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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'

#171

Post by soulofmischief »

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…

Just because some people are deprived of it doesn't mean it shouldn't be a right. And the fact that some of these communities don't even have time to consider it a priority when they're also deprived of other basic rights doesn't mean that it isn't also a basic right. It's not a fairy tale to expect basic human rights. The entire world could be connected if that's what powerful people wanted.

Internet should not be a luxury in any community. That is against the ethos of the web, which should be free, open and accessible. Your comment is needlessly patronizing and dismissive without actually presenting any evidence that the internet shouldn't be considered essential for any modern community.

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

#172

Post by hello_computer »

Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #158
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?

it’s a secret

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

#173

Post by lenerdenator »

ryandrake wrote: post #60
lenerdenator wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm beginning to think Europe needs to just dry out from soccer for a year or two. Like, we're impacting communications now.

This isn't a football problem, it's a "company has way too much power" problem. It's as if Coca-Cola were allowed to tell my water company to turn off my tap water for a few hours because I should be drinking their soda at lunchtime.

But why does the company have too much power?

Because there's a lot of money at stake surrounding soccer in Europe.

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

#174

Post by literalAardvark »

oeitho wrote: post #149
sebmellen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink is the only massively global ISP and (as far as I’m aware) has not cut off access for anyone based on their politics or location.

Not true at all, Elon Musk has already cut off access for Ukraine because of his own personal views[1]. There's a reason why he's currently hated in most of Europe. [1] https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4193788-musk-acknowledges...

That article is heavily slanted, while providing the facts hidden in the text: Starlink was never enabled in Sevastopol. Musk simply denied an informal request to enable it to be used in a first strike, and deferred that decision to the DoD, which he contacted.

Which is the correct thing to do when random people ask private companies to go to war.

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

#176

Post by M3L0NM4N »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #168
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare isn't the company with too much power in the above scenario: La Liga is. CF isn't turning off access because they want to, it's because La Liga convinced a court that Cloudflare is promoting "piracy" with the various websites they host (some of which, constituting less than a rounding error of the overall sites they host, may host pirated soccer streams), and convinced a court to have Cloudflare blocked.

If there was a viable competitor, then it wouldn’t matter so much if it was blocked or not…

The same IP rules would apply to anybody hosting any site that could have the pirated streams...

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

#177

Post by fluoridation »

pmontra wrote: post #153
fluoridation wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fine. Like I said, it's not the topic of discussion.

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

#178

Post by amarant »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #168
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare isn't the company with too much power in the above scenario: La Liga is. CF isn't turning off access because they want to, it's because La Liga convinced a court that Cloudflare is promoting "piracy" with the various websites they host (some of which, constituting less than a rounding error of the overall sites they host, may host pirated soccer streams), and convinced a court to have Cloudflare blocked.

If there was a viable competitor, then it wouldn’t matter so much if it was blocked or not…

What makes you think the competitor wouldn't simply be blocked as well?

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

#179

Post by Retric »

pstuart wrote: post #143
Retric wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the factory had simply shut down without hooking up their infrastructure, the area still would have had the exact same short term issues. The issue was arguably a lack of wells in an extreme situation, not a lack of water in the aquifer.

Aquifers are not infinite in capacity, so it's a valid point.

Again not what this was about.

If the area can’t support the factories water use then shut down the factory permanently. Wanting to hook up to its infrastructure is all about a lack of public infrastructure.

Many aquifers are over used, but that’s a long term problem and has nothing to do with a drought in a single year.

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

#180

Post by notavalleyman »

oefrha wrote: post #154
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.

Wagner* and russia's Libya intervention to continuously arm and support general khalifa haftar against the internationally recognised government
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