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Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

theguardian.com

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Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#151

Post by gimme_treefiddy »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #20
junaru wrote: post #19

Given how internet exploited and divided people in the west i don't blame them. Ignorance is bliss and i want it back.

What? They don't block Internet because they want their people united. They do it because they are authoritarians who want to control every aspect of people's lives. India doesn't top the list of countries that cut Internet access because it's a haven of national unity, lol. It's probably a country more divided than any Western ones.

Lets peek into whether those divisions are organic or driven through NGOs.

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#152

Post by ty6853 »

bilbo0s wrote: post #136
Synaesthesia wrote: post #128

Internet has become an essential right up there with housing, electricity, water etc. Everywhere around the world people are connected to the internet. Even in poor African countries.

Um. Yeah. The internet is important. But if you go some places in this world you learn in a very swift fashion that it is not as important as housing, food, and water. There's parts of the world that are not a fairy tale. Places where people have far more basic worries. That said, if there are parts of Africa where people want the luxury of internet, they should, of course, be allowed access. The mere fact that they…

Counterpoint: in the third world some 3rd rate shack with a shitty well or water source may often come 'free' as it stays in the family. I have seen people in the third world blow most their paycheck on phone and internet related charges since food/water/shelter may cost a villager in a farm basically nothing and the internet is entertainment and communication for a whole month.

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#153

Post by pmontra »

fluoridation wrote: post #120
leereeves wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way these countries treat their citizens is rarely a secret. I'd say a better analogy is that gun stores should not sell guns to known felons.

What would prevent gun stores from selling guns to criminals would be the law and the punishments doled out by the government. So if your argument is that Switzerland should punish Swiss companies for dealing with oppressive governments, then yeah, maybe. That's not the topic of discussion, though. If someone buys a gun in a foreign country, and after returning to his home country he shoots a man, is he subject to th…

> if your argument is that Switzerland should punish Swiss companies for dealing with oppressive governments

Some countries require an export license for some products and companies might get it to export to friendly countries and not get it for other countries. It's similar to sanctions. Those licenses apply even to some piece of software (spying tools et al.) Companies caught selling without a license are punished.

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#154

Post by oefrha »

4b11b4 wrote: post #72

This should be an extremely high profile piece of news... Imagine people all over planet Earth talking to each other in real life, in passing.. "Did you hear Internet access is cut off in ____"? Is there not some "tracker" out there? I'm sure it would be hard to keep up to date but..

Did you hear about hundreds of thousands of people dying in South Sudan’s civil war since 2013? Did you hear about the return of open-air slave markets in Libya since NATO intervention in 2011? Did you hear about dozens of other hideous things happening in Africa? It’s almost comical that you think people elsewhere would give a shit about such a comparatively minor thing as Internet interruptions.

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#155

Post by sandy_coyote »

HaZeust wrote: post #147
ryandrake wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I try to come up with an exaggerated hypothetical and it turns out to be a real example. We live in a ridiculous world.

That's why I haven't taken life so seriously and been as uptight about things in recent years; because life sure as hell doesn't take us serious lol

I need to try out this line on my manager in stand-up later today.

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#156

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

m3047 wrote: post #139
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #43

Apps should respond to events like this by becoming smaller--so that you can only collaborate with people on your network partition. Most of the time they instead break altogether. The future is way to uncertain to assume a reliably connected future, which is what most of our tech is doing.

I made a wifi firing range / disconnected collab environment to this end a few years ago. Has BIND (which takes over the world), Apache, DAV, Etherpad. I carry a VM of it around on my laptop "against the day".

Thats a cool idea. Instead of initializing our hard disks with 0's we should fill them with things like that so that people have a chance of finding them as needed.

Does it have a corresponding repo or blog post or anything like that?

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#157

Post by Terr_ »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #128

Internet has become an essential right up there with housing, electricity, water etc. Everywhere around the world people are connected to the internet. Even in poor African countries.

It's interesting to think that if the US Constitution had been created in today's technological environment, the founders would have authorized a federal United States Internet Service, as opposed to a postal one.

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#158

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

hello_computer wrote: post #27

I blocked Africa from my networks a couple weeks ago, and the number of attempts in my logwatch emails has been cut in half ever since. Sometimes even more.

what are you using to block entire geographical regions?

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#159

Post by bilbo0s »

ty6853 wrote: post #152
bilbo0s wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um. Yeah. The internet is important. But if you go some places in this world you learn in a very swift fashion that it is not as important as housing, food, and water. There's parts of the world that are not a fairy tale. Places where people have far more basic worries. That said, if there are parts of Africa where people want the luxury of internet, they should, of course, be allowed access. The mere fact that they…

Counterpoint: in the third world some 3rd rate shack with a shitty well or water source may often come 'free' as it stays in the family. I have seen people in the third world blow most their paycheck on phone and internet related charges since food/water/shelter may cost a villager in a farm basically nothing and the internet is entertainment and communication for a whole month.

If they had access to internet, you weren't in the parts of Africa I'm talking about. There is a difference between undeveloped, developing and developed.

You go to an undeveloped place, you wouldn't be worried about phones or internet access. You just accept that you're going to be off the grid for the duration of your stay in that village. Alternatively, you bring your communications equipment with you so that you can stay in touch with your, "base", for lack of a better term. But I can tell you right now, that equipment better not be dependent on internet access.

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#160

Post by FirmwareBurner »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #95
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it doesn't stop them. Yeah? Where are the pirate ISPs of North Korea then? Mate, you're fighting with ghosts here. There are legit ISPs in EU, you don't need pirate ones. And there are legit VPNs to bypass whatever soft government restrictions are in place. There's no point arguing about endless made up hypotheticals.

Do we suspect there's significant demand for internet in North Korea? Market potential, sure. But I'm guessing if you asked North Korea what information distribution they wanted, they would say they just want a more honest newspaper.

>Do we suspect there's significant demand for internet in North Korea?

Why not? They literally throw USB sticks and optical media over the border. After my country broke away from communism, content consumption of foreign media was the highest priority.

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