This is the perfect article for the "nothing to hide" crowd. It just shows that whatever we think is fine at the present moment, might become a problem. And if we can't take control over our digital past, this can have serious consequences.
Afghans are racing to erase their online lives
51–57 of 57 posts
Re: Afghans are racing to erase their online lives
#52Unpopular opinion: You really cannot fight an ideology, the Taliban is so successful because it has some (if not most) support amongst the masses. If there wasn't any, people would've resisted. May be this is a beginning of a long civil war in the nation but I doubt ordinary people will have a voice, they are surely significantly outnumbered.
Do you think they have the majority in Kabul ? Or is this a classical case of rural vs urban (only that in this case the rural people have a ton of firepower and the will to create laws that affect the urban people as well)? As someone who grew up in Austria and Germany I think we can fight ideologies. In fact we have to. Having strong (intolerant) ideals is not a problem until you force it on people who don't in inh…
> I think we can fight ideologies
Which ideologies? And which ideology do you want to replace those ideologies with? Do you see the issue?
Re: Afghans are racing to erase their online lives
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
True. Who knows what they do after that. The Afghan war was a mess basically from day one, the retreat is in a different league al together so. Quite embarrassing for the most powerful military alliance on the planet, too.
>Quite embarrassing for the most powerful military alliance on the planet, too. Not really. There is a reason Afghanistan is called "Graveyard of Empires". https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2001-11-... Judging by the history that i'm naturally close to and know well, i.e. Russia history, the drive to free your Motherland from foreign occupants is like 10-100x multiplier of force.
It’s even more embarrassing that despite all of this history they had the arrogance to believe they knew better.
Re: Afghans are racing to erase their online lives
#54Friendly reminder that when you delete your discord account, they don't delete your statements, just strip the account name from them, similar to how Github is doing it with their ghost account. For Github, I sort of understand it. For discord, it feels very dangerous to me.
GitHub also allows you to self-bot.
Discord will ban you for that, even if you delete your messages with the app on a stock Android without any macros or other tools that reduce the required effort over the naive way (e.g. `from: namibj` search; repeat for each "server").
(Btw; you have a pending email. I lost my old domain, but keybase has other accounts and an encryption key linked. You have 24h before I'll have to reach out harder, due to acute urgency.)
Re: Afghans are racing to erase their online lives
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, China just defines a country as "not another country" when they want to interfere. See Hong Kong, Taiwan, or pretty much every other neighboring country and their territorial waters or exclusive economic zone. It is important to keep in mind that China is a startup empire. They are still trying to dominate their immediate neighborhood, whereas the US is an established empire, mostly concerned with global matter…
Hong Kong and Taiwan aren't countries. Both are historically Chinese territory and both are, as far as international law, the UN, and international recognition are concerned, Chinese land. Hong Kong was supposed to be a separate administrative region according to the treaty with the UK, which has been violated by China, but it was never a country. Chinese land -> colony -> autonomous Chinese region -> China Taiwan, o…
> Everyone agrees the PRC is the sole China.
This is not even close to true.
> For Americans, an analogy for Taiwan - the Confederacy lost the Civil war, but ran away to Hawai, assimilated the locals, calls itself the CSA and claims the whole of the US in its constitution.
A decent anology. If that happened, then many people on both sides would still being willing to fight and die for it today.
That sounds a lot like "two countries" to me.
Re: Afghans are racing to erase their online lives
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hong Kong and Taiwan aren't countries. Both are historically Chinese territory and both are, as far as international law, the UN, and international recognition are concerned, Chinese land. Hong Kong was supposed to be a separate administrative region according to the treaty with the UK, which has been violated by China, but it was never a country. Chinese land -> colony -> autonomous Chinese region -> China Taiwan, o…
> Everyone agrees the PRC is the sole China. This is not even close to true. > For Americans, an analogy for Taiwan - the Confederacy lost the Civil war, but ran away to Hawai, assimilated the locals, calls itself the CSA and claims the whole of the US in its constitution. A decent anology. If that happened, then many people on both sides would still being willing to fight and die for it today. That sounds a lot like…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Taiwan#...
There are 15 states, the vast majority of which are microstates, which recognise Taiwan as "the China". Some countries have unofficial representation within, but don't officially recognise it. No country officially recognises Taiwan and China as separate countries. Should have said "almost everyone", not everyone, indeed.
> That sounds a lot like "two countries" to me
And absolutely is, in practice. However, from a legal/UN/international law standpoint, Taiwan isn't a country, it's a Chinese island. Due to the power and influence of the PRC, few countries, even the US, would dare to recognise an independent Taiwan replacing the ROC claim to the whole of China. And even then, China would still claim it's their land and they might even invade.
Re: Afghans are racing to erase their online lives
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think they have the majority in Kabul ? Or is this a classical case of rural vs urban (only that in this case the rural people have a ton of firepower and the will to create laws that affect the urban people as well)? As someone who grew up in Austria and Germany I think we can fight ideologies. In fact we have to. Having strong (intolerant) ideals is not a problem until you force it on people who don't in inh…
> I think we can fight ideologies Which ideologies? And which ideology do you want to replace those ideologies with? Do you see the issue?
One that allows a plurality of ideologies while not opressing or killing people?
Also not as new of a paradox as you might think: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance