When Togo turned off the internet | Hacker News Reader

When Togo turned off the internet

theguardian.com

Not-so-minor correction: the message scrawled on the asphalt in the last photo says "Faure doit partir", which is French for "Faure MUST leave", not "should".

I feel the core message of the article is that our online media are making us complacent. I know lots of people on social media who are really angry about politics and post furiously all day long. And I wonder, what are they accomplishing?

I wonder about this when I read a news article online and see there are 2k comments on it. So much energy spent churning out--what I assume the author believes are 'thoughtful'--comments that no one will ever read.

I have unemployed friends and relatives who spend their entire day arguing on social media. When I challenge them on whether this is the best use of their time, they tell me they are changing the world.

And then I read about the bot-armies flooding social media and news articles with comments intended to make certain positions seem more prevalent. I think about all the humans arguing with those bots and what a waste of time and effort it all is.

The internet makes it seem like there's so much sound and fury going on in the world, but then I step outside and find my local community working harmoniously on making our spot on Earth a better place. It's important to unplug from the unreality and look around you.

> With WhatsApp, penniless guys would send women virtual flowers and rings. Now, they had to find money to buy real ones. Men who previously sought to impress ladies by copying and pasting cute quotes and images on social media now had to go out, bring friends together in a bar, pay the bill and prove their real verbal and intellectual skills.

I wonder if that's meant as a humorous exaggeration or seriously, because it sounds simply made up.

I suspect the author believes it, and even believes they have reason to - while at the same time having no real evidence. The Guardian does some great writing in terms of crafting narratives, but they just don't seem to have the level of numeracy to make sure their stories reflect overall reality rather than exceptional anecdotes. Can anyone recommend a good source for this kind of news?

Well, someone said it to them, as the preceding sentence makes clear. That's journalism.

No, seriously - journalism is not about digging until you find some kind of underlying "fact", there simply isn't time and what you're asking for could potentially be an extraordinary amount of work; journalism is about reporting what the reporter sees and what people tell them. Obviously it's incumbent on them to evaluate their sources, but not usually to write next to the sources' words the journalist's own opinion of the situation.

You can usually see this structure in reporting, where sources will be either named or given an anon descriptor (here "a friend").

"The Iraqi information minister says that Iraq has not been invaded": this is accurate journalism if he really did say that.

"Iraq has not been invaded" (no source) : not accurate journalism.

"The jews are responsible for funding the invasion of Iraq" : fake news.

Unsourced quotes, information is called gossip. Repeated gossip is called hearsay.

Anonymous sources are kind of essential to getting certain kinds of information where the source would face reprisal, e.g most famously Daniel Ellsberg.

This is why the "Chatham House rules" exist and are widely used. https://www.chathamhouse.org/about/chatham-house-rule

Journalism's continued defense of chivalry further enables the abuse. Akin to bringing cardboard tube swords to a gun fight.

So .. how do you propose covering stories where nobody will talk on the record?

How do you propose filtering, ignoring the vast majority of "news" that is unsourced?

Seems more like in both instances, the person is proving that they have money to "waste" more than anything else.

Plus ca change...

It would be interesting to see how a first world country which depends far more heavily on the internet would cope with a shutdown.

Would be a brave government that would try that!

Edit: I’m reminded of the Imperial Russian government (pre-revolution) banning vodka which had the dual effect of reducing tax income and increasing their unpopularity.

Brave? It would have to be a desperate government pretty much anywhere in the world.

When Arab Spring kicked off, the Egyptian government responded to protests by shutting down the internet under the apparent delusion that lack of coverage and coordination would mean the protests didn't amount to much, and loss of internet definitely wouldn't be taken as a sign something much bigger than usual was going on. It was the moment I thought they were finished.

(c.f. Erdogan who survived an attempted coup by getting his supporters to flood social media with his messages after losing control of state TV)

I don't think the Togo government - a dynasty in power for half a century - will be around for much longer either.

In some countries like Sweden, it would wreck the economy. The push towards a cashless society in Sweden means few ATMs, and the majority of banks not even having any cash on hand.

For a country like the United States, where electronic payments make up around half of the total commerce volume, it would be painful, some economic carnage would be wraught, but business would still keep going. The upper-middle class and upper class would be the most affected, as most in that section of society don't keep cash on hand. Comparatively, the lower class which is mostly disenfranchised from the banking system would fare okay with some cash on hand, and those on EBT & WIC would incur an inconvenience as retailers had to call the state for voice auths rather than processing those transactions via a terminal.

> Business would still keep going

I was thinking about Industries. Think "just in time" and SAP.

Sure you could call but what about VoIP.

The largest chains would suffer the most. They don't train their staff on how to handle outages, and most are centrally managed, soviet esque command companies, with local store managers & staff not having the skills to price or order inventory. Some chains don't let anyone at the store level do pricing or promotions at all.

I think you're underestimating just how reliant all but the most trivial firms are on reliable communications for even basic operations, and just how many of those communications touch the internet at some level. Sibling comment mentions "just in time" supply chains, even "once a month" supply chains would collapse because nobody would know what to load in the trucks, and nobody would know which drivers were supposed to go where. I would not assume that government benefits payments would work unaffected, and especially not that you could "call the state for voice auths" (that sounds like something that involves VOIP and an outsourced datacenter).

Ironically, the big banks and credit card clearing houses and the electronic payments they facilitate would probably be among the least affected, because they still largely run on in-house mainframes and dedicated lines. Assuming that the POTS telephone network still work, the last generation of credit card terminals (dial-up) might actually still work.

Assuming just the internet and SMS/MMS were disabled, most smaller companies would fall back to calling and faxing eachother. Esp. among wholesalers, faxing is still very popular.

With regard to voice auths, I doubt the state would have their hotline go down, rarely do they use the public internet to backhaul calls.

Most credit card processing is over IP. Chains like Kroger (and their 200+ subsidiaries), Walmart, etc would not be able to process cards. A small double digit segment of small businesses would fail over to processing over phone, but most Verifone and FD terminals have dial disabled.

> Assuming just the internet and SMS/MMS were disabled, most smaller companies would fall back to calling and faxing eachother.

Hmm. Likely not working either given that telcos have migrated their backbones to fiber/internet long ago, and the exchanges between telcos are quite possibly also reliant on Internet.

Do any businesses still have the old credit card impression machines? Where you run a pressure roller over the card to make a copy of the numbers on a multi-part carbonless form? Because my most recent card doesn't have the raised info on it to take an impression.

I'm sure many of them have the machines, still. The new kids pull them out from under the counter top and muse, "What are THESE for?!"

Aside from what you said about the embossed cards, I suspect the greater problem is probably the multi-part forms. I've seen embossing machines more recently than I've seen a stack of credit slips.

For what it is worth, you can take a decent impression of a card with an ordinary piece of thermal receipt paper and a firm rubbing with a soft plastic like a Bic pen barrel or a thumbnail.

I worked in a grocery store about 5 years ago and the machines went down. We used the impression machine and everything was fine.

It may break some rule, but there's no reason you can't just write all the information down. That's ultimately just a slower version of what the impression machine does.

Yep. And still in common use in some places.

The number isn't high enough to be meaningful, but many of the wealthier folks that I know have safes built into their homes and offices. Some even have a safe built into their car and may have another built into their RV, if they have one.

I haven't seen inside all their safes, but I have seen inside a few of them - including my own. In those, again a very small sample size, there is always some cash.

I tend to be willing to jump on a deal and have a small automobile addiction. So, I keep a pretty decent stash on hand. The amount will vary, please don't rob me, but it's not unheard of for me to have nearly six figures in between a couple of safes.

If I'm planning on buying something big(ish), I may have already taken the cash out to have it on-hand. I live in a crime-free area, as in zero crime, so it's not really a risk. People will often favor me in barter, if they know I have cash immediately available.

So, if I'm going to a car show, then I will have extra cash already in my safe. If I'm going to be traveling, there will be extra cash in my safe. If I haven't made it to deposit the money, there will be extra cash in my safe.

A friend of mine owns an excavation/trucking company. I know he's usually got six, or more, figures in his safe - though some will be in checks.

Another one owns a bunch of franchises and doesn't always make it to the bank as often as he should. He's good for a five digit sum, probably (speculating) in the $20k region, plus whatever he usually has in there. This will usually be after a long holiday weekend.

I can't really say much about the rest but those are the only ones where I know some of the contents and they all have decent amounts of cash.

Again, that's a very, very small sample size and a very biased sample. I'm not sure if it carries over to other people and to other areas.

Since I retired to here, there have been zero property crimes. That's ten years. There have been zero violent crimes. The only crimes I know about was some guy was in an accident while he was driving drunk and one guy who led police on a merry chase that happened to go up the State highway. So, this may very well not apply elsewhere.

I know you know that's a biased sample, but I've been trying to estimate just how unusual it is and can't find the right stats. Six figures in cash is I think more than median total net worth. Having that much as an individual rather than a business is clearly top 10% territory and maybe even top 1%.

Definitely very odd to have 6 figure in cash on hand in the top 10%. Even for those with a few million in net worth that I know, they use their safe purely to store their valuables while they're out of town (not to deter property crime, but to keep their kids from stealing it).

I was only addressing their idea that the wealthier wouldn't have access to cash in the event of an internet outage. In my limited experience, they might. In the few cases I know of, they would.

However, it's a very small and biased data set, not much more than an anecdote. I can't speak about a larger group, I just don't know. So, I included caveats.

Oh absolutely, but I am not sure that the wealthier people don't have access to cash. That's what I was addressing. They may use plastic on a daily basis, but I'd be surprised if they didn't have near immediate access to liquid assets, including some that are easily bartered with.

I know at least two people who have gold in various weights, for example. I am not one of those two people. Some have art and jewelry, those could be bartered with - if things got really bad.

Interesting, where I am from (.dk) it is illegal for a company to receive payments above approximately 10k usd in cash. It must be a digital transfer (card/bank transfer/etc).

Whereabouts do you live, that has such a low crime rate? I'm curious, because that's unusual.

Not really. It's just that "Nothing happened today" isn't a news story.

By comparison, and a heartening story against collapsism, in the Irish Banking Strike the country turned to a system of informal credit mediated through pubs.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/we-can-all-get-b...

https://bankunderground.co.uk/2016/01/20/the-cheque-republic...

https://www.quora.com/How-did-the-Irish-deal-with-the-1966-1...

I hadn't thought of this before but, while I am dubious about the whole cashless society idea, it must be granted that this is an advantage: if it comes to it, makes it harder for an oppressive government to shut down the Internet.

The banking system would shut down in the US as well when the bloody revolution started. People would simply not tolerate a deliberate internet shutdown by the government.

Around the 2011 London riots there were calls from senior politicians to temporarily "shutdown" Twitter and Blackberry Messenger. I can definitely see that happening again in a political unrest situation. In fact, the Catalan domain registry is currently occupied by Spanish police; keep an eye out for a wider shutdown of social media there as 1 October approaches.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14442203

I don't think you'd get away with it in the EU, to be honest.

Wait till 2019 when the UK is no in the EU anymore /s.

Why do you think the conservative party wants to leave the EU? /s

(Seriously, there are lots of signs that the UK government, especially the Home Office, is not happy with external constraints on its arbitary power)

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