Hacker News Reader

Comment by goombastic | Hacker News Reader

I've said this before, software & tech companies are enabling this sort of authoritarian transition in countries and enabling the powerful to stifle voices of dissent.

It is more than likely that the connected world wide web will fraction itself off into regional entities soon enough. With things like data analytics and AI, controlling populations is even easier. The Chinese model will succeed.

In India, a Russian style klepto-plutocracy is slowly taking over. It's only natural that they would want this transition kept hidden.

View on HN

This is nothing to do with tech companies. Government have lot more money and resources to fund such efforts. In countries such as India, people view government as a protector and provider as opposed to countries like US where people view government as something they permitted to exist with terms of and conditions of minimal interference. Well, at least in theory. Such countries are risk at authoritarian Internet. Even if tech isn’t invested, these countries will invest and make it happen.

> This is nothing to do with tech companies.

The same companies whose product is customer data and usage patterns? That they use to develop behavioural models, affinities and recommendation engines?

It's one thing when you are a device maker and are required to provide in-country servers and backdoor access as a condition of doing business. Blackberry (then RIM) caught heat for that in 2011 when they provided that to India and the UAE.

It's a different thing entirely when gargantuan companies like Amazon or Google that control a significant part of the Internet's infrastructure begin to shift away from public-facing business models and towards high-margin contract work for governments.

You said it yourself:

> Government have lot more money and resources to fund such efforts

and they're adept at wasting it as well. You don't think Amazon, Google etc look at IT contracts in the public sector and salivate at the opportunity?

> klepto-plutocracy is slowly taking over

And it is aided by the perks and privileges that the platform controllers offer (at least, initially) to lure the sheeple in.

For a more visual representation of what people see as a future, check https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpzQ8a4xmgk

Now, s/Grab/[Maro|RobTM|ChorTel|Loota] of India. Each of these wants to hegemonize, by leveraging technology; and ironically, this tech is mostly built by the same people (like us!)

Future is dark

It's not much different than most of history. You could even argue this is regression to the mean. I genuinely think civilization peaked around 2012.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com