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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

#331

Post by arp242 »

amolo wrote: post #283
bilbo0s wrote: post #29

Earlier 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.

I think this depends a lot on the country, no? From what I heard, something like Rwanda is doing quite well these days (pre-COVID at least, not sure what happened since). The situation in, say, Uganda, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, or Algeria might be very different still.

There are probably some reasonable generalisations that are fair, but sometimes I feel people generalize a bit too much when it comes to Africa.

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

#332

Post by imtringued »

petre wrote: post #294
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.

Youth unemploynent + unstable region = young men with time on their hands that could easily get recruited and become rebels. So the gov't must be totally interested addressing the issue.

That's how it would work in a democracy.

You're forgetting that authoritarian governments do not have to address these things by eliminating the root cause. They can just silence the opposition with arrests or execution [0]. Uganda is so famous for this to the point that there is an entire movie [1] about Idi Amin.

If you actually cared about youth unemployment you could address it with simple economic measures first and you would seek funding from western investors, not get rid of them.

Implementing tariffs in an industry that you are never going to be a world leader in is just plain stupid. Ugandan app developers can just develop for the Google and Apple store and get access to a bigger audience instead of restricting themselves to Uganda only.

It only works out in China because their internal market is bigger than EU+USA combined. It could work out for India (unlikely unless they address corruption). Uganda only has 44 million people it just doesn't make sense.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idi_Amin

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455590/

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

#333

Post by bserge »

MattGaiser wrote: post #101

Facebook and Twitter might do well to just ban politics entirely at this point. It costs them a lot to touch it.

Politics is not the problem. People discussing it are literally participating in democracy.

The problem is that these discussions go nowhere. Everyone may come to an agreement, and yet no one will do anything about it. Politicians themselves don't participate, which is sort of ironic.

Plus, these discussions often devolve into shit slinging over some general issues like racism, minority rights, wealth, power. It only takes a few people to start it, and often, all the rational people just leave at that point.

All of this blocking will just limit everyone's freedom and access to information. The core issue, education, is what needs to be solved.

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

#334

Post by imtringued »

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…

I don't even understand what you mean by western influence. The worst thing western nations did is physically invade nations through wars. Providing internet services is in the "lets sit in a circle peacefully and share things" bucket. It's about the furthest you could go from a war.

>I think this illustrates how unbalanced and agenda-driven these media and social graph services have become who bring in foreign values to local elections.

Considering the existing rulers fail to live up to their responsibilities that's not necessarily a bad thing.

>This interference used to be called neo-imperialism not too long ago by the same people who now advocate for these narratives.

The countries who accept them can often be more successful than those who refuse them. Hong Kong is a pretty good example. Democratic values and capitalism forced down the throat of people. This became a threat to the authoritarian regime in the Chinese mainland and the rulers have to make concessions to their population. They built special economic development zones and simply copied the ideas that worked out in Hong Kong and were compatible with Chinese values at the time. Western investors suddenly had a reliable business partner in Hong Kong and a large "proxy" workforce that was manufacturing goods on the mainland which got shipped to Hong Kong and could be sold to the west. The story ends with China becoming a world leading economy, not because of the west but rather because the west forced the government to listen to the people.

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

#335

Post by emteycz »

kergonath wrote: post #317
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I don't know what about QAnon do you mean. It was a serious problem here. It's not even about the topic itself, it's about the comments under the posts.

https://www.expats.cz/czech-news/article/pro-trump-anti-covi...

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

#336

Post by imtringued »

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…

UK opted out of many EU policies. Now they simply decided to opt out entirely.

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

#337

Post by imtringued »

nromiun wrote: post #309
permo-w wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a real flood of people on HN right now who really want to fight this battle. It’s unpleasant because it’s the kind of thing I use Hacker News to avoid Even though I know it’ll just cement their viewpoints even further, I’m hoping the mods do something about it

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. No one is flooding HN. A lot of us are non-American and programmers who understand what the recent events will mean in geopolitics. Everyone can see that GP was talking about what this move will mean in general terms. Don't assume we are trolls just because you don't like ou…

The article is about government censorship.

However, if you read the comments people are interpreting the title as if Google and Apple did something wrong.

They make up random theories about the economic benefits of internet firewalls, the "evil" desire of western corporations to influence Ugandan politics and just the general idea of sharing culture among Uganda and the rest of the world being a net negative for Uganda.

People who know about Ugandan history are acutely aware of how deep in a pit they started off and how much of it was purely internal. It was similar to China suppressing their Muslim population except it was against political enemies and the Ugandan government wasn't afraid to kill someone (100s of thousands) on a whim.

Comparing this type of suffering with Google's and Apple's worst crimes is just laughable.

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

#338

Post by fapjacks »

secondcoming wrote: post #320
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And here we have arrived at the crux of the problem. Should we just throw up our hands and say "Then just don't use American tech"? I think this move by Uganda (and your comment) illustrate the same frustration that we in America feel at the power these monopolies are exerting over public discourse (for some various definitions of "public discourse").

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

#339

Post by imtringued »

nickysielicki wrote: post #86
ajconway wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 em…

I think his point is that you can hide in the "crowd" on a centralized service. In order to find one "perpetrator" you have to inconvenience a large portion of uninvolved people.

If there is a decentralized service that is exclusively used by "perpetrators" then banning the service will have a greater impact even if the ban is harder to implement.

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

#340

Post by imtringued »

bserge wrote: post #333
MattGaiser wrote: post #101

Facebook and Twitter might do well to just ban politics entirely at this point. It costs them a lot to touch it.

Politics is not the problem. People discussing it are literally participating in democracy. The problem is that these discussions go nowhere. Everyone may come to an agreement, and yet no one will do anything about it. Politicians themselves don't participate, which is sort of ironic. Plus, these discussions often devolve into shit slinging over some general issues like racism, minority rights, wealth, power. It only…

It's always two things.

1. You need to make officials accountable.

2. You have to make everyone in the country understand what's good for them and give them the ability to make informed votes.

Uganda is suffering from 1. The US and Europe is suffering more from 2. (extremism in any direction). They are completely different problems.

Censorship goes against 1. Fake news goes against 2.

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