I imagine that this is less about the app than it is about controlling Google and Apple. Imagine Yandex was hosting Smart Voting apps for US elections
Russia restricts opposition election voting app
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Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app
#72I find some comments in this section quite funny.
Russia was blamed with USA elections rigging because someone payed for facebook ads to promote one of the candidates.
In this case we have every evidence, that a group of people, financed by foreign organizations, created multiple apps, websites and other sources to manipulate people voices.
Wake up guys, such activity should and will be banned in every country.
Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app
#73- Google removes Navalny's team google document with "Smart Vote" instructions. - YouTube blocks videos with Smart Vote instructions. - Telegram blocks a bot with Smart Vote the instructions
I’m a bit surprised by the telegram one - I thought they were uncooperative enough with law enforcement to blow this off. Guess not?
Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app
#74Why don't they just make a hundred new accounts and upload it under different names?
The government could do the same - but if Google and Apple were really concerned about democracy, they could just delete the fake entries faster than the real entries.
Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I don't know why people have such a hard time believing this. A 50 cent army to steer social media opinions is certainly a lot cheaper than aircraft carriers
The belief among technologists that censorship is a good thing is relative recent, and there is still quite a large number of people who still think that all censorship is bad when it comes from the powerful deciding what the powerless can see and do.
The group that is against censorship is likely still angry with companies like Facebook, twitter, apple, and it makes more sense that it is those people who continue to make jabs about past censorship. One do not need to pay people to be angry.
Here is a question: Does the hkai use above has a history of advocating free speech outside of articles that cover Russia? Is it consistent with someone who has not accepted that powerful companies should hold such power on society?
Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Parler isn't banned from the internet, it's banned from AWS and mobile app stores. These bans weren't ordered by the government either.
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…
> 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.
Sounds like pure speculation.
Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I don't know why people have such a hard time believing this. A 50 cent army to steer social media opinions is certainly a lot cheaper than aircraft carriers
It's sneaky. It's against site rules to make the accusation because it's usually impossible to confirm but it is absolutely a tactic used by foreign powers.
https://www.state.gov/russias-pillars-of-disinformation-and-...
Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app
#78- Google removes Navalny's team google document with "Smart Vote" instructions. - YouTube blocks videos with Smart Vote instructions. - Telegram blocks a bot with Smart Vote the instructions
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Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Not now, but people adapt when there's an incentive.
Already if you go in a country with restrictive internet, you'll find the average working-age person knows how to use a VPN. Regular drug users in western countries know how to use Tor. Hong-Kong protestors were using a bluetooth mesh network app.
Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app
#80Apple 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…
The latent power of big tech is incredible. Apple is so awash with cash, they could probably just stop doing business in a country without taking much damage. I don't know how big the russian market is for them - but for many countries smaller than that, they could dicate terms. Imagine the CEOs of a couple of tech companies meet for brunch, and decide to do something about human rights in order to feel good. So they tell country XY, get your human rights affairs in order, or, lol, no modern cell phones for you. (China would surely step in after some time, but look how much trouble Huawei was having with the sanctions and without Google apps recently outside of China.)
Also, consider that Apple, Google, Microsoft essentially have a backdoor on every piece of consumer electronics. They can push updates and do anything they want. Granted, this is a one-shot thing and might be ruinous for the company if abused, but if I was a foreign government I would be terrified.
I bet there are a lot of beind the scenes power struggles going on - the US supplies a lot of critical software, the PRC lots of hardware, Tawian has TSMC, Europe has ASML (and this is just the tech sector). Nobody wants to use their nuclear options, but with every public development you see, these powers are priced in. Probably, Google and Apple had long conversations with the state department, and somewhere the decision was made to comply with the Russian government. But the result could have easily been different.