271–280 of 437 posts
Note: My comment is about communication restrictions and not about Imran Khan or Pakistan. Restricting communication does indeed introduce a bias in information that people may get and thus the opinion they may forge. As such, freedom of communication is a pilar of democracy. But in some cases, communication may also be harmful and should be limited. Regardless if the info is true or false, if it may generate a harmf…
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> The problem is, guys with guns will come to your door, beat you with a wrench, and put you in jail. This is hyperbole. A dictator might have the tools to shut off a couple of dissident. But if you have a large portion of the population running these dishes, it's game over. > Most people are bootlickers. Most people want the type of power structure that ends up with the internet blocked. They don't want freedom - th…
A significant portion of Mainland Chinese Internet users have access to a VPN. They can read the whole Internet. It's been that way for about 10 years. Why isn't it "game over" yet for the Chinese Communist Party? How about Myanmar or Cambodia, which have much less sophisticated national Internet firewalls? Still going dictator-strong.
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He was complicit in the Gujurat riots ethnic cleansing[0] Demonetization was a scheme to enrich his billionaire friends and party[0]. There's a lot more, and being the PM he hasn't allowed the media to question him. He only appears in staged interviews singing his praises or speeches. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Gujarat_riots [1] https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/national/bjp-members-kne...
> Gujurat riots ethnic cleansing…Demonetization…only appears in staged interviews singing his praises or speeches None of this is corruption. Authoritarianism. Populism, perhaps. But not fraudulent, not bribery, and not corruption.
Even if that were true(which it's not), that's not a good defense of Modi.
"Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain."
Scrolling through the comments, Imran was arrested for accepting bribes worth billions while in office. Some comments say it's true, the other it's false charges. Does anybody have a credible source for what's really going on? The point of propaganda is not to make people believe it. It is to foster cynicism so that we don’t know what to believe and come to believe that nothing is true, no facts are reliable, and the…
Right away after reading that news, one could have predicted how things would go.
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> The problem is, guys with guns will come to your door, beat you with a wrench, and put you in jail. This is hyperbole. A dictator might have the tools to shut off a couple of dissident. But if you have a large portion of the population running these dishes, it's game over. > Most people are bootlickers. Most people want the type of power structure that ends up with the internet blocked. They don't want freedom - th…
A significant portion of Mainland Chinese Internet users have access to a VPN. They can read the whole Internet. It's been that way for about 10 years. Why isn't it "game over" yet for the Chinese Communist Party? How about Myanmar or Cambodia, which have much less sophisticated national Internet firewalls? Still going dictator-strong.
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> EU citizens have no freedom of speech I was thinking exactly that the other day, while watching a TV show on national publicly funded television, where a variety of pundits where discussing the first year of the present term of the ruling president, and the on-set comedian summed up the situation : "the panel and the country is split in two : those that don't like the ruler, and those who hate him". The youngest pa…
The problem with it is that you only have free speech until someone higher in the power structure decides whatever you're saying is insulting. Free speech in the US is actually limited in some ways, for example speech is only protected from abridgement by the government, something that's becoming more relevant by the day as social media platforms gain more and more sway over the public discourse.
The "sway" that social media platforms have over public discourse is often vastly overstated for political ends, certainly compared to that of governments (as the argument is often made that social media platforms are more powerful than governments, to make them seem more threatening.)
And the real problem is, if you consider the ability of social media platforms to moderate content to be harmful, the only solution is to have government limit the free speech of those platforms and those who participate on them by coercing them into publishing speech they don't want to, which cedes power to a potentially even worse entity. People are so terrified of the perceived power social media has now (to the point of wanting to make "algorithms" illegal) that they're willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Facebook can ban me from their platform but at least they can't send goons to my house and ban me from life.
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If you want to learn about the many different ways to accomplish goals like this, you can look into the terms 'decentralization' and 'post-scarcity society'.
Rather than wasting everyone’s time, why don’t you enlighten us about how you think those different concepts should combine? Be sure to include examples.
If you think such a complex and broad question can be distilled to a pithy HN comment, go right ahead - why demand that I do it?
I pointed OP to the words that best enable them to find their own answers. That's not a waste of time, it's useful information that they seem to have lacked.
If you don't think that's useful, fine - offer your own answer.
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> The problem is, guys with guns will come to your door, beat you with a wrench, and put you in jail. This is hyperbole. A dictator might have the tools to shut off a couple of dissident. But if you have a large portion of the population running these dishes, it's game over. > Most people are bootlickers. Most people want the type of power structure that ends up with the internet blocked. They don't want freedom - th…
if you have a large portion of the population running these dishes, it's game over. Sadly this is wishful and overly optimistic thinking. The Tiananmen Square protesters thought similarly. Dictators will massacre their own people
A counter example is the CCP backing down from the Covid restrictions under popular pressure. If enough people put pressure, the government will react.
> Dictators will massacre their own people
You have to be reminded that the government (and the army) are themselves made of the people. This has the interesting consequences that the most brutal ones are actually oil-funded (because they can outsource security) or countries that have a racial/cultural divide (because they can rally one segment of the population against another, ie: Syria).
When people say crypto is the answer to cash, I ask them what happens when the internet is down
You don't need to take down the entire internet to sabotage cryptocurrency either. Many cryptocurrencies rely on a few key validation servers as running and processing the entire block chain all the time becomes very resource intensive as crypto gains popularity. A strategic attack on only a relatively small amount of servers (8000 in the case of ethereum and all coins using that blockchain) can DoS many cryptocurrencies worldwide. Furthermore, over 46% of Ethereum's servers are controlled by two parties, so if a government can seize those companies it's likely capable of doing a 51% attack to sabotage many cryptocurrencies used on exchanges today.
I doubt there's any risk of sabotage in practice, but like most digital payment methods, this stuff only works if there's an internet connection.
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What you suggest is impossible, because you are attacking a wrench on the head problem with a coding solution. You can always get a dish and connect to your choice of orbital provider, if your ISP - which is regulated - is blocked. The problem is, guys with guns will come to your door, beat you with a wrench, and put you in jail. Now if we solve for the real issue - lack of freedom because of a ruling class, the tech…
As a EU citizen I’m a bit offended, how do EU citizens have no freedom of speech?