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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

#81

Post by njanirudh »

gameswithgo wrote: post #65
laurent92 wrote: post #31

> 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 ha…

left leaning calls to violence get banned on social media all the time, they just were not ever the president doing it so you don’t notice.

This is a lie. I have seen so many people threaten the POTUS and talked about evading cops and support BLM riots without any regards to others.

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

#82

Post by stale2002 »

dleslie wrote: post #66
stale2002 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. That's curation, not cen…

> That's being overly reductive

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.

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

#83

Post by eunos »

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.

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

#84

Post by systemvoltage »

laurent92 wrote: post #31

> 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 ha…

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.

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

#86

Post by nickysielicki »

ajconway wrote: post #38
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 you…

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?

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

#87

Post by systemvoltage »

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #46

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 t…

So you want to idolicize the model of China?

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

#88

Post by digdigdag »

eunos wrote: post #83

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.

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

#89

Post by scollet »

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…

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.

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

#90

Post by cabalamat »

gameswithgo wrote: post #65
laurent92 wrote: post #31

> 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 ha…

left leaning calls to violence get banned on social media all the time, they just were not ever the president doing it so you don’t notice.

> 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).

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