Any nation that wants to retain control over their culture and values should have social media sovereignty.
Honestly, in the case of my country (and probably many others), this is a huge improvement. Thank god the internet and social media have exposed me to the American ideas and values as I was growing up. I don't agree with all of them, but living with my head filled with the culture and values of my own country would've been so much worse.
All that stuff about "freedom" and "human rights" and "spreading democracy" may sound corny, unless you live in a place that doesn't have enough of those.
Exporting its values is probably the best thing America could've done for my country.
I could stand to hear less about American politics though)
> Any nation that wants to retain control over their culture and values should have social media sovereignty.
I'd rather control my own culture and values myself (by choosing what things to read and what websites to visit), than having someone else control them for me (which, in practice, just means censorship and/or propaganda).
You do not currently have control over your culture and values, you said yourself you're glad America exported its values to your country and exposed you to them. Good or bad, it should be clear you're not living in a vacuum with absolute control over what you see and believe.
If you adopt a free-market attitude to these questions you will end up being controlled by whoever has the most money and the worst morals, companies and people who will prey on our worst instincts, algorithms which reward anger and division, which prey on addiction triggers and so on. The content you consume will be controlled to present you with ideas, news and perspectives that are politically and economically advantageous to their country, and often contrary to the best interests of your own.
And to be clear there is no dichotomy between the status-quo and censorship. There is a million alternatives, the Digital Markets Act for example is a good start that should begin to break up social monopolies and companies which abuse network effects. Digital sovereignty just means you make available alternative tools to your population which are free of foreign influence.
There are actually very few countries which are freedom and democracy avatars. And they can export culture within the us sphere (japan, south korea/ some european countries come to mind) freely. All other culture/value spheres, are quite supressive/ethno centric (china, russia), hiding behind a thin veneer of "external propaganda".
The us secret service agencies interventions are a mess and the decay into a traditional empire is real, but overall, if you really look into other countries and cultures, its alot better, open, integrate the best of all worlds, then what you will find elsewhere.
I especially started to despise the "hollow husk" disney world "freedom" image some dictatorships export. People fall for that nonsense all the time and its ridiculous. Some nice videos of dancing people and skyscrapers, without any visible dissent, do not make freedom.
Hang on, in which period of world history did the world enjoy more widespread peace and democratic rule than during Pax Americana?
Or are you claiming that the most peaceful and democratic era of history happened in spite of the US, not in any way due to it?
I don't have any objections to criticizing the US but my read on its history in this context is basically - once it expanded as far as it could militarily it decided the next best thing to do was build up a global network of nations it could trade with and make money off of. Those powers needed to be peaceful and stable so frequently ended up being democracies.
Has there been another nation in history that it was better to lose a war against rather than win? Compare Germany, Japan, South Korea to Vietnam, North Korea, Afghanistan. Perhaps the Achaemenid Empire also qualifies.
The problem is not this, the problem is morals and free market look like they shouldn't be in the same place.
For example, Facebook controls majority of the social media traffic. People use them for reasons other than morality but Facebook itself is a deeply immoral company. So, free market is supporting an immoral idea because of amoral reasons and this is happening subconsciously.
It's not a trustworthy place, just has higher production standards for their propaganda vs your home country.
In the US there is free press, which is why everyone knows and speaks freely about these things. When Bush 2 was pushing his administration's lies about WMDs, a large chunk of the population saw through the deception immediately, and another large chunk also saw through the deception but decided to go to war anyway. We still have the ability to think about our own history in ways that would be inconceivable in many places. That ability is maintained by individuals exercising their rights.
There is objectively no comparison between the state of things in the US and say Russia. These are not two different cases of the same model or two sides of the same coin, they are utterly different models and practices of governance. The US is also so culturally focused on rights and freedom that people don't understand the first amendment only protects citizens from action by the government, and people are able to hold onto this notion because of the extent to which they are generally left alone.
Time and time again, just like every other country, people who disagree with the Rich and Powerful or the government get crushed.
Again American propaganda is simply better than other countries and it comes from deliberate practice. For example the US military works very closely with Hollywood and videogames like the best selling Call of Duty series.
My point is that the fact that we are freely having this discussion, and able to access reliable sources of information without government impediment, is in itself very significant in the context of human experience on earth in 2022. The US is still in a situation where we can self-correct. Crying wolf about the state of press freedom is counterproductive and harms the credibility of people working to actually improve things.
For example, what the US is doing to Julian Assange is wrong. However, if Russia had been equally pissed at him they would have simply murdered him long ago. There is still a system within which to work in the US, and pretending it doesn't exist is self-defeating and draws attention away from possible solutions.
We even had a "Black Lives Matter" rally here, when things were happening in USA. Media reported on it, mostly Lithuanian teens showed up, some skipped school to attend. I don't think there was a single black person. They even had some signs against police brutality, when in Lithuania most of incidents happen not by police but to police.
Noobs. We Canadians have been at it probably since before Confederation (1867).
One reason is that it's probably good for ratings: drama, heroes, villains, etc. Who needs West Wing (or Veep) when you can watch the real thing instead?
This has been going on since missionaries, perhaps going back to the original Apostles, started travelling the planet:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_Wor...
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25227902
The fact that it is now American, as opposed to some European country, is just a recent phenomenon.
Honestly can't imagine anyone looks at the US and says that they want to emulate it.
Our healthcare may be skewed towards those who have the means to afford insurance (and this isn't quite true because emergent care must be treated), but it is the best in the world. We routinely do things that are science fiction in other countries with "enlightened" healthcare policies: deep brain stimulus implants, laser-etched re-mapping of nerve impulses across the heart (that bought my physician father a few extra years of life), CAT scans are routine, etc. Our physicians are also the best trained in the world. After having toured hospitals in the UK, only a fool or the near-indigent would rely on NHS in the UK — there's a reason why the Royals go to private clinics.
That's a bug, not a feature. American doctors know that they order too many scans; they know it's harming their patients; but they can't stop doing it because there's a false belief that "more scans == better care".
If you're in England and you need a cat scan you get a cat scan. They're not forbidden.
hackernews is pretty US dominated to in userbase and selected topics. even without the influence of skewed moderation. and like australia, most of what's discussed on hackernews includes american politics.
sometimes i feel pretty sheepish when i comment on some topic starting with "yes, but in europe..."
fortunately hackernews readers are pretty open to other viewpoints, but still american values and ideas are quite strong.
Skeb is even in the process of launching its own cryptocurrency, intended for use in payment within the service, to avoid pressure from US-based credit card networks like Visa or MasterCard.
There’s a bone-chilling phrase if ever there was one.
Sovereignty doesn't need to mean government control, censorship, firewalls, nationally isolated networks. It can mean having alternative tools which are free of foreign influence. The implementation can take a million form, one might be the enforcement of open protocols and interoperability to counteract network effects.
I believe in the free internet (however nebulous) as much as anyone who has seen its origins and works in software, but it's clear the internet is not free anymore, we are all centralized on closed and carefully curated American platforms.
Or: it reads like one of the worst aspects of American culture (from an American perspective): that human instinct to want to control how our neighbors think, live and breathe, and our incessant nagging about how other people in other parts of the State and Country are living wrong. Growing up here you’re immersed in it: farmers vs city dwellers, “right kind” of people rhetoric and other such nonsense I lost all patience for at a very early age because it’s all just provincialism and finding excuses to see the worst in people.
This isn’t unique to America either. In my experience most places have some kind of dynamic like this because deep in our heart of hearts, we’re a xenophobic species and we need to keep the xenophobia in check. People who sound, think and act differently are much scarier to us than people who look different. Wanting to exercise “sovereignty” over someone else’s social media habits—the someone else being your fellow countrymen—just sounds like you want to control what your own people think and hear, basically the thing I’m criticizing Twitter and saying it’s probably best left as a smoking hole in the ground for.
So please find a better phrasing, because you’re going to have to explain that one every time you drop it.
Where “sovereignty” enters the picture so does “control” and “power”.