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Russia restricts opposition election voting app

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Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#221

Post by mullingitover »

belorn wrote: post #84
ookdatnog wrote: post #31

Earlier 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.

To me the negative aspects of censorship is not exclusive to governments. It is any censorship when it comes from the powerful controlling the powerless in order to maintain that power relationship. Government vs citizen is one form of power relation, but so is dominating market holder vs user. A third is infrastructure vs user. Apple has decided to hold the power of being the gatekeeper of mobile apps. Every time th…

> To me the negative aspects of censorship is not exclusive to governments. It is any censorship when it comes from the powerful controlling the powerless in order to maintain that power relationship.

Parler was bankrolled by the 'powerless' heiress daughter of oligarch Robert Mercer.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#222

Post by belorn »

mullingitover wrote: post #221
belorn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the negative aspects of censorship is not exclusive to governments. It is any censorship when it comes from the powerful controlling the powerless in order to maintain that power relationship. Government vs citizen is one form of power relation, but so is dominating market holder vs user. A third is infrastructure vs user. Apple has decided to hold the power of being the gatekeeper of mobile apps. Every time th…

> To me the negative aspects of censorship is not exclusive to governments. It is any censorship when it comes from the powerful controlling the powerless in order to maintain that power relationship. Parler was bankrolled by the 'powerless' heiress daughter of oligarch Robert Mercer.

Everything I had read says that the reason it was taken down was because of what users did on the platform. They did not want those users accessing the site, and so they went after the platform.

We could all be cheering for the fact that the powerful went after those users, and then be angry when they go after users we want to protect, but I don't. I rather want to promote users ability to choose themselves if they want a filter that removes Parler members from their own devices.

On HN there is a setting which allow users to see dead comments. Its a user setting. There could be any number of dead comments and yet users can see them if they choose to do so. Such a simple choice makes a rather large difference in the power relation between HN moderators and HN user. Without it this whole discussion could not even exist as the parent comment is dead.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#223

Post by mullingitover »

belorn wrote: post #222
mullingitover wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me the negative aspects of censorship is not exclusive to governments. It is any censorship when it comes from the powerful controlling the powerless in order to maintain that power relationship. Parler was bankrolled by the 'powerless' heiress daughter of oligarch Robert Mercer.

Everything I had read says that the reason it was taken down was because of what users did on the platform. They did not want those users accessing the site, and so they went after the platform. We could all be cheering for the fact that the powerful went after those users, and then be angry when they go after users we want to protect, but I don't. I rather want to promote users ability to choose themselves if they w…

Parler had contractual obligations with AWS that they violated, were given opportunities to correct the violations, and were unable to do so. AWS hosts more objectionable content than Parler, but those parties are able to keep themselves within the bounds of their contract. It's that simple. Parler wasn't censored, they breached their contract and so their contract was terminated.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#225

Post by hvis »

egao1980 wrote: post #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.

No they weren't. The app doesn't need the name of the user at any step.

It wasn't storing the address either - it just has a search field where you input your address any time you need to use it.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#226

Post by hvis »

p49k wrote: post #23
sneak wrote: 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…

> They have a device in the hands of more than a billion people who spend hours per day staring at it.

Including 99% of Russian legislators. They're suckers for luxury.

To be fair, though, executing political pressure through this kind of means might raise certain red flags back in US, even if that only happens in Russia, one time.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#227

Post by akho »

gnull wrote: post #212
akho wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The candidates are known beforehand. Putin’s men do not need Navalny to tell them whether there is a popular candidate in an electoral district. Consolidation of “protest” votes does not make someone win an election; it gives a small extra push in contested districts.

You really don't see the difference between eliminating all the candidates (and all popular candidates) and eliminating one candidate per district? Smart Voting™ creates these popular candidates in the districts where all competitors of Putin's guy are more or less equally popular. Knowing whom they will make popular is an advantage for Putin, don't you agree? I have a feeling you're arguing out of stubbornness. My o…

“One per district” is 225, “all popular” in contested districts is, like, maybe 70?

Smart voting does not create new popular candidates. It’s a way to concentrate the 5 % they can access (or 2 %, if badly mismanaged by publishing the list too late) in an efficient way.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#228

Post by squarefoot »

thih9 wrote: post #213
squarefoot wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a rabid dog attacks you, you won't save yourself by politely asking it to stop.

I still don't know what you mean; I was hoping for something specific (i.e. not metaphors or implied and unclear solutions).

I'm not the OP, mine was an interpretation. My take is that being against violence is a good thing unless it leads to the point of self destruction.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#229

Post by atemerev »

ingas wrote: post #207
atemerev wrote: post #32

The current elections are shameful even by Russian standards. These are the recordings of some falsifications that happened in this cycle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1knqpiDrtUs (until YouTube bans this video too).

It's shameful that there is no real opposition in Russia. Looking on Latin America it's always ends with something violent. On the other side: in Asia it's usually transforms into something not that bad, e.g. South Korea.

There is “no real opposition” in Russia, because real opposition is in prisons.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#230

Post by skinkestek »

shadowgovt wrote: post #211
eitland wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And neither of them are feature complete with Pine phone either which is the reason for this thread :-) Actually owning your own phone to the point of deciding yourself what runs on it and what does not and being able to repair it easily are two huge features when you start to think about it.

Unfortunately, if you ask the average user whether they want detailed control of what runs on their phone or a Facebook app, they're going to go for the Facebook app. Most users don't have any utility in detailed control. They don't even know what to do with it.

> Most users don't have any utility in detailed control. They don't even know what to do with it.

Can I chime in and say that:

- Surprisingly many are getting uncomfortable with the current situation.

- If this had been our collective conclusion 20 years ago we wouldn't be sitting here working on blazingly fast Linux dev machines running dirt cheap servers in vast clouds, we would have been stuck with Windows (and probably an inferior version to Windows 10, since without competition there's less pressure to perform)

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