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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

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that inciting a government insurrection, then expressing your love for the perpetrators, shouldn't be a bannable offense?

Yes, it should be. Do you think govts will tolerate Western corporations having the power to ban any politician?

and do you think that politicians should have to follow the same rules as everyone else?

I'll answer your q when you've answered mine

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

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm talking about isn't so narrow as liberals or conservatives; it's about social cohesion and the censorship that's necessary in order to preserve it. We've been living charmed lives up until now because the ability to broadcast to large audiences has only been within the capabilities of a select few media outlets that were vetted and controlled to varying degrees by the government to make sure they didn't sow…

This is so so many words about a overly discussed slippery slope, that do not address a very simple point. You said this: > 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 is this large population? Who is this large population? Thus entire comment you typed is an distressingly large stretch if you can't iden…

In this case, the population is Parler members. But the instance and people involved are largely irrelevant; it's merely the illustration of a point that will become more and more pronounced as more people realize this power. And it'll be confounded by the fact that no company can be fully up to date with the local foibles of country X and their issues that the company must now decide the truth of and censor whomever they believe to be the bad actors (yeah, good luck!).

Although social media companies have allowed more of us to broadcast to an unprecedentedly large audience, we're not actually ready for the Pandora's box this opens in terms of free speech, corporate rights and obligations, and national sovereignty. The near-term solution will be selective censorship by companies and blocking by governments unhappy with the censorship choices (for both good and bad reasons). But as the decade drags on, we'll be forced to recognize our lack of psychological adaptability to this kind of influential power that can destabilize societies to such a degree (by individual, group, AND state actors), and try to come up with a least-worst solution that we're probably not going to like.

It's not like this is completely new; larger countries with information dissemination advantages have used that power to destabilize smaller countries for centuries, most recently in South America and the Middle East. But it's quite another thing to be on the receiving end, by anyone able to harness a sufficient audience (i.e. not just state actors), and find yourself unable to effectively defend against it.

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

#363
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many banks don't provide HTTP endpoints (except for business versions). My bank, Monzo, does not. My other bank TSB does provide a website, but it's awful.

Wait, you have to use a smartphone app to interact with your bank? There is no website with 95% of the functionality (or bonus functionality that the app doesn't have) available as a website for desktop users? This is rather unusual, the credit union I use in the USA offers an iOS and Android app that is literally a webview of their mobile website, plus a dash of OCR for check handling. Using the PWA is nearly identi…

Yup that's pretty much it. To Monzo's credit they seem to make a point to work without Google Play Services, but iOS users would be screwed in the event the App Store was blocked.

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

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so so many words about a overly discussed slippery slope, that do not address a very simple point. You said this: > 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 is this large population? Who is this large population? Thus entire comment you typed is an distressingly large stretch if you can't iden…

In this case, the population is Parler members. But the instance and people involved are largely irrelevant; it's merely the illustration of a point that will become more and more pronounced as more people realize this power. And it'll be confounded by the fact that no company can be fully up to date with the local foibles of country X and their issues that the company must now decide the truth of and censor whomever…

Nope.

Definitely not buying that was the original population mentioned: it doesn't follow your original claim and it doesn't follow your reply.

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

Parler users are not a significant portion of the population.

They were not blocked by "all social media companies", their app was removed from an app store.

If you're trying to implicate the people who were using Parler... again small population and the over lap between banned from social media and using Parler is far away from a "significant portion of the population". And many are of a certain political leaning, they are not representative of that population.

This while comment chain was built on an event "banning a significant portion of the population population" that doesn't exist. End of story.

I'm not interested in discussing doomsaying based on made up events.

Nothing said in this thread is a novel thing, it's the same tired what-ifs that ignore the "what-happened". When your argument doesn't even stand without leaning on made up events and slipper slopes, it's not worth much.

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

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it should be. Do you think govts will tolerate Western corporations having the power to ban any politician?

and do you think that politicians should have to follow the same rules as everyone else? I'll answer your q when you've answered mine

I fail to see how can I be any clearer. It's yes to both your questions. I am not saying anything about what should be done. My only question is, do you think govts will tolerate Western corporations having the power to ban any politician? A simple yes or no will suffice.

Here is a real life example of what I was talking about in my original comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25714824

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

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, the population is Parler members. But the instance and people involved are largely irrelevant; it's merely the illustration of a point that will become more and more pronounced as more people realize this power. And it'll be confounded by the fact that no company can be fully up to date with the local foibles of country X and their issues that the company must now decide the truth of and censor whomever…

Nope. Definitely not buying that was the original population mentioned: it doesn't follow your original claim and it doesn't follow your reply. > All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country. Parler users are not a significant portion of the population. They were not blocked by "all social media companies", thei…

I can see now that this discussion will not be fruitful.

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

#367
"We never thought it would happen, but in 2024, the year of our lord, it did. It seems that governments are requiring full access to iPhones and using features in ways we didn't think possible. People are now using infrared broadcasting, attached to weapons, government vehicles and buildings, to prevent taking photos near protests and riots. This is the first time it's happened that we know of, and we are scared of the precedent. Over 4,150 people died in a protest in the [redacted African country] at the hands of newly 'elected' military regime, and we have no digital evidence of it, except for the older analog cameras that some people still possessed."

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-patent-disables-camera...

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

#368
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Uganda (and other countries) will start thinking about replaceing US-run social media with home grown solutions. Given that open source and federated replacements for Twitter[1], Instagram[2], Reddit[3], YouTube[4] etc exist, this would not be a massive undertaking. 1: Mastodon, https://mastodon.social/about 2: PixelFed, https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed 3: Lemmy, https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy 4: PeerTub…

It's probably a good idea, but how will they implement censorship?

Uganda, or the proposed new sites that would be set up?

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

#369

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…

The incentives were the simple (and common) political expediency of using the EU and immigration as scapegoats; whether to excuse their own failings in power or attack the Blair government. Many politicians did that for years without seeing any benefit at all to actually leaving the EU, but as David Cameron found, if you spend long enough blaming the EU for stuff, sooner or later you're going to get cornered into "why don't you do something about it?". And public concern about 'mass immigration' is less about incentive structures to change it and more a constant that seems to exist irrespective of where, when and what the actual levels of immigration are, which results in massive boosts to the political profile of anyone who wishes to talk about it.

There are people with obvious financial incentives to get a trade deal with the US (not necessarily on terms beneficial to the UK), and people with obvious political incentives to destabilise Western European liberal democracy, but they were largely in the background. And some prominent Leave campaigners made a lot of money shorting the pound because they believed they would win, but that was just as much a gamble on the result as anyone else directly or indirectly betting on it.

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

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Nevermind that 1 individual -chose- to use twitter as their primary base of operations, instead of the usual channels. Isn't this perfectly reasonable to switch to the modern Internet channels as time comes? Or should all the presidents keep transmitting in Morse code over cable telegraphs?

No, they use official government channels like White House press conferences and the like. Please don’t make bad faith arguments as if I really were suggesting Morse code instead of Twitter.
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