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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

#111
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

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 ca…

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.

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

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

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…

> 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.

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

#113

> 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…

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…

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].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_bias

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

#114
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.

> the great social media purge towards GOP personals

This seems like a weird way to put it if only Trump and stuff like Parler was removed off the big social media platforms.

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

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be very clear: Trump did not "incite" an "insurrection". The dude was trying to hold a rally. Shit got out of hand much like in the George Floyd riots, but to a much lesser degree. In spite of the relative magnitudes of the death and destruction in those events, the insane leftist media has somehow decided to paint the George Floyd riots as understandable at worst and freaking obligatory at best. At the same ti…

Let's not split hairs. When: 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.' You are inciting a r…

>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.

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

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be very clear: Trump did not "incite" an "insurrection". The dude was trying to hold a rally. Shit got out of hand much like in the George Floyd riots, but to a much lesser degree. In spite of the relative magnitudes of the death and destruction in those events, the insane leftist media has somehow decided to paint the George Floyd riots as understandable at worst and freaking obligatory at best. At the same ti…

Let's not split hairs. When: 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.' You are inciting a r…

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.

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

#117
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

> A grave crime was committed this week Like in 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wisconsin_protests And 2018. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/protests-buil...

Just trying to be clear, are you saying these events were justified, or that the attack on the US Capitol was justified?

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

#118

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…

https://getaether.net/docs/tech/ Aether is peer to peer. I don't see it being censored easily.

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

#119

> 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…

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.

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

#120

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 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…

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.
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