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Comment by throwaway27448 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why countries don't simply block facebook, instagram, etc. There's zero upside to allowing them.

I'm just as confused as you are.

The economic value seems literally negative and the influence on the discourse massive and much too unpredictable.

The recent Romanian election where a focused botnet created a pro russian candidate from thin air 2 weeks before the election _and got him elected president_ should really be proof enough that the state of things is unnatural.

I hadn’t heard of this, so here’s more context [1] for the curious.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/articles/cqx41x3gn5zo

Because western democracies are about freedom of speech and access to information ?

Are you aware of The Paradox of Tolerance?

I am, which is the problem, if you start banning social media, you are banning access to information.

The real way out of it is education. Educating people about algorithms, social engineering, the harms of misinformation etc?

I'm fine with that, it's primarily the finely tuned bubbles I'm against here.

So, very approximately, ban fyp.

That's what makes it even more confusing why we don't ban these sites.

To my ear, "freedom of speech" mostly means "ability to be an asshole without consequence". Facebook seems determined to push this as close to fraud as possible without incurring legal consequences. This is, of course, the main drawback of democracy, but why don't states stand up for themselves and demarcate the freedom clearly rather than acting like a doormat for capital? Not that america in living memory would understand such values....

"created a pro russian candidate from thin air 2 weeks before the election"

The way you phrased this made it seem like the candidate didn't exist. The candidate was a real person, but just wasn't well known or polling very well before winning.

> why countries don't simply block facebook

because everyone currently in power has used it to get there

why would they block their best weapon?

I'm against government building a scaffold to be able to block selective parts of the Internet because the block list always expands and never retracts.

The people rely on them too much, sadly

This may sound weird, but: Alternatives will appear, just like how Chinese people have been able to live their lives without access to Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp etc. The alternatives may not be good -- I'd argue the Chinese version of Google (Baidu) is quite a lot worse in many ways -- but they work and are good enough for most people.

That's not weird at all. This is the very schumpeterian premise this forum is built on.

People in Iran or China don't rely on Facebook and Instagram. Before Facebook penetrated Europe in ~2010, each local market was dominated by copycat services like StudiVZ or Hyves, which then vanished within 2 years. When the US floated the idea of banning TikTok, some people felt compelled to download Chinese social media apps.

If a country was to ban Facebook from operating in their country, people would be on an alternative 2 weeks after. There are reasons why a Facebook ban would be hard to enact, but dependence on the product is not one of them

I think you’re not aware how deeply engrained WhatsApp and instagram are in Brasil.

I think dependence is definitely a problem because everyone would get mad at you for having to switch. Sure in the long run it wouldn’t be an issue but immediately you will lose some voters

When WhatsApp was banned for a day, people immediately migrated to Telegram. This is not an excuse.

Didn't Brazil massively adopt Bsky as an alternative to X? And in a very short timespan too? Did they turn around on that?

Maybe, I don’t use either - but WhatsApp is a different use case too

In an ideal society, I think you just tax digital ads to help compensate for the damage from this attention economy. Maybe even use that money for education?

people would not vote for someone who took away their doom scrolling addiction dealer, that’s why.

You have to understand the president position is extremely weak, since he’s a centrist posing as left wing, there’s a lot of scrutiny on all his actions and he has very little support in congress, since it’s a very conservative country politically dominated by evangelicals and big farmers.

Blocking Facebook would be deeply damaging for him, they would quick him out even before the election

Brasil pretty much runs on WhatsApp and instagram - they are by faaaaaar the most popular communication platforms. It’s cooked.

But many countries do: China, Russia, North Korea, Myanmar, [...].

Do you think it is aspirational to join that club? Because I don't think so.

Because people cry "censorship" — just like we are seeing here in the comments.

Well, with all due respect, fuck them. If they’re so desperate, let them use VPNs.

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