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Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after more than two and a half years

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Re: Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after more than two and a half years

#61
post #35
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you shouldn't use terminology you don't understand: 1. All this "1st / 2nd / 3rd world" is from cold war time and not really relevant anymore. 2. Turkey is NATO member since 1952 so it's would be your first world country. PS: Of course Turkey is not a rich country, but everyone there can certainly afford $3-5 a month for VPN. UPD: s/user/use/

yes, the three worlds concept was actually invented by mao and has more to do with bloc alignment and less with economics. it is outdated and new terms are needed.

>yes, the three worlds concept was actually invented by mao

seems like there's actually two "three worlds" labelings, one by mao, and one by a french demographer.

>As political science, the Three Worlds Theory is a Maoist interpretation and geopolitical reformulation of international relations, which is different from the Three-World Model, created by the demographer Alfred Sauvy, wherein the First World comprises the US, Great Britain, and their allies; the Second World comprises the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and their allies; and the Third World comprises the economically underdeveloped countries and the countries, including the 120 countries of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).[3]

Re: Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after more than two and a half years

#62
post #33

I wonder what will happen (politically) in countries that engage in mass Internet censorship when SpaceX's Starlink constellation goes GA. I've always believed (perhaps naively) that the Internet is a great equalizer for information. Free (as in freedom) and unfettered Internet access seems like one of the few things that could make it incredible difficult for bad and oppressive regimes to operate anywhere in the wor…

Starlink needs special phased array antennas. Unless those become commoditized they can just ban imports.

Just a few days ago there was an article on the front page about a commodity phased array that has unfortunately been discontinued (60ghz for wireless TV): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22109708

We'll get there eventually.

Re: Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after more than two and a half years

#63
post #52

While talking about this, I think it's appropriate to at least mention what that block was about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berat_Albayrak

It's incorrect. The block was began because of Turkey was in the list of State-sponsored Terrorism article [1]. Turkish authorities asked to remove the content from Wikipedia, otherwise they will be blocked. [2]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_terrorism

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_of_Wikipedia_in_Turkey#c...

Re: Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after more than two and a half years

#64
post #57

I wonder what will happen (politically) in countries that engage in mass Internet censorship when SpaceX's Starlink constellation goes GA. I've always believed (perhaps naively) that the Internet is a great equalizer for information. Free (as in freedom) and unfettered Internet access seems like one of the few things that could make it incredible difficult for bad and oppressive regimes to operate anywhere in the wor…

Is there even a need for this when existing technological measures work? There's alternate DNS servers, VPN services, TOR bridges, obfsproxy, and shadowsocks. I've even heard that you could get pass the gfw by using a roaming sim card from hong kong.

You're obviously right when it comes to Turkey, or at least their past efforts to block, which were somewhat half-hearted.

But there are now countries that are willing to shut down the internet completely, at least for short terms. Cashmere still has no internet if I'm not mistaken, and Iran also had several shutdowns of about a week each in the past months.

Unfortunately, the track record of technology isn't that great when it comes to technology. A functioning court system, independent press, and strong civil society are far more useful than tor, encryption, bitcoin, or any other attempt in that direction.

Re: Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after more than two and a half years

#65
post #9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like inconvenience than trouble, I would say, as most prominent VPN providers are blocked at IP level.

i am told by expats that you can use VPNs in china to get access to blocked sites; i am also told that the government generally turns a blind eye, especially to foreigners using VPNs. how they deal with chinese users, in terms of social credit score, is something that is opaque. it seems like an inherently "antisocial" activity by the standards of their governance. this is all assuming that with nation state resource…

China knows it's impossible to stop everyone all the time, they just need to put up enough barriers to make it something you actively have to do, then make sure the culture is such that the majority won't even consider doing it, and if they do manager to see western reports on concentration camps in west china, or tianaman square, they won't spread it to the masses.

Re: Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after more than two and a half years

#66

I wonder what will happen (politically) in countries that engage in mass Internet censorship when SpaceX's Starlink constellation goes GA. I've always believed (perhaps naively) that the Internet is a great equalizer for information. Free (as in freedom) and unfettered Internet access seems like one of the few things that could make it incredible difficult for bad and oppressive regimes to operate anywhere in the wor…

SpaceX has already said that Starlink hardware will be offered by partners for countries outside the United States, in order to abide by local laws (i.e., in China, the hardware will have to route through the gfw)[0]. It won't be a magic bullet for censorship, unfortunately (unless you could smuggle a US router into another country, but there may be some kind of DRM or something to prevent you from doing that). [0]:…

It is ridiculously easy to geo-fence these solutions, because the position of the ground stations must be known for the system to work (and spoofing won't be possible because then your signal will get steered to the wrong spot), so SpaceX could still block/reroute people's access even if you're using a region-unlocked ground station from another country. And if smuggling foreign equipment into China becomes common you can bet that location-based censoring will happen instead of equipment ID-based censoring.

Re: Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after more than two and a half years

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billionaires still need the protection of a nation state. Their wealth would go away quickly if they had to finance an army. Maybe trillionaires can pull that off.

He'd have to have them on bitcoin payroll.

Maybe some kind of cryptocurrency, but it's unlike to be Bitcoin. When people get paid, they want the value of their payment to not massively go up/down each week.

Re: Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after more than two and a half years

#69
post #54

I always wonder what the real effects of these kind of blocks. For even average users of the internet, it was easy to overcome this block by just putting a "0" in front of the domain name. 0wikipedia.org is a clone of wikipedia and it was accessible. WHOIS search shows 0wikipedia domain name was created on 4 May 2017, just five days after the block. I am a Turkish grad student in the US. Whenever I visited Turkey, I…

The real effect is that Turkey will get more and more behind the rest of the world because its citizens do not have access to information. Regimes that block access to the truth are structurally disadvantaging themselves and their citizens in the long run.

It doesn't work like that. The Soviet Union which had some of the most tightly controlled access to information, and didn't have to worry about the Internet, managed to stay at the cutting edge of science and technology, even sometimes outpacing the west. The communist economy couldn't support it but that's a different problem.

Re: Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after more than two and a half years

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX has already said that Starlink hardware will be offered by partners for countries outside the United States, in order to abide by local laws (i.e., in China, the hardware will have to route through the gfw)[0]. It won't be a magic bullet for censorship, unfortunately (unless you could smuggle a US router into another country, but there may be some kind of DRM or something to prevent you from doing that). [0]:…

It is ridiculously easy to geo-fence these solutions, because the position of the ground stations must be known for the system to work (and spoofing won't be possible because then your signal will get steered to the wrong spot), so SpaceX could still block/reroute people's access even if you're using a region-unlocked ground station from another country. And if smuggling foreign equipment into China becomes common yo…

Wonder if the commonly disputed borders of some countries is going to make things tricky in those areas?
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