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Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube

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Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube

#31

Post by laurent92 »

> foreign values

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.

Good one, Uganda.

Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube

#32

Post by [deleted] »

vbezhenar wrote: post #7
mc32 wrote: post #4

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…

Some governments can force *Store to ban whatever they want. Some can't, so they have to resort to banning stores.

[deleted]

Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube

#33

Post by jedimastert »

tobylane wrote: post #27
ilaksh wrote: post #3

What Trump was doing was extreme, but stories like might make you think twice about enthusiasm for censorship.

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?

Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube

#34

Post by nostromo »

madhadron wrote: post #17
mimikatz wrote: post #9

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.

Trump has a press office and a whole press corps that shows up to listen to what he might want to say to them daily.

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.

Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube

#35

Post by mimikatz »

andrewzah wrote: post #15
mimikatz wrote: post #9

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?

Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube

#36

Post by tedunangst »

mimikatz wrote: post #9

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.

Unclear how banning the App Store prevents Twitter from banning you.

Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube

#37

Post by meibo »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #14
meibo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What can you do on your Apple iPhone without Apple servers? Hint: it's nothing.

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.

Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube

#38

Post by ajconway »

johndevor wrote: post #16

Time to decentralize everything

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.

Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube

#39

Post by kawfey »

nostromo wrote: post #28
johndevor wrote: post #16

Time to decentralize everything

It’s not fully decentralized, but I’d love to see Signal take on some Twitter and Facebook use cases.

I would reckon that if Signal were to take over these use cases, Signal itself would just turn into the next big tech baddie.
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