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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

#81

Post by mikeash »

arghwhat wrote: post #74
politician wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every time a certain show is broadcast on the TV. 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.

Ah, but then you're back at general taxation of a utility, not discriminatory taxation of certain content. I disagree wholeheartedly that it would make sense to have a government tax on TV slots, but it does not manipulate information exchange in any way. Taxing social media would be more akin to placing a tax on documentaries, or all content containing a narrative by Morgan Freeman.

Since this tax is on the user’s end, this would be more like a tax on watching documentaries, and then scrambling to control all DVD players and such to ensure they report your viewing.

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

#82

Post by anticensor »

ryan-c wrote: post #21
SomeRandomDev wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like China is good about public/shared VPN's. If you set up your own and keep the details to yourself I was under the impression that it'd work just fine. That being said I love to travel and can work wherever but haven't been to CN yet for this reason in particular.

From what I've heard second-hand (my SO has a friend who frequently travels to China), they do actually block people's private one-off VPN servers quite effectively. Have a look at https://www.cs.tufts.edu/comp/116/archive/fall2016/ctang.pdf - it talks about GFW using machine learning with flow analysis to do this.

Why do they not outright block encrypted connections which they fail to bruteforce?

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

#84

Post by mar77i »

temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #64

The Uganda OTT tax is probably meant to stifle online political speech and organizing, but the concept itself, taxing most over-the-top communication mediums that use the mobile networks solely as an opaque data pipe (and typically only work with their captive apps) is a concept that merits more discussion than being patently called "absurd". These services aren't interoperable, they exfiltrate data to foreign countr…

Are you a history professor or a diplomat of some sort?

You just delivered the kind of analysis I'd pay money to read in a paper.

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

#85

Post by xiii1408 »

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.

I had a similar experience after a visit to Mexico. I picked up an ATT Mexico SIM card, and noticed that it still worked after I got back to the US. I bought a new tariff each month for about $10 USD using Ding, and it worked great.

The only downsides were that I had a Mexican phone number (I use Google Voice anyway, so just needed the data) and, more importantly, that all the customer support was in Spanish...

I ended up ditching the SIM after about a year when the data stopped working when I bought a new tariff. Not sure how much this was due to my inability to navigate the Spanish customer interface vs. ATT cracking down on people doing exactly this.

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

#86

Post by sangnoir »

callahad wrote: post #48

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

The title is not misleading at all - the purpose of the tax is to discourage the use of social media. The (likely) president-for-life Museveni has expressed his strong displeasure with social media (particularly when it was used to mock him in the run up to removing term-limits) well before this law was promulgated. Strong-men do well with traditional media, which they can easily control.

Few Ugandans are going to spend 43p (per MMS) to send a meme gif mocking the government to 7 friends - this is entirely according to plan. Nevermind the local police (secret or otherwise) has easy access to MNO's servers compared to WhatsApp or Facebook for their investigations to support the charges of "incitement/treason".

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

#87

Post by TooBrokeToBeg »

exabrial wrote: post #41
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #33

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.

That doesn't sound any better. So if I have an asset that I'm not using, it's morally just to take it from me because I'm not using it?

> it's morally just

Morally? Definitely. Incentivizing trade promotes human survival. Is it "just" is a different question, because justice requires a set of idealogical social principles to start from. Natural rights, divine will, reparative, or some other. YMMV

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

#88

Post by callahad »

sangnoir wrote: post #86
callahad wrote: post #48

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 The title is not misleading at all - the purpose of the tax is to discourage the use of social media. The (likely) president-for-life Museveni has expressed his strong displeasure with social media (particularly when it was used to mock him in the run up to removing term-limits) well before this l…

Not familiar with the political situation in Uganda, but if that's the case, then framing this as a tax on "Over The Top" services (and including things like Skype in the restriction) is mainly about finding a plausible excuse for effectively censoring access to uncontrolled, peer-to-peer communication?

Sounds like the despots and the profiteers are aligned. Good luck, Uganda. :(

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

#89

Post by greglindahl »

forinti wrote: post #52
feikname wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because social media is simply one of the vast amount of websites on the internet, it's unfair to tax it alone. Either you tax the whole internet comsumption (e.g. every 5GB or something like that) or you don't. Imagine taxes specific to laundering machines that only apply when washing underwear, but not for any other clothes, it makes no sense. Also, the govt. snooping on what people access / banning use of VPNs rai…

You could argue that social media has a negative effect and that it should be taxed in the same way that alcohol (and soft drinks in some places) is taxed. I'm not arguing that social media has a net negative effect, but I can see how some internet sites could singled out and taxed.

In this case, the reason that Uganda is taxing social media is to stop people from criticizing the government. Taxes can be a great tool for censorship.

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

#90

Post by namlem »

pathseeker wrote: post #58
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #33

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.

They're the same thing. You can't have courts and police without paying them, and you can't pay them without taxes.
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