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Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax

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Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax

#111

Post by pas »

walrus01 wrote: post #106

As 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 da…

Incompetence at that level is malice. Short sightedness is nothing new in politics. As is fucking with the middle class. (I mean with those who understand the problem of blocking certain kinds of Internet traffic.)

Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax

#112

Post by lostlogin »

briandear wrote: post #75
sametmax wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. In france calls in in the eu and to the usa are free and unlimited on most contracts.

That was one of my (only) favorite parts of my French cell plan. It’s a bit sad when the less developed world rapes their customers. For example, What’s App got big, especially in Latin America because up until a few years ago, a typical Mexican cell plan would include 10 included SMSes per month, then overages were something like 25 (US) cents. Carlos Slim got away with that nonsense because he had a government mand…

> That was one of my (only) favorite parts of my French cell plan. It’s a bit sad when the less developed world rapes their customers.

That’s a developed world problem isn’t it, or at least it’s bad there too?

A downside of the situation you discuss is that it’s not easy to navigate the current situation, as you can’t communicate with certain people if you don’t want WhatsApp. In France i encountered several people don’t have a cellphone number for calls or SMS, and my interest in WhatsApp is zero, preventing communication except by email.

Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax

#113

Post by walrus01 »

pas wrote: post #111
walrus01 wrote: post #106

As 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 da…

Incompetence at that level is malice. Short sightedness is nothing new in politics. As is fucking with the middle class. (I mean with those who understand the problem of blocking certain kinds of Internet traffic.)

Oh, it's absolutely malicious. In a typical $RANDOM_DEVELOPING_NATION the amount of corruption and graft that goes on between the "Minister of Communications" and other government entities (quasi-state-owned telco in the UAE for example) is something that has to be seen first hand to be believed. Those who are in power have no interest in actually having something like a diverse IP transit and transport carrier ISP ecosystem (as the US, Western Europe do, take a look at how many carriers and ISPs are connected to the AMS-IX and DE-CIX). They care about their short term personal financial gain.

Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax

#114

Post by lostlogin »

arghwhat wrote: post #31
rb808 wrote: post #10

I'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 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.

Is it? After the shenanigans that have been uncovered with recent elections (specifically referring to the US and Britain, I’m sure there are others) is ‘free speach’ really anthing that is being defended by opposing this tax?

Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax

#115

Post by Lordarminius »

walrus01 wrote: post #106

As 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 da…

Welcome to Africa! This is the sort of shit we have to put up with here.

Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax

#116

Post by lostlogin »

dev_dull wrote: post #44
rb808 wrote: post #10

I'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.

Telephones have taxes, but has anyone tried anything like this? Calling mother: 15¢/minute Calling children: 3¢/minute Calling policy: 25¢/minute

Interesting exercise - if calling certain relatives received tax credits you could potentially achieve something positive.

Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax

#117

Post by walrus01 »

Lordarminius wrote: post #115
walrus01 wrote: post #106

As 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 da…

Welcome to Africa! This is the sort of shit we have to put up with here.

or uzbekistan, or russia, or vietnam, or cuba, or belarus, or iran, or most small pacific island nation-states... I've worked in African telecom and many countries there are really good examples of the phenomenon but are by no means the only.

Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax

#118

Post by rootsudo »

walrus01 wrote: post #117
Lordarminius wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to Africa! This is the sort of shit we have to put up with here.

or uzbekistan, or russia, or vietnam, or cuba, or belarus, or iran, or most small pacific island nation-states... I've worked in African telecom and many countries there are really good examples of the phenomenon but are by no means the only.

Philippines is also another great example.

Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax

#119

Post by purge »

I'm living in Uganda at the moment and have a couple of things to add:

1. VPNs still work fine (I'm using one right now, though its one I installed on a digitalocean instance - it's possible those receiving lots of traffic have now been blocked).

2. This tax is unaffordable for many Ugandans (it would be about 5% of the average wage here). Whatsapp is very popular here and this has impacted everybody I know. Most people I've talked to are using a free VPN (they aren't aware of the risks here).

I haven't done much analysis of the blocking yet but I will be doing a more in-depth post about this whole debacle in a few days.

Re: Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax

#120

Post by Matt3o12_ »

sametmax wrote: post #67
Matt3o12_ wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we are at it, I still pay 1€ a minute for international calls (EU/Switzerland/USA) but I can talk for hours on WhatsApp, and FaceTime audio before I come close to 1GB data. Telecoms don’t charge in propositions for what they are providing (the cost + small markup for profit), they charge what they think customers are willing to pay, and since there is no real competition (at least in my country), they can do pr…

Weird. In france calls in in the eu and to the usa are free and unlimited on most contracts.

Well Germany does have the most expensive plans it seems. I pay for 3GB what my Austrian friends pay for 30GB and don’t even have LTE, although this is because I chose a plan on the D network (that just means it uses 900MHZ instead of 1800MHZ) and brought them through a resell because that’s about 1/3 cheaper.

They offer an option for about 10€ a month which offers unlimited international calls but only to landlines. 10€ is also how much unlimited texts cost – but I don’t send many texts anyways so 3 * 20¢ a month is not too bad.

I think the real problem is that there is no real competition in Germany. They are 3 carriers, 2 of them use the D network but are very expensive and one is cheaper but only uses 1800HZ frequencies which makes them unusable in most buildings. You have a false sense of competition from third party resells which either use the a slow network, a slow connections, or just don’t offer LTE/4G at all (although their customer support is usefully way better then one of the three carriers).

After all, we almost pay American prices in terms of $/GB, but live in a very dense area, we don’t need a lot of rual coverage (unlike in America where you can go 300 miles in one way and don’t meet anybody) and have no difficult mountains. Even according to our government we have “good and fair telecom regulations”.

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