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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably more like silicon valley. Bluecoat vars have been known to sell equipment to sanctioned countries and those that violate human rights.
https://www.voanews.com/a/iran-plans-its-own-sanitized-inter...
* Skype
which, while sure, are "social media" platforms, are also tools that you might use as a professional to do things like get jobs, or talk to clients, etc.
I'm not sure how pervasive those platforms are in Uganda, but certainly something that could really harm aspiring professionals without much in the way of resources.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You're literally taking people's money under the threat of force Money that would have no meaning, earned for work which would largely be impossible, without said threat of force.
>earned for work which would largely be impossible, without said threat of force. You're confusing threat of force to enforce property rights and personal freedoms with the threat of force to collect taxes.
How do you plan on paying your police?
Then again, it's awfully convenient for the President that these services are places where one can organize an opposition against him, and he can use the excuse of rumours, lies, or "fake news" to justify legislating against them. The tax regime now sets up a wealth transfer from every Ugandan to the state, where it will be squandered I'm sure.
What I find frustrating is that most coverage about this falls into the same tired tropes, like pointing out how little most Ugandans make in real US dollars as an insidious appeal to well-to-do westerners to envision the subjects of this tax as downtrodden poor who are being exploited by their (presumably) oppressive government. I thought we were beyond this kind of coverage, and recognize that people in less prosperous countries have the same agency, despite systemic problems with the 5-term Ugandan president's authoritarian tendencies, corruption, voter intimidation, lack of transparency, and poverty.
What this tax will do is hasten the decline of civil society and respect for the current administration's law in Uganda. It will broaden the gulf between the cronies of the President and everyone else, leaving more and more people dissatisfied with the governing party that once promised (and, in fairness, delivered) real reforms. He obviously knows this, and has been making moves to prolong his power as he feels the winds of change shift around him.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> analyzing how much data flows in which direction and when Encapsulated TCP SYN packets, for example, smaller than any HTTP request inside TLS would be. Want to beat that by padding? Everything always being the same size is an anomaly too.
So then we randomize the padding, what's next? How else do they figure it out? My mind jumps directly to funny traffic patterns like a single person using the domain or maybe a non-normal looking website that doesn't serve static assets to non-vpn users or other normal things, etc. Can they probe the server somehow and and figure out it's a vpn? Does the user need to visit other sites unrelated to the vpn in order to…
Only makes sense if you are doing it for a bunch of people and at that point you are another VPN provider.
The 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, 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…
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…
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…
It seems like an obvious thing to tax the airing of a show on TV. I'm in favor of the taxation of every 30 minute slot on TV and Cable.
This maybe makes sense to me because I'm a natural person (i.e. not a corporation), so everything I receive or produce or give away is taxed.
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.
Because tax, in general is absurd. You're literally taking people's money under the threat of force. Just because it is done quite universally does not justify the practice. More specifically, taxes are abused near universally. From the sugar taxes in Seattle (unless you are Starbucks), or forced Union dues that fund political campaigns, the practice is abused. Meanwhile necessary services like police, firefighters,…
So it's fine to attack taxes (even with this naive-libertarian "stealing my money under threat of force" line) but it's a very small problem in the big scheme of economic organisation.
We'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.