Hacker News Reader

Comment by renholder | Hacker News Reader

What happens when, say, Iran wants and - legally - requests the identities of everyone that supports the "Democracy in Iran" group?

View on HN

I don't think facebook is very used in Iran, at least it was blocked in 2015.

The interesting question is what happens when Turkey asks for the members of a "justice for unfairly sacked teachers" petition, or Saudi Arabia asking for the supporters of the local "End discrimination of Shia" petition.

Yes, Facebook is blocked in Iran, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not being used. Just about everyone I met in Iran was on several supposedly blocked social media platforms, mostly through dodgy VPNs. Apple isn’t allowed to sell phones in Iran either, but I’ve never seen so many second-hand iPhones.

You understand the point of the parent's example and are only arguing semantics.

I'd wager that Iranians have a good idea of what might happen in such scenarios, since the 2009 protests against Ahmedinejad's re-election were partially fueled by Twitter, which authorities clamped down on afterwards. This was a couple of years before smartphones were ubiquitous. Chances are both protestors and the authorities would act much faster now.

I'm more concerned about political operatives right here at home who are likely rubbing their hands with glee, as FB gives them the tools to make it easier than ever to drum up online lynch mobs to further poison political discourse.

I'm not even going to mention how much easier this makes it for scammers to find their marks. The guy who collected $20m on Gofundme for 'the wall' comes to mind.

>The guy who collected $20m on Gofundme for 'the wall' comes to mind.

Can you explain how this guy is a scammer? It looks like everyone who donated before the Gofundme plan switched from "donate it to the government" to "pay to build it ourselves" is having their money automatically refunded to them unless they explicitly opt in to the new approach, and donations still keep rolling in from people opting in to this new we'll-just-build-it-ourselves approach. Where's the scam?

They'd probably be the ones running the group, or a like-group. One simple tactic is to just pose as your enemy online, which is quite easy to do when it is a digitally created persona/group and not in-person.

The Russians proved how easy that is. Putin has been doing this internally for a very long time before messing with the 2016 election. Create a pro-gay group, create an anti-gay group. Foster hate between them. Others join the respective "causes" that they align with. You now know a lot of the pro/con supporters because you're running the group(s).

Here's an 11 minute clip from Adam Curtis' HyperNormalization, which illustrates this tactic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwglZTNhMNE

It's alive and well in the USA too, and things make more sense after watching it. I'd find the whole video and watch it. It's quite fascinating.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com