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Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

reuters.com

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Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#81

Post by chopin24 »

secondcoming wrote: post #8

It would be an interesting social experiment to see what happens if twitter turned itself off worldwide for a week.

Perhaps there's a middle way, something I've been experimenting with myself personally when it comes to digital devices: A digital Sabbath. Don't call it that of course, since it has religious connotation, but instead just... Turn Twitter off 1 day a week. Doesn't even have to be the weekend. Just close up shop on Tuesdays, give everyone a break.

We long ago learned that you can't be 'on' 24/7, yet we let ourselves fall into it with digital media/social networks.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#82

Post by nawgz »

citilife wrote: post #56
xref wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“US was a great role model this year. We aspire to feed our citizens a steady stream of disinformation so they are ready to storm the government and overturn the election if it doesn’t go our way” Everyone keeps making these same points in every thread, and no minds are changed.

You assume the steady stream of disinformation is only coming from facebook, and not the news corporations. The reality is that CNN, MSNBC, Huffington post, New York Times, FOX, etc. all are shoving fluffed up pieces with an extreme bias. Every media outlet is doing this. > Everyone keeps making these same points in every thread, and no minds are changed. I agree with this. This is why we have always defaulted to "fr…

Why do I see this claim that private companies refusing Parler service somehow has "silenced Conservative voices"? It's pretty facile on the face of it. No conservatives have been banned from social media for being conservative...

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#83

Post by genericone »

This is how Zuckerberg's dream of connecting the entire population of the world comes to an end. Countries that don't want foreign influence (of both good and bad varieties) injected directly through their citizens eyeballs will ban social media first. Then a "nextdoor" style social media company will appear and allow individual countries to control how their social media is used. That or a Docker image with a Generic Social Media App can be bought and loaded onto a regional datacenter controlled by said country, because "cloud" will get a well justified bad label of being associated with foreign influence.

Does a multi-country-specific social media company already exist? In any case, the 2020's will be an interesting decade for this space.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#84

Post by travisoneill1 »

pjc50 wrote: post #60
throwaway894345 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think these movements are the natural result of pivoting our epistemological institutions from truth-seeking to progressive political advocacy. The right in particular has less reason to recognize these institutions as “truth authorities” as even when the right has a good point (e.g., when the right asks, “how do we know that racism and not crime rates belies police shooting disparities?”) , they can rel…

> when the right asks, “how do we know that racism and not crime rates belies police shooting disparities?” This question isn't asked in good faith. Besides, it's actually irrelevant; those deaths are statistics. What was demanded was prosecutions of specific police for specific shootings of specific, named people such as Breonna Taylor. It's up to the white community to decide if police shootings of white people are…

Prosecutions aren't something that should be done by mob demand. In the case of Breona Taylor the police were returning fire. You can question whether they should have served that warrant, but you will never in a million years convict someone of murder when they were returning fire.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#85

Post by Apocryphon »

slim wrote: post #46
antiman0 wrote: post #4

> A source in Uganda’s telecom sector said the government had made clear to executives at telecoms companies that the social media ban was in retaliation for Facebook blocking some pro-government accounts. This is probably the interesting bit - a retaliatory move by a regime trying to silence the opposition. I don't think this has too many parallels (except for blocking of accounts) with the current US events, which…

It is related to US elections. because dictators in Africa can point to USA when they get criticized. Why should Facebook have the power to police speech during elections in Uganda and not the state of Uganda ?

They don't have to point to the U.S., they've been doing this for a while now:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25711941

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#86

Post by andai »

trident5000 wrote: post #31
kyleblarson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tiny fraction of the populous who spend hours a day on Twitter might have panic attacks, the rest of us who realize that Twitter (and social media in general) is a cesspool of toxicity and who never use it would carry on like normal.

Id like that to be true but Twitter has 400 million users which is a large chunk of the developed world.

A sad week for the nsfw art community.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#87

Post by spamizbad »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #53
djtriptych wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I hear these comments I wonder what the recommendation is to shrink the movement. Obviously open conversations did not stop the movement from growing.

Personally I think these movements are the natural result of pivoting our epistemological institutions from truth-seeking to progressive political advocacy. The right in particular has less reason to recognize these institutions as “truth authorities” as even when the right has a good point (e.g., when the right asks, “how do we know that racism and not crime rates belies police shooting disparities?”) , they can rel…

Ashley Babbitt, the woman who was shot by capitol police, was in a polyamorous relationship. So the notion that people are turning to these tactics to free themselves from a perceived left-wing cultural hegemony doesn’t seem likely.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#88

Post by geofft »

benjohnson wrote: post #32
djtriptych wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I hear these comments I wonder what the recommendation is to shrink the movement. Obviously open conversations did not stop the movement from growing.

Prosecuting Epstine would have helped. Auditing the voting system would have helped. Just show the movement that there nothing to hide rather than yell at them and appear to cover up.

Epstein was a thing for them to latch onto. If he were prosecuted, it would be something or someone else. (Soros? Gates? Hillary Clinton? Jeremiah Wright? etc.) Or, alternatively, there's no convincing argument that had Epstein never been born, the Qanon movement would have been noticeably smaller or weaker.

If your claim is that it would have helped to deliver justice in every single case of injustice, promptly and transparently, then yes, that certainly makes for a better society and certainly everyone agrees with that goal but it's also never going to be 100% completed.

And if you remember 2004, there were serious allegations of unaudited changes to the voting system as well as coverups and hiding of important information (like what we knew about Iraq's weapons program or lack thereof), but the movement of people who objected to both of them did not storm anything. So there's something else different here.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#89

Post by TigeriusKirk »

benjohnson wrote: post #32
djtriptych wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I hear these comments I wonder what the recommendation is to shrink the movement. Obviously open conversations did not stop the movement from growing.

Prosecuting Epstine would have helped. Auditing the voting system would have helped. Just show the movement that there nothing to hide rather than yell at them and appear to cover up.

It has to start with admitting the systems are imperfect and unchecked misconduct is possible even if it's not actually happening.

The insistence that our systems infallible is not at all helpful because anyone can see that's not true.

Once we get to admitting unchecked misconduct is possible in the current systems, we can make some progress to reducing those possibilities. Right now we're resisting that path, and that's just not sustainable.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#90

Post by yakcyll »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #68
pjc50 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been audits of the voting system. They didn't believe them, and they were reported falsely in the media they follow. It's a cult. It's like trying to convince them that aliens don't exist. (Epstein would have been prosecuted .. if he hadn't died in extremely mysterious circumstances. Now that's a situation where absence of evidence where evidence should be expected - the security cameras - drives paranoia.…

The “cult” (if you insist) was once much smaller, so something must be driving this phenomenon, which means there is hope that we can stop or even reverse it. What makes people go from believing the media, science, etc to unwarranted skepticism? Specifically, what changed in the last couple of decades that might’ve yielded this result? My pet theory is that our institutions increasingly pivoted from truth-seeking to…

> What makes people go from believing the media, science, etc to unwarranted skepticism?

It's the phenomenon of illusory truth. Wiki has some sources [0][1][2]. It seems inherent to discussions on the Internet as it becomes more and more accessible and popular. The only obvious way out seems to be educating people, but not enough entities seem interested in doing so right now. Maybe pessimistically, I don't think people en masse can learn on their own about the dangers of misinformation unless crises occur that directly impact their lives.

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

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160515062305/http://www.psych....

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160514233138/https://www.apa.o...

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