Earlier quoted context omitted.
>You libertarians are insufferable. Stick to content. Not attacks.
The content of his argument is libertarian.
"You libertarians are insufferable" is not exactly a critique of an argument.
Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax
101–110 of 172 posts
Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax
#102Someone needs to make a small sketch of the Uganda government with 7 year olds making up the laws. Child 1 - "Let's tax people for being on social media to stop them from saying bad things about us" Child 2 - "Yeah that's a great idea. Plus we'll have more money for candy." Govenments notice - "Social media is hereby taxed. Your local ISP will be collecting the tax automatically." People - "Whatever, we'll just use V…
I see this all the time on HN, the dismissal of real problems by suggesting the wide spread use of using highly technical solutions. It is naive and frankly arrogant. The vast majority of the population, and I'd bet it's even higher in Uganda does not even know what Tor is, yet alone how to use it. My mom just figured out how to send photos via text message for heaven's sake.
It is true the TOR does not solve the problem. But I don't think discussing how to solve it here would do anything for Uganda.
But if anybody from Uganda does find this. It's time to stand up and fight for your rights as a people and not let the corrupt politicians push you around. In the meantime, if you want to know how to use TOR here is a great tutorial: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2686467/privacy/how-to-use-t...
And here is the Facebook site for TOR: https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/
Good Luck!
Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax
#103I'm not sure why this tax should be labelled as absurd. Lots of countries tax TV, phone already. Taxing social media sounds weird only because no one else has done it yet.
I must agree- we like the idea of absolute neutrality, but the internet is so general purpose it's possible that society will ultimately settle on things like this.
TV and phone are two services both provided over one or two strands of copper, and each is taxed at a different rate. Is social media not just another service? Sure, it's built on TCP/IP, DSL, & DOSCIS, but cable TV is built on CATV and phone on ISDN.
If it is absurd to tax a social media service coming down the wire, then it is equally absurd to individually tax cable TV or phone service over the same wire. Yet, we hardly see that as absurd, we've been doing it for decades.
Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax
#104I'm not sure why this tax should be labelled as absurd. Lots of countries tax TV, phone already. Taxing social media sounds weird only because no one else has done it yet.
Taxing TV and phone is like taxing internet connectivity. While a bit odd, this is perfectly fine. The reason for this is that it does not discriminate content, but only care about the utility itself. Taxing social media is like taxing you for saying or hearing a specific word or sentence on the phone, or every time a certain show is broadcast on the TV. This is absurd, and a violation of free speech, as it discrimin…
Taxing TV and phone is like taxing internet connectivity.
Is it? Then why do you pay taxes to use VOIP? Is internet not a carrier, while TV & phone are services?
Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax
#105Someone needs to make a small sketch of the Uganda government with 7 year olds making up the laws. Child 1 - "Let's tax people for being on social media to stop them from saying bad things about us" Child 2 - "Yeah that's a great idea. Plus we'll have more money for candy." Govenments notice - "Social media is hereby taxed. Your local ISP will be collecting the tax automatically." People - "Whatever, we'll just use V…
The Chinese government has had a lot of success blocking Tor (and VPNs) most recently. You may know that all of the normal relays are publicly listed in the Tor directory, making them trivial to block by IP address. That will then require Tor users to do extra work to find bridges or configure pluggable transports for censorship circumvention, which most users may not be motivated enough to do. Censors can also try t…
I doubt the Uganda has the infrastructure that the Chinese government has to implement such a complex system. They would have to tax more internet usage. Youtube is probably next. "For every video you watch there is an entertainment tax."
Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax
#106As a professional network engineer this is utterly preposterous. Ignorant government officials who know nothing about how the Internet actually works, trying to fuck with it because it's something beyond their petty attempts at control. When will people realize that blocking VoIP and blocking a ton of other stuff (Ethiopia and the UAE are great examples), in the long term and in aggregate, results in more economic damage and a poorer telecom/Internet ecosystem than allowing all traffic freely? They're short sightedly trying to raise revenue by taxing the mobile phone carriers, who are 95% of the data connections in the country, when they should be focused on allowing telecoms to build better pipes for domestic and international traffic.
Quick edit: People who run major international ASNs and medium sized regional ASNs have a responsibility to not aid and abet this bullshit. Don't contract for government entities that want to implement filtering/blocking of stuff. Refuse to participate with network engineering and architecture decisions and implementation that hurt net neutrality. There is a finite pool of people with the real talent, clue and 15+ years of experience who can build carrier-grade ISP infrastructure. If people want to fuck up their domestic Internet in $COUNTRY, do not help them. No matter how lucrative it might appear at first glance.
There is such a thing as ethics in network engineering, just as there is in software engineering. Think long and hard about what you think defines an ethical ISP. If you're asked to do something contrary to that, refuse to participate.
Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Weird. In france calls in in the eu and to the usa are free and unlimited on most contracts.
France has it good. Here's my anecdote: I got a SIM card from France for my last trip for 20 euros (30$) all included. That was enough for what I needed it for. Fast forward, I come back to Canada, and I still have that SIM card. I can now use it locally, with unlimited text, calls and 25 GB of data, without paying a cent more. MMS included. My local phone contract is 70$ per months for 6 GB and a limited numbers of…
Just to add to this as I have done the same - the SIM I got game with 100gig of data, 25 if I used it outside of Europe (which included Britain!).
As far as I could tell, you’re a caveman in France if you use SMS or cell calls as they use WhatsApp. That surprised me.
Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax
#108The title seems misleading -- looking at the image in the article, it appears that the tax isn't on social media per se, but on any service that provides mobile voice / messaging functions over cellular data. Which is effectively a tax against cellular data being treated as a dumb pipe. Still not OK, but a fundamentally different beast than the title implies. If you're a telco in Uganda, and you have sufficient sway…
> The title seems misleading -- looking at the image in the article, it appears that the tax isn't on social media per se The title is not misleading at all - the purpose of the tax is to discourage the use of social media. The (likely) president-for-life Museveni has expressed his strong displeasure with social media (particularly when it was used to mock him in the run up to removing term-limits) well before this l…
Funny you mention easy access to MNO servers. This happened last night - https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/telecoms-and-tec...
Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax
#109I'm interested to see how they go about filtering VPN traffic. AFAIK, running openvpn over port 443 is pretty much indistinguishable from normal TLS traffic.
China's gotten pretty good at it. OpenVPN running over port 443 is generally going to be using a CA that is not a public CA, and issues certificates directly rather than through an intermediate. Even if you tunnel something over normal TLS, the type of traffic can potentially be determined by analyzing how much data flows in which direction and when. If circumvention is seen as too widely spread, Uganda may simply de…
>OpenVPN running over port 443 is generally going to be using a CA that is not a public CA, and issues certificates directly rather than through an intermediate.
nothing preventing you from using letsencrypt.
>Even if you tunnel something over normal TLS, the type of traffic can potentially be determined by analyzing how much data flows in which direction and when.
true, but only if you're doing packets-over-TCP. if you think beyond a VPN, like a https proxy (http proxy, but over TLS), it's indistinguishable from regular https traffic.
Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax
#110We've got a sugar tax here in the UK as our newest form of indulgence tax. I wonder how a social media tax would go down with the public.
Isn't it only a tax on sugary drinks? And from my personal experience it just seems to be pushing people to buy Coke Zero/Diet Coke instead. Most people I know haven't complained much about it. I wonder if it will have the indended effets of reducing sugar consumption.
The only time I noticed this is on the McDonald’s machine where the default is now Coke Zero (yuck) and “classic coke” costs 12p more. I still buy the classic coke. I hope the government puts the tax to good use!