[HN Gopher] Ugandan Govt Blocks Google Playstore, Apple AppStore... ___________________________________________________________________ Ugandan Govt Blocks Google Playstore, Apple AppStore, and YouTube Author : drsim Score : 93 points Date : 2021-01-09 20:34 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (techjaja.com) (TXT) w3m dump (techjaja.com) | cherylskylar wrote: | Important to see whether the ban imposed by telecoms are to be | permanent, or whether they will be lifted after the election. | Great civil unrest may arise if people still don't have access to | the digital infrastructure they feel they are entitled to after | an election favorable to the current govt | ilaksh wrote: | I disagree. Censoring everyone and even further shutting down a | critical infrastructure like app stores during an election | means you have to wonder if that government is doing more harm | than good. | tester756 wrote: | how's "app store" critical infrastructure? | | internet access should be enough | TaylorAlexander wrote: | "The internet" is both browser based web pages as well as | various mobile phone based apps. | tester756 wrote: | what critical stuff is not avaliable via web browser but | is via app? | throwaway45349 wrote: | Banking, for one. | frenchy wrote: | While you might consider software that runs on the | internet to be part of the internet itself, not being | able to run some of the software doesn't mean you can't | access the internet. | | 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. | meibo wrote: | What can you do on your Apple iPhone without Apple servers? | Hint: it's nothing. | colejohnson66 wrote: | The stock apps include a web browser, email client, and | more. Sure, the apps are what make the phone, but to say | you can't do anything on a stock iPhone is a lie. And for | those inclined enough, there's AltStore for sideloading. | meibo wrote: | You do need an Apple account and constant connection to | Apple servers to be able to sign development and AltStore | apps - I assume for a govt that wants to block the store, | blocking auth or signing servers is just one more line on | a memo. | | 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. | reaperducer wrote: | _What can you do on your Apple iPhone without Apple | servers? Hint: it 's nothing._ | | The Apple devices I use that are too old to talk to | Apple's servers disagree with you. | Ekaros wrote: | Make phone calls? Send text messages? Or has Apple | removed those features yet? | zxspectrum1982 wrote: | Meaning Epic is right: the Apple Store dependency and | monopoly is abusive. | zepto wrote: | If you choose to buy something like that, how is it | 'abuse'? | throwaway45349 wrote: | Sure, but there are only two choices. | BlueTemplar wrote: | It's critical for those people who's only computer is an | iPhone. | jimkleiber wrote: | I remember when building an Android app back in 2012-2014, | that if it had in-app purchases, it seemed to have to go | through the Play Store. I wonder if banning the Play Store | will hinder apps that rely on in-app payments. | | Anybody know? | nevi-me wrote: | Apps and updates to apps. If much of the internet is | crippled already, targeting app stores and YouTube could be | seen to be limiting options effectively for users. | | 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. | sbhn wrote: | Remember that british company called Cambridge Analytica | mimikatz wrote: | If I ran was in charge of a government after watching them all | ban Trump's ability to communicate at the same time, I too would | think about banning them to protect myself. | tedunangst wrote: | Unclear how banning the App Store prevents Twitter from banning | you. | mimikatz wrote: | You go full China and ban those as well. | justinzollars wrote: | Get rid of them. China needs to get rid of Apple too. | andrewzah wrote: | Or maybe you could do some introspection and think about what | would have to lead up to you being banned? Every politician on | twitter has been fine except for 1 particular individual. | Nevermind that 1 individual -chose- to use twitter as their | primary base of operations, instead of the usual channels. | mimikatz wrote: | Why would you as a leader of the country leave it up to | chance? What if your country was in conflict with America | whose side do you think Google and Apple would side with? | jimkleiber wrote: | I appreciate this point and it makes me think more and more | about how we try to govern global businesses with national | governments and how I wonder if we'll ever get a more | powerful global body to balance the power of global | organizations. | im3w1l wrote: | We will, and it will be a bad thing. Nowhere to run when | it eventually goes corrupt and evil. Hopefully we will be | space-faring before that. | mc32 wrote: | Exactly this. If these media have favorites and push a | particular agenda that isn't quite aligned with these | corps's agenda then it would make sense for them, out of | their own interest, to pre-emptively ban these orgs who now | have proven to not be neutral parties. | im3w1l wrote: | Africa is Africa, they always do coups and civil wars and | shady shit. African leaders know that intervention is just a | question of time. | BlueTemplar wrote: | Weren't others banned at the same time as Trump? | ivnubinas wrote: | > Or maybe you could do some introspection and think about | what would have to lead up to you being banned? | | Having the wrong party affiliation? | madhadron wrote: | Trump has a press office and a whole press corps that shows up | to listen to what he might want to say to them daily. | erentz wrote: | Right. A serious percentage of people think the only way the | president can communicate is via Twitter and there's been | this right wing persecution complex building for a few years | now that they believe they are constantly being censored. | Despite the fact that right wing news and pundits get a lot | more shares on social media. It's all part of the weird | twisted mass delusion that we find ourselves dealing with. | YarickR2 wrote: | Any numbers to support the "lot more shares for right wing | media" claim ? | nostromo wrote: | Most Americans don't trust the media to accurately and fairly | cover the news. So it shouldn't be surprising that people | don't want their political leaders' thoughts filtered through | the media. | tathougies wrote: | And then pick and choose sound bites to report to form a | narrative. | tobylane wrote: | That could be analysed. What's the average length of clip | of Trump/WH talking on the various news networks and total | per hour on the subject. It's measuring the quantitative | part. | ilaksh wrote: | What Trump was doing was extreme, but stories like might make you | think twice about enthusiasm for censorship. | tobylane wrote: | What if I'm enthusiastically against censorship and | enthusiastically for deplatforming in cases like Trump? Which | makes me strongly dislike the news in the post. | jedimastert wrote: | I'm not arguing for or against anything, but those views seem | opposed to each other. Can you talk more about how you can | allow for any form of de-platforming while also feeling | strongly against censorship? | jtr1 wrote: | I'd guess you could point at the metaphor implied in the | word "de-platforming." Free speech doesn't necessitate that | every person gets a stage and a microphone. If we were in a | physical auditorium and the president started encouraging | violence among the audience, is it a violation of free | speech for the theatre to cut his mic? | | 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. | [deleted] | dleslie wrote: | Censorship is the Government stating that person A must not | communicate with person B. | | 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. | stale2002 wrote: | > Censorship is the Government stating that person A must | not communicate with person B. | | 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." | dleslie wrote: | The key, in the wiki definition, is: | | > 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. | stale2002 wrote: | It listed controlling bodies in a list that also | contained "private institutions". | | 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." | dleslie wrote: | That's being overly reductive; akin to stating that | Christian Mingle censors Atheist or Muslim views because | they focus on a Christian market. Or that Steam censors | by not approving all content. At that point "censorship" | is diluted to have no meaniong beyond curation. | | 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. | bluntfang wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance | | 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. | [deleted] | [deleted] | mc32 wrote: | Given how given to certain narratives some of these services are, | I'm not surprised and I would predict more governments will do | similar things pre-election. | | 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. | laurent92 wrote: | > foreign values | | 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. | gameswithgo wrote: | left leaning calls to violence get banned on social media all | the time, they just were not ever the president doing it so | you don't notice. | mullingitover wrote: | > while censoring the 50% rest of the political spectrum | | 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. | mc32 wrote: | Ransacking through the capitol like imbeciles was very ill | advised, but that's not how a coup is executed. You need | dedicated backers [cause oriented willing to sacrifice] in | the armed forces as well as the intelligentsia. | | Rag tag groups do not execute coups. That's a willful | exaggeration. | mullingitover wrote: | Honestly I feel bad for the people who were duped into | doing the ransacking. They thought their leader was | telling them the truth. | | 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. | lallysingh wrote: | 50% isn't really the right number, is it? Where did you get | it? If you're counting people's political beliefs, the | popular vote is a good estimator. | enedil wrote: | I think this was just an approximation. Nonetheless the | order of magnitude is right. | amscanne wrote: | The popular vote is still ~50% in terms of party split -- | are you questioning the _accuracy_ or _precision_ of the | parent's 50% figure? | tehwebguy wrote: | It's a guess, and it's certainly not split R/D in the US. | bilbo0s wrote: | A bit off topic, but I think one thing this week should have | taught us all is that this whole liberal-conservative | dichotomy does not encompass the entirety of the US | population. There are an enormous number of people out there | who don't really subscribe to either view. The assumption | that if you're liberal you make up 50% of the population, or | that if you're conservative you make up 50% of the | population, can lead you to overestimate your strength and | take woefully ill considered actions. | | Just putting that out there. | vbezhenar wrote: | Some governments can force *Store to ban whatever they want. | Some can't, so they have to resort to banning stores. | bilbo0s wrote: | Only going from what I've observed on the continent, | (especially in the EAC), but I think it's a bit deeper than | that right now. | | 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. | [deleted] | ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: | I wish there would be a societal awakening in Europe and people | would boycott American services. Countries need to reclaim | their digital sovereignty if they hope to preserve their | culture. Back in college everyone I knew browsed reddit, 9gag, | facebook, etc for hours every day. The european youth is | getting raised by America and fed its political ideology one | meme/discussion thread at a time. It took me a long while to | realize I had been brainwashed. A lot of people I know tout | themselves as citizens of the world, and consider nationalism a | useless thing of the past, seemingly oblivious to the | adversarial relationship we're in with our western allies wrt | culture and trade. | rattlesnakedave wrote: | Does anyone else feel like we're going down the path of internet | Balkanization? Not in any immediate sense, but it seems like a | slow rolling type of narrative that we will retrospectively see | at the end of the 21st century. I don't have any _real_ evidence | to support this feeling of mine, but occasionally there are blips | like this that make me wonder. | mc32 wrote: | I think governments that can will for a couple of reasons. One | is to maintain their own narrative, to minimize the influence | of foreign players who have little stake in a country. Another | is to preserve their own culture and not be overrun by the | culture and politics of the service. Another is that these | entities can't be held to account locally. | | 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. | klodolph wrote: | I don't think so, but my guess is as bad as anyone else's. | | 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. | johndevor wrote: | Time to decentralize everything | nostromo wrote: | It's not fully decentralized, but I'd love to see Signal take | on some Twitter and Facebook use cases. | kawfey wrote: | I would reckon that if Signal were to take over these use | cases, Signal itself would just turn into the next big tech | baddie. | ajconway wrote: | Banning (or, more precisely, disturbing operation of) a | decentralized service is much easier than a big, important | centralized one. You just need to obtain the DNS names or IP | addresses of the nodes the same way everyone else does -- by | participating in the network. This way you can even selectively | ban the "bad" nodes. | | 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. | CivBase wrote: | Wouldn't you also have to keep searching for and squashing | content mirrors all the time? That seems like a pretty big | investment to me. | baybal2 wrote: | > You just need to obtain the DNS names or IP addresses of | the nodes the same way everyone else does -- by participating | in the network. | | Not if such network was made purposefully to minimize | transparency. | ajconway wrote: | I don't see how this can be done without anonymization | techniques like the onion routing. If you can think of one, | please share. | itake wrote: | We can either have the ability to ban people like Trump or we | can't. | williesleg wrote: | Of course, we're all trying how to block them, they control us | all and report to no one. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-09 23:00 UTC)