U.S.A. exclusively.
Yes. And it’s beyond ridiculous when these are imported and translated literally to be used as propaganda tools in countries with very different issues. Like the European ramifications of Qanon or some versions of identity politics...
Or, of course, how with Google AdSense the entire world must live under the U.S.A.'s notedly quaint aversion to nudity, because allowing it on a website will severely reduce advertisement revenue.
It's quite interesting how many international websites would forbid me from posting scenes from Dutch television programming because the adult U.S.A.-man is apparently more damaged by nudity than the præpubertal Dutchman.
Yes, that as well, along with the fetishisation of violence. Even more horrifying is how this is being internalised as “how we should behave” in non-US countries.
I don't know what about QAnon do you mean. It was a serious problem here. It's not even about the topic itself, it's about the comments under the posts.
This sort of things, for example. I am more familiar with the UK, France, and Germany, but your example is on point.
I suspect at the beginning there is a kind of identification and a contrarian reflex (“you won’t prevent me from speaking so I will say the vilest things just to test how far you’ll bend”). But people doing that end up taking it seriously after having steeped in it for a couple of years. Still, surely they realise that the people they support don’t care a bit about them and live on the other side of the world.
I find that there is quite a bit of technology that isn't, but that also seems to be less interested in moral police.
GNOME is of the U.S.A. and well known for its livid codes of conduct; KDE is of German origins, and seems to be more lax in this.
Even with Linux, Linus, a Finn living in the U.S.A., has long resisted it and even referenced this difference between Finnish and U.S.A. culture, but eventually relented.
And here we have arrived at the crux of the problem. Should we just throw up our hands and say "Then just don't use American tech"? I think this move by Uganda (and your comment) illustrate the same frustration that we in America feel at the power these monopolies are exerting over public discourse (for some various definitions of "public discourse").
I don't think we can't not use it. But anyone on AWS or GCP needs to have a plan for the case where their business is suddenly deemed unacceptable (for whatever reason) and they may get cancelled.
The entire world cannot now use Parler (disclosure: I've never downloaded or used it) because a hundred or so people broke into a US government building for 2 hours.
Case in point, the fascists in India became very concerned about Trump being deplatformed. They decried it as a lack of tolerance, because they knew there’s no difference between what Trump does and what they do.
> All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country.
Where did this happen?
Because I saw some specific tags blocked calling for a VP to be killed blocked (vs some generic "kill all humans" hyperbole)... and specific account blocked after its owner triggered an attack on the Capitol that resulted in 5 casualties (and breaking the rules of the platform for 4+ years)
-
Are you trying to say people who were pro-talking about killing Pence and storming the Capitol are a significant population?
Because last time I checked there were still tens of millions of conservatives on Twitter who aren't banned
What I'm talking about isn't so narrow as liberals or conservatives; it's about social cohesion and the censorship that's necessary in order to preserve it. We've been living charmed lives up until now because the ability to broadcast to large audiences has only been within the capabilities of a select few media outlets that were vetted and controlled to varying degrees by the government to make sure they didn't sow too much discord. And this is healthy, because a divided nation loses its international competitiveness and in the worst case risks collapse.
We're now in the unprecedented situation where individual people can out-broadcast even nation states with the help of social media companies, most of which have their head offices in the USA, limiting their dependency upon and reachability from other governments of the world. It's a decent situation all around because having such companies headquartered in a repressive regime would have damaging effects worldwide. But we still run into some problems:
1. Their morals are local, but their reach is international. This has caused a lot of friction in the past, and that friction will only increase going forward.
2. They're being pressured to bow to local "truths" or risk being banned in a number of nations. These "truths" generally come to light from local issues, and while they can be easy to decypher in autocratic regimes, they absolutely will NOT be so easy to arbitrate in functioning democracies. We'll eventually reach the point where every social media company will need a team of sociologists and political strategists in order to figure out what's behind every government's complaints over what's being broadcast by their citizens, and how best to respond (making them higher arbiters of truth than even the government). The national self-determination issues alone are staggering.
The endgame of this is increased government regulation and increased pressure for a single national "truth", which must be defended vigorously in order to keep the government functional. The increased conflict between these American companies and local governments will increase to the point where eventually the companies will win and essentially set the policy of truth worldwide, which leaves us in a very centralized and fragile state when it comes to corruption, especially since companies - unlike governments - have only profit as a motive, and do not answer to the people.
This is so so many words about a overly discussed slippery slope, that do not address a very simple point.
You said this:
> All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country.
Where is this large population? Who is this large population?
Thus entire comment you typed is an distressingly large stretch if you can't identify the population you're using as a diving board to truly go into the deep end here.
In this case, the population is Parler members. But the instance and people involved are largely irrelevant; it's merely the illustration of a point that will become more and more pronounced as more people realize this power. And it'll be confounded by the fact that no company can be fully up to date with the local foibles of country X and their issues that the company must now decide the truth of and censor whomever they believe to be the bad actors (yeah, good luck!).
Although social media companies have allowed more of us to broadcast to an unprecedentedly large audience, we're not actually ready for the Pandora's box this opens in terms of free speech, corporate rights and obligations, and national sovereignty. The near-term solution will be selective censorship by companies and blocking by governments unhappy with the censorship choices (for both good and bad reasons). But as the decade drags on, we'll be forced to recognize our lack of psychological adaptability to this kind of influential power that can destabilize societies to such a degree (by individual, group, AND state actors), and try to come up with a least-worst solution that we're probably not going to like.
It's not like this is completely new; larger countries with information dissemination advantages have used that power to destabilize smaller countries for centuries, most recently in South America and the Middle East. But it's quite another thing to be on the receiving end, by anyone able to harness a sufficient audience (i.e. not just state actors), and find yourself unable to effectively defend against it.
Definitely not buying that was the original population mentioned: it doesn't follow your original claim and it doesn't follow your reply.
> All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country.
Parler users are not a significant portion of the population.
They were not blocked by "all social media companies", their app was removed from an app store.
If you're trying to implicate the people who were using Parler... again small population and the over lap between banned from social media and using Parler is far away from a "significant portion of the population". And many are of a certain political leaning, they are not representative of that population.
This while comment chain was built on an event "banning a significant portion of the population population" that doesn't exist. End of story.
I'm not interested in discussing doomsaying based on made up events.
Nothing said in this thread is a novel thing, it's the same tired what-ifs that ignore the "what-happened". When your argument doesn't even stand without leaning on made up events and slipper slopes, it's not worth much.
Once again it's been proven that, even after facing the worst case so far, presidents using their platform to threaten nuclear war... people still have to resort to embellishments and straight up fabrications to support doomsday theories that just haven't panned out.
Twitter did not falter in their dedication to avoid censorship until people's blood were quite literally on this person's hands before finally taking a stand.
It's probably been a difficult 4 years for some people at Twitter turning cheek after cheek, they're earned their extra 11 days of rest.
Only going from what I've observed on the continent, (especially in the EAC), but I think it's a bit deeper than that right now.
Today, right across Africa, governments are studying the possibilities of restricting foreign internet services. Both as a way of controlling the information their populations get to view, but also as a means of addressing high youth unemployment among educated workers by giving their domestic internet firms the room to take root. This is actually an interesting sideshow in the more global tendency towards balkanization. But take my word for it, young startup type guys from Entebbe-Kampala, (and, with AfCFTA, even places like Dar and Nairobi), will be very active trying to press their advantage.
The political side of this shutdown is predictable, but the interesting action is the long game. I think these kinds of shutdowns are dry runs for the sort of internet world African leaders are quietly pressing for in their future.
this is incorrect. Majority of African leaders and regimes are not interested in addressing high youth unemployment among educated workers by giving their domestic internet firms the room to take root.
Even local startups have little to no support from their own countries.
This is purely authoritarian. They are more interested in retaining power to continue exploiting their own people.
I think this depends a lot on the country, no? From what I heard, something like Rwanda is doing quite well these days (pre-COVID at least, not sure what happened since). The situation in, say, Uganda, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, or Algeria might be very different still.
There are probably some reasonable generalisations that are fair, but sometimes I feel people generalize a bit too much when it comes to Africa.
Can you back that up with anything? Sounds a lot like pure ideologue speak in the absence of any backing. The person you're replying to made some claims that seemed to make sense on their face, and it'd be nice to have more than a "that's wrong, they're not. it's just not" as a response, since I'm actually curious what the on-the-ground situation is in these places.
A headline of "Local President admits focus on internet censorship is driven by personal greed, not economic protectionism?"
I'm from Ghana, a country that's been touching the line of internet censorship from time to time, and I see nothing wrong with their statement.
It's laughably naive to imply that they're censoring outside services to prop up the local tech scene when they can hardly be assed to get kids a proper education without using it as a political bargaining chip.
Like saying they're playing 4d chess when they're not interested in checkers unless it suits them...
Youth unemploynent + unstable region = young men with time on their hands that could easily get recruited and become rebels. So the gov't must be totally interested addressing the issue.
You're forgetting that authoritarian governments do not have to address these things by eliminating the root cause. They can just silence the opposition with arrests or execution [0]. Uganda is so famous for this to the point that there is an entire movie [1] about Idi Amin.
If you actually cared about youth unemployment you could address it with simple economic measures first and you would seek funding from western investors, not get rid of them.
Implementing tariffs in an industry that you are never going to be a world leader in is just plain stupid. Ugandan app developers can just develop for the Google and Apple store and get access to a bigger audience instead of restricting themselves to Uganda only.
It only works out in China because their internal market is bigger than EU+USA combined. It could work out for India (unlikely unless they address corruption). Uganda only has 44 million people it just doesn't make sense.
It works like that in troubled countries and areas where civil wars are frequent events. In a democracy youth goes out and protests without being shot live rounds at.
I was not equating blocking the app stores with addressing youth unemployment.
Silencing the opposition didn't quite work for Idi Amin, because the opposition became part if the military which topped him and tge next president.
I don't even understand what you mean by western influence. The worst thing western nations did is physically invade nations through wars. Providing internet services is in the "lets sit in a circle peacefully and share things" bucket. It's about the furthest you could go from a war.
>I think this illustrates how unbalanced and agenda-driven these media and social graph services have become who bring in foreign values to local elections.
Considering the existing rulers fail to live up to their responsibilities that's not necessarily a bad thing.
>This interference used to be called neo-imperialism not too long ago by the same people who now advocate for these narratives.
The countries who accept them can often be more successful than those who refuse them. Hong Kong is a pretty good example. Democratic values and capitalism forced down the throat of people. This became a threat to the authoritarian regime in the Chinese mainland and the rulers have to make concessions to their population. They built special economic development zones and simply copied the ideas that worked out in Hong Kong and were compatible with Chinese values at the time. Western investors suddenly had a reliable business partner in Hong Kong and a large "proxy" workforce that was manufacturing goods on the mainland which got shipped to Hong Kong and could be sold to the west. The story ends with China becoming a world leading economy, not because of the west but rather because the west forced the government to listen to the people.
Does anyone else feel like we’re going down the path of internet Balkanization? Not in any immediate sense, but it seems like a slow rolling type of narrative that we will retrospectively see at the end of the 21st century. I don’t have any _real_ evidence to support this feeling of mine, but occasionally there are blips like this that make me wonder.
I think governments that can will for a couple of reasons. One is to maintain their own narrative, to minimize the influence of foreign players who have little stake in a country. Another is to preserve their own culture and not be overrun by the culture and politics of the service. Another is that these entities can’t be held to account locally.
After witnessing how they used their heft and influence in the US you better believe the likes of India, Russia, China, Nigeria, Brazil, etc., will evaluate their relationships with these services.
I don’t think so, but my guess is as bad as anyone else’s.
People have too many family members, coworkers, friends, etc. across country borders. There’s a high cost to cutting your country off from the rest of the internet in any real way. The cost of intercepting / controlling / severing internet communication is high and gets higher as communication volumes get higher, the economy relies more heavy on international communication, and encryption becomes more commonplace.
I do think we’re going to see a lot more geofencing as time goes on.
This was the narrative before Brexit, and yet that didn't ultimately stop it. Game theory rarely helps when the actors aren't perfectly rational, which they aren't.
I honestly don't understand Brexit. My usual assumption when strange things happen in politics is game-theory-compatible: there are strong incentive structures driving the behavior. A roughly equivalent statement: some (possibly large) group of people is going to get rich off it, and they're directly or indirectly driving the change.
But here? I can't point to obvious actors with enough pushing power that would benefit from this. Not on the UK side, at least. Brexit feels to me like a meme that got out of hand and drove behavior that's against everyone's self-interest.
In the language of game theory (but not with enough evidence, so this is a Just-So-Story):
When he was a journalist, Johnson discovered that “write disparaging lies [0] about European politics” was a successful strategy.
It is plausible others noticed this, and likewise found easier to win power by euro-bashing than by being honest.
Given the cognitive biases which makes repetition of claims make those claims seem more true, from that point on you get your meme which got out of hand and drove the referendum and its result.
There is a well known dynamic with EU law being translated to national law : If it is perceived as good, the national lawmaker will take credit. If perceived as bad, the national lawmaker will point to these nasty EU bureaucrats. After years of this, the local population will perceive any EU law as bad.
A second fun one is unpopular politicians being dumped in EU seats. They vote pro something unpopular, let their local equivalent implement the national law, then blame them for it. Hence extremist politicians make EU law as nasty as possible, just to get some ammonution at home.
IIRC (and I may not be; check for yourself) the EU were planning much stricter AML laws which were quite firmly opposed by the UK wealth management industry. That's a group with motive and the power to do something about it.
The incentives were the simple (and common) political expediency of using the EU and immigration as scapegoats; whether to excuse their own failings in power or attack the Blair government. Many politicians did that for years without seeing any benefit at all to actually leaving the EU, but as David Cameron found, if you spend long enough blaming the EU for stuff, sooner or later you're going to get cornered into "why don't you do something about it?". And public concern about 'mass immigration' is less about incentive structures to change it and more a constant that seems to exist irrespective of where, when and what the actual levels of immigration are, which results in massive boosts to the political profile of anyone who wishes to talk about it.
There are people with obvious financial incentives to get a trade deal with the US (not necessarily on terms beneficial to the UK), and people with obvious political incentives to destabilise Western European liberal democracy, but they were largely in the background. And some prominent Leave campaigners made a lot of money shorting the pound because they believed they would win, but that was just as much a gamble on the result as anyone else directly or indirectly betting on it.
I didn't vote for it but maybe taking people at their word for why they voted for it is a good idea?
Would you rather other people assigned their own ratios as to why you made your voting decisions, or actually listened to you?
Most people can understand the arguments for both sides of most debates, it just involves a little work to grok what they haven't themselves, concluded.
Voting for Brexit like voting for Trump is partly to raise awareness to people who were harmed by previous policies, like globalisation etc. They don't expect that Brexit or Trump will solve the problem, they just want new order, mayhem and attention which might lead to improvement of their situation. Hillary didn't visit the rust belt, Biden did. In England they didn't care about the situation in the north, the rate of immigration and all the other known issues, now they do. So altogether there is some rational there, a risky one but at least it breaks the status quo.
This is a great analysis. The shocking thing is how Trump stole the Democrats' pre-Bush era positions on trade, immigration and foreign policy and won.
Bill Clinton opposed NAFTA, Barbara Jordan wanted to slash legal immigration, and Democrats opposed the Iraq war after Bush's reelection.
From the perspective of an "irrational actor": Brexit was much more about not liking the political policies of the EU than about cutting the UK off from the rest of the world.
Not really, it was UK Conservative voters tirning out to vote against Labor. The actual Brexit thing is a red herring. Populism needs leaders, leaders need vague enemies, the EU was perfect.
It’s about degrees. Brexit has a cost, internet balkanization has a cost, the more you isolate your country the more you pay. At some point the costs are too high, and can only be supported by the most authoritarian regimes.
I feel that way too. I'd say we're at a precipice of visible exponential growth of Balkanization. Why do I feel so? Possibly because this headline didn't surprise me. My reaction wasn't, "oh, that's horrible!" but "oh, another country doing that". National bans of social media platforms became normalized.
Heres a few data points to argue that this should be the case.
India's most populous and likely poorest state, had 202 mn people in 2012; nearly 2/3rds of the current US population.
Here are some cities and numbers for scale (Google search)
Mumbai had ~20.4 mn people.
Cairo has ~20.9 mn.
Dhaka 21 mn
Mexico city 21.7
New Zealand had 4.8 mn people in 2018.
Canada - 37.59
Mayanmar - 53.71
The UK - 66 mn
Vietnam 95.5 mn
-------
A few years ago, Mexico had a spate of gang violence. News about it was suppressed by the govt.
A woman driving along the road uploaded a video she had taken. It showed shell cases strewn on the roads, burnt out trucks, and the aftermath of that violence.
IT went viral on Facebook, going against the Government narrative and letting a slice of reality get observed.
Until morning came around to the UK. At which point someone opened facebook, and saw the gore. They were able to call people they knew at FB and say "why am I/my kids seeing this?".
And FB responded and took it down, for breaking site rules.
(taken from Custodians of the Internet)
-----
FB wasn't necessarily wrong, but it was definitely partial. When the blood and gore rule was enforced during the Boston bombings, senior employees overruled it citing newsworthiness.
----
Your guess that the net will be balkanized is quite likely true.
FB spends great efforts to have local presence in each market. They recruit policy people, and negotiators. However, the platform does help broadcast content.
And if someone at FB can decide what is newsworthy or not, then why wouldn't local leaders crave that same power?
Can someone with more familiarity with Ugandan politics comment? My understanding is that outside developed states, lawful democracy can be very brittle especially in states containing multiple nations and tribes, and when there is a long history where the people tend to put their own nation and tribe before the others in the same state, leading to conflict.
The rationale and measure seems to be a better evil if the politics are thusly brittle.
Uganda is ruled by a virtual military dictatorship. There is substantial democratic opposition which is suppressed by the govt. It's quite an oppressive country, you see soldiers in black patrolling the streets on trucks.
Seems the great social media purge towards GOP personals really made many countries rethinking their information sovereignty.
There's no way they would allow access to social media, the 21st century mass communication be controlled by some Silicon Valley companies located in the USA.
Expect the indigenization also occurs in financial ecosystem, etc.
Did you even read the article? The reason the Ugandan government is blocking these apps is with the intent, as the article suggests, of stopping misinformation through "citizen journalism", not because the nation of Uganda suddenly had fears of Google or Apple moderating their nation's discourse.
Furthermore, the article goes on to say that this kind of block has occurred before in 2016.
There’s a real flood of people on HN right now who really want to fight this battle. It’s unpleasant because it’s the kind of thing I use Hacker News to avoid
Even though I know it’ll just cement their viewpoints even further, I’m hoping the mods do something about it
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
No one is flooding HN. A lot of us are non-American and programmers who understand what the recent events will mean in geopolitics. Everyone can see that GP was talking about what this move will mean in general terms. Don't assume we are trolls just because you don't like our comments.
However, if you read the comments people are interpreting the title as if Google and Apple did something wrong.
They make up random theories about the economic benefits of internet firewalls, the "evil" desire of western corporations to influence Ugandan politics and just the general idea of sharing culture among Uganda and the rest of the world being a net negative for Uganda.
People who know about Ugandan history are acutely aware of how deep in a pit they started off and how much of it was purely internal. It was similar to China suppressing their Muslim population except it was against political enemies and the Ugandan government wasn't afraid to kill someone (100s of thousands) on a whim.
Comparing this type of suffering with Google's and Apple's worst crimes is just laughable.
True, the article is about govt censorship. But my (and others) point is that this type of censorship is going to increase. And its partly because of western corporations' willingness to censor anyone they want.
Recently Twitter and Facebook (two of the biggest Western corporations in the world) abruptly cut off the biggest politician in the world. It was the first page headline for several days all over the world. Do you think govts are going to just ignore that?
And to be clear, I am not talking about any crimes. I am talking about censorship and power. It is now clear that Twitter and Facebook will censor anyone they want and that is a clear threat to the power of govts all over the world. (For example SWIFT network alternatives developed by Russia and China for similar reasons.)
I fail to see how can I be any clearer. It's yes to both your questions. I am not saying anything about what should be done. My only question is, do you think govts will tolerate Western corporations having the power to ban any politician? A simple yes or no will suffice.
> Even though I know it’ll just cement their viewpoints even further, I’m hoping the mods do something about it
Maybe troll was a strong word. But calling for censorship by HN mods to suppress a perfectly reasonable comment is a very strong position to take as well.
I am talking in a more general term. And also they do want ability impose sovereignty upon the narrative. That include the ability to prevent Silicon Valley companies propagate narrative that is not compatible with the sovereign.
No one is forcing you to use "Silicon Valley" products. There's already a precedent set in the courts when a bakery refused to offer service to a gay couple because of personal beliefs.
Likewise, Twitter et. al. are simply following the same precedent set to enforce their values in the products they offer. The social media app is not public square and no one is certainly entitled to use it.
Again I'm talking from sovereign point of view. You don't want Silicon Valley companies to control your country's information flow. There's no guarantee that those companies won't ban the account of government apparatus for whatever reason.
I predict that more and more govts will take similar steps in the future. In the last few days Twitter and Facebook showed the world what they can do (and how effective it is) and govts all over the world are now watching them very closely.
I’m currently work from Asia so I follow the local and regional news quite closely.
What’s fascinating is that many countries are using the whole tech censorship to justify their own behavior. It’s a bit of “see, even the US agrees dangerous speech should be censored” or “do you want to end up like the US? this is why we have laws about speech”.
Important to see whether the ban imposed by telecoms are to be permanent, or whether they will be lifted after the election. Great civil unrest may arise if people still don't have access to the digital infrastructure they feel they are entitled to after an election favorable to the current govt
I disagree. Censoring everyone and even further shutting down a critical infrastructure like app stores during an election means you have to wonder if that government is doing more harm than good.
Apps and updates to apps. If much of the internet is crippled already, targeting app stores and YouTube could be seen to be limiting options effectively for users.
With app stores blocked, what prevents the government from blocking messaging apps next, as they won't have ways of providing updates to users? I'm referring to Telegram and what they've previously done to try circumvent blocking techniques.
The stock apps include a web browser, email client, and more. Sure, the apps are what make the phone, but to say you can’t do anything on a stock iPhone is a lie. And for those inclined enough, there’s AltStore for sideloading.
You do need an Apple account and constant connection to Apple servers to be able to sign development and AltStore apps - I assume for a govt that wants to block the store, blocking auth or signing servers is just one more line on a memo.
But of course you're right - you can use the web fine, provided the modern web apps you're using aren't crippled by Apple's slow API adoption in Safari, which is of course to drive you to the better experiences that are waiting for you in the hypothetically accessible App Store.
I remember when building an Android app back in 2012-2014, that if it had in-app purchases, it seemed to have to go through the Play Store. I wonder if banning the Play Store will hinder apps that rely on in-app payments.
Third party apps can handle payment however they want (e.g. gambling apps) but I would expect apps downloaded from the play store not to work if they are connect via play services
While you might consider software that runs on the internet to be part of the internet itself, not being able to run some of the software doesn't mean you can't access the internet.
A little bit less pedantically though, while this is certainly a blow to internet freedom, and not a good thing, I think most of us would agree (at least in the long-term) that access to the web is more important to freedom that a collection of proprietary apps.
Many banks don't provide HTTP endpoints (except for business versions). My bank, Monzo, does not. My other bank TSB does provide a website, but it's awful.
Wait, you have to use a smartphone app to interact with your bank? There is no website with 95% of the functionality (or bonus functionality that the app doesn't have) available as a website for desktop users?
This is rather unusual, the credit union I use in the USA offers an iOS and Android app that is literally a webview of their mobile website, plus a dash of OCR for check handling. Using the PWA is nearly identical, it even works on a PinePhone with Maemo or any other operating system that can run a semi-modern browser.
Yup that's pretty much it. To Monzo's credit they seem to make a point to work without Google Play Services, but iOS users would be screwed in the event the App Store was blocked.
Banning (or, more precisely, disturbing operation of) a decentralized service is much easier than a big, important centralized one. You just need to obtain the DNS names or IP addresses of the nodes the same way everyone else does — by participating in the network. This way you can even selectively ban the "bad" nodes.
Banning a centralized service like gmail is easier, but then you lose in productivity as 90% of your country's businesses are likely to rely on it.
As far as privacy goes, it's also easier to coerce admins of smaller nodes to disclose valuable information than fighting with a multinational foreign corporation.
This is not an argument against decentralization. It's just not immediately obvious that decentralization does not automatically lead to censorship resistance. To do that we need onion routing or mix networks as a base for all our communications, so that banning the network would be equivalent to disconnecting the ISP from the Internet altogether.
Your argument seems to depend on the idea that centralized services are inherently more popular than decentralized services, which isn’t necessarily true.
To say that it’s “much easier” to ban hundreds of IP addresses instead of a dozen IP addresses is ridiculous. It’s no easier to get IP addresses in a distributed system than it is to get them in a centralized system.
GMail is a funny example to point to, because email is arguably the most used digital communication method and it’s also decentralized. Try to fully shut down email in the US — where are you going to find a list of all ip addresses hosting SMTP and IMAP servers, and is that going to be easier than just blocking Twitter?
In practice centralized services are just more popular. Less hassle to handle them, for users.
And email is practically the only decentralized system in widespread use these days. And it's not centralized, but close to it. You shut down 3 or 4 email services, 95% of its traffic is gone.
> Where are you going to find a list of all ip addresses hosting SMTP and IMAP servers?
Shodan is a readily available database of such data. Just search for all hosts with IMAP, SMTP and POP3 ports exposed and then block those. Alternatively, a DIY scan of the whole IPv4 address range can be accomplished within hours or days.
IPv6 address space is harder to scan, but it's arguably safe to ban all such traffic since nearly nothing critical uses IPv6.
MX is not crucial for email, everything falls back to A.
I have an email server with no MX in production for years now. Not the most important one, but in use.
Edited to add: there is a tiny fraction of providers that would reject the emails from such a setup, but it's really not common and does not include large providers.
I think his point is that you can hide in the "crowd" on a centralized service. In order to find one "perpetrator" you have to inconvenience a large portion of uninvolved people.
If there is a decentralized service that is exclusively used by "perpetrators" then banning the service will have a greater impact even if the ban is harder to implement.
It’s easier to ban them selectively, achieving the desired level of censorship.
You don’t need to shut down the entire public email network (although it’s possible to do with DPI). You would only need to ban the servers that are involved in spreading of unwanted information.
There are already decentralized Twitter-esque alternatives, but they are hardly used, because without centralization no one is making money, and thus it cannot be advertised to the same magnitude.
Signal is not a social platform. It's meant for 1:1 or small groups communication (there is a hard limit of members in conversation) as if people met in real life. We can't compare it. Trump would not be able to use it the same way as social platforms, the same way he can't go and talk to every person.
"We never thought it would happen, but in 2024, the year of our lord, it did. It seems that governments are requiring full access to iPhones and using features in ways we didn't think possible. People are now using infrared broadcasting, attached to weapons, government vehicles and buildings, to prevent taking photos near protests and riots. This is the first time it's happened that we know of, and we are scared of the precedent. Over 4,150 people died in a protest in the [redacted African country] at the hands of newly 'elected' military regime, and we have no digital evidence of it, except for the older analog cameras that some people still possessed."
>>“We are now having a challenge of citizen journalism. Social media propaganda is certainly not in the best interest of this country’s security. We are looking for a way of dealing with it.”
Ah, OK then comrade. Cancel elections as well since you've figured it all out.
Politics is not the problem. People discussing it are literally participating in democracy.
The problem is that these discussions go nowhere. Everyone may come to an agreement, and yet no one will do anything about it. Politicians themselves don't participate, which is sort of ironic.
Plus, these discussions often devolve into shit slinging over some general issues like racism, minority rights, wealth, power. It only takes a few people to start it, and often, all the rational people just leave at that point.
All of this blocking will just limit everyone's freedom and access to information. The core issue, education, is what needs to be solved.
Eh, I'm not seeing much of 1 in the western world, either. The political class is nigh untouchable.
And when was the last time anyone explained in detail why they think a certain law would benefit people? Wouldn't be that hard to do. But I'm guessing it could reveal the real reasons behind many laws.
If they use any definition at all, that's what matters. We've crossed that rubicon long ago. Platform centralization + corporate privilege gives no lever to challenge definitions at the enforcement level.
It's easy to block that default VPN (or directory server). I don't think there's an easy way for Apple to get around it. IP protocol is too easy to block. I think that it's possible to develop better protocols where every peer will proxy packets if necessary, so it'll be impossible to block it, but that's probably not something that'll replace Internet.
If I ran was in charge of a government after watching them all ban Trump's ability to communicate at the same time, I too would think about banning them to protect myself.
Or maybe you could do some introspection and think about what would have to lead up to you being banned? Every politician on twitter has been fine except for 1 particular individual. Nevermind that 1 individual -chose- to use twitter as their primary base of operations, instead of the usual channels.
Why would you as a leader of the country leave it up to chance? What if your country was in conflict with America whose side do you think Google and Apple would side with?
Exactly this. If these media have favorites and push a particular agenda that isn’t quite aligned with these corps’s agenda then it would make sense for them, out of their own interest, to pre-emptively ban these orgs who now have proven to not be neutral parties.
I appreciate this point and it makes me think more and more about how we try to govern global businesses with national governments and how I wonder if we'll ever get a more powerful global body to balance the power of global organizations.
I hear that point and agree it could bring fear, especially as it gets very powerful. What I wonder is, what shall we do as global organizations get stronger and stronger and play national governments against each other, or less nefariously, try to abide by 200+ national laws at the same time, which most certainly conflict with each other?
> Nevermind that 1 individual -chose- to use twitter as their primary base of operations, instead of the usual channels.
Isn't this perfectly reasonable to switch to the modern Internet channels as time comes? Or should all the presidents keep transmitting in Morse code over cable telegraphs?
No, they use official government channels like White House press conferences and the like. Please don’t make bad faith arguments as if I really were suggesting Morse code instead of Twitter.
Why Twitter or something like that should not replace White House press conferences like White House press conferences (mostly seen on TV, right?) have replaced cable telegraph or whatever was used before TVs?
twitter did start banning some left extremists... i had never heard of a lot of them so I'd love to hear from someone educated on it if these other bans were just to appear bipartisan or actually meaningful
Russia just recently introduced laws that would allow to fine Youtube and social networks if they hinder propagation of important information, so according to them not only banning their propagandists, but even removing them from suggestion lists is prohibited by law. Of course they probably don't have means to enforce this law, but it's an interesting strategy.
They fine them if they not do so, and if they not be willing to pay the fine, then they are blocked.
Russia will certainly be a large enough market that they will consider it a financial loss large enough that they might implement this for Russia's version.
Russia already have tried to ban Telegram, but due to help from AWS it turned out that the whole internet needs to be banned, so eventually they gave up. Not saying that Youtube will choose the confrontation the way Telegram did, but it doesn't depend on Russian government alone.
At the time of writing people were downvoting you, but I'd say to them that this is a legitimate strategy. China has succeeded in building their own internet economy, unlike the EU or Africa.
There is no African union that is big enough to justify an African only app store. The primary goal behind the store ban is to ban installation of VPNs.
Most Americans don’t trust the media to accurately and fairly cover the news. So it shouldn’t be surprising that people don’t want their political leaders’ thoughts filtered through the media.
That could be analysed. What’s the average length of clip of Trump/WH talking on the various news networks and total per hour on the subject. It’s measuring the quantitative part.
Honestly, I stopped believing the media reporting of Trump once I listened to the full audio of his speech about the awful events in Charlottesville. Literally immediately after the 'both sides' soundbite he goes on to explicitly denounce nazis, and yet the media censored that, to make it appear as if he were defending them. It's so blatant, it's insane.
Like I've said before around here, in 2016, I couldn't stand the man, but the way the media treats him, I find myself rooting for him. Every problem about Trump is their own creation.
Right. A serious percentage of people think the only way the president can communicate is via Twitter and there’s been this right wing persecution complex building for a few years now that they believe they are constantly being censored. Despite the fact that right wing news and pundits get a lot more shares on social media. It’s all part of the weird twisted mass delusion that we find ourselves dealing with.
They'd be wrong about only communicating through Twitter, but at this point I demand original long form footage before I believe the media in what a politician did or did not say. They simply don't do an accurate job of summarising.
I wish there would be a societal awakening in Europe and people would boycott American services. Countries need to reclaim their digital sovereignty if they hope to preserve their culture. Back in college everyone I knew browsed reddit, 9gag, facebook, etc for hours every day. The european youth is getting raised by America and fed its political ideology one meme/discussion thread at a time. It took me a long while to realize I had been brainwashed.
A lot of people I know tout themselves as citizens of the world, and consider nationalism a useless thing of the past, seemingly oblivious to the adversarial relationship we're in with our western allies wrt culture and trade.
> I wish there would be a societal awakening in Europe and people would boycott American services.
I understand the point but you have to admit it is a little funny you are expressing this point in english while on an american website.
I think you should recognize the reverse as well though - countries all over the world are interacting with and influencing americans and america - I know a lot of americans that would prefer to have their pre-globalist culture back as well.
I think the problem is language. English offers a far wider platform to engage people, but it also means that discussions/engagements will be dominated mostly by Americans. Computer use also favors using English. As a result, American influence is kind of inevitable. At the same time though, America also feels the influence from all those other cultures.
There's also lots of inertia around English. For better or worse, my default heuristic is that if I read something in Polish that isn't hyperlocal (e.g. country news, or research that's only done here), I'm better off looking for a text on it in English. In my experience, it'll universally be better. People doing best-class work usually do it in English, or are republished in English, due to sheer inertia of the economical and scientific dominance of English-speaking world.
So I for one would not be very interested in more balkanized Internet, simply because this limits my options to mediocre sources, whereas knowing English and having access to a global platform lets me find better material.
I agree completely, language plays a huge part which is why I'm always advocating for a European lingua franca. I've started writing all the learning resources I produce solely in German and French (whereas I'd always write them in English before for the sake of openness) but it's a drop in the bucket. Honestly I don't know how we're gonna get there.
> As a result, American influence is kind of inevitable.
Yeah and it's only a matter of time until youtube will start de-platforming mainstrem hungarian vloggers because their values don't align with american
I will rather make up my own mind and decide what is the appropriate course of action and truth on each issue than swear fealty to a “culture” and observe it's tenants blindly, whatever they be.
Now, what I have noticed is that some have consumed so much U.S.A. media that they seem to believe various legal principles of the U.S.A. apply here locally when they do not. It can be nothing but dangerous that some seem to think that the emergency number here is 911, when it is not.
Instead of worrying about a non issue I would rather fix fundamental flaws in our economic systems. It's not just ruining the lives of young people. It's also ruining the lives of anyone who loses their career in old age but does not receive enough of a pension to retire. Optimizing an entire economy for a minority of savers and wealthy is misguided.
A lot of political anger is rooted in very simple economics. The economy is doing increasingly worse for the majority and that fuels extremism. Of course the extremism makes it harder to do the right thing because people believe in unrealistic promises that are never going to work out but they appeal to their own biases.
For example. Labor in China is very cheap. If Americans want to compete with China they have to reduce their incomes to match Chinese incomes. One idea is to introduce tariffs to raise the costs of products until they are high enough to pay for American labor. You can do this in theory but why on earth would you do it if China can do it cheaper? If you buy products from China you could still use the saved money to employ American labor. So the actual loss is not that great.
The only reason why the tariffs work out is that the labor market is not flexible enough. Low income workers need jobs and the jobs that are there are high skill. Training has to be paid by the workers themselves and the training is not guaranteed to grant a job. Even after acquiring a good college degree there is still a "pseudo training phase" during your first 3 years on the job. Converting low skill workers to high skill workers is too unreliable and expensive so it doesn't happen and it gets worse the older the worker is.
If you could figure out a way to do training effectively and inexpensively your country would be significantly better off by buying Chinese products.
So what politicians will advocate is tariffs instead of better training. It's short term vs long term thinking.
I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I don't remember. Mostly we do that when a subthread goes too offtopic, especially when it makes the discussion more generic, which is a bad thing on HN [1]. But we might also do it as a pruning mechanism because the thread has become top-heavy and a subthread can stand on its own. We also do it when a comment is not really a reply to its parent, but was posted there for some other reason (usually because the parent was the top comment). I take your word for it that the latter was not the case here.
Most likely it was because the subthread was too generic relative to the OP. What makes articles intellectually interesting are the specifics, the curious bits, the diffs [2] between it and comparable things. In the present case that was certainly the Ugandan aspect, and the theme of American cultural domination vis-a-vis Europe is a change of subject relative to that.
Changes of subject can be fine if they're unpredictable and whimsical, but definitely not when they're a move towards the generic. Generic topics are like large planets with powerful gravitational fields—or even black holes—the default trend is for all threads to get sucked towards them, and that leads to a much less interesting place.
I feel like you're being disingenuous. Just because China does something doesn't mean it's a bad idea, it's certainly in line with their economic interests. I think Americans are very aware of what a treacherous situation you put yourself in when you depend on people ideologically opposite to yourself (e.g: oil and manufacturing).
But to be clear I'm not advocating for the Chinese model. I think each country should have their own software platforms to preserve their sovereignty and the interests of their citizens but I think they should be regulated to follow common standards to preserve the openness of the internet.
Not even foreign values. Only subset of foreign values which are only shared by the Silicon Valley. Beyond that, half the US people disagree with Google/Apple/Twitter/Facebook’s non-neutral stance on politics, who weighed their full weight in censoring 50% of the political spectrum.
I will not call it the pied piper because Uganda weighs nothing, but the GAFA’s politics are now visible as directly harmful in USA, with calls to leftist violence given full platform since 4 years while censoring the 50% rest of the political spectrum, and any country who lets them operate their ideological platform is doomed to live through the Congress event again.
> while censoring the 50% rest of the political spectrum
Let's be clear: moderating/banning the accounts of a man and his supporters who invited tens of thousands of people to the United States Capitol, spent hours lying to them about the results of the election, and then weaponized them in an attempt to overthrow the US government is not a case of Twitter crossing some sort of threshold into tyranny.
A grave crime was committed this week, and the wheels of the legal system are dysfunctional enough that the perpetrator wasn't arrested on the spot but instead allowed continued control of the US military and its nuclear weapon arsenal. Just because Twitter is able to act quickly outside the confines of the legal system doesn't mean we're descending into tech tyranny.
I honestly don't want to hear another word about "leftist violence" or "the radical left" now that the right has unapologetically lined up behind the man who fomented a coup attempt.
Ransacking through the capitol like imbeciles was very ill advised, but that’s not how a coup is executed. You need dedicated backers [cause oriented willing to sacrifice] high up in the armed forces as well as the intelligentsia.
Rag tag groups do not execute coups. That’s a willful exaggeration and further evidence of how narratives tilt people’s thinking.
This is the media and social media calling it that -they cannot help it. Are the armed forces classifying as a coup? It’s a ridiculous accusation. More of a coup attempt is the call for impeachment with two weeks left after the previous impeachment failed. It’s honestly sad.
I think sometimes we judge events based on the outcomes not on the intent. If one of those people who got inside the building gained access to one of the members of Congress or Vice President Pence and took them hostage or harmed them, would you think that it were closer to a coup attempt? There were reports of how the National Guard seemed to be getting delayed because of not having the approval of, I believe, the President through the Department of Defense, to enter. As a person sitting here in my home, some of it looked rag tag and yet 1) I don't know what happened behind the scenes and 2) rag tag groups can cause a tremendous amount of chaos, e.g., if bombs had gone off outside the RNC or DNC.
There is no "what if" in history, you just cannot argue from that position. There were events and there are facts about those events and participants. That's what matters and it should be investigated, tried in court and punished accordingly.
I'm confused as I didn't think I was arguing for a "what if" of history. I was just trying to say that not only are we criminally liable for the outcomes we cause but also the intentions we have and just because something doesn't have an illegal outcome doesn't mean it didn't have an illegal intention, e.g., murder vs. attempted murder.
Okay, then you are attributing an intent to harm or take hostages government officials to undetermined members of Capitol takeover gang, is that correct?
I'm saying I have no idea what their intentions were but that in terms of the law, intentions matter and I believe law enforcement should investigate to determine what they intended to do.
For starters, a right-wing coup that kicked off by taking outgoing-VP Pence hostage would be beyond ridiculous. Instead of own goals we'd all be using "Pence-d" as an idiom.
If they'd taken Congresspeople hostage that would have been terrorism not a coup. The mob was totally unprepared, unimaginative, achieved no strategic outcomes and half of them are going to be in jail from now to forever. This is a coup in the same way that the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone was a succession. It is clueless protestors playing around.
> For starters, a right-wing coup that kicked off by taking outgoing-VP Pence hostage would be beyond ridiculous.
Are you aware that Trump through Pence under the bus Wednesday morning for being unwilling to use his (nonexistent) unilateral authority to discard electoral votes? In the (brief) time between Trump's speech and the seditious mob's invasion of the Capitol, there was already some commentary about increased threats to Pence's life as a result of the speech. As far as that mob and its supporters are concerned, Pence is a traitor as much, if not more, than the entire Democratic Party.
Well, if they may have believed that if he didn't certify the election, then Trump would not have been the outgoing President.
Maybe you're right in that the word "coup" is not the most precise one to use, I think what I meant more than anything is that sometimes we see something as less serious violence because the action didn't result in as severe of an outcome as was intended. So maybe not coup, but terrorist attack or insurrection or whatever word portrays the gravitas but aligns better with the meaning of the action.
On a second note, I think we do this a lot in law as well—if I get into a tussle with someone and push them softly and they trip and hit their head and die, I will probably go to prison for much longer than if I repeatedly and angrily punch someone in the face and they don't die. I guess I'm just curious about how that works in our psyche.
When Trump called the national guard to deal with rioters during the summer it was globally criticized. The military do not have the training to deal with rioting citizens. They do not have the right equipment to deal with rioting citizens. They do not have the right organizational structure to deal with rioting citizens. The result of sending the military against your own citizen is always unnecessary violence and death.
Feel free to complain about the delays in requesting additional police from nearby cities, or the inability of the few thousands police officers for not be able to secure the building and the people inside. Complain that they did not have a good plan and assessment of the situation. But please, do not complain that they did not send the military. It is never a good idea unless the other side also have military gear and military training operated by a military organization.
Would anyone here be happier of the military was used against the rioters in the capital and a few hundred or thousand people died from machine fire?
> Would anyone here be happier of the military was used against the rioters in the capital and a few hundred or thousand people died from machine fire?
No, I would be happier if they hadn't been lied to for months and then invited to the capitol and incited to do an attack on congress in the first place.
> When Trump called the national guard to deal with rioters during the summer it was globally criticized.
At least from what I recall, it was criticized because the President was ordering the national guard into a state, whereas I'm pretty sure it's the state's decision whether it wants to deploy its national guard or not, not the President's.
> The military do not have the training to deal with rioting citizens. They do not have the right equipment to deal with rioting citizens. They do not have the right organizational structure to deal with rioting citizens. The result of sending the military against your own citizen is always unnecessary violence and death.
I don't have a military or law-enforcement background so I don't know if they have the skills or equipment or not. You seem to speak with utmost certainty on this so I assume you may know more than me, but with the anonymity of the internet, I have no idea.
I don't know why the national guard seemed to be delayed, I don't know if that were because someone thought they weren't the right ones to do the job or if it would be too much of an escalation, or adversely, they thought they would do a really good job at protecting and not harming people. I have no idea.
What I was trying to say is that I don't know what the plans were, what the coordination was behind the scenes, and how few of us actually know the full scope of actions that were planned or intended and that just because a plan fails doesn't mean it didn't break the law in a serious way.
Honestly I feel bad for the people who were duped into doing the ransacking. They thought their leader was telling them the truth.
The fact remains that the President gathered tens of thousands of people and, with a torrent of lies, weaponized them into an attack on the United States. Just because it failed doesn't make it any less grave of a crime.
I'm not really a fan. But I must say, he asked for a protest, not for them to storm the Capital. He probably wanted to stir it up, but never thought it would go that far. I have not seen any explicit tweets where he asked for that.
The other thing I want to mention (in demonstrating the two standards) is that the dem leadership cheered on protests in the summer with battle like language which turned into far larger and more consequential riots that somehow we dont talk about anymore. Many lost their livelihoods and some their lives. These went on for months, not 6 hours. Those riots by the way were encouraged by dem leadership but somehow have not been penalized on twitter or even critiqued. The unlevel playing field that essentially a cartel is laying out which we see time and time again is what people are getting fed up with and I can sympathize.
mullingitover - You might be correct that the claims were hyperbole. But I don't see a difference between the two sides in falsely justifying a protest that turned into a riot. For instance, the police brutality is not acceptable (and the imagery was terrible), but it was also mostly an astroturf and amplification of reality before an election to rally voters when you actually look at the FBI statistics of racial deaths in the hands of police. Both sides encouraged protests with battle like language. They both turned into destructive riots. One side was penalized.
> But I must say, he asked for a protest, not for them to storm the Capital
He's not completely stupid, at least in the short term. I'll give him that.
The fact is, however, that he made breathtaking, wholly unfounded claims of a vast conspiracy that if you believed them would lead you to believe that a revolution was in order and completely appropriate. Then he turned them loose on the Capitol.
Anyway, my point here is not to defend trump. Just to point out that both sides caused riots over the past 6 months with leaders egging them on and 1 side was penalized.
Take your fine people on both sides argument somewhere else. One side acknowledged that people had a legitimate reason to protest cops offing black people while specifically discouraging rioting.
Another side told people that their country was being stolen from them and only they could stop it before telling them to go to the capital.
> Another side told people that their country was being stolen from them and only they could stop it before telling them to go to the capital.
Was it or wasn't it being stolen? Do you have a debunking of Matt Braynard's argument? [1]
I presume not, since one hasn't been presented, because the evidence hasn't been examined or litigated, which is why hundreds of thousands of people went to the capital.
What should the American voter do if they believe there's a chance that their election was unfair? Sit it out? Would you?
Stop spreading the "very fine people" misinformation.
It's attitudes represented by this blithe dismissal of a compelling argument that will continue to divide the nation. I guess you think you're going to get something out of it, but this is a scenario that nobody wins.
In the spirit of healthy debate, you could share the evidence you find so compelling. The article linked did not include any evidence or argument that I could find (even after watching the video)
I owe you an apology. I was sure I had posted the article referencing his conclusions video, but I did not, and I ended up wasting your time and compounding my error with an unfounded accusation. That was pretty egregious and rude, and I'm sorry about that.
If you're still inclined, here's his conclusion video. The summary includes links to various sections within the admittedly lengthy video, if it helps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH9ihoLi1NA
I worked in the marketing and ad-tech industries for the better part of a decade. The data linking tools that Matt Braynard used to "enhance" the data available from states are intended for marketing purposes where even a 30% accuracy is sufficient for call, mail, and digital campaigns. They are not suitable for "auditing" an election, as you'll inevitably introduce bad data. Further, linking individuals from different databases is highly error prone - there are more than 500 thousand people in the US with my first and last name. Individuals may choose different writings of their name at different times such as including or excluding Sr./Jr. or including or excluding a middle initial.
The above limitations become apparent in the below hearing on Michael's evidence in the Georgia state legislature. Individuals were clearly misslinked by name, and inferred birthday - simple errors due to removing Sr/Jr. are also present.
These linking errors are inevitable in this analysis as the state does not publicly disclose sufficient information to uniquely identify individuals for privacy reasons.
"Take your fine people on both sides argument" I had no idea I was even making that argument or that was a topic of discussion. But I believe your summery of what happened is not exactly accurate.
Id say the biggest thing was the void of dem leadership even acknowledging the riots. I dont have a rolodex of statements but the theme was encouragement of the protests despite them turning into riots time and time again. Thats specifically the reason they even went on for an entire summer. Can look to twitter trends which were never/rarely censored. Flip side is "walkaway" is not even allowed. Perhaps one example is AOC saying "protests are made to make people uncomfortable" If T said something like that after Jan 6 what would the reaction have been? Any sober person sees the double standard. Dont fight me here I'm just pointing out why so many people are pissed.
You're just making assertions and hoping that the zeitgeist continues to agree with you.
It's easy for the winning side to trot out a bunch of people that support their position (and if you try suggesting R's are on the same side as Trump supporters, then you're more divorced from reality than I feared). Trump supporters don't care. They want specific concerns addressed.
And frankly, they should be. Every election in a bona fide democracy should be characterized by the winning side steel manning the losing side's objections and addressing them one-by-one until the fraction of the population continuing to object is minuscule enough to ignore.
That didn't happen. Instead objectors got people they didn't trust trotted out before them declaring "There's NO evidence of election fraud" (demonstrably false, there's evidence of election fraud in every election), stonewalling, and running out the clock.
They should have steel-manned and addressed in a very public and forthcoming, unspun manner the more compelling arguments presented. Matt Braynard's [1] work, for example, should have been litigated to hell and back.
Undergoing these challenges is critical to maintaining democracy, but the left was hell-bent on painting a narrative that pursuing election transparency in 2020 (not 2016, mind you; they had quite a different take then when they were mucking with the electoral college themselves [2]) was somehow antidemocratic because all questions had been settled by the people only they were permitted to declare trustworthy.
So what we have now is a huge fraction of the population that feel the election has been stolen:
"Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans say it’s Very Likely the Democrats stole the election, but just as many Democrats (61%) say it’s Not At All Likely. Among unaffiliateds, 29% feel it’s a stolen election; 45% do not." [3]
I don't have much of a dog in this fight. I'm about as pure a libertarian/ancap as you can find. I leaned slightly Trump because I despise war, but I would have been just as happy with Biden and a republican senate. I'm telling you with open eyes (the same eyes I use to attempt to discredit the Q and Lin Wood madness on the right) that you have bought into a false narrative sold to you by the leftist media. You are nowhere in the vicinity of "woke". You are stuck in a bubble that decries other bubbles and you don't even realize it. Worse, it's the most powerful bubble that is causing the most damage to society. It is YOUR bubble that is causing the most damage to democracy in this country.
There is no reason whatsoever to believe this election was stolen beyond unverified fabricated nonsense spread by the loser and his cronies and amplified by social media. Each state has measures in place to ensure a fair election takes place including, canvassing, the recourse of requesting a recount or pursuing litigation.
All these things already happened and it was proven over and over that there was no substantial proof of widespread fraud. If your fellow citizens cannot discern the difference between social media and reality then this does not create an obligation for the opposing side that scales upwards towards infinity with their level of insanity.
Its deeply ironic that before the election around 2/3 of republicans believed our elections were free and fair and now instead of concluding that their objections are grounded in bad faith you believe that the democrats didn't do enough to prove to their opponents that they didn't cheat. You have reversed the burden of proof and I reject your assertion. The burden of proof always lies with he would would assert a crime has been done not upon the accused to prove a negative. The alternative is utter nonsense.
10% of democrats believe we didn't have a fair election, 44% of independents, and a whopping 78% of republicans. On the overall ~2/3 of Americans trust our election was free and fair. The 1/3 will more or less be convinced by nothing as their feelings aren't based on reality.
These people will by and large just have to go through the next 4-16 years of Democratic control thinking the Democrats, the women, and the minorities are stealing their country.
Vast electoral interference conspiracies are an old tactic at this point. Impeachment is generally a more favoured response than revolution. Neither the conspiracy nor the resolution make sense, but that isn't a big deal in politics.
It is a stupid conspiracy, the gap in the popular vote is overwhelming and Trump was only ever going to get in on electoral college technicalities. But this meme that Trump is the first one to launch serious claims at the electoral system is misinformation. This is a direct mimic of the Democrat response to 2016.
> This is a direct mimic of the Democrat response to 2016.
I recall some arguments in Congress, but to call it a 'direct mimic' is complete nonsense. The election was conceded immediately by the Clinton campaign as soon as it was called by the networks.
If you're attempting to equate the contexts of systemic, on-going race-based manslaughter to someone fabricating a conspiracy theory (while offering no evidence, threatening other elected officials, rallying supporters, etc) then that is - purely in an academic sense - stupid.
If you look at per-police interaction statistics the narrative changes. All kinds of people die during interactions with police.
Now, what we can claim is that historical injustices have led to increased ratios of police interaction by different populations. That’s true. However, per interaction, the police are not more likely to be fatal to one group vs another. That’s a misrepresentation.
See: Simpson’s Paradox.
Given this it should behoove media and leaders to institute root changes that improve the “interaction” frequency.
> The fact remains that the President gathered tens of thousands of people and, with a torrent of lies, weaponized them into an attack on the United States. Just because it failed doesn't make it any less grave of a crime.
I cannot fathom why you keep saying this. Please present some evidence.
If you believe Trumps claims of malfeasance are true then the burden of proof lies with you. These matters were addressed in courts throughout the nation and 60 lawsuits failed to prove them.
Not really. The vast majority were thrown out on procedural grounds.
The left completely controls the MSM at this point. It's unsurprising that large swathes of officials, including judges, are unwilling to investigate their narrative for fear of being branded and extremist of one flavor or another. The right knows this, and so doesn't trust outcomes that aren't transparent. The left knows this too, but has no incentive to correct it, in spite of the damage it's going to cause to our democracy.
I have the feeling we're about to find out in the US precisely how the left can go too far, and how Americans respond to it.
> The vast majority were thrown out on procedural grounds.
You'll be reassured to know they'll still be litigated soon.
Dominion is coming for Sidney Powell over her fabricated claims, and I hope she gets a dignified, humane arrangement with a local homeless shelter after they're done with her.[1]
I encourage everyone to read the entire filing. It's going to be a fun ride, I'm really looking forward to this case being heard in court.
A few of my favorite things that were brought to the capital. Zip ties, several guns, 11 molotov cocktails, 2 pipe bombs.
Guliani also asked Tuberville to object to every state which if acted on would have required at least 11 days of 12 hour sessions with an armed angry mob outside.
When they finally attacked it took hours to authorize the national guard to defend the capital giving the mob maximum time to terrorize congress.
It we examine the possible failure modes in this situation we can imagine.
- The mob could have slaughtered burned or blew up our congress or enough to frighten the rest into compliance.
- The mob could have destroyed the physical copy of the ballots delaying the matter giving the mob more time to intimidate legislators further.
- The legislature might have lost heart over 11 days of being terrorized by the mob outside and come to some compromise like allowing congress to vote on the matter one delegation one vote allowing the republicans to pick the next president.
This would have only required all of the republican party and 6 democrats in the house to join to enact. They would simply have had to vote with the republicans to reject 36 states worth of EC votes in order to throw the election to the house.
It is foolish to suppose this couldn't possibly have succeeded just because they are very very incompetent. They could never have enacted a traditional coup because the military was never on their side. This could actually have worked if our congress had lost heart.
This was absolutely an attempted coup and we would be stupid to treat it as less.
All of that fantastical story could have happened and still would not have had a diff government. You need consent from a number of powerful stakeholders including the armed forces Supreme Court and all kinds of ancillary players [banks, heavy industry, etc.]
Forcing people under duress doesn’t hold. If you walk up to a bank teller and force them to transfer a million dollars to your account while you brandish a gun, will not be a legitimate transfer and will be reversed when order is restored.
Real life is not like playing cops and robbers. It’s slightly more sophisticated than that but the media is frothing at the mouth with wild exaggeration when it fits their narrative. The CHAZ was hip and cool for all I know.
I cannot fathom how people would think a rag tag coup is realistic in any way. It does not happen that way. Successful coups have powerful interests in the background willing to bite it if it comes to that.
All of the republicans in senate and house and 6 democratic reps could have opted to throw out any number of votes they please leaving no party with the majority of the electoral college vote which would constitutionally required us to hold a vote in the house to decide the next president which would almost certainly result in Trump being re-elected.
Arguably this would be obviously against the spirit of the law but its not clear that 5 supreme court justices would have found that argument persuasive.
If the court and congress comply there is no need to convince the armed forces let alone banks and industry.
For the record the CHAZ was actually nonviolent during the day. Guns should have never been allowed. The shooting happened because drug addicts were fleeing to CHAZ with their stolen car that looked similar to the car that tried to pull a drive by earlier that night and the retards shot them.
Some parts of Seattle aren't really safe at night in the best circumstances.
Still “80” only works when there’s a strongman/woman who rules by iron fist and it’s a powderkeg ready to blow. He or she is surrounded by enemies biding their time. That’s the only scenario where this “may” work.
Equipment is equipment. It can only do so much regardless who has it. As I said more molotovs were thrown during the past summer’s sometimes peaceful sometimes violent demos.
Ultimately the capital police were distracted by multiple pipe bombs at the RNC/DNC headquarters, The FBI seized a van full of guns. The woman who was shot served 6 years in the DC air national guard, and directly trained on riot control in the DC metro area.
This was an organized attempt to assault a joint-session of the newly elected congress discharging their duty to certify the election results for the Executive branch of government.
Had the rioters reached the house or senate floor the US could have found itself without a legislative branch to legitimize the next president.
They did reach the floor. Some topless dude with horns and a fur cape pranced about the dais.
And guess what? We're fine.
You're pulling together a handful of facts from a massive event composed of trillions of facts and weaving them into a conspiracy. It was what it appeared to be. A rally that got out of hand.
So this is just a rally that got out of hand, harmless.
I wonder - would you stand up for them if the crowd was a BLM crowd, and the outcomes the same? Would you stand up for them if it were a Muslim crowd, and the outcomes the same?
If you would then that's admirable and consistent, so fair enough
I don't recall the time when armed insurrectionists with guns, bombs, and zip ties attempted to execute the Vice President when the left did it, can you share some links?
You're narrowing the criteria to match this specific event and asking for an exact replica the left, of which there are none. We see through your rhetoric.
Last summer was replete with examples of violence from the left. Far more deadly and destructive than seen at the capitol building riot.
Overwhelmingly peaceful, massive, justified protests with scattered violence, versus highly targeted political violence instigated by the highest-ranking public official and based on an unvarnished lie. These things are the same to you?
If you think it was scattered and not organized you haven't been paying attention.
95 % of black lives matter protests were peaceful. There were 10600 demonstration events which leaves us with 500 riots. A massive number.
Results:
- Worsening of race relations
- Billions of dollars in damage
- Numerous stores and businesses, predominantly owned by black and latino Americans, destroyed. Those people, the very same we were told the riots were for, had their lives ruined in the name of social justice. Or do you think insurance reimburses all the damage and in a timely fashion? Years of hard work ruined. We know from past riots it takes decades for neighborhoods to recover.
- Almost 50 people died, can't recall the exact number. I think 47
- 9 million extra Trump votes and a doubling of his latino and black vote
Where did you get the 10,600 number and the percentage that were peaceful?
Where is the proof that damaging riots were deliberately organized. I mostly saw white people looting under the cover of black people marching.
Where is the proof that it was primarily minority owned businesses that were damaged? Why would it take decades for these businesses to file a claim with their insurance and replace their merchandise and windows?
> Then most of them just stood there, unsure what to do. They even stayed inside the velvet ropes in Statuary Hall, like a bunch of tourists. Does that sounds like an armed insurrection?
It sounds like what it is: a mob, drunk on falsehoods and weaponized against the US Capitol in hopes of intimidating congress into overturning a thoroughly litigated and settled election.
George Floyd being murdered was real, and the overwhelmingly peaceful protests with bipartisan support were wholly justified.
A vast conspiracy at all levels of state, local, and federal government, involving shadowy corporations, Venezuela, George Soros, spanning both political parties and involving thousands of conspirators, and none of whom leaked a single detail, is a right-wing fantasy.
> Here's a pointed question for you: Which was worse and by what measure, the BLM/Antifa riots of last year or the capitol building riot?
I'm gonna say that the mob attack on the United States' entire line of succession over false claims of fraud is worse than overwhelmingly peaceful protests over the murder of an unarmed, compliant man in police custody.
I see it's graduated from "mostly peaceful" to "overwhelmingly peaceful". The craziest part of your spin is that by applying it, you're greatly increasing the odds of actually getting it.
> Polls estimate between 15 million and 26 million people participated in the United States, making these protests potentially the largest movement in terms of participation in U.S. history.[1]
If 15+ million people were rioting, we wouldn't have a single structure left standing in the country. A fraction of a percent of the protesters were bad actors, and nobody is defending them so I will leave you to abuse that strawman in peace.
100% of the people who invaded the US Capitol were rioters.
Entire books were written in their defense, one infamous title being "In defense of looting".
MSM talking heads were besides themselves defending the rioters. For months!
> 100% of the people who invaded the US Capitol were rioters.
This is so blatantly twisted that I am forced to believe you're being intentionally deceptive. Everyone knows a tiny fraction of the protesters went into the capitol building.
The maximum damage of those riots is a handful of people killed and businesses burned down. The maximum damage in the capital invasion is the loss of our democracy and way of life.
You're comparing apples and oranges. You're comparing the results of the former (which you have painted in an incredibly rosy light) to the potential outcomes of the latter.
If we look at the potential outcomes of the BLM/Antifa riots, there's no reason to believe that they couldn't have destroyed our democracy.
I suspect you understand that you are doing this, and that you are comfortable with the charade. More and more people are beginning to see through the kind of spin you and others present, however, and are coming to resent you powerfully for it.
If this is a crime then there should be an investigation in progress and some court orders made to prevent more criminal activity. Not an abrupt decision by... We don't even know who exactly made that decision.
If we want to nationalize all the major web services so they are forced to operate as government agencies with all the constitutional protections that go along with that, it's certainly an idea. I wouldn't have imagined in 2021 we'd have conservatives advocating for seizing the means of production of the nation's Tweets.
So far we know these companies made the decision to ban the President:
- Twitter
- Google
- Youtube
- Reddit
- Tiktok (ironic that he'd be banned by Tiktok before he banned it himself)
- Instagram
- Snapchat
- Spotify
- Shopify
- Twitch
- Pinterest
I would love to know if YCombinator has formally banned him from the Hacker News community.
You bring tens of thousands of hardline supporters to the Capitol on the day that officially seals the transfer of power.
You and your henchmen spend hours forcefully lying and claiming that the entirety of the national election apparatus is in a conspiracy to steal the election.
You tell them to march on the capitol to 'fight.'
You are inciting a riot.
When, as the capitol is being ransacked, you double down on the lie and continue to say the election was stolen, and to say you love them, you are continuing the riot and you are trying incite nationwide unrest.
>You have the world's largest megaphone. You bring tens of thousands of hardline supporters to the Capitol on the day that officially seals the transfer of power. You and your henchmen spend hours forcefully lying and claiming that the entirety of the national election apparatus is in a conspiracy to steal the election. You tell them to march on the capitol to 'fight.'
Here is where opinion differ. You may consider this inciting riot, but not everyone will agree to it, many other people don't consider this inciting riot.
I agree that events are subject to interpretation, and I hope we can agree that he deserves a fair trial, has chance to testify at his trial and confront his accusers, and has competent legal representation.
I hope we can also agree that Twitter doesn't need to dispense with a trial and can use their own judgment, since they are not part of the US government.
” When, as the capitol is being ransacked, you double down on the lie and continue to say the election was stolen, and to say you love them, you are continuing the riot and you are trying incite nationwide unrest.”
You conveniently leave out the fact that he explicitly and clearly told them to stop doing it ”go home”. Yet this was again censored by the big tech.
I don’t like Trump either, but let’s stop lying about ”doubling down” etc.
If Trump said one sentence that "be peaceful go home" but wrapped it in two sentences "the election was stolen" why shouldn't we assume he means the thing he says more often and ignore stuff he says less often? And he repeated "it was stolen" many times before, too. To point that out is not a censorship.
It's impossible to present all facts, out there happens a lot more stuff than would fit in any media. Media must curate or summarize it either way. If they're any good they clearly separate facts and commentary.
We've banned this account for using the site primarily (exclusively?) for political flamewar. That's not allowed because it destroys the curious conversation this site exists for. Yes, we ban accounts that do it regardless of their ideological flavor.
This is precisely the expertly spun narrative I can watch on CNN or MSNBC. It's wonderfully constructed, people get paid a lot to do it. It's also just a lie. To fully half of the American population, and a rapidly growing proportion, this is a bald-faced lie.
So please, hold the speculative narrative. Don't repeat talking heads to me. Show receipts. Demonstrate with evidence that Trump tried to get his rally to invade the freaking capitol building.
In the meantime, respond to the rest of the arguments being represented here. You can't conveniently ignore the much worse riots that took place last summer as you try to spin your crazed narrative, we see through all of this now.
Show the receipts that the election was stolen before you decide to broadcast that claim to millions.
Trump's legal team had the chance to do that in court dozens of times, and failed to do so every time. He took the same discredited claims to a massive crowd in the capitol, and we see the result.
> You can't conveniently ignore the much worse riots that took place last summer as you try to spin your crazed narrative, we see through all of this now.
You can't "both sides" this because none of the marches for social justice this summer attempted to kidnap and execute the executive line of succession.
> Show the receipts that the election was stolen before you decide to broadcast that claim to millions.
Again, look at Matt Braynard's work. It's compelling, and has been completely ignored. [1] The right isn't pissed because they think they know fraud happened, they're pissed because the evidence hasn't been examined.
> Trump's legal team had the chance to do that in court dozens of times
False. Trump's legal team brought a handful of cases before the courts, most of which were thrown out on procedural grounds without looking at the merit, which again is the reason the right is rightfully pissed.
Many more cases were presented to the courts by third parties and thrown out. Some because they were batshit, some on procedural grounds, very few on their merits. The media has been presenting those cases as "Trump's cases being thrown out" in order to make him appear incompetent, but that is just more spin. That you bought into, apparently.
> attempted to kidnap and execute the executive line of succession.
Again and again the lawsuits refused to even assert fraud and made procedural quibbles and asked that because of procedural differences the votes of millions of people cast in good faith to be thrown out until they got the right answer.
In the minority of cases that actually spoke to fraud in public filings or public statements they declined to prove it in court when given a venue.
It's not that they didn't get their day in court. They did and they had nothing to show or tell when the show and tell portion of our program came about.
There was no evidence to present in court in the first place. If there was compelling evidence the Trump admin would have clung to it like a drowning man clinging to their savior.
There ARE tons of things good enough to meme out of context but none that stands up the the kind of scrutiny required in a court of law.
On twitter you can claim thousands of dead people voted. In court you have to actually prove it.
This is a very programmery viewpoint. Trump didn't literally say "hey guys, go wreck up the Capitol", so his hands are clean. But... the real world is not a computer program. People can read between the lines. In this case, Trump planned a rally on the exact day of the congressional certification of the election results. He spent the previous two months telling his supporters the election was a fraud, and that they needed to "stop the steal". Then at the conveniently scheduled (and located) rally, he riled up the crowd and asked them to march to the Capitol. They were able to read between the line and follow his orders.
It's true that he didn't write a line of code like "minions.wreckUpTheCapitol()" but in the non-programmer world, things need not be as certain.
You believe Trump was making some kind of insurrection suggestion with his invitation to a rally in the capital. I don't. You think there's something between the lines of his words, but that's just speculation. If you're going to make a claim so grand as the sitting president was inciting insurrection, you need more than speculation.
My honest opinion is that Trump wanted a BIG rally to demonstrate that he had a lot of support to make the idea that he lost to Biden seem absurd. He used this reasoning over and over again, even in his call with the GA SoS.
Occam's Razor makes that far easier to believe than that he wanted people to take over the capitol building. Beyond just sounding like crazed conspiracy, it doesn't even make any sense to do. What is he gonna do with a building? Like, what if they managed to take congresspeople or senators hostage? How in the world would that lead to maintaining his hold on power?
Sorry, it just sounds like a bunch of conspiratorial claptrap to me, along the lines of the stuff I hear from the right with their Q and Lin Wood nonsense. The crazy thing is that it's become institutionalized on the left in the MSM. It's bonkers.
> My honest opinion is that Trump wanted a BIG rally to demonstrate that he had a lot of support to make the idea that he lost to Biden seem absurd.
He wasn't trying to win a rhetorical debate, he was serious as a heart attack about overturning an election that had been thoroughly litigated and decided by the states.
Occupying a government building for a few hours to disrupt a ceremonial activity isn't an attempt to "overthrow the US government". The capitol isn't a game of Capture the Flag - you don't get power just by standing there. At most, the occupational of the capitol was equivalent to a sort of political panty raid. Silly, yes. Meaningful, no.
You have bought into a hysterical narrative, at least as fantastic as whatever insane narrative the QAnon people have bought into.
> You have bought into a hysterical narrative, at least as fantastic as whatever insane narrative the QAnon people have bought into.
I'm just stating facts. The claims Trump has made about election fraud, hundreds of times over the course of two months, are lies. He used the people who believed those lies to attack the Capitol as they deliberated on the transfer of power.
Please elaborate on what's hysterical about my assessment of these facts.
Big Tech platforms allowed pretty much everything until last week which crossed the line. Facebook's most viewed pages were all conservative and sometimes insanely violent discussions which I think should have been banned a long ago. The US Capitol attack was staged on Big Tech forums. Did you miss the part where 4 years of Trump on Twitter happened?
Your opinion seems to be formed just recently, but you're making profound statements that ignore 99.99% of history. I am sorry, but this is an absurd and misplaced knee-jerk reaction and pooling it in to "Silicon Valley" culture. Silicon Valley culture dates back 50 years or more.
If I was the leader of a country, why would I let Silicon Valley companies potentially censor my speech?
Other authoritarian leaders are likely thinking "If Twitter can deplatform the President of the United States [which has more power than my smaller country], they have the power to deplatform me. Better reduce that risk and start blocking services to maintain control."
Not saying it's right, but I understand their point of view.
I imagine they were planning to do this before what happened in the US with Twitter banning Trump. Ethiopia shut off telecommunication with the province of Tigray when conflict heated up this year (it still may be cut off). According to the article, Uganda shut off communication (Facebook, Twitter, and Whatsapp) in Feb 2016. I think that because many of us are in the US and just witnessed Twitter banning Trump we are falling prey to recency bias [1].
It is very strange to speak of a president being "deplatformed" If somewhere out there is a nation without their own government website for the president to speak on?
From the perspective of a hypothetical corrupt, authoritarian government, it's an issue of control.
Of course they have their own websites. But the goal would be to promote the "official" point of view while suppressing the opposition, to maintain the illusion of broad support. It's not a free speech issue. And if the "official" point of view gets deplatformed, it's a risk to them.
I'm hesitant to use VKontakte as a real-life example because I don't speak Russian, but according to Wikipedia VK had censorship issues until it was (supposedly) taken over by Putin-friendly people.
Ah the silent majority argument. The thing is people aren't getting censored for being fiscally conservative, being for tax breaks, being against abortion or any number of conservative values.
People are being shut down for being part of an offensive minority that supports extreme behaviors and statements. Lets look at the events at the capital as a proxy. 12% of America support this behavior. This is well within the margin of error for the percentage that tacitly supports the idea that the white "race" is exceptional.
” People are being shut down for being part of an offensive minority that supports extreme behaviors and statements.”
Yet, last year Twitter and Reddit was full of BLM/Antifa supporters calling for and supporting cleansing of white people, republicans, Trump voters etc. without any kind of censorship.
Also for past decade these platforms have been safe harbor for terrorist organizations, cartels, gangs, government media from countries that do extreme human rights violations etc. No problem there either except sometimes when the shitstorm get big enough.
Apparently though some mentally unstable QAnon hillbillies stealing speakers stands are more extreme than countries and organizations involved in slavery, genocide, mass murder or terrorism.
A bit off topic, but I think one thing this week should have taught us all is that this whole liberal-conservative dichotomy does not encompass the entirety of the US population. There are an enormous number of people out there who don't really subscribe to either view. The assumption that if you're liberal you make up 50% of the population, or that if you're conservative you make up 50% of the population, can lead you to overestimate your strength and take woefully ill considered actions.
Maybe Uganda (and other countries) will start thinking about replaceing US-run social media with home grown solutions.
Given that open source and federated replacements for Twitter[1], Instagram[2], Reddit[3], YouTube[4] etc exist, this would not be a massive undertaking.
Nearly half of the population on average votes Republican because their views align better with the red team but that doesn't mean every one of them is aligned with the far right that is more like 12% of the population not half.
"50% of the spectrum" is not censored. Some extent edges are. Most of the right-wing don't care about Trump and his fan clubs, they just care about whoever the Republican candidates are.
> left leaning calls to violence get banned on social media all the time
Yes they do, but a lot less that right leaning calls do, because social media companies lean leftwards.
For example, Parler was recently kicked off of Google App store, and Apple and Amazon have also threatened to kick Parler off their app store and hosting platform. This was because Parler leans right and some messages by some users encouraged violence.
None of these companies would ever do the same to a mainstream (i.e. left leaning, because social media censors the right more than the left) social media platform because of left wing violent talk/threats.
It's blatantly obvious that big tech is biased to the left. (I say this as someone who is fairly left-leaning, FWIW).
> This was because Parler leans right and some messages by some users encouraged violence.
This had nothing to do with Parler's political leanings and everything to do with Parler's wildly inadequate content moderation combined with top users calling for the execution of public officials with impunity.
Facebook's userbase is very right-leaning and has arguably just as many calls for violence, but they at least have a fully staffed moderation team.
> This had nothing to do with Parler's political leanings
I think we're going to have to agree to differ here.
> Facebook's userbase is very right-leaning
Really? It seems to me that just about all adults on on Facebook (I can only think offhand of one person I know IRL who isn't). Thus FB will have the same political composition as the population.
What if I’m enthusiastically against censorship and enthusiastically for deplatforming in cases like Trump? Which makes me strongly dislike the news in the post.
I'm not arguing for or against anything, but those views seem opposed to each other. Can you talk more about how you can allow for any form of de-platforming while also feeling strongly against censorship?
I'd guess you could point at the metaphor implied in the word "de-platforming." Free speech doesn't necessitate that every person gets a stage and a microphone. If we were in a physical auditorium and the president started encouraging violence among the audience, is it a violation of free speech for the theatre to cut his mic?
That said, I'm still conflicted about this. I think it's possible to believe both that 1) there is a material threat of violence from continuing to give the president the equivalent of a giant megaphone, and 2) giving private corporations unilateral decisions-making power over who gets a platform is probably not in the long-term best interests of democracy.
Censorship is the Government stating that person A must not communicate with person B.
Deplatforming/cancelling is person C _asking_ person A not to communicate with person B, under threat of person C no longer communicating with person A.
"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies."
My point still holds. Asking a company to deplatform someone under threat of boycott is not censorship; because no individual user is in control of the platform.
It listed controlling bodies in a list that also contained "private institutions".
So, according to the wiki definition, it states multiple times, all over that article, that private companies can censor people, and it fits with in that definition.
> a company to deplatform
A private institution can absolutely censor people though.
So what you are describing is an individual advocating in favor of censorship.
Here is another quote from the article " It may be carried out by governments or by private organizations either at the behest of government or on their own initiative."
That's being overly reductive; akin to stating that Christian Mingle censors Atheist or Muslim views because they focus on a Christian market. Or that Steam censors by not approving all content. At that point "censorship" is diluted to have no meaniong beyond curation.
The company is choosing to narrow its market focus; it tried to facilitate person's B and C, but C is forcing them to choose.
No it isn't. It is literally the definition that is on wikipedia. That is a very good authority on definitions for things.
> At that point "censorship" is diluted to have no meaning beyond curation.
Sure it does. The meaning is quite clear in the article, which is a relevant authority on the issue.
Private companies can censor people. That is the definition, and the relevant authorities on the matter agree that it is.
Most definitions that you find with agree with me that private companies can censor people. This is not controversial, and most definitions agree with me.
Private companies engage in censorship only when they have a controlling interest on a form of communication, and that is the sole purview of monopolies.
No actually. According to the wikipedia definition on censorship, there is no requirement to be a monopoly, in order for a private business to engage in censorship.
Instead, according to the actual definition of censorship, censorship is any sort of "suppression of speech, public communication, or other information", and private, non-monopolies can absolutely engage in censorship.
You are simply incorrect about what the definition of censorship is. The actual definitions, that are all over the place, do not require a monopoly.
A company cannot fully suppress communications if it does not control the communications medium. There is no company which has a total monopoly on any form of communications in the USA. Material is not effectively made unavailable without total suppression.
Person C threatening to no longer communicate with person A, is different than person C threatening to do additional work to not conduct business with person A. This kind of weaponization of everyday business does not lead to anything good. And just like we would condemn shop owner refusing to sell to a customer based on race/hair color/ clothing style we need to condemn twitter refusing service to sci-hub, to Trump, or even to actual murderers like Xi/Putin/Aliyev.
Even your example of deplatforming is a very questionable practice, for instance it is often used by cults like Jehovah Witnesses to disallow followers talking with family members who leave the cult.
Freedom of Association is a fundamental freedom in many countries, for good reason. I'll happily avoid services that happily and stubbornly provide platforms to white nationalists and similar wretches, like Parler and Gab, and it certainly does not bother me that such platforms may not welcome me.
Cults and similar certainly do use their ability to sever association to control their membership, but making that step and severing those bonds frees those same members from the harm of the cult.
There is difference between association and between singling out someone and refusing service that would be at no additional cost to you. Twitter not only banned Trumps account, but also sci-hub account which is far from being a "wretch" and has contributed immensely to science.
If we include social media service providers into "cancellation" wars the result will be too costly for the society, so we need better ways to fight against nationalists. Sacrificing freedom of speech to a group applying unknown rules, without a mechanism to appeal, will be harmful in the long run, even though this time it have produced a result we like.
I fail to see the critical distinction between refusing to associate and refusing to engage with, or how the freedom of association can be upheld without the ability to refuse such engagement.
We must provide social media services with protected freedoms, or we risk impinging upon the freedoms of its users. Users must be free to choose social media which allows them to _not_ associate or communicate with those they do not wish to. Nor should we compel them to support speech that they do not wish to, for similar reasons.
If your concern is whether certain legal speech may be effectively completely deplatformed, then may I suggest the solution is federated social networking and not to impugn the freedom of association.
it's a big hard to grasp, but just because you are for something doesn't mean you can't be against an individual participating in the thing you're for doing bad stuff.
That is a good theoretical argument but in practice Trumps opinions are mainstream enough to garner tens of millions of votes in support.
Being intolerant of the representative of somewhere between 20% and 40% of the country (accounting for turnout) is not a sustainable strategy. Ignoring even 10% of a country is a recipe for great pain.
Deplatforming is a kind of censorship. With social media monopolies in place, deplatforming is effectively removing someone's voice altogether, so basically the same as censorship.
"If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech."
I had not made any ideological or nationalistic comment I merely stated that culturally american values are very different and is often forced upon people in other countries via the internet. I don't wish HN to become that way, once I see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html enforcing conformity to american culture I will stop using it as I'm sure many users in other countries will. Thank you Dang for moderating accordingly.
If you had expressed it the way you just did here, that would have been fine. But when you frame it with words like "imperialism", "revolting", and "bullshit", that becomes flamewar.
As for your general point, HN users are about 50% in the US, and of course some of those are immigrants/expats. So HN is a highly international site. It certainly has a US orientation, but I think that's far from "conformity to American culture" and certainly we have zero intention of forcing that. We want people to be themselves and have curious conversation across their differences.
In a way I think a bigger problem here is the opposite to what you're saying. Because so many of the non-American users here have such incredibly good English, it seems on the surface that the site is much more uniform than it is. People have no idea how diverse the community here is, and it makes for a lot of misunderstandings, often bitter ones.
This is clock work, every election period they shutdown social media & electronic payments. It happened in 2016[0]
But when an "OTT" tax was imposed on social networks (Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Linkdin) in 2018[1].
Majority didn't want to pay an extra tax(required to use social media) on top of paying for internet. So majority learnt how to use vpns.
As a result, the OTT tax was a complete failure [2] and now the Uganda Revenue service is planning on bundling it with internet data costs.
Since people now know how to use vpns, social media cant be blocked.
So the reason for blocking smartphone app stores is to essentially, STEP 1 i.e Stop people from installing VPNs.
STEP 2 will probably be the total blocking of all social media.
[0]:https://theatlantic.com/amp/article/463407/
[1]:https://dw.com/en/uganda-one-year-of-social-media-tax/a-4967...
[2]:https://techjaja.com/ott-tax-fails-as-ura-proposes-tax-on-in...