[HN Gopher] Ugandan Govt Blocks Google Playstore, Apple AppStore...
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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.
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