Live data from Hacker News

Russia restricts opposition election voting app

netblocks.org

51–60 of 244 posts

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#51
post #38

I know that "violence is never the answer" but it's pretty pretty hard to swallow when corrupted thiefs and murderers have state-guaranteed monopoly of physical violence. I can't accept that, and no one should.

A monk asked Pa Ling, "What is the Blown Hair Sword? " Pa Ling said, "Each branch of coral supports the moon"

This makes zero sense

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#52
post #38

I know that "violence is never the answer" but it's pretty pretty hard to swallow when corrupted thiefs and murderers have state-guaranteed monopoly of physical violence. I can't accept that, and no one should.

Yeah, Putin's regime has no place in this day and age. It's totally anti-people.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#53
post #36
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In this case there's not many reasons for it to be a native app instead of a Progressive Web App. This would simplify distribution. The opposite of this is true. Blocking a web application is very easy for Russian authorities, there are well-established legal and technical protocols for that, it's a routine, it happens every day. The opposition uses apps precisely because they are more difficult to censor.

I see, that makes sense. The advantage of a web app is that it can be distributed in any number of ways though. It's trivial to take it and re-host it on different servers, as an onion service, or go the full decentralized route with IPFS or similar.

Do you really think going through all that would be trivial to the masses?

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#54
post #23
post #5

Apple is in no position whatsoever to fight governments. The amount of money and power they wield in the market and society is huge, but it doesn't even rank in competition to the power of the state. (For scale, the US, just a single country, has spent, only on the military, 4.3x the entire market cap of Apple ($2410B) since the iPhone was introduced.) They have to do whatever the CCP tells them to do, as they are co…

Apple is most certainly in a position to influence government. They have a device in the hands of more than a billion people who spend hours per day staring at it. They absolutely have a responsibility to fight for human rights and freedom. By your logic, no one would ever engage in any kind of civil obedience and no one would be able to effect change: the government, after all, is also more powerful than any individ…

The most famous advocate of civil disobedience in the US got executed as a result of his prominence.

(In an ultimate irony, Tim Apple keeps a picture of him (MLK) on the wall in his office, alongside a picture of the guy who signed the order as Attorney General to have the FBI put him under 24/7 surveillance (RFK), which resulted in the FBI sending him (MLK) anonymous letters attempting to blackmail him into suicide.)

Apple knows which way the wind blows. Even if they wanted to engage in the maximum amount of resistance that is feasible/practicable, that's not really very much, especially when an organization friendly to the US military has literally every single rich/connected person and the entirety of the executive, legislature, and judiciary under bulk surveillance at all times.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903613/apple-hiding-tai...

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/10/768841864/after-china-objects...

https://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/tim-cook-barack-obama...

https://gigaom.com/2014/09/18/apples-warrant-canary-disappea...

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#55
post #24
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Silent days” are still a thing. The new bit is that the day before the election is not included, only the election days themselves. This prohibition makes sense to me. My personal opinion is that telegram’s actions are reasonable in this context. Navalny’s team fucked up by publishing their recommendations only on the 15th, two days before voting. I don’t understand that decision at all.

This ensures Putin's government won't have enough time to subvert the recommended candidates in some way.

But there was nothing to hide, everyone knew that it will be basically "vote for Communists".

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#56
As far as I understand those apps were illegally gathering and storing personal data - real names and addresses - storing them abroad - which is no-no not only in Russia but in EU (GDPR).

In terms of voting - people can still lookup candidates proposed by Navalny's team online without breaking the law.

Surprisingly most of them are from Communist party of Russia.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#57
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A monk asked Pa Ling, "What is the Blown Hair Sword? " Pa Ling said, "Each branch of coral supports the moon"

This makes zero sense

It makes more sense than the violence is not the answer trope.

At least it's not trying to make you an obedient slave

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#58

As far as I understand those apps were illegally gathering and storing personal data - real names and addresses - storing them abroad - which is no-no not only in Russia but in EU (GDPR). In terms of voting - people can still lookup candidates proposed by Navalny's team online without breaking the law. Surprisingly most of them are from Communist party of Russia.

For curious - LinkedIn is banned in Russia for exactly the same reason.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#59
post #35
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People? What people? Was there a vote held?

Corporations have better way to gauge the opinion of the silent majority.

Not the OP, but this is actually something I doubt.

There is a long list of expensive products that outright flopped or the public received them in a rather lukewarm way. The same is true about, say, movies.

If companies can make such huge mistakes in their core business, surely they aren't any better in gauging public opinion in politics.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#60
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was similar to self-censure from Amazon, that is if they wanted to still gain lucrative contracts with the military-industrial complex opposed by the candidate that they banned. To say nothing of the personal vendetta between the owner of Amazon and said candidate, the owner being the wealthyest man on Earth and directly controlling a big mouth-piece of the media (WashPo). The US is by definition an oligarchic sta…

Do you really think the previous president and the current president are enemies?

No, I don't think Biden and Trump are enemies, I do think Bezos and Trump are enemies. In fact I tried saying that but because English is not my mother language maybe it came out wrong.
Post reply on HN