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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

#311

Post by ben_w »

lxmorj wrote: post #306
diminish wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calls for violence and election-critics were encouraged by current social media in some countries. It looks like many social media platforms have bias based on the political affinities of their owners. I see no reason for any government or any party to trust the social media, mobile OS platforms and messaging anymore. A new set of tools is about to loom hopefully.

Is this really different than old media? Seems like all networks are biased - these are just more powerful, centralized networks.

> Is this really different than old media

Yes. People never handled daily small talk with their friends and family via the Letters page of e.g. The Times, so it was never antisocial to change newspaper, to boycott a newspaper entirely, or to go without any daily paper at all.

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

#312

Post by _jgdh »

kstenerud wrote: post #288
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…

> 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 wi…

Case in point, the fascists in India became very concerned about Trump being deplatformed. They decried it as a lack of tolerance, because they knew there’s no difference between what Trump does and what they do.

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

#313

Post by ben_w »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #198
selfhoster11 wrote: post #120

Earlier 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…

In the language of game theory (but not with enough evidence, so this is a Just-So-Story):

When he was a journalist, Johnson discovered that “write disparaging lies [0] about European politics” was a successful strategy.

It is plausible others noticed this, and likewise found easier to win power by euro-bashing than by being honest.

Given the cognitive biases which makes repetition of claims make those claims seem more true, from that point on you get your meme which got out of hand and drove the referendum and its result.

Defect-Defect.

[0] https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/times-boris-johnson-flat-lied-13...

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

#314

Post by simonh »

ben_w wrote: post #311
lxmorj wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really different than old media? Seems like all networks are biased - these are just more powerful, centralized networks.

> Is this really different than old media Yes. People never handled daily small talk with their friends and family via the Letters page of e.g. The Times, so it was never antisocial to change newspaper, to boycott a newspaper entirely, or to go without any daily paper at all.

There are plenty of direct messaging apps and services people can use to continue to do so such as iMessage, WhatsApp, SMS, email and many more.

The issue is publishing services with discoverability where anyone can see or subscribe to your feed, those are more like a letters page and service providers have a clear interest in what they are publishing for you.

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

#315

Post by Ekaros »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #130
nickysielicki wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 em…

> Where are you going to find a list of all ip addresses hosting SMTP and IMAP servers? Shodan is a readily available database of such data. Just search for all hosts with IMAP, SMTP and POP3 ports exposed and then block those. Alternatively, a DIY scan of the whole IPv4 address range can be accomplished within hours or days. IPv6 address space is harder to scan, but it's arguably safe to ban all such traffic since n…

Or even simpler. Just scan all domains for MX records... That information is not even secret, but openly advertised.

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

#317

Post by kergonath »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #307
emteycz wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because you have no idea what's happening elsewhere. Here in Czechia we have our own version of the problems USA faces (regarding "censorship"/deletion of content), and nobody has any idea what's happening in the USA.

I am not from the U.S.A.. I merely noticed that much of the censorship and cultural policing on large platforms such as GitHub , or even the new Linux code of conduct seems to be mostly applicable to situations that pertain to the U.S.A. exclusively.

Yes. And it’s beyond ridiculous when these are imported and translated literally to be used as propaganda tools in countries with very different issues. Like the European ramifications of Qanon or some versions of identity politics...

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

#318

Post by BoorishBears »

kstenerud wrote: post #288
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…

> 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 wi…

> All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country.

Where did this happen?

Because I saw some specific tags blocked calling for a VP to be killed blocked (vs some generic "kill all humans" hyperbole)... and specific account blocked after its owner triggered an attack on the Capitol that resulted in 5 casualties (and breaking the rules of the platform for 4+ years)

-

Are you trying to say people who were pro-talking about killing Pence and storming the Capitol are a significant population?

Because last time I checked there were still tens of millions of conservatives on Twitter who aren't banned

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

#319

Post by BoorishBears »

WaxProlix wrote: post #285
amolo wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What are they supposed to back it up with?

A headline of "Local President admits focus on internet censorship is driven by personal greed, not economic protectionism?"

I'm from Ghana, a country that's been touching the line of internet censorship from time to time, and I see nothing wrong with their statement.

It's laughably naive to imply that they're censoring outside services to prop up the local tech scene when they can hardly be assed to get kids a proper education without using it as a political bargaining chip.

Like saying they're playing 4d chess when they're not interested in checkers unless it suits them...

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

#320

Post by secondcoming »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #298
kstenerud wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wi…

It's an interesting point I had not yet considered that most private internet censorship seems to relate to some political issue or moral value that primarily plays in the U.S.A.. That, and of course financially complying with pressure from the Chinese government to be tough on whatever independence movement it struggle with now — Catalonia was of course free to chant it's independence.

It's American Privilege, pure and simple. Anything tech is pretty much American and so the rest of the world gets dragged into their bullshit.
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