Turkey determined to control social media platforms, Erdogan says
uk.reuters.com
uk.reuters.com
Social media vastly amplifies loud minorities. Democracy assumes that the majority of people are reasonable, so majority rule will also be reasonable. Loud minorities undermine majority rule. Loud minorities have always existed, but social media is now amplifying them to the point of obscuring what the majority of the country actually wants. This is why we can have an election outcome that no one in the media predicted.
Add to that the fact that social media is highly game-able and scalable, and you have small groups of people working against the majority of the country.
Social media is also a prime playground for international enemies.
In that light, I'm moving away from the idea that all social media should be allowed, and seeing actions like this as something worth exploring. I hate imposing restrictions, but social media is a strange and unbelievably influential paradigm, which needs to be handled "like a weapon instead of some toy".
[edit] Can't reply below: Freedom House is NOT the State Department. They're a funder, but not the only one. So your description still in incorrect or requires sourcing.
They're not masquerading in the sense that they try to hide where the money comes from, but to the majority that read their materials, this won't be apparent.
If they are a government organization then the domain needs to be .gov.
.org gives the perception of NGO.
However, it all comes down to this, what happens when people of a democratic country elect a president that has totalitarian tendencies?
Japan's Abe is famous for auctioning huge reserves of JPY in order to reduce the value of their currency and stock up on USD. Reduced currency value means their exports became temporarily cheaper and this way they got an artificial boost to their production industry.
This is a complex subject and doesn't show that "country X is the puppet of country Y", it rather shows how they like to strategize for their own benefit.
It's a democracy in terms of the electoral process, mostly... at least historically. Flawed, but the people select their leaders by election.
It's not really a democracy in terms of political culture and rights. Very weak free speech, right to organize, right to assemble, freedom of the press, etc. They jail a lot of journalists, on charges like "subliminal messages announcing the military coup."
I presume you're referring to the 2016 presidential election in the US, and if so that's patently false. FiveThirtyEight estimated a ~28% probability[0] that Trump would win, and other major media outlets had similar outlooks prior to the election. Many willfully interpreted "28% chance" as "with any luck it won't happen," but you can't say that the media didn't think it was possible.
[0]: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
(edit: updated with link to actual prediction by FiveThirtyEight)
I'm surprised you chose this as the prime example. I think things surrounding George Floyd protests are more apt examples (tearing down arbitrary statues, cancel culture, CHOP/CHAZ, social media mobs, etc).
Similarly, US police have been routinely murdering people for years. What social media has done is allow the creation of a "headless" protest movement that can outrun attempts to take it down.
In both cases, some people have leapt in and gone too far because they enjoy the chaos, but don't let that obscure the real issues.
No, the problem of social media is reactionary movements arising against entirely fake problems, like "pizzagate".
Christopher Columbus and Francis Scott Key aren't arbitrary? It's not like they were removed by a democratic process. The majority had no say. A loud minority decided they needed to come down for arbitrary reasons and did it without permission. Anyone challenging them would be browbeaten by the loud minority mobs on social media and cancelled (employers pressured to fire them, etc.). Loud minorities have effectively been making entire corporations cower and kowtow on social media during recent weeks.
The last line of defense for conservatives is "well actually there's a silent majority that thinks otherwise" and "actually most people don't care, they're just virtue signaling". And this works well when the Fox+ apparatus are the ones creating boogeymen out of minor things like CHAZ.
That's a given, but it's arbitrary in that he's not generally recognized as a "symbol of slavery" like Confederate flags or statues are, so it's just minorities taking advantage of turmoil to bypass the democratic process and impose their will on everyone.
On a side note, I personally think it's wrong to retroactively "cancel" historical figures because we now judge their actions to modern morals. It's better to recognize they were victims of their time and not judge them as harshly - "with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again" and all.
Most of the founding fathers had slaves, but let's face it, most of us would have had slaves as well had we been born in their shoes. If we really decide it's a good idea to hold historical figures to modern standards, and cancel them if they fail the test, prepare for people in 2525 to retroactively cancel us and all of our heroes because we don't live up to the lofty (unknown) morals of 2525.
> Regardless, corporations are not saying BLM because some tiny segment of the country thinks that.
I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about meaningless virtue signalling that corporations attempt to try to ingratiate the small, but extremely loud, mobs on social media (think GitHub changing master branch name). It's a corporation's worst PR nightmare to be harangued by the mob on social media.
Putting up a statue of Lee was whatever the opposite of virtue signalling is - vice signalling?
He's not recognized as a symbol of plantation slavery because it didn't exist at the time. But he enslaved the native population of Hispaniola and was incredibly inhumane and cruel to them. So much so that the Spanish crown "canceled" him. Crazy, right?[1] He also never set foot on the US mainland. There aren't really any good reasons to have statues of the guy around.
> Most of the founding fathers had slaves
Is anyone taking down statues of Jefferson, Washington, Adams and co? You're drawing a false equivalence between them and Confederate leaders.
Confederate leaders engaged in high treason, and took up arms against their countrymen to defend their right to own other human beings. They deserve to be "canceled". There was already a public hearing about all of this 160 years ago. It was called the Civil War and they lost. The only reason these people weren't tried and executed for treason is because the Union saw fit to offer generous terms in order to end the conflict quicker and save lives (note how it never occurred to the Confederates that they too could save the lives of their own people, if only they gave up on their determination to own other human beings).
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#Accusatio...
On the other hand, they were (at least those vary many who had sworn oaths to the federal Constitution that were broken in rebellion) permanently barred by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution (not coincidentally the same one that expressly imposed due process and equal protection constraints on the States) from public service, federal or state, unless rehabilitated by a 2/3 vote of both houses of Congress. It seems silly to honor and celebrate people whose acts against the country were so extreme as to warrant the creation of such a bar in response.
A majority of the nation supports the Statement "Black Lives matter" a Majority of the nation supports reforming the police and holding them accountable. And a majority of the nation supports ending systemic racism in our laws and institutions
BLM as movement / organization however has many many positions that are not supported by the majority, the organizers are self described Social Marxists, the BLM Foundation web site speaks of breaking down the nuclear family, and with in the movement is also an undertone of socialism even communism none of which is supported by the Majority of the nation
I'd wager that a majority of the nation knows there's no "systemic" racism in our laws and institutions, but does support ending the institutional problems that affect everyone who enters the justice system.
I would agree that not everything that is claimed to be racism based is in fact racism based, alot of it is Class based as well. But to say there is NO racism in the law is also an position that is not supported by the historical record
It's hotly debated topic. Sometimes, statistics clearly show that some system has a racial bias. But often it's misleading because the variable the system is _actually_ selecting might be poverty, not race. The racial bias only appears due to the fact that <race> is disproportionately impoverished.
The biggest factor keeping someone from succeeding in the US, is intergenerational poverty, not skin color. Black and brown immigrants have high success rates in America, because they do not have intergenerational poverty. Black and white people from impoverished families struggle in America. The problems of black citizens in the inner cities are very similar to the problems of white people in rural trailer parks.
If we focused on dealing with the problem of intergenerational poverty, we might make a lot of progress in improving the lives of both black and white Americans. However, the rich elites of all races might see their money And influence diminish. So they use race to divide us.
I’ve been calling for the cancellation of Columbus since at least 2015. In part because he was a genocidal maniac. But mainly because it would give us an excuse to turn Columbus Circle in DC into a proper intersection.
Media is a "pillar" of democracy. I think social media destabilized that pillar.
And restrictions won't do any good. It's the Internet. Practically, you can't stop E2EE communication at this point. Social media can become decentralized (with Mastodon and similar systems) or even p2p (with Secure Scuttlebutt). All restrictions would do would be to curtail the speech of people who don't know about them, and increase the utilization of these other social networks. Net effect: No change to the nature of speech, just to the places they happen.
I believe that's spot on, and it's essentially the same with newspapers and TV, at the very least today. 30 years ago, there was only one truth, and it was spread via mass media. Now, there are competing narratives, both in mass media and on the Internet, and everybody picks and chooses what fits into their understanding of the world.
> Net effect: No change to the nature of speech, just to the places they happen.
And the degree to which you can observe and influence what is said. If you force people to adopt secure communication en masse, you lose a lot of possibilities. I don't know how much this is a concern for governments, but I don't think that they will be able to win the crypto wars, so pushing people into secure comms by overreaching today means they will have a much harder time tomorrow. But maybe they won't be in charge tomorrow, so it's not really their problem.
Historically, only the vocal minorities with money could afford to influence politicians.
Now minorities without much money can get politicians attention too?
I think we need social media to operate as a non-profit like Wikipedia, and I think drastic action is the only way to do so. Building alternatives won't work. A for-profit model is just not compatible with the nature of social media.
> And the result is that a handful of tech employees and billionaires can wield outsized influence over the dominant media channels and public forums of the entire world without any democratic input or regulatory oversight.
This is probably the biggest threat to democracy, and to 90% of the population
I agree and would add that the same argument stands for the traditional press as well.
I think a reliance on advertising is what has pushed things to the degenerated state we have now. And social media has practically dictated that reliance.
True, but the press relied on an advertising-based business model right from the start. That, in hindsight, was not such a sensible choice.
otherwise, the democratic oversight will just be whatever the u.s can manage.
the internet is already falling apart; i notice many u.s media sites are inaccessible from europe. i guess national internets are less painful in europe, where almost every country has its own language, than in the anglosphere, where there are many smaller countries that use english.
it solves many problems - it puts an end to cyberattacks, for instance. but is it right? i doubt it.
I'm not advocating an end to global platforms. And I don't think the democratic oversight should come from the US government. The end goal should be a website like Wikipedia -- non-profit, maintained and perhaps even funded by users.
In fact, I think a lot of the fragmentation of the internet you see abroad is a reaction against the powerlessness of users and governments against the unassailable power of these corporations. Maybe, if we are able to give users some degree of control over the design and policies of these platforms, we might be able to preserve the global internet. Some of that fragmentation -- as you see in the OP article -- is simply a result of governmental authoritarianism, which is a problem either way.
I think the first step would be to re-align some economic incentives by creating digital rights laws. GDPR is a good first step. So establishing something similar in the US. This itself is a hugely complicated step that could go very wrong, and due to the corrupt nature of US politics and the desire for large tech companies for regulatory capture, the potential pitfalls are many.
Then, if we manage to get that right, I think we need to find a way to create legislation that requires these platforms to give their users control regarding how content is presented to them -- essentially, the ability to control their feeds.
I don't know how we would manage to transition these companies to a true non-profit model. As long as they remain for-profit, they will fight and subvert these efforts every step of the way, even after they became law.
However, I think we are increasingly seeing how dangerous and unsustainable the current model is. Perhaps the best way to accelerate data rights is accelerationism -- making the exploits and faults in these platforms as visible as possible by "hacking" them.
Its about governments powerlessness to control the message from foreign cooperations likely influenced by foreign governments.
Maybe 0.000001% of it is 'protecting users'.
> essentially, the ability to control their feeds
Again, probably 0.0001% of Users will so even if you give them the option.
> making the exploits and faults in these platforms as visible as possible by "hacking" them.
So hurting users even more in the process?
Fair enough, that is also an issue.
> Maybe 0.000001% of it is 'protecting users'.
I think we need to bring in concrete examples here. Consider GDPR -- would you characterize that as a governmental entity protecting its users?
> Again, probably 0.0001% of Users will so even if you give them the option.
I kind of doubt that. Facebook has introduced limited control over certain aspects of your feed and everyone I know has used those features. Even non-technical people I know routinely complain about suggested content, non-chronological feeds, and so on. These are popular (if not nearly-universal) concerns.
> So hurting users even more in the process?
Ok, I was off the mark there. I just mean that there are problems with the current platforms that expose real vulnerabilities into public discourse and democracy that have been exploited, and will be exploited much more thoroughly in the future. So doing nothing is not sustainable.
It depends on the implementation. A good example for user control is Pandora. Not hard at all to control what music I'll hear.
Luckily for infosec professionals - we are never putting the lid back on that particular box. International businesses need the internet, just as it needs encryption. It'll only be proles facing restrictions.
I can't help but echo that I'm simply grimly fascinated by how far and fast the standard of discourse has fallen, however. And a decent chunk of that political interference, gaslighting and general verbal abuse and toxicity is from the US - "progressive" and "conservative" regions alike.
I think it's right. Countries have sovereignty over their physical territory and they ought to have sovereignty over their digital territory, that's the basis of any democracy and self-determination.
Of course it produces awful results in Turkey because Erdogan is an autocrat, and autocrats use power to enact dumb policies, in this case censoring something because his family was insulted.
However in democracies it is necessary to not be defenseless and to maintain values. Here in Europe I've always felt that we're pretty much exposed in the digital sphere to either American norms due to sheer size, and nowadays more and more to negative campaigns by countries like Russia and China as they've learned to weaponize cyberspace.
In China, they are conducting a great experiment in suppressing and controlling culture. Perhaps it will work - perhaps not, but I think you could only really achieve such a goal with such means, and moreover, I think such means are far more insidious and corrupting than any kind of foreign influence. Sheltered culture becomes irrelevant, then idiotic, then it becomes something only idiots and fossils can believe in.
of course you can. Do you know why the Breton language in France is reduced to 200k speakers and the Académie française gets to determine how French is spoken? Because the state stamped out every regional language during the creation of the Republic, and that was that.
Are the native cultures of the new world almost gone because they're worse cultures? No, it's because they were defenseless. Did Chrisitanity and Islam spread because they "worked?" No, they were spread by sword or settlement.
China's experiment isn't new, it's not even an experiment really. how do you think the Romanization of large parts of the old world happened, or the Russification of much of Eastern Europe? Is Finland 'idiotic' for defending its culture? Are they actually just living in a worse culture and haven't realised it yet?
What a terrible might makes right logic.
They had signs on the walls in Breton schools telling that "it's forbidden to spit on the ground, or speak Breton".
Ironically, the generation older than that can still speak English, and roll their eyes when they have to translate for their adult kids who can't engage in tourism or trade.
What if the US bans them, and Britain does not. Do you want the US government to systematically control the internet to prevent US citizens from using that British websites?
The things you say are easy to say, but hard to actually make in the real world without running into many more complications.
No, I'm just pointing out that a for-profit structure necessarily clashes with the public value that these platforms produce. The only platform that escapes this conflict and functions quite well is Wikipedia. I don't think that's an accident.
> The things you say are easy to say, but hard to actually make in the real world without running into many more complications.
Yes, of course. My point is that we need to start thinking of solutions. If doing nothing had no consequences, I would be heavily in favor of doing nothing. But I believe it's clear that things are going quite wrong.
> What if the US bans them, and Britain does not. Do you want the US government to systematically control the internet to prevent US citizens from using that British websites?
I don't want anything to get banned. I don't want any government to unilaterally control the internet. I just want people from every country to have some democratic input into the massive tech platforms that heavily impact their daily lives. Perhaps international data rights legislation is the solution. I don't know. But we need to start taking these problems seriously and discussing real solutions -- not just creating federated Twitter clones that offer an unwieldy UX that the average user will never adopt.
Just because there would be some democratic input doesn't mean there would be total democratic control. I think that's a pretty un-substantiated slippery slope.
Similar issues appear for the internet with respect to backbone capacity and video streaming, but political speech mostly doesn't encounter the kinds of scarcity problems that justify such a heavy hand.
It sounds like you're calling for jackbooted thugs to go and shut down newspapers. This has historically not been a sign of a society headed in a good direction.
Agreed. I think we need to transition to something like Scuttlebutt, where no one controls the network. It solves the problems of profit incentives, government intervention and policing of content all at once. I've been writing about this a lot recently at https://adecentralizedworld.com
Legacy media boundaries are dictated by advertisers.
When most people complain about social media they use their previous relationship to media as a benchmark for normality but centrally controlled media never really existed and is no longer strictly possible. Cheap media is always going to be attractive to cranks. Years ago it was pamphlets, AM radio, tabloids and cable news, now it's social media and email campaigns (yes, they still exist). Our relationship to media keeps changing and people learn to deal with the political discourse, disinformation and outright crankery being amplified by these platforms the same way they learned not to pick up an issue of the National Enquirer and tune out the nuts on AM radio.
I think the thing that has happened with social media is that we've moved even more to a sound bite and headline world. This is no critical thought or consideration. The headline said X so it is true. The "news" is willing to do anything for eyeballs. All information has become click bait to sell ads.
A millennia old truth: take care of the politics, or politics will take care of you
It's a good thing that power in democracies is determined by secret ballot and not likes on social media then!
Dewey Defeats Truman.
I started in this industry in the '90s, I like to think of my cohort as the generation who "built the Internet" (or the commercial version of it).
We've created a monster. Or at least the means to unleash it.
We now see an explosion in selfish and cowardly interactions. Good faith conversations obviously abound, but they have been effectively buried under co-opted hysteria.
As the saying goes "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time", so this would in fact be a safeguard against things like Brexit.
Or do you mean that the current system is gaslighting and direct democracy would be better?
Including loud minorities that own most of the newspapers, television networks, radio networks, publishing concerns, banks, movie distributors, etc.
> ... obscuring what the majority of the country actually wants
Ain't that the truth.
Regarding political theoretical statements:
There are different paradigms of liberal democracy currently. Some of them can be regarded as appealing to the will of the majority for legitimacy, but essentially they don't assume that the majority are reasonable, but merely that we shall respect the will of the majority and base policies on their stance.
Disregarding illiberal democracy paradigms, all liberal democracy paradigms recognize the value of minority voices and recognize that their rights shall be protected, the right to freely express included.
Regarding the factual statements:
The mainstream US media didn't take social media as an input of significance for understanding the majority stance of US population before 2016. Those journalists had their echo chambers and represented a vocal minority in their echo chambers.
Social media, on the other hand, provides a meaningful alternative allowing some different opinion groups to express their opinions beyond the echo chambers of mainstream media. The liberal-leaning mainstream media now has a tendency to exaggerate the influence of some niche circles on social media (e.g. the so-called alt-right), though.
Some people liken Section 230 to being the First Amendment of the Internet, and they’re not far off. That doesn’t mean social media isn’t dangerous, but fire is dangerous. Print is still dangerous. Guns are dangerous. There’s a lot of dangerous things out there, so where do you want to draw the line? We’re not very good at dealing with social media as a society yet, but you don’t develop antibodies to this crap without first exposing yourself to it.
Meanwhile Erdogan is set on keeping the steady flow of immigrants coming for as long as he's the gate holder, the EU will bow to many of Erdogans demands.
Concurrently Russia is said be rerunning the USSR book and is desperate in acquiring more territory. For as long as I've lived I can recall the USA being somewhat the voice of reason in these situations but USA is too occupied with their own stuff currently.
I think theirs trouble on the horizon as Erdogan and Puttins position become more and more unsustainable with the citizens of said countries being more and more unhappy with them.
My interpretation is as following -- please correct me if I'm wrong. Note: I am not endorsing (nor criticising) Russian policies here, just trying to understand and learn. In order to learn, I try and give as clearcut an explanation as possible of my current understanding, so as to make it as easy as possible for others with more expertise to point to where I am wrong (if indeed I am wrong). My take is this: contemporary Russian policy is a variation on "spheres of influence" [1], and Russia treats its neighbours as being in its "sphere of influence", and does not accept them becoming part of NATO. I think the implicit deal with "sphere of influence" neighbours is: as long as you don't join NATO, you can do whatever you like but as soon as you try to join NATO we will stop this, including with force. Currently, Russia has borders with the following NATO countries: Norway, Estonia and Latvia. The latter two joined NATO in 2004, when Russia felt too weak to do anything about it, especially since they are not land-locked, so could be easily be defended by western Navies.
A clear example of this was the Russian-Georgian War in 2008. Russia withdrew after a couple of days (but left some "Frozen Conflicts" [2] in place that it can 'turn on' at will, as a power-lever: South Ossetia and Abkhazia). Who would have defended Georgia if Russia had decided to stay, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey? Probably not. Likewise, Russia could easily invade an keep the 'stans. Take land-locked Kazakhstan: huge, rich in resources, nearly empty, and, thanks to Stalin's policy of mixing ethnic groups, about 1/4 of the population is ethic Russian anyway (in 1989 it was nearly 40%). Who would defend Kazakhstan? Mongolia, Uzbekistan , Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan? Probably not. Ukraine is an interesting special case, and the annexation of Crimea can be interpreted in this way: Ukraine came too close to NATO, and Crimea is important for the ability of the Russian navy to project power in the Mediterranean Sea. Crimea is > 2/3 Russian from the POV of ethnic groups and Russia has a higher standard of living than Ukraine, so the majority of the Crimean population would probably have been ok with the policy anyway.
Belarus is staring to realize this and look West, so did Georgia and the Ukraine. Russia is desperate not to lose all influence over these.
They were desperate to keep the Crimea. But to be fair Crimea wasn't even part of Ukraine until 1960 when Khrushchev wanted to increase is own power base. Not really Ukrainians who live there and the region was never much for Ukrainian nationalism.
Russia is desperate not to get parceled up by China, Europe and the US. Russia is declining power, its population is collapsing, it has major brain drain, half of the Russian life outside of Russia. Putin is good at seeming strong but the long term battle is basically lost already.
> USA being somewhat the voice of reason
You mean the voice with the most financial and military power that told others what do? Are you rally so naive to think that 'reasonableness' is what made these things happen?
In the 90s the Russian were sticking mad as hell about this stuff, they just didn't have the power to do anything about it. In the last 15 years the have learn that they can, so they do.
There was no such negotiations with binding promises made public aside from interwebs rumors, frequently reposted on RT/Sputnik/etc. The end of Cold War was USSR unilaterally dissolving by agreement between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
Furthermore, Yeltsin publicly said that eastern europe can join NATO if they wish. The only request was that there would be no nuclear weapon moved to new NATO members. And there were talks about limiting conventional weapons. That's why current NATO forces in Baltic states and Poland are "rotational" rather than permanent.
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/18/world/yeltsin-now-seems-r...
> In the 90s the Russian were sticking mad as hell about this stuff, they just didn't have the power to do anything about it. In the last 15 years the have learn that they can, so they do.
As an ex-USSR citizen, Russia was damn friendly in early 90s. Russian SSR (separate from USSR) supported Baltic states during January events of 1991. Russian army was rather swiftly removed. Separation was rather smooth thanks to mutual understanding. Things started to change in late 90s though. Not sure where the braking point was.
I have heard from multiple cold war scholars some that were in government at that time that they promised this to Gorbachev. That said, it was never formally ratified.
This is just one example, another one is the non-adjustment of borders without agreemnt. But this was broken in the 90s when the US created Kosvo.
The missile treaties were broken by Bush.
> The end of Cold War was USSR unilaterally dissolving
Arguably the Cold War ended with the treaties between the Soviet Union and the US before it devolved. That is at least what US negotiators believed and you can listen interviews with them.
They are actually quite angry that people now say that the cold war ended because the Soviet Union collapsed.
> Furthermore, Yeltsin publicly said that eastern europe can join NATO if they wish.
Yeltsin was weak and had to agree to a lot of stuff that he didn't like. The Russian elites certainty never wanted the NATO to expand east.
> As an ex-USSR citizen, Russia was damn friendly in early 90s.
They are incredibly friendly right at the point in the history where they are weakest. Lenin was so friendly he signed over half of European Russia.
And there was a lot of pressure to not separate from USSR up to coup of 1991. Especially from Western europe. Looking at our politicians from early 90s memoirs, Gorbachev broke those unwritten agreements with West by using military in January events of 1991.
> This is just one example, another one is the non-adjustment of borders without agreemnt. But this was broken in the 90s when the US created Kosvo.
Wasn't non-adjustment of borders some agreement in Helsinki in mid-70s?
> Arguably the Cold War ended with the treaties between the Soviet Union and the US before it devolved. That is at least what US negotiators believed and you can listen interviews with them.
Got any examples? Because
> Yeltsin was weak and had to agree to a lot of stuff that he didn't like. The Russian elites certainty never wanted the NATO to expand east.
While Yeltsin was rather weak (just like any politician in 90s in ex-USSR/Warsaw pact), the main difference was split between democractical vs imperial powers. Russian SSR government was were pro-democracy people congregated while pan-USSR structures were held by imperialists. When USSR dissolved, it took some time for imperialists to regroup and take over Russian Federation (ex Russian SSR) structures.
> They are incredibly friendly right at the point in the history where they are weakest. Lenin was so friendly he signed over half of European Russia.
Lenin only signed over non-ethnically-Russian territories of tsarist Russia. Tsarist Russia was called "jail of nations" for a reason.
But the way you and Russia talk about it shows that they still consider that to be their territory, even though it is now a different country. That attitude leads Russia to think they have a right to meddle in their former territory.
Second: Why did those countries join NATO? Because NATO held a gun to their head and told them they have to join? No, because Russia kept talking and acting in ways that made them afraid that they were going to get pressured, meddled with, invaded, and/or annexed. They wanted something bigger than their own military to protect them, so they pushed to join NATO.
All of which leaves Russia feeling surrounded and encroached upon. But the cause of that has been the Russian habit of trying to treat former territory as still their own, rather than the evil machinations of the West.
Russia has lots 'non-Russian' regions inside of its border that they also think are part of Russia.
> But the way you and Russia talk about it shows that they still consider that to be their territory, even though it is now a different country. That attitude leads Russia to think they have a right to meddle in their former territory.
I'm explaining wat the Russian perspective is, I'm not taking Russia side.
Yes they do. Like literally ever great or regional power does. US literally claims dominance over a gigantic region, basically half the world. See what happens when China tries to put Mexico under a nuclear umbrella.
These issues need to be considered in diplomacy.
> Second: Why did those countries join NATO? Because NATO held a gun to their head and told them they have to join? No, because Russia kept talking and acting in ways that made them afraid that they were going to get pressured, meddled with, invaded, and/or annexed. They wanted something bigger than their own military to protect them, so they pushed to join NATO.
I agree. Where did I deny that? Of course these countries want foreign protection. They are well aware of their own weakness.
But just because somebody ask me to fight for them, doesn't mean its a good idea for me to do so. Maybe they would be better helped with other kinds of support.
> All of which leaves Russia feeling surrounded and encroached upon. But the cause of that has been the Russian habit of trying to treat former territory as still their own, rather than the evil machinations of the West.
Any power would respond when you try to literally surround it with a nuclear umbrella.
The West pushed and pushed NATO further East, and that's a fine strategy for them and certainty made some amount of sense even if Russia didn't like it. But at some point you need to realize that Russia was gone respond if you take it to far.
The Russians quite strategically invaded Georgia to make it impossible for them to join NATO. The reason they did that was quite clearly to stop the Eastward expansion of NATO. They had over, and over and over again in negotiation said that extending NATO into Ukraine and Georgia was a vital interest for them. In a way that it wasn't with the Baltic's for example.
And again, I'm not 'on the side of Russia'. But when you are talking about practical diplomacy, I think the Western powers miscalculated. Georgia under NATO was a terrible idea. Giving Ukraine hope to be in the EU is an equally terrible idea. Not just because of Russian response, but for other reasons as well.
Blocking NATO expansion to Georgia and annexing Crima were simple sensible policies that should have surprised nobody. But they don't represent a massively expansionist policy on Russia part. I think Russia knows they can't really do that.
Solve for the equilibrium. We would expect federated social media to increase in popularity when the convenience of centralized social media is jeopardized. I believe in Russia, where people don't feel safe voicing their opinions publicly on centralized social media, ad hoc social networks have appeared on safe chat platforms like Telegram to take their place.
> I believe in Russia, where people don't feel safe voicing their opinions publicly on centralized social media, ad hoc social networks have appeared on safe chat platforms like Telegram to take their place.
I'm Russian. Today is the last day of 7-day voting for the very controversial constitution amendments that would grant Putin two additional 6-year terms, among other things. My both VK and Twitter feeds are chock-full of posts about this. People are posting about how asinine these amendments are. People are posting about incessant violations in the voting process itself. People are posting pictures of their ballots. The feeling that people are afraid to publicly voice their opinions is certainly not there.
But once it's on TOR, it'll be similar to the DNMs for drugs: once it's out of the bag, you can stamp out individual sites, but the system is there to stay.
Edit: my point is: starting in the late 70's, authoritarian regimes failed miserably before all over the world, therefore there's no reason to believe they'll succeed thist time. Remember Marx explaining Charles Bonaparte: history happens twice, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.
The fundamental fact is that, in the long run, autocrats are very incompetent and make a lot of mistakes, mostly by hubris and because they're surrounded by yes-men that hide them the truth. They become detached from facts, they think they can control facts until facts control them.
Erdogan's strong rule is a drug that Turkey will have to pay very dearly to get rid off.
How do you think openness and democracy triumphing cause the rise of autocrats? Are you referring to Plato's five regimes theory, where each type of government degenerates into a different government, in a cycle?
Sorry, I expressed myself badly. It doesn't "cause" it just provides a contrast that makes this look as different of what was there before.
If Latin America, Eastern Europe, Middle East and East Asia were still under the authoritarian rulers of the Cold War era, these new autocrats wouldn't be a novelty.
My point is that autocrats failed before and all those places tried democracy. It succeeded in most of them, but a few want to go back to something that is not viable anymore.
It's clear Turkey is drifting away from the values held by the alliance members.
I'm so glad they haven't been accepted into the EU. That would be a disaster.
Just like how Poland and Hungary are EU members and they are walking their own way not giving a f about anything, rewriting the constitutions and laws as they wish
There are mechanisms in place to change constitutions and laws in all countries. The primary function of parliament is to legislate. In Poland, Hungary and the rest of the EU.
They can do whatever they want without having to touch the constitution. They just ignore it.
Since Germany and Italy was such a long time ago ;)
seems in line with the EU approach, no?
It extremely hard to do a major judicial reform which is needed. The ruling party argument is that that the system of election the supreme court is flawed. There is a risk of deep state influence from the previous system and ties to Russia.
When Germany was reunified they a purge of people with ties to DDR. Nothing like that happened in Poland.
At that time though Turkey would have been a real welcome growth addition to the EU.
2005 +9% growth, the year the EU opened accession negotiations with Turkey.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union%E2%80%93Turke...
My point is a different one though: If Turkey joined the EU, it wouldn't be a net contributor, it would get huge subsidies from the EU. As such, it wouldn't benefit the EU economically, and it would be a disaster politically. It may be nice for some private companies to get easier access to a new market, but the price would be much too high, and I'm fairly certain that the EU would not survive Turkey as a member state.
There's a reason EU countries have huge numbers of Turkish expats already despite Turkey's economy.
Thank you for discovering universal rule. If you read US/Canadian press for example you might find out that for any bad thing happening inside some evil foreign entities are responsible. Any government needs an enemy to take people's eye from their own f..k ups.
As for Germany they have been in bed with Russia for a long time, and Austria is basically one of the main conduits for laundering money coming from "bad" Russian people (who steal from the majority of the Russian population).
https://www.france24.com/en/20200701-france-suspends-role-in...
Look at what happened with the Arab spring in Egypt... after the leaders fell, even worse parties and fundamentalist strongmen came in. It was lauded as a democratic revolution until the muslim brotherhood came in. Same shit happened in Syria -- now it's devastated.
There is so much outcry over TikTok being adopted in masse within the United States -- this isn't really that different. Facebook invests a lot of resources fighting fake news in the US -- I doubt it puts any efforts into propaganda (nor has the ability) that is spread in a place like Turkey.
The way to think about these countries behavior is -- imagine foreign governments were sending the KKK $100 of millions along with weapons across your borders. We got a taste of 1% of this with Russian interference -- but it is nothing compared to what happens in the middle east.
> "Do you see why we oppose social media like YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, and so on?" Erdogan said.
> "Turkey is not a banana republic. We will snub those who snub this country’s executive and judicial bodies," he stated.
> "We will chase those who attack a baby...," Erdogan said, referring to an insult directed at his daughter Esra Albayrak and his son-in-law, Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak upon their announcement of their newborn baby.
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/president-erdogan-vows-soc...
You say the wrong thing online in the UK or Germany, the police come knocking. Everyone always thinks their reason for censorship is exceptional because their beliefs are the one-true virtuous beliefs in the universe.
Greatness is a small number of key visionary decisions, and not a bunch of little reactive ones.
Presumably they will ignore this request as well.
Currently I have settled for a room-darkening shade.
That’s how you frame your readers. The author doesn’t know whether there’s causal relation between the possible insult and the plans to control the social platforms. But this is how media tricks the readers in thinking so.
Quotes from a different article:
> "“Do you see why we oppose social media like YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, et cetera.?” Erdogan asked in reference to the alleged insults of his family members. “It is imperative that these channels are brought under control.”
> Erdogan said: “Turkey is not a banana republic. We will snub those who snub this country’s executive and judicial bodies.”"
"We experienced similar attacks in the past. The lack of monitoring on these platforms have a role in the rise of this sort of immoral behaviour. These platforms do not suit this country. We want these platforms to be banned, taken under control."
This also comes after arresting and detaining several social media users for tweeting the insults.
I don't know--seems pretty clear to me.
“Do you see why we oppose social media like YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, etc...?” Erdogan asked in reference to the alleged insults of his family members. “It is imperative that these channels are brought under control.”
Again in reference to the insults:
"We experienced similar attacks in the past. The lack of monitoring on these platforms have a role in the rise of this sort of immoral behaviour. These platforms do not suit this country. We want these platforms to be banned, taken under control."
>"We experienced similar attacks in the past. The lack of monitoring on these platforms have a role in the rise of this sort of immoral behaviour. These platforms do not suit this country. We want these platforms to be banned, taken under control."
The "similar attacks", and the "immoral behavior" are direct references to insults against him and his family on social media.
These are from the Al Jazeera translation of the press conference if you don't trust the AP:
"Erdogan said investigations were under way against those who "attacked" his family by "abusing a newborn".
"We will keep chasing these cowards who attack a family and the values they believe represented by them through a baby."
"We experienced similar attacks in the past. The lack of monitoring on these platforms have a role in the rise of this sort of immoral behaviour. These platforms do not suit this country. We want these platforms to be banned, taken under control."
Please stop being deliberately obtuse.
The AP should have added then that a newborn was insulted instead of referring to „his family“. Someone who insults a baby must be quiet foolish. There seems to be a heating debate! At least Turkey got some balls and they talk openly about Adrenochrome in the main stream news, can’t be that bad their censorship. In other countries and on Youtube you get deleted and insulted when talking about child abuse. It’s easy to point on other people and label them censorship when you should instead point the finger on your own media.
There was already plenty of evidence if you actually read the quote the and setup that it was the answer to a question about the attack.
>At least Turkey got some balls and they talk openly about Adrenochrome in the main stream news, can’t be that bad their censorship.
If you're talking about the fictional drug, there's a movie and a TV show that openly talk about it. If you're talking about the chemical substance, you can buy it in the US.
If you're talking about the bullshit pizza gate conspiracy, the mainstream news mentions it when it's newsworthy. Like when someone shoots a hole in the floor of a pizza restaurant. But most of the time they don't talk about for the same reason they don't talk about lizard people or the tooth fairy.
Go ahead and talk about it though. I guarantee you the government won't censor you and throw you in jail the way they will in Turkey if you insult a government official.
expect to see parallels.