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.
Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube
281–290 of 394 posts
Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 benef…
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.
Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some governments can force *Store to ban whatever they want. Some can't, so they have to resort to banning stores.
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 domes…
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.
Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 benef…
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.
Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 domes…
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.
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.
Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube
#286If 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.
That's exactly the problem, that every politician is fine except Trump. There are much worst people around the world but they are fine because the American tech companies view everything from their American lens.
Also, why should someone make introspection because some SV guy decided to block Trump, what about all the people who support trump, there are millions of them, what makes some head of corporate opinion in a particular social bubble so much more valuable than other millions of people? Try to say the same thing about Shi or Putin decisions, see how stupid and condescending it sounds
Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube
#287Ugandan here, to provide more context;
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...
Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube
#288Given 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…
> 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".
Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube
#289>>“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.
Re: Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube
#290Can 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…
Here's some info about the current situation, and the charismatic challenger Bobi Wine:
https://twitter.com/PopulismUpdates/status/13414323996834078...
https://twitter.com/PopulismUpdates/status/13396952711737057...