Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin

I think all authoritarian governments rely on a chunk of their population to stay in power. This population can be very small, but sufficient.

In order to maintain their popularity they rely on:

1. Lack of education

2. Strong propaganda

3. Poverty

4. Social welfare

5. Religion & ideology

6. Fear of enemy

Within their target demographics.

So, they will end up with chunks of population who are uneducated, poor, strongly reliant on government welfare that are actually thankful for the government for their social welfare and cultural/religious alignment.

The pro-democracy people are usually middle class citizens. How do you fight uneducated, religiously/culturally motivated people with tame middle class citizens? It's not doable. That's why Taliban takes control of Afghanistan.

The only thing that I've seen work is this:

1. You try to keep communications alive with population. Google leaving a country? There couldn't be anything worse.

2. You incentivize government/regimes to stay as open as possible.

3. You wait decades for paradigm shifts within populations.

As for #1, let me give you an example. ~25 years ago I was 7. I lived in Iran. There was no internet. TV & Radio are government controlled and the country was too poor for people to travel abroad.

The _only_ thing that kept us connected to the outside world was... soccer.

Iranian state TV would broadcast a few soccer games a week (not live). For a massive chunk of the population, the only way to see there are _other_ type of people, not name Ali, Hussain, Muhammed, etc, and instead named Alessandro, Paolo, David, whatever, was soccer. Something simple like this can really keep the mind open. Allows you to realize there are other ways.

Fast forward a few years, a "reform" government was in place. The regime was relatively incentivized to talk to the US. Thus, they allowed Internet. The reform government allowed music and film to flourish again. As a result of economic growth a lot of Iranians were traveling abroad (from Turkey and Dubai to all over Europe) and as a result the middle class got more and more "western".

Fast forward to Donald Trump leaving the JCPOA, putting a "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran.

The economy went to shit (it's really a humanitarian crisis now). The government, scared of riots, locked everything down. All European brands/companies have left the country and the government is pushing to close down internet altogether.

A decade ago Iranians were pushing for democracy (Green Movement). Now, their only concern is survival. There is no hope anymore. The population is getting poorer and poorer, less and less educated.

So my question after this story is, do you think Google leaving Russia will end up helping Russians get more educated, more wealthy, more connected to the free world?

Or would it push them to the direction of poverty, isolation and disconnect?

Iran 10 years ago (before maximum pressure campaign by the republicans) was on the path to be something like Turkey. Not totally free, but somewhat OK ish country. Now it's on the path to be another North Korea (if this direction continues for another 15-20 years)

Sorry this wasn't a well written, well thought piece. It was an anecdotal dump of thoughts, but hopefully I managed to make a point.

Govt says take that down, the company takes it down, public outrage ensues, govt takes a step back, the company brings it back.

The good thing about governments is that you actually pick the management. Even in not so democratic places it is common and acceptable to take down poor managers through any means.

With companies, you only can hope that the CEO is capable and ethical. That’s why it’s not OK for them to go extralegal. They are supposed to function within the law and their obligations are to the shareholders.

Because that requires possessing illegal images, while legal pornography that also happens to cause a hash collision with NeuralHash doesn't.

Again, no one at Apple is reviewing the source image. They're reviewing obfuscated derivative images, and then informing law enforcement if they suspect they're illegal images.

What law enforcement then does is get warrants for all of the accused's electronic devices and raids their home and workplace in order to collect evidence.

It's another version of SWATing. Sure, eventually the authorities might find out that the accused isn't actually a mass shooter or holding hostages, but by then the damage is already done.