Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube
techjaja.com
techjaja.com
This is clock work, every election period they shutdown social media & electronic payments. It happened in 2016[0]
But when an "OTT" tax was imposed on social networks (Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Linkdin) in 2018[1].
Majority didn't want to pay an extra tax(required to use social media) on top of paying for internet. So majority learnt how to use vpns.
As a result, the OTT tax was a complete failure [2] and now the Uganda Revenue service is planning on bundling it with internet data costs.
Since people now know how to use vpns, social media cant be blocked.
So the reason for blocking smartphone app stores is to essentially, STEP 1 i.e Stop people from installing VPNs.
STEP 2 will probably be the total blocking of all social media.
[0]:https://theatlantic.com/amp/article/463407/
[1]:https://dw.com/en/uganda-one-year-of-social-media-tax/a-4967...
[2]:https://techjaja.com/ott-tax-fails-as-ura-proposes-tax-on-in...
[0]:https://qz.com/africa/1957137/uganda-cuts-off-internet-ahead...
Now of course most of the governments that would do this would be authoritarian and would look to control their own narrative, I think this illustrates how unbalanced and agenda-driven these media and social graph services have become who bring in foreign values to local elections.
This interference used to be called neo-imperialism not too long ago by the same people who now advocate for these narratives.
Today, right across Africa, governments are studying the possibilities of restricting foreign internet services. Both as a way of controlling the information their populations get to view, but also as a means of addressing high youth unemployment among educated workers by giving their domestic internet firms the room to take root. This is actually an interesting sideshow in the more global tendency towards balkanization. But take my word for it, young startup type guys from Entebbe-Kampala, (and, with AfCFTA, even places like Dar and Nairobi), will be very active trying to press their advantage.
The political side of this shutdown is predictable, but the interesting action is the long game. I think these kinds of shutdowns are dry runs for the sort of internet world African leaders are quietly pressing for in their future.
A headline of "Local President admits focus on internet censorship is driven by personal greed, not economic protectionism?"
I'm from Ghana, a country that's been touching the line of internet censorship from time to time, and I see nothing wrong with their statement.
It's laughably naive to imply that they're censoring outside services to prop up the local tech scene when they can hardly be assed to get kids a proper education without using it as a political bargaining chip.
Like saying they're playing 4d chess when they're not interested in checkers unless it suits them...
You're forgetting that authoritarian governments do not have to address these things by eliminating the root cause. They can just silence the opposition with arrests or execution [0]. Uganda is so famous for this to the point that there is an entire movie [1] about Idi Amin.
If you actually cared about youth unemployment you could address it with simple economic measures first and you would seek funding from western investors, not get rid of them.
Implementing tariffs in an industry that you are never going to be a world leader in is just plain stupid. Ugandan app developers can just develop for the Google and Apple store and get access to a bigger audience instead of restricting themselves to Uganda only.
It only works out in China because their internal market is bigger than EU+USA combined. It could work out for India (unlikely unless they address corruption). Uganda only has 44 million people it just doesn't make sense.
I was not equating blocking the app stores with addressing youth unemployment.
Silencing the opposition didn't quite work for Idi Amin, because the opposition became part if the military which topped him and tge next president.
There are probably some reasonable generalisations that are fair, but sometimes I feel people generalize a bit too much when it comes to Africa.
I would focus on the regional peoples' politics rather than the technocracy or American politics.
I firmly believe your thrust is irrelevant to the core issue, if not solely for the immediacy of a democratic threat.
I'm not an expert on this, but my family and I have been following this revolution for the past few months. To me, it's a promise to the people that things can get better.
From what I understand, not being an expert either but having spent quite a few months in Uganda in the last few years, Museveni has been the president since 1986 and brought a lot of stability to the country, aka brought peace after lots of conflict under Idi Amin. Some people have expressed gratitude for that and fear that Uganda will go back into the violence it faced before and yet seem very tired of the way Museveni has been running the country and want new leadership. Recently, there has been stronger opposition and in the last few years, a popular musician, Bobi Wine, decided to get involved in politics and declared to run for president.
I imagine, if I were in government, I might be afraid of the US, China, Russia, or other countries bringing their political influence into the country through the internet. I might fear revolutions like the ones that happened in Tunisia and Egypt and other countries. I may also just fear my own citizens and what they want. It's hard for us in the US to know how much of the political discourse here is from the citizens vs external sources vs government sources, and I could imagine even harder sometimes in other countries to figure that out.
That's the tricky part with this decision, it could be to stop foreign influences, it could be to stop local influences, it could be to amplify government influences, or a combination of all three.
Incidentally Uganda was previous battleground of US campaign against Huawei with reference to Wine.
>Huawei technicians have been helping governments in Uganda and Zambia spy on their political opponents, a new report says https://www.businessinsider.com/huawei-workers-helped-africa...
Snarky, but interest reading dissecting the agenda behind WSJ article. Choice quote:
>The WSJ doesn't say how it obtained the documents, though it does reveal that Wine was recently in Washington DC where he had briefed the US government on events in Uganda and had received offers of assistance.
https://www.theregister.com/2019/08/15/huawei_uganda_report/
TLDR; Washington upset Huawei prevented them from meddling in domestic Uganda affairs. Huawei lawful interception implementation erodes US influence operations abroad. No surprise tech sovereignty is gaining momentum in any place that is able.
Makes me think just how antiquated the idea of geography-based government could be when we have instant communications with people around the world. I think national, regional, and local governments really have no idea how to deal with internet interactions that cross geographical jurisdictions.
Would they be? Consider what just happened in the USA: All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country.
Now imagine if some similar subversion were attempted in another country, say Ecuador? Would these social media companies be as willing to silence a faction in another country?
What if it were to happen in a more important country, say Australia? South Korea? Japan? Germany? At what point should these companies be interfering through censorship, and at what point are the issues too blurred or difficult to figure out who's right and who's wrong? Sir Richard Wharton in Yes, Minster once quipped: "Once you start interfering in the internal squabbles of other countries, you're on a very slippery slope."
Naturally, these companies will resist the push towards becoming arbiters of Truth (until they actually BECOME such arbiters, then god help us all).
So non-American governments will have no recourse but to plead with Youtube, and then block them when the answer is "no".
I see no reason for any government or any party to trust the social media, mobile OS platforms and messaging anymore. A new set of tools is about to loom hopefully.
Yes. People never handled daily small talk with their friends and family via the Letters page of e.g. The Times, so it was never antisocial to change newspaper, to boycott a newspaper entirely, or to go without any daily paper at all.
The issue is publishing services with discoverability where anyone can see or subscribe to your feed, those are more like a letters page and service providers have a clear interest in what they are publishing for you.
That, and of course financially complying with pressure from the Chinese government to be tough on whatever independence movement it struggle with now — Catalonia was of course free to chant it's independence.
I merely noticed that much of the censorship and cultural policing on large platforms such as GitHub, or even the new Linux code of conduct seems to be mostly applicable to situations that pertain to the U.S.A. exclusively.
It's quite interesting how many international websites would forbid me from posting scenes from Dutch television programming because the adult U.S.A.-man is apparently more damaged by nudity than the præpubertal Dutchman.
https://www.expats.cz/czech-news/article/pro-trump-anti-covi...
I suspect at the beginning there is a kind of identification and a contrarian reflex (“you won’t prevent me from speaking so I will say the vilest things just to test how far you’ll bend”). But people doing that end up taking it seriously after having steeped in it for a couple of years. Still, surely they realise that the people they support don’t care a bit about them and live on the other side of the world.
GNOME is of the U.S.A. and well known for its livid codes of conduct; KDE is of German origins, and seems to be more lax in this.
Even with Linux, Linus, a Finn living in the U.S.A., has long resisted it and even referenced this difference between Finnish and U.S.A. culture, but eventually relented.
Is there an open-source project, US or not, that the Code of Conduct saga hasn't touched?
The entire world cannot now use Parler (disclosure: I've never downloaded or used it) because a hundred or so people broke into a US government building for 2 hours.
Where did this happen?
Because I saw some specific tags blocked calling for a VP to be killed blocked (vs some generic "kill all humans" hyperbole)... and specific account blocked after its owner triggered an attack on the Capitol that resulted in 5 casualties (and breaking the rules of the platform for 4+ years)
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Are you trying to say people who were pro-talking about killing Pence and storming the Capitol are a significant population?
Because last time I checked there were still tens of millions of conservatives on Twitter who aren't banned
We're now in the unprecedented situation where individual people can out-broadcast even nation states with the help of social media companies, most of which have their head offices in the USA, limiting their dependency upon and reachability from other governments of the world. It's a decent situation all around because having such companies headquartered in a repressive regime would have damaging effects worldwide. But we still run into some problems:
1. Their morals are local, but their reach is international. This has caused a lot of friction in the past, and that friction will only increase going forward.
2. They're being pressured to bow to local "truths" or risk being banned in a number of nations. These "truths" generally come to light from local issues, and while they can be easy to decypher in autocratic regimes, they absolutely will NOT be so easy to arbitrate in functioning democracies. We'll eventually reach the point where every social media company will need a team of sociologists and political strategists in order to figure out what's behind every government's complaints over what's being broadcast by their citizens, and how best to respond (making them higher arbiters of truth than even the government). The national self-determination issues alone are staggering.
The endgame of this is increased government regulation and increased pressure for a single national "truth", which must be defended vigorously in order to keep the government functional. The increased conflict between these American companies and local governments will increase to the point where eventually the companies will win and essentially set the policy of truth worldwide, which leaves us in a very centralized and fragile state when it comes to corruption, especially since companies - unlike governments - have only profit as a motive, and do not answer to the people.
You said this:
> All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country.
Where is this large population? Who is this large population?
Thus entire comment you typed is an distressingly large stretch if you can't identify the population you're using as a diving board to truly go into the deep end here.
Although social media companies have allowed more of us to broadcast to an unprecedentedly large audience, we're not actually ready for the Pandora's box this opens in terms of free speech, corporate rights and obligations, and national sovereignty. The near-term solution will be selective censorship by companies and blocking by governments unhappy with the censorship choices (for both good and bad reasons). But as the decade drags on, we'll be forced to recognize our lack of psychological adaptability to this kind of influential power that can destabilize societies to such a degree (by individual, group, AND state actors), and try to come up with a least-worst solution that we're probably not going to like.
It's not like this is completely new; larger countries with information dissemination advantages have used that power to destabilize smaller countries for centuries, most recently in South America and the Middle East. But it's quite another thing to be on the receiving end, by anyone able to harness a sufficient audience (i.e. not just state actors), and find yourself unable to effectively defend against it.
Definitely not buying that was the original population mentioned: it doesn't follow your original claim and it doesn't follow your reply.
> All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country.
Parler users are not a significant portion of the population.
They were not blocked by "all social media companies", their app was removed from an app store.
If you're trying to implicate the people who were using Parler... again small population and the over lap between banned from social media and using Parler is far away from a "significant portion of the population". And many are of a certain political leaning, they are not representative of that population.
This while comment chain was built on an event "banning a significant portion of the population population" that doesn't exist. End of story.
I'm not interested in discussing doomsaying based on made up events.
Nothing said in this thread is a novel thing, it's the same tired what-ifs that ignore the "what-happened". When your argument doesn't even stand without leaning on made up events and slipper slopes, it's not worth much.
Once again it's been proven that, even after facing the worst case so far, presidents using their platform to threaten nuclear war... people still have to resort to embellishments and straight up fabrications to support doomsday theories that just haven't panned out.
Twitter did not falter in their dedication to avoid censorship until people's blood were quite literally on this person's hands before finally taking a stand.
It's probably been a difficult 4 years for some people at Twitter turning cheek after cheek, they're earned their extra 11 days of rest.
>I think this illustrates how unbalanced and agenda-driven these media and social graph services have become who bring in foreign values to local elections.
Considering the existing rulers fail to live up to their responsibilities that's not necessarily a bad thing.
>This interference used to be called neo-imperialism not too long ago by the same people who now advocate for these narratives.
The countries who accept them can often be more successful than those who refuse them. Hong Kong is a pretty good example. Democratic values and capitalism forced down the throat of people. This became a threat to the authoritarian regime in the Chinese mainland and the rulers have to make concessions to their population. They built special economic development zones and simply copied the ideas that worked out in Hong Kong and were compatible with Chinese values at the time. Western investors suddenly had a reliable business partner in Hong Kong and a large "proxy" workforce that was manufacturing goods on the mainland which got shipped to Hong Kong and could be sold to the west. The story ends with China becoming a world leading economy, not because of the west but rather because the west forced the government to listen to the people.
After witnessing how they used their heft and influence in the US you better believe the likes of India, Russia, China, Nigeria, Brazil, etc., will evaluate their relationships with these services.
People have too many family members, coworkers, friends, etc. across country borders. There’s a high cost to cutting your country off from the rest of the internet in any real way. The cost of intercepting / controlling / severing internet communication is high and gets higher as communication volumes get higher, the economy relies more heavy on international communication, and encryption becomes more commonplace.
I do think we’re going to see a lot more geofencing as time goes on.
But here? I can't point to obvious actors with enough pushing power that would benefit from this. Not on the UK side, at least. Brexit feels to me like a meme that got out of hand and drove behavior that's against everyone's self-interest.
Bill Clinton opposed NAFTA, Barbara Jordan wanted to slash legal immigration, and Democrats opposed the Iraq war after Bush's reelection.
https://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/illegal-immigration...
When he was a journalist, Johnson discovered that “write disparaging lies [0] about European politics” was a successful strategy.
It is plausible others noticed this, and likewise found easier to win power by euro-bashing than by being honest.
Given the cognitive biases which makes repetition of claims make those claims seem more true, from that point on you get your meme which got out of hand and drove the referendum and its result.
Defect-Defect.
[0] https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/times-boris-johnson-flat-lied-13...
A second fun one is unpopular politicians being dumped in EU seats. They vote pro something unpopular, let their local equivalent implement the national law, then blame them for it. Hence extremist politicians make EU law as nasty as possible, just to get some ammonution at home.
There are people with obvious financial incentives to get a trade deal with the US (not necessarily on terms beneficial to the UK), and people with obvious political incentives to destabilise Western European liberal democracy, but they were largely in the background. And some prominent Leave campaigners made a lot of money shorting the pound because they believed they would win, but that was just as much a gamble on the result as anyone else directly or indirectly betting on it.
Here's a Nuffield College survey on the subject: http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Carl_Rea...
I didn't vote for it but maybe taking people at their word for why they voted for it is a good idea?
Would you rather other people assigned their own ratios as to why you made your voting decisions, or actually listened to you?
Most people can understand the arguments for both sides of most debates, it just involves a little work to grok what they haven't themselves, concluded.
The internet naturally didn't end up having many borders.
These borders however are not just political, they reflect a lot of things.
It's very natural that the internet should be a little bit different in each nation, after all, everything else is.
We are not prepared for that, and we have no idea what it's going to mean, so it's going to be a rollercoaster.
India's most populous and likely poorest state, had 202 mn people in 2012; nearly 2/3rds of the current US population.
Here are some cities and numbers for scale (Google search)
Mumbai had ~20.4 mn people. Cairo has ~20.9 mn. Dhaka 21 mn Mexico city 21.7
New Zealand had 4.8 mn people in 2018. Canada - 37.59 Mayanmar - 53.71 The UK - 66 mn Vietnam 95.5 mn
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A few years ago, Mexico had a spate of gang violence. News about it was suppressed by the govt.
A woman driving along the road uploaded a video she had taken. It showed shell cases strewn on the roads, burnt out trucks, and the aftermath of that violence.
IT went viral on Facebook, going against the Government narrative and letting a slice of reality get observed.
Until morning came around to the UK. At which point someone opened facebook, and saw the gore. They were able to call people they knew at FB and say "why am I/my kids seeing this?".
And FB responded and took it down, for breaking site rules.
(taken from Custodians of the Internet) -----
FB wasn't necessarily wrong, but it was definitely partial. When the blood and gore rule was enforced during the Boston bombings, senior employees overruled it citing newsworthiness.
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Your guess that the net will be balkanized is quite likely true.
FB spends great efforts to have local presence in each market. They recruit policy people, and negotiators. However, the platform does help broadcast content.
And if someone at FB can decide what is newsworthy or not, then why wouldn't local leaders crave that same power?
The rationale and measure seems to be a better evil if the politics are thusly brittle.
https://twitter.com/PopulismUpdates/status/13414323996834078...
https://twitter.com/PopulismUpdates/status/13396952711737057...
There's no way they would allow access to social media, the 21st century mass communication be controlled by some Silicon Valley companies located in the USA.
Expect the indigenization also occurs in financial ecosystem, etc.
Furthermore, the article goes on to say that this kind of block has occurred before in 2016.
Likewise, Twitter et. al. are simply following the same precedent set to enforce their values in the products they offer. The social media app is not public square and no one is certainly entitled to use it.
Even though I know it’ll just cement their viewpoints even further, I’m hoping the mods do something about it
No one is flooding HN. A lot of us are non-American and programmers who understand what the recent events will mean in geopolitics. Everyone can see that GP was talking about what this move will mean in general terms. Don't assume we are trolls just because you don't like our comments.
However, if you read the comments people are interpreting the title as if Google and Apple did something wrong.
They make up random theories about the economic benefits of internet firewalls, the "evil" desire of western corporations to influence Ugandan politics and just the general idea of sharing culture among Uganda and the rest of the world being a net negative for Uganda.
People who know about Ugandan history are acutely aware of how deep in a pit they started off and how much of it was purely internal. It was similar to China suppressing their Muslim population except it was against political enemies and the Ugandan government wasn't afraid to kill someone (100s of thousands) on a whim.
Comparing this type of suffering with Google's and Apple's worst crimes is just laughable.
Recently Twitter and Facebook (two of the biggest Western corporations in the world) abruptly cut off the biggest politician in the world. It was the first page headline for several days all over the world. Do you think govts are going to just ignore that?
And to be clear, I am not talking about any crimes. I am talking about censorship and power. It is now clear that Twitter and Facebook will censor anyone they want and that is a clear threat to the power of govts all over the world. (For example SWIFT network alternatives developed by Russia and China for similar reasons.)
I'll answer your q when you've answered mine
Here is a real life example of what I was talking about in my original comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25714824
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
then assumed my comment was calling you a troll. That looks to me like a particularly potent mix of hypocrisy and self-victimisation
Maybe troll was a strong word. But calling for censorship by HN mods to suppress a perfectly reasonable comment is a very strong position to take as well.
This seems like a weird way to put it if only Trump and stuff like Parler was removed off the big social media platforms.
What’s fascinating is that many countries are using the whole tech censorship to justify their own behavior. It’s a bit of “see, even the US agrees dangerous speech should be censored” or “do you want to end up like the US? this is why we have laws about speech”.
internet access should be enough
A little bit less pedantically though, while this is certainly a blow to internet freedom, and not a good thing, I think most of us would agree (at least in the long-term) that access to the web is more important to freedom that a collection of proprietary apps.
This is rather unusual, the credit union I use in the USA offers an iOS and Android app that is literally a webview of their mobile website, plus a dash of OCR for check handling. Using the PWA is nearly identical, it even works on a PinePhone with Maemo or any other operating system that can run a semi-modern browser.
But of course you're right - you can use the web fine, provided the modern web apps you're using aren't crippled by Apple's slow API adoption in Safari, which is of course to drive you to the better experiences that are waiting for you in the hypothetically accessible App Store.
The Apple devices I use that are too old to talk to Apple's servers disagree with you.
Anybody know?
With app stores blocked, what prevents the government from blocking messaging apps next, as they won't have ways of providing updates to users? I'm referring to Telegram and what they've previously done to try circumvent blocking techniques.
Banning a centralized service like gmail is easier, but then you lose in productivity as 90% of your country's businesses are likely to rely on it.
As far as privacy goes, it's also easier to coerce admins of smaller nodes to disclose valuable information than fighting with a multinational foreign corporation.
This is not an argument against decentralization. It's just not immediately obvious that decentralization does not automatically lead to censorship resistance. To do that we need onion routing or mix networks as a base for all our communications, so that banning the network would be equivalent to disconnecting the ISP from the Internet altogether.
Not if such network was made purposefully to minimize transparency.
To say that it’s “much easier” to ban hundreds of IP addresses instead of a dozen IP addresses is ridiculous. It’s no easier to get IP addresses in a distributed system than it is to get them in a centralized system.
GMail is a funny example to point to, because email is arguably the most used digital communication method and it’s also decentralized. Try to fully shut down email in the US — where are you going to find a list of all ip addresses hosting SMTP and IMAP servers, and is that going to be easier than just blocking Twitter?
Shodan is a readily available database of such data. Just search for all hosts with IMAP, SMTP and POP3 ports exposed and then block those. Alternatively, a DIY scan of the whole IPv4 address range can be accomplished within hours or days.
IPv6 address space is harder to scan, but it's arguably safe to ban all such traffic since nearly nothing critical uses IPv6.
Edited to add: there is a tiny fraction of providers that would reject the emails from such a setup, but it's really not common and does not include large providers.
And email is practically the only decentralized system in widespread use these days. And it's not centralized, but close to it. You shut down 3 or 4 email services, 95% of its traffic is gone.
You don’t need to shut down the entire public email network (although it’s possible to do with DPI). You would only need to ban the servers that are involved in spreading of unwanted information.
If there is a decentralized service that is exclusively used by "perpetrators" then banning the service will have a greater impact even if the ban is harder to implement.
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-patent-disables-camera...
Ah, OK then comrade. Cancel elections as well since you've figured it all out.
So your point is to have Facebook and Twitter policing and monitoring everyone's posts for discussions on general politics. Good luck with that.
You better have a definition and where to draw the line on which posts, images, text and speech that fit your definition of 'politics'.
The problem is that these discussions go nowhere. Everyone may come to an agreement, and yet no one will do anything about it. Politicians themselves don't participate, which is sort of ironic.
Plus, these discussions often devolve into shit slinging over some general issues like racism, minority rights, wealth, power. It only takes a few people to start it, and often, all the rational people just leave at that point.
All of this blocking will just limit everyone's freedom and access to information. The core issue, education, is what needs to be solved.
1. You need to make officials accountable.
2. You have to make everyone in the country understand what's good for them and give them the ability to make informed votes.
Uganda is suffering from 1. The US and Europe is suffering more from 2. (extremism in any direction). They are completely different problems.
Censorship goes against 1. Fake news goes against 2.
And when was the last time anyone explained in detail why they think a certain law would benefit people? Wouldn't be that hard to do. But I'm guessing it could reveal the real reasons behind many laws.
Will be interesting to see what their internet turns out looking like if this is permanent
Running the required servers might be too hard, though.
Having the wrong party affiliation?
Isn't this perfectly reasonable to switch to the modern Internet channels as time comes? Or should all the presidents keep transmitting in Morse code over cable telegraphs?
Like I've said before around here, in 2016, I couldn't stand the man, but the way the media treats him, I find myself rooting for him. Every problem about Trump is their own creation.
A "ban them all" strategy is not unthinkable.
They fine them if they not do so, and if they not be willing to pay the fine, then they are blocked.
Russia will certainly be a large enough market that they will consider it a financial loss large enough that they might implement this for Russia's version.
If more people were willing to do the right thing and sacrifice their political career the world would be a better planet.
So I for one would not be very interested in more balkanized Internet, simply because this limits my options to mediocre sources, whereas knowing English and having access to a global platform lets me find better material.
Yeah and it's only a matter of time until youtube will start de-platforming mainstrem hungarian vloggers because their values don't align with american
Not related to social media but this stuff even happen IRL https://www.euronews.com/2019/04/09/hungarian-opera-asks-whi...
Most likely it was because the subthread was too generic relative to the OP. What makes articles intellectually interesting are the specifics, the curious bits, the diffs [2] between it and comparable things. In the present case that was certainly the Ugandan aspect, and the theme of American cultural domination vis-a-vis Europe is a change of subject relative to that.
Changes of subject can be fine if they're unpredictable and whimsical, but definitely not when they're a move towards the generic. Generic topics are like large planets with powerful gravitational fields—or even black holes—the default trend is for all threads to get sucked towards them, and that leads to a much less interesting place.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Now, what I have noticed is that some have consumed so much U.S.A. media that they seem to believe various legal principles of the U.S.A. apply here locally when they do not. It can be nothing but dangerous that some seem to think that the emergency number here is 911, when it is not.
I understand the point but you have to admit it is a little funny you are expressing this point in english while on an american website.
I think you should recognize the reverse as well though - countries all over the world are interacting with and influencing americans and america - I know a lot of americans that would prefer to have their pre-globalist culture back as well.
A lot of political anger is rooted in very simple economics. The economy is doing increasingly worse for the majority and that fuels extremism. Of course the extremism makes it harder to do the right thing because people believe in unrealistic promises that are never going to work out but they appeal to their own biases.
For example. Labor in China is very cheap. If Americans want to compete with China they have to reduce their incomes to match Chinese incomes. One idea is to introduce tariffs to raise the costs of products until they are high enough to pay for American labor. You can do this in theory but why on earth would you do it if China can do it cheaper? If you buy products from China you could still use the saved money to employ American labor. So the actual loss is not that great.
The only reason why the tariffs work out is that the labor market is not flexible enough. Low income workers need jobs and the jobs that are there are high skill. Training has to be paid by the workers themselves and the training is not guaranteed to grant a job. Even after acquiring a good college degree there is still a "pseudo training phase" during your first 3 years on the job. Converting low skill workers to high skill workers is too unreliable and expensive so it doesn't happen and it gets worse the older the worker is.
If you could figure out a way to do training effectively and inexpensively your country would be significantly better off by buying Chinese products.
So what politicians will advocate is tariffs instead of better training. It's short term vs long term thinking.
Not even foreign values. Only subset of foreign values which are only shared by the Silicon Valley. Beyond that, half the US people disagree with Google/Apple/Twitter/Facebook’s non-neutral stance on politics, who weighed their full weight in censoring 50% of the political spectrum.
I will not call it the pied piper because Uganda weighs nothing, but the GAFA’s politics are now visible as directly harmful in USA, with calls to leftist violence given full platform since 4 years while censoring the 50% rest of the political spectrum, and any country who lets them operate their ideological platform is doomed to live through the Congress event again.
Good one, Uganda.
Edit: I wish people downvoting this question would explain. I literally don’t understand and am asking for clarification.
Most conservatives, like most liberals, never run afoul of the content rules of the major platforms.
Just putting that out there.
Yes they do, but a lot less that right leaning calls do, because social media companies lean leftwards.
For example, Parler was recently kicked off of Google App store, and Apple and Amazon have also threatened to kick Parler off their app store and hosting platform. This was because Parler leans right and some messages by some users encouraged violence.
None of these companies would ever do the same to a mainstream (i.e. left leaning, because social media censors the right more than the left) social media platform because of left wing violent talk/threats.
It's blatantly obvious that big tech is biased to the left. (I say this as someone who is fairly left-leaning, FWIW).
This had nothing to do with Parler's political leanings and everything to do with Parler's wildly inadequate content moderation combined with top users calling for the execution of public officials with impunity.
Facebook's userbase is very right-leaning and has arguably just as many calls for violence, but they at least have a fully staffed moderation team.
I think we're going to have to agree to differ here.
> Facebook's userbase is very right-leaning
Really? It seems to me that just about all adults on on Facebook (I can only think offhand of one person I know IRL who isn't). Thus FB will have the same political composition as the population.
Let's be clear: moderating/banning the accounts of a man and his supporters who invited tens of thousands of people to the United States Capitol, spent hours lying to them about the results of the election, and then weaponized them in an attempt to overthrow the US government is not a case of Twitter crossing some sort of threshold into tyranny.
A grave crime was committed this week, and the wheels of the legal system are dysfunctional enough that the perpetrator wasn't arrested on the spot but instead allowed continued control of the US military and its nuclear weapon arsenal. Just because Twitter is able to act quickly outside the confines of the legal system doesn't mean we're descending into tech tyranny.
I honestly don't want to hear another word about "leftist violence" or "the radical left" now that the right has unapologetically lined up behind the man who fomented a coup attempt.
Rag tag groups do not execute coups. That’s a willful exaggeration and further evidence of how narratives tilt people’s thinking.
This is the media and social media calling it that -they cannot help it. Are the armed forces classifying as a coup? It’s a ridiculous accusation. More of a coup attempt is the call for impeachment with two weeks left after the previous impeachment failed. It’s honestly sad.
The fact remains that the President gathered tens of thousands of people and, with a torrent of lies, weaponized them into an attack on the United States. Just because it failed doesn't make it any less grave of a crime.
I cannot fathom why you keep saying this. Please present some evidence.
The left completely controls the MSM at this point. It's unsurprising that large swathes of officials, including judges, are unwilling to investigate their narrative for fear of being branded and extremist of one flavor or another. The right knows this, and so doesn't trust outcomes that aren't transparent. The left knows this too, but has no incentive to correct it, in spite of the damage it's going to cause to our democracy.
I have the feeling we're about to find out in the US precisely how the left can go too far, and how Americans respond to it.
You'll be reassured to know they'll still be litigated soon.
Dominion is coming for Sidney Powell over her fabricated claims, and I hope she gets a dignified, humane arrangement with a local homeless shelter after they're done with her.[1]
I encourage everyone to read the entire filing. It's going to be a fun ride, I'm really looking forward to this case being heard in court.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/dominion-sues-sidney-powell-...
The other thing I want to mention (in demonstrating the two standards) is that the dem leadership cheered on protests in the summer with battle like language which turned into far larger and more consequential riots that somehow we dont talk about anymore. Many lost their livelihoods and some their lives. These went on for months, not 6 hours. Those riots by the way were encouraged by dem leadership but somehow have not been penalized on twitter or even critiqued. The unlevel playing field that essentially a cartel is laying out which we see time and time again is what people are getting fed up with and I can sympathize.
mullingitover - You might be correct that the claims were hyperbole. But I don't see a difference between the two sides in falsely justifying a protest that turned into a riot. For instance, the police brutality is not acceptable (and the imagery was terrible), but it was also mostly an astroturf and amplification of reality before an election to rally voters when you actually look at the FBI statistics of racial deaths in the hands of police. Both sides encouraged protests with battle like language. They both turned into destructive riots. One side was penalized.
He's not completely stupid, at least in the short term. I'll give him that.
The fact is, however, that he made breathtaking, wholly unfounded claims of a vast conspiracy that if you believed them would lead you to believe that a revolution was in order and completely appropriate. Then he turned them loose on the Capitol.
It's easy for the winning side to trot out a bunch of people that support their position (and if you try suggesting R's are on the same side as Trump supporters, then you're more divorced from reality than I feared). Trump supporters don't care. They want specific concerns addressed.
And frankly, they should be. Every election in a bona fide democracy should be characterized by the winning side steel manning the losing side's objections and addressing them one-by-one until the fraction of the population continuing to object is minuscule enough to ignore.
That didn't happen. Instead objectors got people they didn't trust trotted out before them declaring "There's NO evidence of election fraud" (demonstrably false, there's evidence of election fraud in every election), stonewalling, and running out the clock.
They should have steel-manned and addressed in a very public and forthcoming, unspun manner the more compelling arguments presented. Matt Braynard's [1] work, for example, should have been litigated to hell and back.
Undergoing these challenges is critical to maintaining democracy, but the left was hell-bent on painting a narrative that pursuing election transparency in 2020 (not 2016, mind you; they had quite a different take then when they were mucking with the electoral college themselves [2]) was somehow antidemocratic because all questions had been settled by the people only they were permitted to declare trustworthy.
So what we have now is a huge fraction of the population that feel the election has been stolen:
"Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans say it’s Very Likely the Democrats stole the election, but just as many Democrats (61%) say it’s Not At All Likely. Among unaffiliateds, 29% feel it’s a stolen election; 45% do not." [3]
I don't have much of a dog in this fight. I'm about as pure a libertarian/ancap as you can find. I leaned slightly Trump because I despise war, but I would have been just as happy with Biden and a republican senate. I'm telling you with open eyes (the same eyes I use to attempt to discredit the Q and Lin Wood madness on the right) that you have bought into a false narrative sold to you by the leftist media. You are nowhere in the vicinity of "woke". You are stuck in a bubble that decries other bubbles and you don't even realize it. Worse, it's the most powerful bubble that is causing the most damage to society. It is YOUR bubble that is causing the most damage to democracy in this country.
[1] https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/matt_braynards_...
[2] https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/12/17/how-democrats-attempt...
[3] https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/ele...
Ask yourself, who led these people to believe this.
Phil Waldron's testimony is one of them https://youtu.be/rri6flxaXww?t=4924
All these things already happened and it was proven over and over that there was no substantial proof of widespread fraud. If your fellow citizens cannot discern the difference between social media and reality then this does not create an obligation for the opposing side that scales upwards towards infinity with their level of insanity.
Its deeply ironic that before the election around 2/3 of republicans believed our elections were free and fair and now instead of concluding that their objections are grounded in bad faith you believe that the democrats didn't do enough to prove to their opponents that they didn't cheat. You have reversed the burden of proof and I reject your assertion. The burden of proof always lies with he would would assert a crime has been done not upon the accused to prove a negative. The alternative is utter nonsense.
Incidentally if we look at an actual source
https://morningconsult.com/form/tracking-voter-trust-in-elec...
10% of democrats believe we didn't have a fair election, 44% of independents, and a whopping 78% of republicans. On the overall ~2/3 of Americans trust our election was free and fair. The 1/3 will more or less be convinced by nothing as their feelings aren't based on reality.
These people will by and large just have to go through the next 4-16 years of Democratic control thinking the Democrats, the women, and the minorities are stealing their country.
Another side told people that their country was being stolen from them and only they could stop it before telling them to go to the capital.
Was it or wasn't it being stolen? Do you have a debunking of Matt Braynard's argument? [1]
I presume not, since one hasn't been presented, because the evidence hasn't been examined or litigated, which is why hundreds of thousands of people went to the capital.
What should the American voter do if they believe there's a chance that their election was unfair? Sit it out? Would you?
Stop spreading the "very fine people" misinformation.
[1] https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/matt_braynards_...
[2] https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/03/21/trump_...
To save others the effort, it's a plea for money to support a vague voter data cross referencing effort. Unsurprisingly no evidence is put forward.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you're still inclined, here's his conclusion video. The summary includes links to various sections within the admittedly lengthy video, if it helps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH9ihoLi1NA
I worked in the marketing and ad-tech industries for the better part of a decade. The data linking tools that Matt Braynard used to "enhance" the data available from states are intended for marketing purposes where even a 30% accuracy is sufficient for call, mail, and digital campaigns. They are not suitable for "auditing" an election, as you'll inevitably introduce bad data. Further, linking individuals from different databases is highly error prone - there are more than 500 thousand people in the US with my first and last name. Individuals may choose different writings of their name at different times such as including or excluding Sr./Jr. or including or excluding a middle initial.
The above limitations become apparent in the below hearing on Michael's evidence in the Georgia state legislature. Individuals were clearly misslinked by name, and inferred birthday - simple errors due to removing Sr/Jr. are also present.
These linking errors are inevitable in this analysis as the state does not publicly disclose sufficient information to uniquely identify individuals for privacy reasons.
It is a stupid conspiracy, the gap in the popular vote is overwhelming and Trump was only ever going to get in on electoral college technicalities. But this meme that Trump is the first one to launch serious claims at the electoral system is misinformation. This is a direct mimic of the Democrat response to 2016.
I recall some arguments in Congress, but to call it a 'direct mimic' is complete nonsense. The election was conceded immediately by the Clinton campaign as soon as it was called by the networks.
Now, what we can claim is that historical injustices have led to increased ratios of police interaction by different populations. That’s true. However, per interaction, the police are not more likely to be fatal to one group vs another. That’s a misrepresentation.
See: Simpson’s Paradox.
Given this it should behoove media and leaders to institute root changes that improve the “interaction” frequency.
For the same given percentage, they could all be people who were genuine threats, or all people reaching for their wallets in their own garage.
The metric is not measuring what matters.
If they'd taken Congresspeople hostage that would have been terrorism not a coup. The mob was totally unprepared, unimaginative, achieved no strategic outcomes and half of them are going to be in jail from now to forever. This is a coup in the same way that the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone was a succession. It is clueless protestors playing around.
Maybe you're right in that the word "coup" is not the most precise one to use, I think what I meant more than anything is that sometimes we see something as less serious violence because the action didn't result in as severe of an outcome as was intended. So maybe not coup, but terrorist attack or insurrection or whatever word portrays the gravitas but aligns better with the meaning of the action.
On a second note, I think we do this a lot in law as well—if I get into a tussle with someone and push them softly and they trip and hit their head and die, I will probably go to prison for much longer than if I repeatedly and angrily punch someone in the face and they don't die. I guess I'm just curious about how that works in our psyche.
Are you aware that Trump through Pence under the bus Wednesday morning for being unwilling to use his (nonexistent) unilateral authority to discard electoral votes? In the (brief) time between Trump's speech and the seditious mob's invasion of the Capitol, there was already some commentary about increased threats to Pence's life as a result of the speech. As far as that mob and its supporters are concerned, Pence is a traitor as much, if not more, than the entire Democratic Party.
Feel free to complain about the delays in requesting additional police from nearby cities, or the inability of the few thousands police officers for not be able to secure the building and the people inside. Complain that they did not have a good plan and assessment of the situation. But please, do not complain that they did not send the military. It is never a good idea unless the other side also have military gear and military training operated by a military organization.
Would anyone here be happier of the military was used against the rioters in the capital and a few hundred or thousand people died from machine fire?
No, I would be happier if they hadn't been lied to for months and then invited to the capitol and incited to do an attack on congress in the first place.
At least from what I recall, it was criticized because the President was ordering the national guard into a state, whereas I'm pretty sure it's the state's decision whether it wants to deploy its national guard or not, not the President's.
> The military do not have the training to deal with rioting citizens. They do not have the right equipment to deal with rioting citizens. They do not have the right organizational structure to deal with rioting citizens. The result of sending the military against your own citizen is always unnecessary violence and death.
I don't have a military or law-enforcement background so I don't know if they have the skills or equipment or not. You seem to speak with utmost certainty on this so I assume you may know more than me, but with the anonymity of the internet, I have no idea.
I don't know why the national guard seemed to be delayed, I don't know if that were because someone thought they weren't the right ones to do the job or if it would be too much of an escalation, or adversely, they thought they would do a really good job at protecting and not harming people. I have no idea.
What I was trying to say is that I don't know what the plans were, what the coordination was behind the scenes, and how few of us actually know the full scope of actions that were planned or intended and that just because a plan fails doesn't mean it didn't break the law in a serious way.
This was an organized attempt to assault a joint-session of the newly elected congress discharging their duty to certify the election results for the Executive branch of government.
Had the rioters reached the house or senate floor the US could have found itself without a legislative branch to legitimize the next president.
And guess what? We're fine.
You're pulling together a handful of facts from a massive event composed of trillions of facts and weaving them into a conspiracy. It was what it appeared to be. A rally that got out of hand.
I wonder - would you stand up for them if the crowd was a BLM crowd, and the outcomes the same? Would you stand up for them if it were a Muslim crowd, and the outcomes the same?
If you would then that's admirable and consistent, so fair enough
Guliani also asked Tuberville to object to every state which if acted on would have required at least 11 days of 12 hour sessions with an armed angry mob outside.
When they finally attacked it took hours to authorize the national guard to defend the capital giving the mob maximum time to terrorize congress.
It we examine the possible failure modes in this situation we can imagine.
- The mob could have slaughtered burned or blew up our congress or enough to frighten the rest into compliance.
- The mob could have destroyed the physical copy of the ballots delaying the matter giving the mob more time to intimidate legislators further.
- The legislature might have lost heart over 11 days of being terrorized by the mob outside and come to some compromise like allowing congress to vote on the matter one delegation one vote allowing the republicans to pick the next president.
This would have only required all of the republican party and 6 democrats in the house to join to enact. They would simply have had to vote with the republicans to reject 36 states worth of EC votes in order to throw the election to the house.
It is foolish to suppose this couldn't possibly have succeeded just because they are very very incompetent. They could never have enacted a traditional coup because the military was never on their side. This could actually have worked if our congress had lost heart.
This was absolutely an attempted coup and we would be stupid to treat it as less.
It’s a willful exaggeration and narrative driving.
Just because they chose a bumbling buffoon as savior figure doesn't mean they can be dismissed as harmless.
Glad they got him. We were THIS close to the end of the US, I tell ya'.
Forcing people under duress doesn’t hold. If you walk up to a bank teller and force them to transfer a million dollars to your account while you brandish a gun, will not be a legitimate transfer and will be reversed when order is restored.
Real life is not like playing cops and robbers. It’s slightly more sophisticated than that but the media is frothing at the mouth with wild exaggeration when it fits their narrative. The CHAZ was hip and cool for all I know.
I cannot fathom how people would think a rag tag coup is realistic in any way. It does not happen that way. Successful coups have powerful interests in the background willing to bite it if it comes to that.
Arguably this would be obviously against the spirit of the law but its not clear that 5 supreme court justices would have found that argument persuasive.
If the court and congress comply there is no need to convince the armed forces let alone banks and industry.
For the record the CHAZ was actually nonviolent during the day. Guns should have never been allowed. The shooting happened because drug addicts were fleeing to CHAZ with their stolen car that looked similar to the car that tried to pull a drive by earlier that night and the retards shot them.
Some parts of Seattle aren't really safe at night in the best circumstances.
We were a few fuckups away from a pile of dead congressional representatives. Don't kid yourself.
You have bought into a hysterical narrative, at least as fantastic as whatever insane narrative the QAnon people have bought into.
I'm just stating facts. The claims Trump has made about election fraud, hundreds of times over the course of two months, are lies. He used the people who believed those lies to attack the Capitol as they deliberated on the transfer of power.
Please elaborate on what's hysterical about my assessment of these facts.
Like in 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wisconsin_protests
And 2018. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/protests-buil...
Here's a pointed question for you: Which was worse and by what measure, the BLM/Antifa riots of last year or the capitol building riot?
I'm gonna say that the mob attack on the United States' entire line of succession over false claims of fraud is worse than overwhelmingly peaceful protests over the murder of an unarmed, compliant man in police custody.
If 15+ million people were rioting, we wouldn't have a single structure left standing in the country. A fraction of a percent of the protesters were bad actors, and nobody is defending them so I will leave you to abuse that strawman in peace.
100% of the people who invaded the US Capitol were rioters.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_George_Floyd_protests_...
Entire books were written in their defense, one infamous title being "In defense of looting".
MSM talking heads were besides themselves defending the rioters. For months!
> 100% of the people who invaded the US Capitol were rioters.
This is so blatantly twisted that I am forced to believe you're being intentionally deceptive. Everyone knows a tiny fraction of the protesters went into the capitol building.
If we look at the potential outcomes of the BLM/Antifa riots, there's no reason to believe that they couldn't have destroyed our democracy.
Or, if we compare the actual outcomes, it's not quite as rosy for your apparently preferred riots: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706651
I suspect you understand that you are doing this, and that you are comfortable with the charade. More and more people are beginning to see through the kind of spin you and others present, however, and are coming to resent you powerfully for it.
Last summer was replete with examples of violence from the left. Far more deadly and destructive than seen at the capitol building riot.
Results:
- Worsening of race relations
- Billions of dollars in damage
- Numerous stores and businesses, predominantly owned by black and latino Americans, destroyed. Those people, the very same we were told the riots were for, had their lives ruined in the name of social justice. Or do you think insurance reimburses all the damage and in a timely fashion? Years of hard work ruined. We know from past riots it takes decades for neighborhoods to recover.
- Almost 50 people died, can't recall the exact number. I think 47
- 9 million extra Trump votes and a doubling of his latino and black vote
Where is the proof that damaging riots were deliberately organized. I mostly saw white people looting under the cover of black people marching.
Where is the proof that it was primarily minority owned businesses that were damaged? Why would it take decades for these businesses to file a claim with their insurance and replace their merchandise and windows?
https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demonstrations-political-vi... cmd + f 'NATIONWIDE DEMONSTRATIONS'
> Where is the proof that damaging riots were deliberately organized.
You don't sustain riots for months without organizing.
> Why would it take decades for these businesses to file a claim with their insurance and replace their merchandise and windows?
Not their insurance but the economic damage. That's what happened after the 1960s riots. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40056402?seq=1
> Where is the proof that it was primarily minority owned businesses that were damaged?
Because the riots were mostly in low-income neighborhoods.
https://www.startribune.com/riots-arson-leave-minnesota-comm...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/minneapolis-protests-b...
https://www.businessinsider.com/black-owned-businesses-put-u...
So far we know these companies made the decision to ban the President:
- Youtube
- Tiktok (ironic that he'd be banned by Tiktok before he banned it himself)
- Snapchat
- Spotify
- Shopify
- Twitch
I would love to know if YCombinator has formally banned him from the Hacker News community.
Your opinion seems to be formed just recently, but you're making profound statements that ignore 99.99% of history. I am sorry, but this is an absurd and misplaced knee-jerk reaction and pooling it in to "Silicon Valley" culture. Silicon Valley culture dates back 50 years or more.
Other authoritarian leaders are likely thinking "If Twitter can deplatform the President of the United States [which has more power than my smaller country], they have the power to deplatform me. Better reduce that risk and start blocking services to maintain control."
Not saying it's right, but I understand their point of view.
Of course they have their own websites. But the goal would be to promote the "official" point of view while suppressing the opposition, to maintain the illusion of broad support. It's not a free speech issue. And if the "official" point of view gets deplatformed, it's a risk to them.
I'm hesitant to use VKontakte as a real-life example because I don't speak Russian, but according to Wikipedia VK had censorship issues until it was (supposedly) taken over by Putin-friendly people.
Given that open source and federated replacements for Twitter[1], Instagram[2], Reddit[3], YouTube[4] etc exist, this would not be a massive undertaking.
1: Mastodon, https://mastodon.social/about
2: PixelFed, https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed
3: Lemmy, https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
4: PeerTube, https://joinpeertube.org/en/
The Ugandan government would find it a lot easier to censor a website based in their country than one based abroard.
People are being shut down for being part of an offensive minority that supports extreme behaviors and statements. Lets look at the events at the capital as a proxy. 12% of America support this behavior. This is well within the margin of error for the percentage that tacitly supports the idea that the white "race" is exceptional.
Yet, last year Twitter and Reddit was full of BLM/Antifa supporters calling for and supporting cleansing of white people, republicans, Trump voters etc. without any kind of censorship.
Also for past decade these platforms have been safe harbor for terrorist organizations, cartels, gangs, government media from countries that do extreme human rights violations etc. No problem there either except sometimes when the shitstorm get big enough.
Apparently though some mentally unstable QAnon hillbillies stealing speakers stands are more extreme than countries and organizations involved in slavery, genocide, mass murder or terrorism.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25705107.
Deplatforming/cancelling is person C _asking_ person A not to communicate with person B, under threat of person C no longer communicating with person A.
Your statement is not true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies."
> controlling bodies
My point still holds. Asking a company to deplatform someone under threat of boycott is not censorship; because no individual user is in control of the platform.
So, according to the wiki definition, it states multiple times, all over that article, that private companies can censor people, and it fits with in that definition.
> a company to deplatform
A private institution can absolutely censor people though.
So what you are describing is an individual advocating in favor of censorship.
Here is another quote from the article " It may be carried out by governments or by private organizations either at the behest of government or on their own initiative."
The company is choosing to narrow its market focus; it tried to facilitate person's B and C, but C is forcing them to choose.
That's curation, not censorship.
No it isn't. It is literally the definition that is on wikipedia. That is a very good authority on definitions for things.
> At that point "censorship" is diluted to have no meaning beyond curation.
Sure it does. The meaning is quite clear in the article, which is a relevant authority on the issue.
Private companies can censor people. That is the definition, and the relevant authorities on the matter agree that it is.
Most definitions that you find with agree with me that private companies can censor people. This is not controversial, and most definitions agree with me.
No actually. According to the wikipedia definition on censorship, there is no requirement to be a monopoly, in order for a private business to engage in censorship.
Instead, according to the actual definition of censorship, censorship is any sort of "suppression of speech, public communication, or other information", and private, non-monopolies can absolutely engage in censorship.
You are simply incorrect about what the definition of censorship is. The actual definitions, that are all over the place, do not require a monopoly.
Even your example of deplatforming is a very questionable practice, for instance it is often used by cults like Jehovah Witnesses to disallow followers talking with family members who leave the cult.
Cults and similar certainly do use their ability to sever association to control their membership, but making that step and severing those bonds frees those same members from the harm of the cult.
If we include social media service providers into "cancellation" wars the result will be too costly for the society, so we need better ways to fight against nationalists. Sacrificing freedom of speech to a group applying unknown rules, without a mechanism to appeal, will be harmful in the long run, even though this time it have produced a result we like.
We must provide social media services with protected freedoms, or we risk impinging upon the freedoms of its users. Users must be free to choose social media which allows them to _not_ associate or communicate with those they do not wish to. Nor should we compel them to support speech that they do not wish to, for similar reasons.
If your concern is whether certain legal speech may be effectively completely deplatformed, then may I suggest the solution is federated social networking and not to impugn the freedom of association.
it's a big hard to grasp, but just because you are for something doesn't mean you can't be against an individual participating in the thing you're for doing bad stuff.
Being intolerant of the representative of somewhere between 20% and 40% of the country (accounting for turnout) is not a sustainable strategy. Ignoring even 10% of a country is a recipe for great pain.
That said, I'm still conflicted about this. I think it's possible to believe both that 1) there is a material threat of violence from continuing to give the president the equivalent of a giant megaphone, and 2) giving private corporations unilateral decisions-making power over who gets a platform is probably not in the long-term best interests of democracy.
- Noam Chomsky
As for your general point, HN users are about 50% in the US, and of course some of those are immigrants/expats. So HN is a highly international site. It certainly has a US orientation, but I think that's far from "conformity to American culture" and certainly we have zero intention of forcing that. We want people to be themselves and have curious conversation across their differences.
In a way I think a bigger problem here is the opposite to what you're saying. Because so many of the non-American users here have such incredibly good English, it seems on the surface that the site is much more uniform than it is. People have no idea how diverse the community here is, and it makes for a lot of misunderstandings, often bitter ones.