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El Paquete Semanal

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Re: El Paquete Semanal

#51

Post by rakoo »

oconnore wrote: post #5

I think it's interesting to compare El Paquete Semanal to the response in the US to net neutrality and various social media scandals. When the threshold for action is high enough, the lack of open internet is overcome in Cuba without any special technology at all. Similar creative solutions pop up anywhere internet access is limited. In the US, most of the energy is spent on open source, high tech solutions that rare…

I think there's an issue in your thinking: you're only approaching this situation in terms of technology. This is in fact the reason why the "solution" in western countries is open source and decentralization: we think it's a technology problem, so the solution is technology. But, like most things, it is inherently a social problem.

Cuba has been under embargo for decades now, and its internet has been heavily censored since; they haven't known how ingrained FAANG are, how ubiquitous Android and iOS and twitter and all those things are. For us, Mastodon is an alternative to Twitter; if there never was an ubiquitous Twitter to begin with, would we have created a heavily asymmetric client-server architecture ?

Sneakernet is the digital continuation of gathering with people and exchanging. Cuba already had an intranet between interconnected homes. The social shape always defines the communications shape, so the reason a sneakernet works there is not enough to say that a sneakernet would work here.

Re: El Paquete Semanal

#52

Post by bruce511 »

kortilla wrote: post #42
bruce511 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In politics it's helpful to have an antagonist to point at and blame for everything bad. There's a villain in every story, and I best point him out to you in case you think it's me. Cuba is somewhat unique in that there are lot of ex-Cubans clustered in Florida, a swing state, who are there by virtue of being anti-Cuban-government. They are in favor of any policy that hurts the govt, even if it hurts the people left…

The nationalization of private property wouldn’t have been a problem if it was just US property. Many countries make it difficult/impossible for foreigners to own land. The problem was that they did it to their own citizens, resulting in many of them becoming the Cubans in Florida. BTW, labeling them “ex-Cubans” is a good way to piss them off (maybe that is your intention). Many see themselves as Cubans in asylum jus…

>> BTW, labeling them “ex-Cubans” is a good way to piss them off (maybe that is your intention).

It was not. I was not aware that term is offensive. My apologies. Cuban Exiles is perhaps a better description.

Re: El Paquete Semanal

#53

Post by SaintSeiya »

Convolutional wrote: post #16

It's bizarre how the US attempted to block Cuba from getting the Internet, and still blocks Cuban Internet through many means ( https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/other-site-policies/g... ), but the presentation is that the suppression of content is of Cuban origin. It reminds me of when the US said Cubans were not allowed to leave Cuba, and the mental hospitals and prisons were filled with political prisoners. C…

The only limiting Cubans access to internet is its own government that restricts internet access, blocks many websites, monitor every citizen's social media, don't respect privacy rights, and even have laws that fines and can put in jail Cubans for posting on social media complaints against the government and its politics. The Cuban dictatorship sees internet as its enemy because they cannot control the information there. I have lived through that hell for 30 years.

Re: El Paquete Semanal

#54

Post by yusmary »

bruce511 wrote: post #28
drpixie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From outside (I am not American) the anti-Cuba position seems to have an almost religious fervor! Almost like They're socialist, we're capitalist; it's natural, true, and necessary that we must oppose everything about them. Similar to the catholic v protestant division that was very strong in the anglo world last century. Surely, if one really wanted to dismantle an evil empire, one would open the borders as much as…

In politics it's helpful to have an antagonist to point at and blame for everything bad. There's a villain in every story, and I best point him out to you in case you think it's me. Cuba is somewhat unique in that there are lot of ex-Cubans clustered in Florida, a swing state, who are there by virtue of being anti-Cuban-government. They are in favor of any policy that hurts the govt, even if it hurts the people left…

Now that we are here, calling exiles anti-Cuban is also a good way to piss them off. That's the government stance: if you are against us, you are anti-Cuban.

This is not only a stance towards exilees, btw. If you oppose them, you get labelled the same no matter where you are.

Stop buying into the official position. It is demeaning

Re: El Paquete Semanal

#55

Post by 908B64B197 »

ibarrac wrote: post #31
Convolutional wrote: post #16

It's bizarre how the US attempted to block Cuba from getting the Internet, and still blocks Cuban Internet through many means ( https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/other-site-policies/g... ), but the presentation is that the suppression of content is of Cuban origin. It reminds me of when the US said Cubans were not allowed to leave Cuba, and the mental hospitals and prisons were filled with political prisoners. C…

That is not true. The US does not block Cuba from getting to the internet in general ( https://ofac.treasury.gov/media/912206/download?inline ), although it blocks most commerce in general under its embargo. Your linked webpage is a Github policy restricting the availability of Github Enterprise Server and Github Copilot in Cuba, not the internet. Your characterization of the Mariel boatlift is misleading and wrong.…

> Castro then demanded that in addition to their relatives, the boats had to be filled with common prisoners from jails and mental patients, who were given the choice of staying in prison or trying their luck emigrating on those boats. Castro wanted to provoke a crime wave in the US to tarnish the reputations of those Cubans living there.

I can't help but to see a parallel with the out of control flood of migrants (some of them potential legitimate refugees) Turkey let into Europe in order to put pressure on the European Union back in 2015.

Re: El Paquete Semanal

#56

Post by oconnore »

rakoo wrote: post #51
oconnore wrote: post #5

I think it's interesting to compare El Paquete Semanal to the response in the US to net neutrality and various social media scandals. When the threshold for action is high enough, the lack of open internet is overcome in Cuba without any special technology at all. Similar creative solutions pop up anywhere internet access is limited. In the US, most of the energy is spent on open source, high tech solutions that rare…

I think there's an issue in your thinking: you're only approaching this situation in terms of technology. This is in fact the reason why the "solution" in western countries is open source and decentralization: we think it's a technology problem, so the solution is technology. But, like most things, it is inherently a social problem. Cuba has been under embargo for decades now, and its internet has been heavily censor…

On the contrary, I wrote this as a reflection on our tendency to focus on technology systems instead of social systems. Another way to think about it is that a social system is just a different type or level of technology that can exist independent of or in close harmony with a technical system.

For example, the air transportation system is a complex social-technical system, where both the human patterns and the technology those humans use have evolved together over many years. Another example: a call tree, where the technical system is the phone line, and the social system is the training of people on who to call in the happy path and what to do if someone doesn't pick up.

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