[HN Gopher] Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake
___________________________________________________________________
Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake
Author : flixing
Score : 675 points
Date : 2023-02-08 13:51 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (netblocks.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (netblocks.org)
| outwit wrote:
| You don't want people talking about who is responsible for bad
| construction and incompetent services right after a big disaster,
| do you? People might lose trust in the government </s>
| crazybLanKeT wrote:
| Many hours after the quake hit, he came out of wherever he was,
| poured out all his hatred, threats, and then went right back in.
| He has the complete authority over everything in the country yet
| no accountability in anything ever. And his stares; effing evil!
| GalenErso wrote:
| [flagged]
| niij wrote:
| Please keep comments like this on Reddit.
| carlsborg wrote:
| Unfathomable. People were literally live tweeting "save me" from
| under the rubble with their locations, and other people were
| tagging the disaster management account.
| flixing wrote:
| just incredible... That's one of the very few platforms where
| people organise help, and share locations of where help is
| needed.
| [deleted]
| dobbysfirstsock wrote:
| [dead]
| xg15 wrote:
| Mastodon instances: Allow us to introduce ourselves...
| pictur wrote:
| technologies like mastodon have nothing to do with this, you
| idiot. please make your shitty suggestions in other posts.
| xg15 wrote:
| ?
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| I think the point is that if anyone of any significance was
| using Mastodon in this context like they are Twitter, they
| would just block that too.
|
| So it's not as if Mastodon offers anything different/better
| in this case.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| I think it's harder to block Mastodon because there are
| many instances. You can block the main ones, but people
| can still use smaller ones to access content from all
| Mastodon instances.
|
| Twitter has one domain and probably a known IP range.
| Mastodon has (at least) hundreds of domains and IPs.
| Darmody wrote:
| People asked Elon Musk on twitter to deploy Starlink to Turkey
| and he said he can't because it is not approved.
|
| I wonder why.
| Fellshard wrote:
| Erdogan explicitly declined it when Musk offered.
| anticensor wrote:
| The main probable cause for it is that Starlink wanted to
| offer it unfiltered, as they normally do in all other cases
| of emergency relief coverage; but the Turkish government
| wanted the regular filtering.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| There is a difference between war and executive priviledges.
|
| The former (Russia) unilaterally imposed a decision (war) on
| another government and its people.
|
| The latter (erdogan) is acting in his capacity as the elected
| representative of the people.
|
| Starlink cannot override the decision of the elected executive.
| He needs approval for that.
| malfist wrote:
| Approval from whom?
| vinceguidry wrote:
| The state. In the case of UA that was Zelensky. In Turkey
| it's Erdogan.
|
| HNer often seem to have this weird idea that companies can
| take governments head-on.
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| Depends on the countries involved. The US has backed
| SpaceX in enabling Starlink service in Iran.
| Darmody wrote:
| But Turkey is an ally and a NATO member.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >> elected representative of the people.
|
| Was he?
|
| >>Starlink cannot override the decision of the elected
| executive. He needs approval for that.
|
| Pretty sure he could given the service is in space and Turkey
| lacks the ability or even really legitimate authority to
| enforce rules in Low earth orbit.
|
| Elon chooses not to because he has enough hot water with US
| Politicians than to open up that mess. I bet is more worried
| but US government reactions here than Turkey;s government
| [deleted]
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Whats the difference between Starlink and say all satellite
| TV networks available anywhere, to anybody with antenna
| pointing up? What can he do, sue an American company for
| allowing freedom of speech? Musk can safely ignore that, and
| Turkey would need his empire more than Musk Turkey (to be
| clear I can imagine erdogan strongarming US government due to
| Nato bases but he would be showing off some nasty side of
| himself)
|
| You can't block Starlink signal, it ain't cable in the ground
| or in sea you can cut at your will.
| anticensor wrote:
| Starlink satellites, unlike television satellites, perform
| active packet switching, not mere beam steering.
| seydor wrote:
| > is acting in his capacity as the elected representative
|
| You can be the "elected representative" of anything if you
| put everyone else in jail
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Yet. People voted for that.
|
| Same for Chavez. Same for maduro.
|
| The collective can make wrong decisions that doesnt take
| away from the fact that the laws and its people are
| sovereign over its territory.
| seydor wrote:
| Erdogan is not simply a populist and nationalist who also
| uses religion (even though he s a typical opportunist and
| definitely not a pious person). He also imprisons the
| opposition, silences media etc. This is typically called
| a dictator. The 'collective' did not make any of those
| decisions , he did
| Darmody wrote:
| Just to elaborate a bit further.
|
| The current mayor of Istanbul is the politician who could
| win the next presidential election and he's been
| sentenced to a few years in prison and banned him from
| politics because he "insulted some elected officials".
| His crime was actually calling a few people clowns when
| they recalled for a runoff of the elections he won. He
| then won the runoff with a wider margin and now has to be
| taken down somehow.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| I don't have a horse in this race, but you do not get to
| change definitions...to accommodate your worldview.
|
| This "dictator" - from wikipedia:
|
| In the June 2011 elections, Erdogan's governing party won
| 327 seats (49.83% of the popular vote) making Erdogan the
| only prime minister in Turkey's history to win three
| consecutive general elections, each time receiving more
| votes than the previous election. The second party, the
| Republican People's Party (CHP), received 135 seats
| (25.94%), the nationalist MHP received 53 seats (13.01%),
| and the Independents received 35 seats (6.58%).
|
| To be clear, i'm not questioning (nor I have an opinion
| on) any of your prior Erdogan coloring, except of course
| the usage of the word "dictator".
| troad wrote:
| This is a strange comment; maybe I'm not understanding it.
|
| 1) Starlink is available on the internationally recognised
| territory of Ukraine, with the support of the government of
| Ukraine. The unlawful presence of Russian troops in Ukrainian
| territory doesn't change any of this. Turkish authorities,
| conversely, have not authorised Starlink in Turkey (for
| obvious reasons - their terror at losing their power to
| censor).
|
| 2) Turkey is not a democracy, and to say Erdogan was elected
| by the people ignores his misuse of state power to suppress,
| harass, and imprison members of the opposition, his control
| of the media, his control of the judiciary, his vast
| corruption, and his meddling - both de jure and de facto -
| with Turkey's constitution and electoral law. No free
| election can happen under such circumstances. The trappings
| of voting do not make for a democracy.
| Darmody wrote:
| I never stated that Starlink has any legitimacy over an
| elected government. My point is that Erdogan doesn't want his
| people to be able to communicate freely even in the middle of
| a catastrophe like this.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| At any other time this would have been more proof that Erdogan is
| blatantly authoritarian. However right now there is a lot of
| insidious fake news and disinfo on Turkish twitter. Many newly
| created bot accounts are pushing lies about Ukrainian refugees in
| Turkey, that they were hoarding aid intended for earthquake
| victims and stealing from the bodies of the dead. Twitter seems
| to be the only major social media platform that is not removing
| and banning these insidious lies and bot accounts.
|
| Many Turkish people are instead using Facebook to organize help
| and aid efforts and it's more effective than twitter because even
| small towns already have Facebook Groups and Pages.
| seydor wrote:
| [flagged]
| 0xDEF wrote:
| A person who dislikes Turkish ultra-nationalists and fear
| what fake news might make them do to refugees is not exactly
| an "erdobot".
| bratbag wrote:
| No, an account that pretends to care about those things
| when using them as an excuse to shut down communication
| that makes the government look bad.
| butler14 wrote:
| You think Erdogan blocked Twitter, because of stories about
| Ukrainian refugees hoarding supplies intended for
| earthquake victims?
|
| And you believe this so much you posted it on a burner
| account?
|
| Seems legit
| actionfromafar wrote:
| TIL that Erdogan cares about refugees.
| m000 wrote:
| Elections are around the corner, and Erdogan's approval ratings
| have been dropping even before the earthquake. Just saying...
| throwawayccp wrote:
| Religion is the Trump card in those countries
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| Things might get even hairier given the elections and the
| popularity drop due to both politics and the earthquake.
|
| It's possible that a state of emergency on account of the
| earthquake will postpone the elections.
| ravel-bar-foo wrote:
| In other countries the population will unite after natural
| disasters, and leadership is usually given credit for the
| response as long as they continue support for local response
| efforts set up in the immediate aftermath. Why would
| popularity of the leader drop so quickly due to an
| earthquake? It's been what 36 hours. At this point almost all
| committed resources will still be highly local...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| In autocratic regimes, the leaders get all the cred for
| things going well, but they also are seen as responsible if
| things crumble.
| sgc wrote:
| Potentially because they cut off social media essential to
| life-saving efforts, and focus on managing optics rather
| than providing concrete help? Just a stab in the dark, but
| who knows.
| slt2021 wrote:
| because Erdogan's relatives were heavily involved in
| construction industry and these flopped buildings are
| result of Erdogan's family dealings
| netsharc wrote:
| Well, either Erdogan knows he's deeply unpopular, so he/his
| lackeys has to censor all the bad news and criticism so
| he/they can look a bit better, or he's afraid he's deeply
| unpopular, which means a bit of self-awareness of what a
| raging asshole dictator but useless leader he is... Fun
| times!
|
| A leader that actually cares but is overwhelmed would
| probably not be afraid of admitting that, s/he could rally
| the population together to overcome the tragedy despite
| their lack of resources. I think Dubya managed to convey
| this with 9/11, no one really knew how bad decisions by his
| administration lead to the threat being unnoticed.
| Meanwhile with Erdogan, he's been the boss for many years,
| the public probably thinks: The government's not able to
| rescue people effectively? Well, that's because it's been a
| kleptocracy for a long time.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Elections are meaningless if you can print millions of
| untraceable mail-in ballots and do not enforce rigorous ID
| requirements. Furthermore, elections are even less meaningless
| if you can imprison the opposition or destroy them in media
| under false and contrived pretense.
| roamerz wrote:
| [flagged]
| saiya-jin wrote:
| This is playbook of scumbag tyrants, doesn't matter if Putin,
| Erdogan or similar. I for sure hope EU politicians are taking a
| note too, there are 2 existential threats to democratic free
| Europe long term - Russia and Turkey. Both have same ambitions,
| are on completely opposite side of all crucial values free world
| holds dear.
|
| Luckily their competence severely lags behind their ambitions, to
| think Turkey was for some time considered to join EU... I think
| Ataturk would be heavily depressed if he witnessed present day
| Turkey and its leaders.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34708693.
| gwright wrote:
| > This is playbook of scumbag tyrants, doesn't matter if Putin,
| Erdogan or similar.
|
| I think you are being generous. The use of force is certainly a
| more extreme manifestation of the problem, but framing speech
| that you disagree with as "disinformation", "misinformation",
| "harmful", "hateful", "dangerous", "offensive", and so on is a
| technique used by petty tyrants and scumbag tyrants alike.
| [deleted]
| geysersam wrote:
| Maybe if EU hadn't been so reluctant to let them in that
| would've put them on another path than the one they are going
| now.
| foronetimeonly1 wrote:
| [dead]
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Erdogan was in no rush either, his support was token at best
| until he could fly his true colors.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| You are underestimating the threat that CCP China is, not just
| to Europe but to the entire world.
| pphysch wrote:
| No, you are just susceptible to "threat inflation". It's a
| very profitable industry in Washington.
|
| One country misplaces a few weather balloons, another has
| hundreds of overseas military bases and bombs pipelines. Yet
| it's the former that is a "global threat", because the latter
| says so. Eye roll.
| ivalm wrote:
| The former is also claiming that many territories it
| doesn't hold are actually theirs and countries around the
| former are asking the latter to come help them defend in
| case of former's attack.
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| China's exit, as happened 70-80 years ago, would cause us to
| have to work more. That might not be such a bad thing, though
| I doubt it will happen to the same degree. It's still fresh
| in everyone's mind.
| foronetimeonly1 wrote:
| [dead]
| middleclick wrote:
| [dead]
| EGreg wrote:
| This is why we need an open source alternative that communities
| can use to self-organize and recover after disasters:
| https://qbix.com/blog/2019/03/08/how-qbix-platform-can-chang...
|
| The future of decentralization:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzMm7-j7yIY
|
| Otherwise all we have is outrage at governments and corporations,
| but they have all the power and all the software too.
| fleddr wrote:
| Despite a 1999 warning that killed 17-18K, rampant corruption,
| incompetence and neglect have not improved construction
| standards, despite the promise to do so. That means that the vast
| majority of today's deaths were preventable.
|
| Imagine being accountable to that. Better to call it
| "misinformation".
| ikeserbestian wrote:
| Just a mini, personal note:
|
| In 1999, collapsed buildings far more than 17k - 18k and nobody
| knows how many people died. I remember some 800k - 1m
| estimations.
|
| Today, just few videos shows at least 10k more houses was
| collapsed but "officials" says just 4k people died.
| fleddr wrote:
| You'll have to back up that 800K number. It seems pretty
| ridiculous:
|
| "An official Turkish estimate of 19 October 1999 placed the
| toll at 17,127 killed and 43,953 injured, but many sources
| suggest the actual figure may have been closer to 45,000 dead
| and a similar number injured.[6][7] Reports from September
| 1999 show that 120,000 poorly engineered houses were damaged
| beyond repair[15] and approximately 20,000 buildings
| collapsed, resulting in more than 250,000 people becoming
| homeless after the earthquake"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_%C4%B0zmit_earthquake http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_d...
| zoobab wrote:
| Time for Nostr.
| Laaas wrote:
| Nostr isn't decentralised. Why do you shill for it? It's not
| much better than Twitter.
| rvz wrote:
| Time for what?
| throwaway69123 wrote:
| Nostrel
| [deleted]
| Lord_Zero wrote:
| Nostr.
| magwa101 wrote:
| [dead]
| RobinUS2 wrote:
| In the case of protests etc I'd understand the goal behind it
| from certain actors involved, but why in this case?
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Paranoid government? It probably fears insturgents can misuse
| earthquake to spread chaos and overthrow it. I don't believe
| people would support them (hypothetical insturgents) in such
| circumstances.
| Zetobal wrote:
| Because the enemy of a wannabe dictatorship is social bonding.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Erdogan allowed (encouraged?) careless construction in many
| areas with complete disregard of anti-seismic building
| procedures. I heard someone say: "as an earthquake brought him
| in power, another earthquake will remove him from power". The
| Turkish Govt spin doctors are likely struggling to counter the
| wave of public outcry, hence the bans.
| abcc8 wrote:
| The media is primarily reporting good news instead of actual
| news. Twitter has been the best source of images, videos, and
| descriptions of what is happening on the ground. Search #deprem
| (earthquake in Turkish) to see for yourself.
| classified wrote:
| Despotic regimes hate to be criticized. Or anything that might
| make them look bad, including how they handle an earthquake.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Including how they handled the years up to the earthquake and
| how much corruption influenced the country's ability to
| improve their housing stock with respect to earthquake
| resilience. I think that's the main source of worry for
| Erdogan and his cronies. The 'building amnesty' was a clear
| bone thrown at business interests at the (literal) expense of
| the rest of the population.
|
| Thousands of buildings collapsed killing lots of people
| inside them. Once the dead have been buried there will be
| calls for why nothing was done to improve the housing stock
| and in a de-facto dictatorship the buck stops with the
| dictator. Erdogan isn't going to be able to weasel his way
| out of this one without claiming another fake coup.
|
| And that's before we get into the fact that for obvious
| reasons Turkey isn't able to handle the aftermath of this
| alone, and that makes Erdogan look weak. The fact that they
| are happy to switch off Twitter even though it is saving
| lives by allowing people to be found under the rubble is
| telling: even now the lives of the Turks matter less to the
| regime than their own image.
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| I'm not up to date on how the Turkish government is handling
| this but I'm willing to bet it has something to do with how
| they're not doing a great job at proving aid to the affected
| region, and they're trying to contain that information to save
| face.
| RobinUS2 wrote:
| Reading a bit it seems to be potentially that the
| recommendations after the last big quake haven't been
| followed up properly. So basically stronger building
| requirements, with government validation was the plan; in
| reality not done (properly) and "checked" by paid companies.
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| My first thought on seeing some of the images was that
| there must be some criminal negligence involved. There is
| one area with 20 or so similar looking apartment buildings
| (about 6 levels each) where every second one has completely
| pancaked.
|
| I was in Christchurch, New Zealand during the 2011
| earthquakes. Only 2 major building completely collapsed.
| One had been designed by an engineer with insufficient
| qualifications and the other had design issues that were
| previously identified but never addressed.
| baybal2 wrote:
| [dead]
| scythe wrote:
| It's worth noting in context that Erodgan is heavily
| involved in the Turkish real estate industry:
|
| https://www.duvarenglish.com/amp/president-erdogan-the-
| world...
| aaa_aaa wrote:
| Typical state excuse, "false information". Also there was
| growing anger, they cannot control it like the mainstream
| media. Media will only show the actions blessed by the state.
| code51 wrote:
| You should realize that Twitter had become a critical source of
| information about people in collapsed buildings. Their friends,
| family and relatives were writing detailed address information in
| order to help rescue efforts and reach these people faster.
|
| All sorts of resource requests were also part of these tweets, so
| it is also part of understanding priorities for each affected
| area.
|
| There are already software projects collecting this information,
| organizing them to a structured form and carrying them over to
| rescue authorities.
| bloaf wrote:
| There is/was an active disinformation campaign on Twitter
| attempting to link the earthquake to Turkiye denying Nato
| expansion. The ridiculous conspiracy theory is that the US used a
| HAARP system to cause the earthquake in retaliation.
|
| Not saying that's the reason for the ban, but twitter is not
| solely a force for good here.
| netsharc wrote:
| Such a disinformation campaign (blaming America) is probably
| what Erdogan would rather support, because then he can deflect
| and say "Don't blame me for the deaths, it's those damn
| Americans with their alien-tech!".
|
| Not that the quake is his fault anyway, but to expand on that,
| he could claim "Trust me, my government tried to build quake-
| proof buildings, but their alien-tech is even more powerful!"
| college_physics wrote:
| Maybe the US used mind control to force (over several decades)
| Turkish contractors to build house-of-cards on top of a major
| tectonic plate fracture line?
|
| But indeed our comms/social channels are just a mess - that we
| pay for dearly when real suffering hits us.
|
| We knew that much from the pandemic already.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| That's annoying. HAARP is essentially just a steerable RF beam
| that heats the ionosphere for RF propagation research, or can
| be used to bounce RF off of the moon. Neither have any effects
| on fault line stress or slippage that I am aware of.
|
| So herein lies the point of all this.
|
| People who know its bullshit, know its bullshit, and can tell
| other people (who don't know) that it is bullshit.
|
| It should not be up to any government or company to use force
| or coercion to meter any idea or speech unless it is, on the
| rarest of occasion, illegal.
|
| Our civilization is more connected than ever before. We have
| access to untold volumes of knowledge. Greater than any library
| in history. If he were alive today, Aristarchus of Samothrace,
| the 6th head librarian of the Library of Alexandria, would give
| his left nut for just 10 minutes on the internet.
|
| We built a vast and wonderful civilization that is almost to
| the star-faring stage, and we did it without government censors
| or censorship by ideologues. The very notion of some
| bureaucrat, state actor, or crybully mod deciding what you
| should think or read insults the collective intelligence and
| struggle for absolute truth from the last 2500 years of human
| history.
| qbrass wrote:
| A secret HAARP-like device that causes directed earthquakes
| was literally from the movie _The Core_. It use is what
| kicked off the plot.
|
| Being able to say that the Earth's core stopped just like
| what happened in the movie makes the earthquake machine
| theory more plausible or something.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Well, HAARP directs RF energy skyward using an array of
| antennas for research and isn't exactly a secret.
|
| The DESTINY project in the movie was a secret and it sucked
| energy up from the entire grid and somehow shot it to the
| center of the planet in an attempt to ...trigger
| earthquakes?
|
| How they were going to aim DESTINY is lost to plot holes.
|
| Probably magnets.
| Jun8 wrote:
| Words fail me! This is a serious impediment to search & rescuer
| efforts as well as coordination for money and other donations.
| The pretext given for the closure was that Twitter owed money to
| the Turkish government.
|
| You can see the anger of locals where a mob reacts to Minister of
| Transportation's visit:
| https://youtube.com/shorts/B7t9W7Qgpfs?feature=share
|
| WhatsApp isage is ubiquitous in Turkey but it seems this morning
| people are seeing problems with that, too.
| oriettaxx wrote:
| democracy is pretty hard in Turkey: just a small example: Bedia
| Ozgokce Ertan was elected as mayor of Van, then sentenced to 30
| years of prison just for what she said.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| thanatropism wrote:
| Are we avoiding "Turkiye" as an expression of anti-Erdogan
| politics? Is it ok to call Kinshasa the capital of Rhodesia?
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Think of it the same as the facebook --> meta situation.
|
| There should be friction to rebranding.
| mig39 wrote:
| You mean "Harare" ?
| empathy_m wrote:
| I think the media is slow to catch up on this stuff, yeah.
|
| The AP's article[1] on the Turkiye rename was datelined from
| "ANKARA, Turkey (AP)" :)
|
| I don't know whether the delay is necessarily a matter of
| political preference or just general slowness in English-
| language media. The press does a good job of changing the names
| of sports arenas whenever the advertiser sponsorship causes a
| rename. This kind of inside-baseball use-of-names media stuff
| is something I used to see on Jim Romenesko's blog 20 years ago
| and it doesn't really have a good home now.
|
| It can't be all politics; although the US government still
| prefers "Rangoon" and "Burma", most of the press writes
| "Yangon" and "Myanmar".
| nemo44x wrote:
| What about "tooting"? Can they "toot" still?
| bronikowski wrote:
| They could block big instances but have no chance of blocking
| smaller ones due the distributed nature. But the same goes for
| blogs, e-mails and other forms of information exchange. The
| problem is none of those have global audience like Twitter
| does, love it or hate it.
| binanc wrote:
| [flagged]
| seydor wrote:
| because we like to talk to americans? that s like the kid that
| grabs all the toys for himself, and then has nobody to play
| with
| binanc wrote:
| > because we like to talk to americans?
|
| You think that's what twitter is? Most of us don't use
| twitter.
|
| > that s like the kid that grabs all the toys for himself,
| and then has nobody to play with
|
| No. It's more like the poor kid that has no toys and has to
| beg rich kids for their toys to play with. Wouldn't you want
| the poor kid to have his own toys? Also, having his own toys
| would make it more likely that other kids with toys will play
| with him.
|
| You misunderstood my point. There is a reason why I said
| social media should be a network of networks, aka the
| "inter"net. Once turkey and other nations have their own
| twitter and social media, they can connect to each other. Or
| you can copy paste things from other "networks" to yours and
| share that way. There are tons of tiktok videos on youtube
| and vice versa. Just because you are in your own network
| doesn't mean you will be isolated.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| [flagged]
| binanc wrote:
| > You literally described isolated instances of major
| social networks
|
| No. It's the current state of social media. Go to youtube
| and look up tiktok videos. Go to tiktok and look up
| youtube videos. Neither are banned and yet people cross
| post.
|
| > Here's a hint, if your premise starts with "make your
| own Twitter", it can't end with "you can collaborate
| across these independent networks by copying and pasting
| your thoughts" and somehow call it not isolated.
|
| That's how twitter currently works. It's how memes from
| reddit end up on twitter and vice versa.
|
| I'm describing how the internet works and has always
| worked. What do you think "inter" in internet means?
| That's what I want social media to become.
|
| Using your logic, we should only have 1 social media
| company. Otherwise, we can't communicate with each other.
|
| Here's a hint, posts from other social and traditional
| media end up on HN. Amazing huh? The more networks we
| have, ultimately the more diversity and more connections.
| That was the point of the "inter"net.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > Just because you are in your own network does not mean
| you are isolated.
|
| You literally described isolated networks. To the point
| where you had to do an "even though" to try and get
| yourself out of your logical hole. Do you understand how
| words work?
|
| The only reason current social networks work is because
| they allow people from all over the world. You can get a
| reddit meme on Facebook because someone on Reddit is also
| on Facebook. If each nation had its own isolated social
| network only for its own citizens, how, exactly, would
| someone copy and paste information either from a network
| they don't have access to (a Turkish person trying to
| crosspost from US Twitter) or vice versa?
| arleken wrote:
| What the hell
| foronetimeonly1 wrote:
| I see plenty of racists calling for ethnic segregation in
| person, but online too? You sir, take the ridiculous prize
| today.
| binanc wrote:
| Since when is saying countries should have their own social
| media platforms "racist"? You think it was "racist" for
| europe to develop airbus? You think a nation should rely on a
| foreign power for their social media needs? You think a
| nation should let a foreign power control their electricity?
|
| Saying nations should empower themselves isn't "racism". It's
| the opposite of racism.
| foronetimeonly1 wrote:
| _rolls eyes_
|
| Bro, come back to me when you're 100% "local". Every last
| element of your computing environment and lifestyle is
| manufactured, developed, coded, and maintained locally.
|
| Then I'll never have to hear from you again.
| foronetimeonly1 wrote:
| http://bbcturkiye.com
|
| By the way, there is such a thing as BBC in Turkiye.
| radres wrote:
| As a Turkish person, seeing people tweet under rubbles, hardly
| breathing but found some space to tweet their full address, THIS
| IS UNBELIEVABLE. And THIS IS MURDER.
|
| There are still people who are alive under rubbles with still
| some charge left on their phone. Twitter proved to be one of the
| most effective ways to communicate how severe their situation
| was.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Never let a good crisis go to waste!
| ikeserbestian wrote:
| Yes, this was the first sentence came to my mind when I saw the
| "police research twitter about the earthquake misinformation"
| news.
| remind_me_again wrote:
| [dead]
| m0guz wrote:
| Insane. Developers are trying to make the best use of Twitter.
|
| * https://huggingface.co/deprem-ml
|
| * https://deprem.io
|
| * https://deprem.basarsoft.com.tr
|
| * https://go.ahb.app/guvenliharita
|
| * https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1QpICWDVpd3eIScSvaj...
|
| * https://depremenkaz.xyz
|
| Almost all the info listed on these websites coming from twitter.
| [deleted]
| wmeredith wrote:
| This is a tragedy, and it's great that people are trying to
| help in any way they can. However, building stuff on Twitter's
| platform seems like utter folly these days.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| What's the alternative?
|
| You need the database. It must scale and be reliable.
|
| It must have proper UI.
|
| People must be able to use it without prior learning.
|
| Let's say you create a website from the scratch. You need to
| use some cloud database. You need to build a simple UI which
| will work with bad network. You have few hours to do that.
| You need not to go bankrupt because entire country suddenly
| will use your app.
|
| Twitter is well known to everyone. Twitter has API which
| basically allows to use it as a simple database. Twitter is
| web scale and can handle the load. Twitter has solid battle
| tested website and apps. And everything is completely free.
|
| IMO it's a unique proposition and nothing compares to it.
|
| If you have enough time, you can build better specialized
| app, that's for sure.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Truthfully it was a bad idea when Jack Dorsey owned it too -
| now that Musk is in charge, it's a no-brainer.
| halilb wrote:
| I live in Turkey and was very close to the earthquake epicenter.
| I can say that communication in affected cities is very limited
| and Twitter had a real positive effect on organizing help and
| reaching out to lots of people in the area.
|
| So blocking Twitter right now is pure evil. They are only
| interested in the optics and looking strong for the upcoming
| election and do not care about anything else.
|
| I saw some people waiting for their relatives to get rescued
| around collapsed buildings dare to say that they haven't received
| any official help so far in the news. And they said that
| "government can come and arrest me for saying this - so be it". I
| don't think the Turkish government is reading HN but still
| feeling a little bit anxious while posting this after witnessing
| so many weird things here.
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| It's a tragedy no nation should face alone. There should be no
| "looking bad" here, just opportunities to help. Why not embrace
| that and do whatever you can? Any city would face horrible
| losses in this situation. Heck, Miami lost half a building on a
| normal day...
| foronetimeonly1 wrote:
| [dead]
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Do you think it will actually harm Erdogan's support though,
| anger over blocking twitter?
| widowlark wrote:
| Is his popular support relevant when he has his hands on the
| levers of government operations?
| dmix wrote:
| I'm curious if Erdogan will attempt an I'm-president-
| until-I'm-dead move the way Putin and Xi Jinping did.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I think it's probably relevant, yes -- he is in fact fairly
| popular, historically. (So is Putin). It's harder to keep
| your hands on the levers of power the less support you
| have, even if it can still be done with increasing force,
| it's a threat.
|
| But I'm interested in hearing with Turkish HN users think.
|
| Note that the comment I replied to, from a Turkish user,
| suggested "They are only interested in the optics and
| looking strong for the upcoming election", suggesting that,
| yes, Erdogan cares about popularity.
| halilb wrote:
| The upcoming election(on May 14th if it doesn't get
| postponed due to the earthquake) will be unique across
| other elections Erdogan participated in over the last 20
| years. This was the first election he might actually
| lose(by a margin of 5-10%) according to election polls
| before the earthquake.
|
| So he did care about his popularity as he was the most
| popular one so far. Voters and the system were surely
| manipulated by the ruling party in the decade but
| opposing a decisive election result is a new line they
| haven't crossed yet.
| trentearl wrote:
| Yes it is relevant. He doesn't have his hands on all the
| levers yet.
| can16358p wrote:
| Turkish here.
|
| This is unbelievable, but totally expected from the current
| "democractic" government. Social media usage is very high in
| Turkiye and people are coordinating using social media (mainly
| Twitter) for rescue operations in near realtime.
|
| I'm pretty much sure some people will literally die under
| wreckage because of communication interruptions as the result of
| this block.
|
| (For anyone telling to use VPN, yeah, many people are used to
| using VPN because of these blocks which also happened in the
| past, but not everyone is tech savvy and it's not reliable for
| life-or-death situations.
| blagie wrote:
| Off-topic: Do most people there prefer "Turkiye" or "Turkey?"
| nextaccountic wrote:
| In some years, this will become a non-issue
| sk0g wrote:
| I still read Czechoslovakia every now and then instead of
| Czechia, and it has been a few decades since they split off
| now.
| blagie wrote:
| It will become a non-issue once all keyboards have a "u"
| button. :)
|
| Which might not actually be that long.
| msm_ wrote:
| That's not a keyboard issue. Everyone in my country uses
| a standard US keyboard, we just press AlgGr to type some
| characters. I even learned some foreign lanugages, so I
| use a (standard, included by default in every linux
| distro) keyboard layout that allows me to type most
| characters used in European languages by using chords -
| for example, alt-shift-2 + u = u.
|
| So this is not a keyboard (hardware) problem, just a
| keyboard layout (software) problem.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| > _standard US keyboard, we just press AlgGr_
|
| Standard US English keyboards don't have AltGr. But you
| may mean ctrl+alt on windows or the 'option' button on
| macs.
| Sunspark wrote:
| It's the right-alt key. If you're using a layout that
| defines AltGr, the key will just work like that on a US
| keyboard. Even with just the US keyboard layout, the
| right-Alt key can still be used with numbers in Windows
| to type any unicode character.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Why is everyone focused on the umlaut? If you don't have
| the button, use a "u" and move on.
| blagie wrote:
| Things like text search and exact string matching.
|
| As minor as it might sound, if 199/200 countries work in
| your system, capitalism dictates that below a certain
| business size, the logical thing is often to just ignore
| the one country and move on.
|
| These things have odd cascading effects.
| msm_ wrote:
| I have good news for you - text search for non-ascii
| version of latin characters like u is a long solved
| problem. That's because even in non-english speaking
| countries some people don't bother with diacritics, or
| they don't have a correct layout at that point, or the
| text is in source code and has to be ASCII, etc.
|
| You can try that now - my browser highlights Turkiye when
| I search for Turkiye.
| blagie wrote:
| Great! Now do a JOIN in a database with Turkiye in one
| column and Turkiye in another.
|
| It's a problem with well-known solutions. That's not the
| same as a solved problem.
|
| It will be a solved problem when processing a log file in
| /var/log with Python (or any other tool of choice), it
| works automatically.
| weberer wrote:
| They are completely different letters. You'd be
| misspelling it.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Context matters. Is it better to use Turkey then?
| sk0g wrote:
| The umlauted u is not just a u with some visual flair.
| "ue" instead would be a more accurate transliteration,
| but Tuerkiye looks... awkward.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Got it, but I'm saying that using "Turkiye" is better
| than using "Turkey".
| ikeserbestian wrote:
| Turkey, "Turkiye" is just another useless show from the
| "president".
| jordigh wrote:
| Erdogan wants English to use the Turkish spelling because
| he's tired of English speakers thinking of the bird when
| they're talking about the country.
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MyNaymeIs
|
| The funny thing is that through a bunch of funny historical
| accidents, the bird is literally named after the country, so
| we could just spell the birds turkiyes too.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| In honor of Erdogan, I'm going to start calling it Turkiye.
|
| The bird, not the country.
| foronetimeonly1 wrote:
| Why do people need an alternative spelling to a country
| whose name is spelled in a latin alphabet?
|
| Should we spell England, wing-lunge for fun?
| tradertef wrote:
| As a Turk, I do not trust people who are using Turkiye in
| English. That is virtue signaling which is saying they are
| populist, nationalist etc. etc. I also find the change
| idiotic at the least though I understand why they did it.
| macintux wrote:
| When working with people of different nationalities and
| ethnicities I emphasize trying to pronounce their names
| correctly. Why is this different?
| Kiro wrote:
| What? If you would try to say my country's name in my
| native language instead of the English version when
| speaking English I would think you were a nutcase.
|
| Similarly my given name has an English pronunciation that
| I prefer people use when speaking English. Someone trying
| to pronounce it natively without being native would feel
| extremely awkward and not respectful at all.
| golemiprague wrote:
| [dead]
| freehorse wrote:
| I find that impossible to achieve and believe others do.
| I have no expectation people getting my name right
| because, apart from other reasons, it contains sounds
| that do not exist in many standard languages. It would
| literally require training one to be able to produce new
| sounds, and that is just not practical at all, not to
| mention outright impossible for many to do accurately. I
| guess it is good to try to pronounce things good enough,
| but "correctly" I doubt.
| jordigh wrote:
| Because it's a nationalistic thing to insist that all
| languages spell your country's name in the script and
| spelling of the source language. It's a stupid move by
| the Erdogan government to get people to stop thinking
| about turkiye birds when they think of the Turkey
| country. Other countries get by just fine.
|
| Germany, Alemania, Deutschland.
|
| Mexico, Messico, Mejico.
|
| Japan, Nippon, Ri Ben .
|
| China, Zhongguo, Zhong Guo .
|
| Every country gets by getting called different things in
| different languages. But Turkey insisting on the spelling
| just because they don't want to be associated to turkiye
| birds, where the birds are literally named after the
| country, is a silly move designed to stir nationalistic
| pride for their near totalitarian government.
| blagie wrote:
| That's not always the right thing to do.
|
| I'm from a language where you'll never get it right, and
| most people are pragmatic and don't care about names
| being the way our mothers do. That's a very Western
| thing.
|
| Forcing us to try to teach you our language, or half-way
| butcherings, are considered obnoxious. Go with the
| English pronunciation. Do anything half-reasonable-
| sounding, and it's okay too. Don't visibly struggle each
| time you try to say my name.
|
| For my name specifically, there's also an uncanny valley
| phenomenon. My name pronounced obviously wrong by an
| American doesn't raise flags. Americans mispronouncing my
| native name sounds horribly wrong.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| It might depend on country or person, but my name is
| already very hard to pronounce, asking me 2 or 3 times
| just prolongs the embarrassment
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Not a Turk here, but I'm guessing it is equivalent to
| using latinx or Latin@. It is a signal that you are from
| a bubble that is out of touch with your intended
| audience. Most Latin people don't use these terms and
| don't particularly care for them, so it signals that you
| are more aligned with a third-party then with Latin
| people.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Aotearoa New Zealand will be same
| foronetimeonly1 wrote:
| [dead]
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| US State Dept has started using Turkiye for its
| communications...
| jlundberg wrote:
| This is AFAIK a result of trying to get Erdogan to accept
| the NATO application from Sweden and Finland.
|
| NATO head Jens Stoltenberg started saying Turkey but then
| changed to Turkiye before the big NATO summit in Madrid
| last summer.
| tradertef wrote:
| Governments are different as they legally have to do it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't think it's a legal requirement, they just choose
| to respect the wishes of the receiving government.
| geysersam wrote:
| Of course. The will (and should) use the name the country
| officially defines to be the correct one. Why would they
| refuse and cause a diplomatic fuss over such a trivial
| thing?
| agtech_andy wrote:
| I do agriculture stuff in Turkey. This has been a useful
| heuristic. I estimate that 90% of the people I have faced
| who get angry or make a big deal about this are bureaucrats
| who didn't get into their position by merit.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't like using Turkiye in English, it sounds out of place
| to me. I'm native Turkish speaker.
| alex3305 wrote:
| There was an official name change [1] to Turkiye.
|
| 1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/2/un-registers-
| turkiye...
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| >> Off-topic: Do most people there prefer "Turkiye" or
| "Turkey?"
|
| > There was an official name change [1] to Turkiye.
|
| That absolutely does not answer the question, and you know
| that.
| blagie wrote:
| I'm very well aware of that.
|
| Whenever I've been on the receiving end of a name change
| like that, I (and everyone I knew) found it obnoxious.
|
| However, cultures differ. Turkey has a long history with
| name changes, and has been rather aggressive about them.
| When it became "Turkey," the post office wouldn't deliver
| mail unless the new name was used. Likewise, the capital
| has gone through two names since "Byzantium."
|
| I was genuinely curious about local reaction. I have no
| idea, from the other end of the world, whether this was
| imposed by Erdogan as a crazy policy to everyone's
| annoyance, or whether it is wildly popular. I assume
| somewhere in between.
| dkural wrote:
| You sound like you're 800 years old.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They got fed up with Google search returning stuff about
| birds.
| aendruk wrote:
| Who is "they"?
| numpad0 wrote:
| The problem is, the bird is supposedly named after the
| country, and that if the country had changed/clarified its
| name, so should the bird, against Turkish intent.
| msm_ wrote:
| > Erdogan released a memorandum and asked the public to use
| Turkiye to describe the country in every language
|
| I wonder how that works. Does Eredrogan expect every
| country to write and say "Turkiye? Does it work the other
| way around - can Germany change their official name in
| Turkey/Turkiye to "Deutschland"?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Does it work the other way around - can Germany change
| their official name in Turkey/Turkiye to "Deutschland"?
|
| Probably not in the same way, as Turkish is not a UN
| official language. They could request their name be
| changed in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, or
| Arabic though.
| rayiner wrote:
| When you use quotes around "Democratic" do you mean the
| elections are rigged? I'm not familiar with the legitimacy or
| lack thereof of Turkish elections.
| can16358p wrote:
| They are not elected democratically, and they are not
| deciding on anything democratically, even though it is
| "democratic" on paper.
| remind_me_again wrote:
| It's a very subjective judgement and everyone is entitled his
| or her own opinion. But that one is very biased. As far as
| elections concerned Turkish election system is very solid as
| a process and implementation is solid. In the end Erdogan
| lost Istanbul in the last elections even after that election
| repeated for only Istanbul, and worse for Erdogan, the second
| round was much more decisive. People didn't like the election
| were repeated.
|
| Also, don't fall to the expressions like, "Turkish here",
| "German there". These does not make anyone expert nor without
| bias.
| toyg wrote:
| Erdogan literally imprisons any opposition leader who comes
| close to be an actual challenger. He's done it twice
| already in the last 7 years.
|
| It's just not funny anymore. Some people in Turkey might
| enjoy living under a dictator (after all, many did in Italy
| and Germany, and many do in a lot of other countries
| today), but let's not pretend that water is not wet.
| aiProgMach wrote:
| > Also, don't fall to the expressions like, "Turkish here",
| "German there". These does not make anyone expert nor
| without bias.
|
| Exactly! I'm from another global south country. Usually
| when someone on these sites say "${their_country} here" I
| prepare myself for the worst takes because I know this
| happens in my country, usually it's some liberal who
| read/work in western leaning media and repeat what they
| hear. It's an echo chamber so huge that you can't touch
| it's walls so it's hard to know you actually live in an
| echo chamber.
| brian_cloutier wrote:
| To give everyone an idea of how solid the process is:
| consider that the opposition candidate widely considered
| most capable of beating the incumbent president was
| recently sentenced to two years in jail and removed from
| politics on the weakest of pretenses: https://en.m.wikipedi
| a.org/wiki/Trial_of_Ekrem_%C4%B0mamo%C4...
|
| Here are a few other biased sources offering their
| subjective judgements:
|
| - https://freedomhouse.org/country/turkey/freedom-
| world/2022
|
| - https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/turkeys-local-elections-
| wer...
|
| - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud_and_viole
| nce...
|
| - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
|
| - https://www.idea.int/democracytracker/report/turkey/decem
| ber...
|
| This is not to say that Turkey is full autocracy: the
| incubent president has a genuinely large amount of support
| and it's quite possible they would win a free and fair
| election. However, the upcoming election will not be free
| and fair as those terms are commonly understood.
| arp242 wrote:
| > This is not to say that Turkey is full autocracy: the
| incubent president has a genuinely large amount of
| support and it's quite possible they would win a free and
| fair election.
|
| This is kind of skewed though, if people can't go on TV
| or Twitter and say "Erdogan doesn't know what he's doing
| and his policies are foolish".
|
| This is really the modern autocrat's secret weapon: have
| reasonably(-ish) fair(-ish) elections, but also rig
| things in such a way that people only hear one side of
| the story. It's not a surprise people support Erdogan if
| they only hear how brilliant he is with tepid criticism
| at best. Control the narrative - control the vote.
| Ergodan, Putin, Xi all play by this book.
|
| Having a free press and free investigative journalism is
| critical; without it you don't really have fair
| elections, even if the actual business of casting and
| counting ballots is sound and free of fraud.
| can16358p wrote:
| Your downvotes speak for themselves.
| bbor wrote:
| It's not quite Russia levels of vote fakery, but rather
| similar to many other backsliding democracies - the incumbent
| is credibly accused of using their influence to insure
| victory. See "controversies" on this page, which describes
| the election where they modified the constitution to give
| erdogan completely unchecked power.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Turkish_presidential_elec.
| ..
| rayiner wrote:
| The subject of that referendum--abolishing indirect
| election of the president and moving to direct election--is
| something that people want in America. And the close result
| on the referendum seems to match opinion polling.
|
| Maybe the referendum was rigged, I don't know. But
| centralizing more power in the executive, if that's what
| the people want, isn't necessarily anti democratic.
| aintgonnatakeit wrote:
| Erdogan is a fascist thug. He's jailed most of his
| opposition.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Not (AFAIK) the elections, but everything else. Highly
| restricted media (many journalists in jail) and now social
| media. Many opposition leaders, judges jailed, exiled or
| otherwise "purged." Over 100k of them. Constant fiddling with
| the constitution and election system to increase his own
| power.
|
| "Democracy," in the sense that refers to the democratic
| systems of government in existence, is a bundle. Elections
| without free press, expression, freedom to organize and
| such... That's no longer "democracy" in that sense of the
| term.
| [deleted]
| BWStearns wrote:
| https://www.economist.com/special-
| report/2016/02/04/getting-...
|
| Erdogan famously remarked: "Democracy is like a train, he
| said; you get off once you have reached your destination"
| ycombinete wrote:
| free and fair elections require more than votes being tallied
| faithfully. They need all the other facets of democracy to
| function faithfully as well. Such as a free press, freedom of
| expression, etc.
| anticensor wrote:
| One incident even featured a pre-filled ballot indicating a
| vote for then-ruling parties.
| gumby wrote:
| Decades ago one of my profs described his voting experience
| in the USSR: they had a completely private ("Australian")
| voting system where you picked up a ballot, entered a
| private voting booth, filled out the ballot, then deposited
| it in the urn.
|
| Or you could pick up a ballot pre-filled-in with the
| straight communist ticket to save time and just put it
| straight in the urn. Naturally anyone in the room could see
| which you chose.
|
| Perhaps more amusingly: he was an exchange student at the
| time (late 60s?). Because communism was a universal
| movement anyone could vote, so he thought, "well why not
| while I have the chance?"
| wgjordan wrote:
| For one nonpartisan quantitative analysis, Freedom House gave
| Turkey a 32/100 ("not free") score on its 2022 global freedom
| scale [1].
|
| [1] https://freedomhouse.org/country/turkey/freedom-
| world/2022
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Isn't freedom house the same one who in 2020 gave top
| scores to countries that literally arrested people for
| walking around outside? That forbade people from running
| their businesses and customers from hiring their services?
|
| All of these restrictions on freedom might have been
| introduced for good reason according to some people, but
| they very much have been introduced, and very much
| restricted freedom, so if those don't count according to
| freedom house, I can scarcely consider this "quantitative
| nonpartisan analysis" to be worth much.
| TylerLives wrote:
| Is there anything specific about Twitter here, or is it just
| the most popular? I don't see why they couldn't do the same on
| Facebook, Telegram or some other platform.
| ejb999 wrote:
| probably because other social media sites have already proven
| time and time again they are happy to weaponize their
| platforms against a population if the leaders of that country
| ask them too.
| foronetimeonly1 wrote:
| The Diyanet said "Do not look to social media for hope in
| finding loved ones, look to Allah". A few minutes later twitter
| was blocked. I think god is jealous of Twitter today.
| efnx wrote:
| ...so do nothing and forget about them in other words?
| foronetimeonly1 wrote:
| [dead]
| OulaX wrote:
| The networks are already overloaded, introducing a VPN into the
| mix might even make them unusable for some people!
|
| Unfortunately, this is a tragic situation.
| Mortiffer wrote:
| Also a lot of the big VPN brands are blocked so its hard for a
| regular person to get one. I recently helped someone out to get
| one required us to iterate through a number of providers each
| time me sending them the binary over signal so they can try it
| out. Spoiler: mullvad vpn was first to go through
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| > For anyone telling to use VPN, yeah, many people are used to
| using VPN because of these blocks
|
| not to mention, imagine learning to setup a VPN (Beacuse your
| life depends on it) while you're buried under rubble..
| xwdv wrote:
| as long as you have a phone I'm pretty sure it's not that
| complicated to setup a VPN even while buried under rubble.
| You could download NordVPN off the App Store and register an
| account and subscription or perhaps just use a free server.
| Then under your iPhone settings you can set it up to use the
| VPN or the app could do it for you maybe.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Radio signals do not penetrate through stone or concrete
| well which causes increased battery drain. You also have
| the issue of perhaps diminishing oxygen and cognitive
| impairment caused by shock and crush trauma.
|
| It would be better for battery life for people to just text
| a friend or family member and say "crushed under tons of
| stone at home, please send help". Nobody is going to do an
| AMA on Twitter while buried using up the precious battery
| life for retweets and likes.
| xwdv wrote:
| But after the initial shock wears off it becomes a
| waiting game, perhaps socializing with the outside world
| will give you the will to survive.
|
| It would certainly make for one hell of an AMA.
|
| "I'm trapped and slowly getting crushed under tons of
| rubble, AMA."
| therealmocker wrote:
| Post reads surprisingly like an auto generated ad for
| NordVPN
| Luc wrote:
| Indeed, and less tech savvy people could just hand their
| phone to any teenager crushed nearby to do it for them.
| prh8 wrote:
| "it's not too hard to do something you have no knowledge
| about, while being in shock and survival mode from extreme
| trauma both physical and mental"
|
| use critical thinking for like 2 seconds
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| Let them eat cake.
|
| How I miss n gate.
| can16358p wrote:
| Exactly. Imagine a government willfully ordering ISPs to
| block access to Twitter where people under wreckage are
| trying to reach for help using social media.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| There's a very dark WikiHow article in the works here, or a
| SNL sketch
| coffeeblack wrote:
| Just like in China with the anti-lockdown protests. The people
| who are recognisable on social media posts from the protests have
| all been arrested by now. They waited just long enough to make
| people forget about it before they picked them up one by one.
| throwawayccp wrote:
| This is why I stopped buying anything that comes form China. No
| more funding CCP.
| blackoil wrote:
| If that's your hill, add Turkey, India and Russia to the
| list. Brazil we'll know in few days.
| buildsjets wrote:
| I cannot think of any product that I have purchased in the
| past 50 years that was made in Turkey or India. I once
| bought a replacement carburetor for a woodchipper, and it
| was made in Russia, but that's all I've seen from there.
| These are not exactly manufacturing and exporting
| powerhouses, it's pretty trivial to avoid them if you want
| to, compared to China.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Turkey has a substantial textile industry. Something like
| the 5th or 6th largest textile exporter globally, and 3rd
| largest in the European market. My last set of bath
| towels were manufactured in Turkey, although my present
| set are from Pakistan.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| If you bought anything pharmaceutical in the last ten
| years, chances are quite high it was manufactured in
| India using raw materials from China, and then either the
| formulation was done in the USA or the packaging was done
| in the USA to avoid having to label the source:
|
| > (2021) "Here we use previously non-publicly available
| data to describe levels and trends in the manufacturing
| locations of the most commonly used prescription
| pharmaceuticals, off-patent generic drugs, intended to be
| consumed by Americans. We find that the base ingredients
| required for the manufacturing of these prescription
| drugs are overwhelmingly and increasingly manufactured in
| non-domestic locations, specifically India and China."
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8109232/
|
| In turn, the raw materials going into the India
| pharmaceutical pipeline tend to come from China more than
| anywhere else:
|
| > "Even as the nation clamoured for banning products and
| cancelling contracts emanating from China, it's apparent
| that, at least in pharma, it may not quite work out as
| imports from China account for 80% of total raw materials
| for making medicines, also called APIs (active
| pharmaceutical ingredients)."
|
| https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-
| business/...
|
| However, this doesn't get a lot of corporate media
| coverage, given that pharma is among the top advertisers.
| [deleted]
| widowlark wrote:
| What about Brazil? I thought Bolsonaro was out?
| [deleted]
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| FpUser wrote:
| The list is actually much longer. Also the should consider
| to stop buying things made by prison labor.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| The list is probably too long to keep up, realistically
| speaking. But I think any positive change in our spending
| habits (e.g. cutting off China and Russia) are good
| FpUser wrote:
| >"This is why I stopped buying anything that comes form
| China"
|
| This is plain lie. At the very best you could stop buying end
| consumer products made and shipped from China. Assuming that
| things mad in the West are free from Chinese components /
| materials is a delusion
| cpursley wrote:
| Where was the device and it's components you typed this
| comment out on made?
| [deleted]
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| How do you even do that? I make an effort when I have a
| choice but so often it seems like there is no other choice.
| throwawayccp wrote:
| For instance i still use 10y old Dell 14r laptop. When it
| became slow to run windows i switched to u Ubuntu and added
| SSD (not china made).
|
| I might have purchased less than 10 made in china products
| in the past 3 years
|
| Something is better than nothing
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| That Dell was still certainly made in China. And the SSD,
| while not manufactured in China, likely had components
| which were.
|
| It's practically impossible to avoid it.
| throwawayccp wrote:
| Laptop was purchased before XI became president.
|
| Agree we can't avoid completely but still doing something
| is better than nothing.
| nordsieck wrote:
| IMO, the best one can practically do is to just buy used.
|
| It's not 0 support, but it's a lot less than buying new.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Used hardware usually has better support in Linux anyway.
| daveguy wrote:
| I think the point is they haven't purchased a new one in
| 10 years. Therefore, no more purchase from China.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I mean Xi has been president for the last 10 years, so
| even that Dell would have supported ol' Winnie.
|
| For someone with such a strong anti-china stance (enough
| to create a throwaway), I'd expect full devotion to the
| cause.
| soperj wrote:
| I think you're letting perfect be the enemy of good.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'd be very interested in this, but it seems hard to
| determine the extent to which a product was manufactured in
| China. Do you have any resources that help with this?
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| [dead]
| ss108 wrote:
| I want to, but it's tough. How have you been filtering
| things?
| consumer451 wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts/
| throw4738465 wrote:
| That subreddit caused a huge Streisand Effect for me.
|
| I saw so many cool, affordable products that didn't have
| any alternatives (or the alternatives were too expensive)
| I ended up buying even more things!
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Why do you write this on a throw away?
| puszczyk wrote:
| Because they take notes, and they may come for the OP one
| day?
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| I agree with funding cuts to the CCP, but there's an argument
| to be made that de-globalisation is a sure fire way to global
| conflict..
|
| Mutual interests tend to keep things civilised
| neoromantique wrote:
| Russia has already demonstrated that McDonald's theory
| doesn't work.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| WW1 already demonstrated that "trade keeps peace" can't
| be counted on, but some people never learn. The argument
| was made and soundly debunked many years before anybody
| here was even born.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| How could "trade keeps peace" prevent Russia paying
| Serbia to start a war to gro it's empire?
| rdevsrex wrote:
| Maybe, but globalization is how China got industrialized so
| fast in the first place. Help your enemy get rich, and then
| watch as they push you off your place. Not a smart strategy
| either.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Yes the difference could be that I am against US
| hegemony, and all for finally somehow growing up and
| attempting to avoid a catastrophic, planet annihilating
| conflict.
|
| That would probably require a different point of view
| than labelling China as _the enemy_ , or keeping them
| pre-industrial and poor in order to control them, as the
| US has done repeatedly in many south American countries.
| Haga wrote:
| [dead]
| actionfromafar wrote:
| That argument gets longer in the tooth by the day. It
| presupposes a certain amount of shared values.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > there's an argument to be made that de-globalisation is a
| sure fire way to global conflict..
|
| You could make that argument, but that is dependent
| strongly on everybody being rational actors and there is
| plenty of evidence that dictatorships are not rational
| actors.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Is the US orchestrating coup after coup all over the
| globe a desirable rational actor ?
|
| The reality is that it will take multiple generations for
| us to get rid politicians who when zoomed out act like
| teenage boys, and we can argue all we want.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| USA - "Hello, my name is the US of A."
|
| Everybody - "Welcome, US of A."
|
| USA - "Today I haven't orchestrated a coup in (checks
| paper)[0] ... six years?"
|
| *applause*
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvemen
| t_in_r...
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| My money is on France for this one, but you never know..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Guinean_coup_d%27%C3%A
| 9ta...
| sockaddr wrote:
| Yup. I'm (trying) to do the same. Every little mindless
| purchase I used to make to fix some minor inconvenience
| slowly adds up to real harm for someone else at the hands of
| the CCP.
|
| Please stop buying from China.
|
| In fact, in recent times Lithuania has been a force for good
| against China, I'd suggest seeking out their goods if
| applicable to your needs.
| spacemadness wrote:
| Stop buying from China means essentially buying nothing
| with a semiconductor. Unless you mean something else.
| tomComb wrote:
| If you buy Samsung stuff instead of Apple you are
| significantly reducing the amount of China made stuff.
|
| No need to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
| sockaddr wrote:
| Well, there are many things in your life that you buy
| from China that don't have a semiconductor in it.
|
| For instance, I was shocked to find out that a lot of
| "Brazilian" honey was actually rebranded corn syrup
| imported from China and cut with low-grade Chinese honey,
| this all to get around U.S. import restrictions due to
| the lack of quality/safety regulation in China.
|
| It's expensive, it's tiring, it's hard. But, in the end I
| feel it's worth it for the safety of my family and
| others. Whether it's honey, a sketchily-soldered power
| supply, or some completely fake lithium ion battery for
| your vacuum that only has 25% of rated capacity and might
| burn your house down, it's best to stay away from the
| Chinese option if you can.
| throwawayccp wrote:
| Buy locally produced food only. Most importantly never
| buy Chinese food it's toxic
| realworldperson wrote:
| [dead]
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Honey is one of those things where you're best off buying
| it from a local producer, or not at all.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| The local honey unfortunately shreds my intestines. :(
|
| But I haven't really had honey since then so the point is
| moot.
| sockaddr wrote:
| Totally agree. After spending tons of time trying to find
| a reputable supplier the answer ended up being either:
|
| 1) I need to befriend a local beekeeper 2) I need to pick
| up beekeeping
|
| You may think, that's too much work but really the honey
| you're buying at the store stands a really good chance of
| simply being sugar with only a trace of honey. Not good
| for you.
| saltymug76 wrote:
| Genuinely curious, what has Lithuania done to stand up
| against China? And any suggestions on potential things one
| would buy from them over China? I would like to buy more
| from countries and people who aren't whipped by the CCP.
| Tomte wrote:
| They opened a diplomatic representation in Taiwan.
| jcranmer wrote:
| And refused to back down when China did its standard put-
| them-in-the-doghouse routine.
| bilqis wrote:
| While individual consumers do such choices to feel better
| about themselves/feel like they're doing something, big
| capital is pumping money nonstop to China.
|
| It's the same with Russia. It has been overflowed with money
| from EU before and during the war, and stop buying Russian
| goods will only affect individuals not buying it (and perhaps
| local sellers, too).
| mylidlpony wrote:
| Same with all of the russian protests.
| [deleted]
| LarryMullins wrote:
| > _The people who are recognisable on social media posts from
| the protests have all been arrested by now. They waited just
| long enough to make people forget about it before they picked
| them up one by one._
|
| Same deal as with that Bundy/Overpass standoff between militia
| types and the Feds a few years ago. The Feds showed up, saw the
| number of men with rifles, turned around and went home. Mission
| accomplished right? The militia guys all pat each other on the
| back and congratulate themselves on scaring off the feds.
| Except they then get quietly arrested one by one over the next
| few months. Those arrests never become big headline stories
| like the initial standoff, so you still have fools today who
| think those standoff tactics are viable.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| But charges against Bundy were dropped, weren't they?
|
| And those arrests didn't really amount to anything, did they?
|
| So yes, I'd say mission accomplished.
| carrja99 wrote:
| Didn't he even run for governor in his state?
| LarryMullins wrote:
| I haven't followed the Bundy affair closely and it does
| seem Clive Bundy himself ultimately got off, but I'm mostly
| talking about all the other guys who were on the overpass
| that day pointing rifles at federal agents. From what I've
| read and heard, they were all IDed and arrested afterwards.
| Wikipedia says that besides Clive, 18 others were indicted
| for federal felonies allegedly perpetrated that day.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I'm not into US politics so just a glance at Wikipedia. You
| compare anti-lock down protests with someone stealing land?
| Or was is it just comparing the way the police worked in
| general? I can't follow your argument.
| [deleted]
| npc12345 wrote:
| [dead]
| LarryMullins wrote:
| > _Or was is it just comparing the way the police worked in
| general?_
|
| This one. When the local odds aren't in their favor, they
| go home and arrest people later at their leisure.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I'd say it's the best, least violent and risky way of
| dealing with this.
|
| The tool is good. Ensuring it's used for good reasons
| it's a separate problem.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| Assuming that these armed people actually broke the law,
| that's the better move then. Otherwise there would be a
| huge outbreak of violence. But that's not really
| comparable to lawful protests.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| I am comparing the law enforcement tactics, not the
| reasons for the protests. The protests themselves being
| incomparable is irrelevant.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| That's sad, and sincerely hope they get at least some form of a
| life back.
| sushzbdbehsh wrote:
| i heard China called America a big dummy
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34708693.
| mc32 wrote:
| Not to defend China, as the scale and the penalties are not
| comparable, however, some western governments also took a
| relatively hard stance against some anti-lockdown protests and
| we're learning government was involved in muting dissenting
| opinions on social media which in some western countries
| crosses the line into censorship.
|
| The government had embeds in social media orgs. Just imagine if
| during the Johnson or Nixon admins the gov/FBI/etc had actual
| "embeds" in the WashPo/NYT, etc. It's one thing for say Bezos
| to sympathize with Biden, or Elon sympathize with Rand, but
| it's another for the gov to had employees embedded and offering
| their take on things in the guise of "protecting the public
| from misinformation"
| sammalloy wrote:
| > Just imagine if during the Johnson or Nixon admins the
| gov/FBI/etc had actual "embeds" in the WaShPo/NYT, etc.
|
| That's pretty much what journalist Carl Bernstein claimed in
| 1977, followed much later by historian Hugh Wilford in 2008.
| mc32 wrote:
| My understanding is that in those days the press and gov
| were on the same "page" but it was more like when airlines
| hike prices or lower prices in response to a competitor
| rather than having actual embeds offering their opinion on
| what was received facts and what was "misinformation". If
| Johnson or Nixon has had that level of access and
| influence, I doubt the VN war protests or Watergate complex
| scandal would have been as large as they were.
| sammalloy wrote:
| I'm inclined to mostly agree with you, but I think when
| it came to politically charged subjects there might have
| been some influence or attempts, particularly around
| left-wing issues, communism, labor unions, and civil
| rights topics.
|
| Nixon had his famous Enemies List which was filled with
| journalists, and Nancy Reagan was in frequent
| communication with Los Angeles Times publisher Otis
| Chandler about the criticism of her husband (then
| California governor) in the paper, as only two examples.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| Sadly, many Western governments got "inspired" by the CCP, I
| agree. Though what happened in China was on a completely
| different level.
|
| But I hope that in the coming years, western societies will
| investigate government actions during the Covid craze. That's
| the advantage of Democratic societies, there is at least a
| chance that sh*t gets cleaned up.
| themitigating wrote:
| "crosses the line into censorship."
|
| Is not compared to being arrested and possibly jailed
| mc32 wrote:
| It depends on whether we believe in upholding the
| constitution or not.[1] In addition we did have people
| arrested for violating lockdown rules/orders.
|
| [1] and given the volatility of this comment it seems
| people take issue with the bill of rights.
| jquery wrote:
| Excerpt From Allow Me to Retort - A Black Man's Guide to
| the Constitution:
|
| "Our Constitution is not good. It is a document designed
| to create a society of enduring white male dominance,
| hastily edited in the margins to allow for what basic
| political rights white men could be convinced to share.
| The Constitution is an imperfect work that urgently and
| consistently needs to be modified and reimagined to make
| good on its unrealized promises of justice and equality
| for all.
|
| And yet you rarely see liberals make the point that the
| Constitution is actually trash. Conservatives are out
| here acting like the Constitution was etched by divine
| flame upon stone tablets, when in reality it was scrawled
| out over a sweaty summer by people making deals with
| actual monsters who were trying to protect their rights
| to rape the humans they held in bondage."
|
| Elie Mystal
|
| https://books.apple.com/us/book/allow-me-to-
| retort/id1549926...
| mc32 wrote:
| Framing it as designed to ensure the dominance of one sex
| and one "race" is not doing the argument any favors. If
| that is what they set out to do, they did a poor job at
| it (even the Swiss and Kuwaitis suppressed their women
| "better") in addition, today, there exists slavery to
| this day in Chad and DRC, despite it being technically
| illegal. That argument is further eroded by claiming it's
| imperfect in enabling a promise. The constitution itself
| is what gave us the the necessary rights (including
| freedom of speech itself) to right previous wrongs.
|
| Moreover, you can have a perfectly nice constitution
| guaranteeing all kinds of rights and freedoms like the
| USSR did (and I suspect the CCP does) and not enjoy the
| important aspects enshrined in such document)
|
| But that's a misdirection in any case. It's utterly
| authoritarian to have a government decide what is truth
| and what isn't. That's one of the first things
| authoritarians go after. We should be very weary of
| anyone espousing the view government should have that
| right.
| freejazz wrote:
| Look, I'm not trying to get into a whole culture war
| thing, but you do realize that the constitution literally
| had to be amended to give non-whites and women the right
| to vote? It seems like the constitution did a perfectly
| good job at doing that.
| mc32 wrote:
| No disagreement there. What I disagree with is the
| insinuation that the right to free speech is tainted and
| thus somehow unjust because the constitution had to be
| amended. It's a devilish argument.
| freejazz wrote:
| Fair enough. I didn't read the poster as to mean that so
| much as to say that flatly stating "support the
| constitution" is kinda painfully vague in its meaning and
| not without the problems the poster pointed out in the
| quote. For sure the constitution is widely
| misinterpreted, even apparently by members of the supreme
| court that are now under the belief that it and the bill
| of rights are an enumerated list of rights, to which
| otherwise none remain, when it is in fact the opposite.
| An enumerated list of limited powers granted to the
| gov't, to which the bill of rights are merely examples of
| such limitations as applied to individuals, but were
| never intended to be exhaustive or imply that no other
| rights existed.
|
| So, imo, and apologies for the controversial political
| example, but when people ask "where is the right to
| abortion in the constitution?" they completely miss the
| point that the actual question _must_ be "where is the
| right for the government to regulate abortions in the
| constitution?"
| pphysch wrote:
| Like Julian Assange?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| If you are correct, with embedded political officers and
| official statements I would say that this crosses from
| censorship to propaganda.
| lessname wrote:
| This is so sad because twitter is still mainly used by people to
| help each other, e.g. to tell where help is needed or who can
| help.
| philipov wrote:
| With authoritarian regimes, having someone who's not a
| representative of the regime doing anything to help others is
| often seen as a threat to the authority of the government.
| pphysch wrote:
| Off-topic, but threads like this make me lose hope in the West.
| The vast bulk of upvoted comments are deranged InfoWars-style
| conspiracy theories about multiple foreign countries that are
| deemed acceptable to spew hatred about. On a supposedly
| intellectual forum. If HN rules were uniformly applied, this
| thread would be nuked from orbit, because it is full of uncurious
| bile. But, because it is popular, there isn't really anything HN
| will do about it.
|
| Can't we have a mature conversation about the nuances of
| censorship during severe crises without resorting to blatant
| xenophobia?
| jim_inont wrote:
| Reading the comments, I fully support return of Caliphate and
| saying hello to Europeans like old time. This will eventually
| looking more and more feasible.
| netfortius wrote:
| Not to defend Erdogan by any means (passionately despise him as
| much as I despise Putin), but truth be told - handing to and
| relying on unbiased/factual information dissemination, via
| Twitter, in the Musk era, is something highly questionable.
| algorias wrote:
| >in the Musk era
|
| random tweets have never been a trustworthy information source,
| Musk taking over has nothing to do with it.
| [deleted]
| oriettaxx wrote:
| election are approaching, and anything goes in Turkey
| diimdeep wrote:
| Understandable. Turkey ruling elites protecting country from
| possible chaos and hysteria amplified by social media. Twitter is
| still US based company and if asked would not turn back on US
| national security interests. As history shows, US tactic is to
| destabilize countries and make them weak, there is no better tool
| than social media platform like Twitter. To use Twitter right now
| and to take advantage of this horrible natural disaster and try
| to destabilize the country, is probably the easiest and best
| intelligence serviceman from Washington can do. This is just
| theory.
| seydor wrote:
| I didn't realize that HN was included in Erdogan's bot army
| targets
| diimdeep wrote:
| I dare you to say something constructive instead of this
| 'bot' calling. Here is video to prove my theory [0]
|
| [0] Prank with Former United States National Security Advisor
| John Bolton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=895Y5G5E6g8
| seydor wrote:
| people using social media is not 'chaos and hysteria'.
| there are rescue teams on the ground , reporters etc many
| of whom are using twitter and certainly blockign a
| communication medium , any medium , in an destroyed area
| with devastated infrastructure under severe cold is an evil
| that Allah won't forgive.
| ikeserbestian wrote:
| I dare you to go to Turkey and help people or go fight with
| US or you're just another Erdogan-lover-bot. This
| government came this point with "US style libertarian
| economical and social movement" rubbish discourse and
| people only got "some Islamic totalitarian pressure and
| meaningless developments about building industry" from them
| which why so many people lying under the rubble this cold
| February night.
| SSLy wrote:
| I'm certain people dying under rubble feel so proud spreading
| the USIan propaganda, yeah. _The traitors_.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Erdogan's first speech was almost 2 days after the earthquake and
| he said "We are monitoring who said what on the social media and
| tried to provoke the people. Today it's not the day to go after
| those but we take notes and when the day comes, we will go after
| them".
|
| Just look at his face when delivering this speech:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doy38aKbMw4
|
| It's like from V for Vendetta. The lighting choice is very
| particular.
|
| Twitter was heavily used to seek help by people in turmoil, even
| hundreds of people were posting from under the rubbles. The
| officials were claiming that everything was under control and
| they are helping everyone but people were posting videos showing
| the situation on the ground and the situation didn't look even
| close to being under control.
|
| The head of communications of Erdogan even introduced an app to
| streamline "reporting disinformation". Like, it's the second day
| after a massive earthquake and they published a f*king app to
| snitch people. Here is the announcement of the app, early at
| 05:00 local time in the morning 24 hours after the quake:
| https://twitter.com/fahrettinaltun/status/162277720485259264...
|
| Also there were many incidents of the mainstream media cutting of
| talks or turning away the camera when people said or did anything
| discrediting the official narrative.
|
| Yesterday, some people with prominent accounts who shared the
| tweets from the people in the region began reporting that they
| were taken into custody by the police. I guess the day has come
| quickly.
| Kukumber wrote:
| > Twitter was heavily used to seek help by people in turmoil,
| even hundreds of people were posting from under the rubbles.
| The officials were claiming that everything was under control
| and they are helping everyone but people were posting videos
| showing the situation on the ground and the situation didn't
| look even close to being under control.
|
| Social media is the first target no matter the country
|
| The US do the exact same [1], they control them with CIA agents
| [1*], so it is easier for them to do profiling rather than
| blocking it
|
| In fact, it's the first thing the US want to do for foreign
| apps, to ban them, just like with TikTok [2], they are recent
| talks about a global ban too
|
| So we can't just throw the stone at Turkey, you have to
| examinate the situation, they had a terrorist attack in
| Istanbul in november [3], mossad agents doing shady things [4],
| wich btw gives flashbacks of the failed coup by the mossad [5]
| (imagine if the coup succeeded knowing how the Ukraine-Russia
| conflict developped and the current issues in Azerbaijan-
| Armenia, they dodged something sinister)
|
| Twitter is known to be a place with lot of political activity,
| it's easy for a foreign country to spread misinformation, there
| are lot of noise
|
| And Twitter is not the most popular social media app in Turkey,
| plus the population in that region is not tech savvy either
|
| [1] - https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/federal-agents-
| mon...
|
| [1#] -
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11562433/Facebook-r...
|
| [2] - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/30/us-
| tiktok...
|
| [3] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63615076
|
| [4] - https://www.aljazeera.com/program/al-jazeera-
| world/2023/1/11...
|
| [5] -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Turkish_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > they control them with CIA agents [1*], so it is easier for
| them to do profiling rather than blocking it
|
| I don't understand what you're suggesting CIA agents are
| controlling. What is "them" in "they control them"?
|
| The article you link to involves surveillance (rather than
| control) by the FBI (rather than CIA).
| EricE wrote:
| Good god - the FBI recently got outed (Twitter files - Elon
| Musk - hello?) paying more than $30M to Twitter to do their
| bidding. Are you really this ignorant of current events?
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| It's pretty clear we all these days live in different
| bubbles, of what is "widely known current events".
|
| Googling, it looks like it was $3 million, not $30
| million, for data requested with court order for such,
| rather than for suppressing speech or other control? It
| was still the FBI, not the CIA? This one?
|
| https://reason.com/2022/12/19/the-fbi-paid-
| twitter-3-4-milli...
|
| Yes, I legitimately didn't know what the GP I was
| replying to was suggesting that the CIA controlled, what
| "them" meant. Now that they replied, I understand what
| they are suggesting, and think they are... living in a
| different bubble than me.
| Kukumber wrote:
| They are in charge of the disinformation/moderation teams
|
| An example: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondberman/
|
| They are in most social media companies
|
| So they can decide what to ban that could hinder their
| national social order
|
| Something Turkey can't do with Twitter, hence a ban, just
| like the US with TikTok and the pseudo "algorithm"
|
| With the amount of misinformation that spreads in Twitter,
| it is the right thing to do
|
| It was similar with Iran, and that coincides with Musk
| purchasing Twitter and dismantling the moderation team
| making it unable to function at all
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/twitters-content-moderation-team-
| repo...
| LarryMullins wrote:
| > _it is the right thing to do_
|
| You had me nodding until this part. Yes, twitter is
| filled with misinformation. But government censorship is
| more dangerous than misinformation. Governments have
| killed more people than anything else short of heart
| attacks and cancer. Governments murdered hundreds of
| millions of people in the 20th century; giving
| governments the power to censor whatever the government
| deems to be misinformation is insanely dangerous. The
| most dangerous kind of misinformation is that which is
| promulgated by the government itself.
| chopin wrote:
| Any government, to emphasize. Who gets to decide what
| constitutes misinformation?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Your source links don't match up with what you're saying. For
| example, with [1#] you claim the US "controls" social media
| with CIA agents, but [1#] simply shows a social media company
| that merely hired former CIA agents. That's like saying
| Facebook hired a bunch of ex-Microsoft people, therefore
| Microsoft controls Facebook. Doesn't make sense.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > wich btw gives flashbacks of the failed coup by the mossad
|
| Turkey has not even accused Mossad of being involved in the
| failed coup d'etat.
| Kukumber wrote:
| The wiki mentions the CIA, but their investigations found
| links to groups helped by both the mossad and the CIA, i'll
| try to find the link for the investigation, i'll edit the
| post once i find it
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Erdogan and his ilk single-handedly made me hesitant about
| donating, that regardless who I donate to, they'll find a way
| to line their pockets. I ended up donating, do the same, but
| Erdogan is a bastard man.
| sokols wrote:
| You can donate here: https://ahbap.org/disasters-turkey
|
| It's an NGO that currently is crowdsourcing donations for the
| relief.
| tradertef wrote:
| +1 for Ahbap. It is a grassroots organization with not much
| religious and political agenda.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| And there is what, precisely, to prevent Erdogan and his
| cronies from just seizing the funds and arresting the
| principals? These bank accounts are in Turkey.
|
| I would honestly be more comfortable using the likes of
| PayPal, as it's less likely to be stolen by the government.
| sokols wrote:
| Well, if we go by the logic you stated, a meteorite may
| fall down to my head now while I am exiting my work
| place.
|
| Anyway, I think there are enough alternatives to donate.
| Where I live, a local relief organization is collecting
| donations for Turkey and Syria. Then there are UN
| agencies who do that etc.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Erdogan doing Erdogan things is a lot more likely than a
| meteorite falling on you, but it's your money so you do
| you.
| mrtksn wrote:
| They are very quick in spending the money and don't do
| long term project, built a solid reputation over the
| years and it's founder is a Turkish Rocks star who is
| politically not very pronounced.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| That's a good strategy, and good to know, thank you. I
| worked with an orphanage in Kyrgyzstan who had a policy
| of ensuring their bank account was empty at the end of
| every day, and it worked for them.
|
| I've made a donation - I hope it ends up helping someone
| who needs it.
| mrtksn wrote:
| thanks a lot!
| mayormcmatt wrote:
| I thought Dennis was the bastard man?
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| So is little Recep
| [deleted]
| beaned wrote:
| > Also there were many incidents of the mainstream media
| cutting of talks or turning away the camera when people said or
| did anything discrediting the official narrative.
|
| Twitter itself pioneered this during covid. It's no surprise
| others learned from it.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| > Just look at his face when delivering this speech:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doy38aKbMw4
|
| I'm only half-snickering here, because the atmospheric choices
| are indeed very particular and telling.
|
| But the face (and its expression) has looked like this at least
| in the past 10 years. That's telling as well, you may say :)
| moremetadata wrote:
| [flagged]
| icepat wrote:
| Can you explain what makes this account a sock-puppet
| account, or how they're causing trouble? The comment makes
| valid points, and provides useful information.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Surprisingly, I upvoted for teaching me that the earthquake
| bomb was actually a thing and used in the wild:
|
| > It was used to disable the V2 launch sites at La Coupole
| and Blockhaus d'Eperlecques, put out of action the V-3 cannon
| sites at Fortress of Mimoyecques, sink the battleship Tirpitz
| and damage the U-boats' protective pens at St. Nazaire, as
| well as to attack many other targets which had been
| impossible to damage before. One of the most spectacular
| attacks was shortly after D-Day, when the Tallboy was used to
| prevent German tank reinforcements from moving by train.
| Rather than blow up the tracks - which would have been
| repaired in a day or so - the bombs were targeted on a tunnel
| near Saumur which carried the line under a mountain. Twenty-
| five Lancasters dropped the first Tallboys on the mountain,
| penetrating straight through the rock, and one of them
| exploded in the tunnel below. As a result, the entire rail
| line remained unusable until the end of the war.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_bomb
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Yes, but people will connect this factual bomb to something
| _magic_ which can cause a region wide earthquakes.
| Undetected, of course, masquerading as a natural event.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Another angry old guy...
| boredumb wrote:
| What a fool. He should have said he was fighting earthquake
| misinformation in order to preserve the rich democracy of
| turkey.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Why does this make Erdogan a fool?
|
| edit: I legitimately have no idea why I am being downvoted.
| Can someone explain?
| FpUser wrote:
| Because people can downvote things when they simply do not
| like your opinion disregarding of merits.
| colpabar wrote:
| Because when western leaders want to censor information,
| they claim said information is a "threat to democracy", and
| everyone just trusts them. (not that it would work - it
| seems like turkish people actually know how to protest)
| coolbreezetft22 wrote:
| What a weird comment
|
| Erdogan has for past the decade regularly arrested
| critical journalists and opposition politicians on very
| flimsy trumped up charges.
|
| In America there is a massive and lucrative media
| industry dedicated to attacking whichever
| politician/party happens to be in power, alongside half
| of social media at any given time. It's pretty clear
| political freedom in the West is much stronger than in
| Turkey right now
| foronetimeonly1 wrote:
| [dead]
| poulpy123 wrote:
| I've read report that Turkey bombarded part of Kurdish syria
| that suffered from the earthquake yesterday
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't know about that but maybe you can donate to Syria,
| they were heavily affected by the quake too.
| Laaas wrote:
| Isn't that against sanctions?
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't know but probably there are options to donate to
| organisations outside Syria which provide direct material
| help.
| phillc73 wrote:
| I think the Kurdish Red Crescent could be a good option for
| donations. They have an appeal page here:
|
| https://www.heyvasor.com/en/banga-alikariya-lezgin-ji-bo-
| mex...
| Hrun0 wrote:
| They also claimed that Turkey apparently used Nukes.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I completely agree but we also really need to move past
| Twattered being the social media of choice for change.
|
| edit: Did I just get downvoted by Elon personally? Win!
| foronetimeonly1 wrote:
| [dead]
| latchkey wrote:
| The background behind him seems like two people watching live
| drone footage.
| golergka wrote:
| This is one of many, many reasons why western countries and
| social media companies should not normalise censorship re-
| branded like "fighting disinformation".
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Curiously, all the people that support such censorship in
| western countries are actually against it in this instance.
| Almost like whether or not they choose to support a policy
| depends not on what it does but instead on who it's being
| done to.
| archagon wrote:
| Government censorship (and arrests!!) are in no way
| comparable to the "censorship" happening in western
| countries. (Namely, ToC violators getting banned, and
| government figures suggesting misinformation to look into.)
| The comparison is just obnoxious.
| peyton wrote:
| It's not. Traditionally the government is in charge of
| the public square. If a private company is enforcing TOS
| violations while operating a public square, and operating
| a public square is traditionally a government function,
| it's valid to argue violators are entitled to free speech
| protections.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| IMO the issue in the entire discussion of "censorship"
| shouldn't be between censorship vs no censorship but about
| the outrage amplifiers social media has become. It makes
| the already huge problem with Bandolini's Law / "flooding
| the zone with shit" so much bigger by amplifying random
| voices that drive engagement which is most effectively
| driven by outrage. I'd wager that addressing this issue
| will suddenly reduce the number of discussions about
| "censorship"
| epgui wrote:
| It's almost like the goal is not censorship for
| censorship's sake, but rather the goal is actually
| protecting the more vulnerable (which in this case is
| clearly the Turkish people and not Erdogan). It's almost
| like there are principles at play!
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| My principle is that force is only justified in response
| to force, and speech is not force (unless it makes a
| threat), false or not. If you don't agree with that
| principle then I'd like to hear it explicitly.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I hope you actually went and asked everybody.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Starting with you, do you support social media censorship
| in the United States? And do you support social media
| censorship by turkey? Those are yes or no questions.
| guelo wrote:
| Do you support Elon's censorship of antifa accounts?
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Difference between me stopping you from wearing shoes in
| my house, and me stopping you from wearing shoes in
| yours.
| ars wrote:
| No and no.
|
| I don't support any censorship at all for any topics even
| those that deeply offend me.
|
| The only exception would be actual death threats and
| things that are illegal to do.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| If he considered himself a counter-example to your
| claims, he probably would have said so upfront.
| ycombinete wrote:
| yes, I found that claim bizarre as well. How does one
| even form such an opinion about "everyone" who holds x
| opinion?
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Almost like whether or not they choose to support a
| policy depends not on what it does but instead on who it's
| being done to._
|
| Well, or they have a more nuanced view than "censorship no"
| or "censorship yes"
|
| For example, I support laws preventing stores from selling
| 3 watt LED bulbs in packages claiming they're 5 watt LED
| bulbs; or selling generic LED bulbs in packages claiming
| they're Phillips bulbs. Even though the printed text is
| surely the manufacturer's speech.
|
| Must I support all censorship, because I support this one
| bit of censorship?
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Exactly this. Censorship should be a nuanced topic if
| anyone gives it any serious thought. Not all censorship
| is at the same level, and there is obviously a difference
| between shutting down Twitter and not letting folks
| criticize the government and, say, not telling folks
| misinformation that can lead to another's harm or death
| (fake cures, for example).
| AeroNotix wrote:
| The problem with allowing the interpretation of whether
| something should be censored be based on the obvious
| nuances that it entails is that the exact nuance is not
| universal among all people. This is why ZERO censorship
| is the only reasonable form of censorship.
| status200 wrote:
| It would be interesting to get your opinion on censorship
| again if a specific lie was gaining exponential traction
| and threatened the livelihood of your family. Or even if
| there were something less direct, like if you couldn't go
| see a movie in a theater because a huge tiktok trend of
| yelling "Fire!" and filming people trample each other
| gains the spotlight of millions of users.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I have trouble grasping the extend to which you
| appreciate the degree of thinking done by other parties
| for your own benefit.
|
| It is the case that unless you are a polymath with
| copious amount of time and money, you will never be able
| to accumulate sufficient information to make fully
| educated decisions in a world truly devoid of censorship.
|
| By fully educated I mean starting from the bottom up and
| going all the way through to reach a conclusion.
|
| This means that every single resource you will use has to
| be verified, all experiments need to be conducted and
| evaluated.
|
| If we don't censor anything, then there is no point in
| books because editors are censoring information there.
|
| What's the point of journals and publications without a
| review process to filter out the garbage?
|
| You could very well be a reasonable person, but without
| censorship to varying degrees your capacity filter
| garbage is hindered by simply not knowing anything to a
| reasonable degree of certainty exactly because no form of
| censorship exists. Thus your capacity to limit
| information based on prior knowledge is hindered as there
| is not an authority of any kind that you may trust
| exactly because there is no way to measure quality of
| one's speech outside the scrutiny it passes through
| through established channels and authorities that already
| have a reputation and we may trust.
|
| The reason we do censorship is because not all speech is
| benevolent, useful, or true. People will abuse the
| absence of censorship to attack "unwanted" people, to
| push lies, to misrepresent information, and to push an
| agenda instead of letting facts do the talking.
|
| Why is it difficult for facts to do the talking?
|
| > Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry
| principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the
| effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the
| relative ease of creating it in the first place. It
| states that "The amount of energy needed to refute
| bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed
| to produce it."[1][2]
|
| Now, the more bullshit that floats the more bullshit
| propagates and thus the less true information exists,
| eventually suffocating us in information garbage.
|
| If you wish to see this in action, look into antivax
| groups convinced that vaccinated individuals will start
| dropping like flies within the next $LATEST_GOALPOST.
|
| Or, take a look at how long it took me to explain why
| absolute absence of censorship simply does not work just
| from a view of having a consistent world model and having
| nobody to trust and no way of doing so.
|
| One could extend my comment to include damage done to
| people or entities intentionally or otherwise. Notice how
| Musk pivoted out of absolute free speech when advertisers
| left?
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Care to tell me what I did wrong to warrant this
| reaction?
| smallnix wrote:
| I understand that you mean zero censorship for adults. I
| am interested in your position regarding people younger
| than 21/18/16 (exact age depends on the country I guess).
| petsfed wrote:
| I worry that the nuance here is not actually down to
| interpretation, but the consequences of extremely rapid
| dissemination of information. I don't even think those of
| us in tech have come to grips with how that matters, let
| alone if/how we should make efforts to get around it.
|
| The latency on information coming from a newspaper or
| even TV news is limited to how rapidly those sources can
| vet the information before publishing it, and then the
| latency of the publication method. If someone wants to
| use those avenues to spread misinformation, they have to
| do a lot of legwork to make the lie sound plausible
| enough that the publisher will put the effort into
| publishing it.
|
| What's the legwork for someone planning to spread
| misinformation via twitter? How long does it take "for
| new facts to emerge" that address the misgivings
| incredulous consumers hold? The power of social media is
| that the real truth can emerge very quickly, regardless
| of what the powers that be want. But the threat of social
| media is that there's basically no organic way to prevent
| abuse of that power.
|
| Others are right that the line between misinformation and
| difference of opinion is often quite narrow. But I don't
| believe there is _no_ difference, and every society
| _must_ choose and hold its line, according to its own
| values.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Your scenario is not equivalent. A buyer and seller shake
| on an implicit contract when a purchase is made, and
| enforcement of a contract you agreed to is not
| censorship. A more accurate comparison would be me
| posting a picture of a 3 watt bulb online, claiming it is
| a 5 watt bulb. I don't believe that should be illegal,
| and you would if you were consistent.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| You've missed the point. It's not desirable to have
| listings which contain false advertising; the remedy for
| that is to restrict false advertising, not make every
| buyer chase the seller in a contract dispute after the
| fact. That would be insanity.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Nope, your comparison is just not equivalent. A sale is a
| transfer of property. We enforce the implicit contract
| that goes along with that. The buyer will pay, the seller
| will deliver, the product is accurate, etc. This
| discussion is about speech, for which no such contract
| exists. If you disagree, then you should have no problem
| arresting people for showing off a 3 watt bulb they claim
| to be 5 watts.
| jliptzin wrote:
| Not a lawyer but I could imagine a situation where you're
| in a store and you see an advertisement for a blue light
| bulb that says that blue light bulbs are proven to
| disinfect surfaces. You remember you have some blue light
| bulbs at home, so you go home and screw them in. Or maybe
| you go on amazon and order some blue light bulbs because
| they're cheaper, even though different brands are not
| making that claim, the first one tricked you into
| thinking it was true. You haven't entered into any
| contract with the manufacturer making that false claim,
| yet you are still harmed by it.
| spoiler wrote:
| Right, but people (and companies) lie all the time, and
| it's not something that's illegal. It's amoral, but not
| illegal.
|
| I'm not sure where I stand on the matter personally.
|
| Like, taking the constant social turmoil in America as an
| example: anything people dislike they call
| disinformation/fake news, but are equally guilty and okay
| with of spreading and allowing the same behaviour if it
| furthers their agenda. Or they will at least be more
| lenient to their side of the arguments indulging in it,
| since it aligns with their biases.
|
| I've seen this happen from both right wing and left wing
| members one Twitter and on Reddit. I personally don't use
| these platforms, but I've seen various threads with
| insane amounts of hypocrisy.
|
| There's so many nuance and unresolved problems.
|
| Like, how do we know truth isn't what's being censored?
|
| How can we even tell in this day and age when the truth
| is? It's often diluted with some hidden agenda. Either
| political or corporate (or oftentimes both). I can't sit
| for hours fact checking everything I read from different
| sources. I have a job, and I also don't want to spend all
| my free time on it. But on the other hand it's also topic
| I care about (just not THAT much I guess?). Who to trust?
|
| And I feel like this "the ones in power control what's
| true" generally feels like a slippery slope.
|
| I also hate that I'm beginning to sound like a crazy
| tinfoil-wearing person.
|
| Idk, humans are complicated. Social media in its current
| iteration was a mistake, since it created platforms for
| some very dangerous and narcissistic people
| Teever wrote:
| People can be victims of false advertising even if they
| don't actually complete a transaction with the offender.
| bentlegen wrote:
| "These other products give you cancer! Only use Febreze
| to mask odours in your home."
|
| _viewer goes and tosses out all their presumably-cancer
| causing products, never purchases Febreze_
| monetus wrote:
| In a similar vein, there is a "fruits and veggies"
| vitamins commercial that advocates skipping meals to
| afford the vitamins, as they give you all you need.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Holy false equivalent, Batman!
|
| The poster's point was pretty simple: there is some
| speech which doesn't deserve to be fully protected to the
| highest possible level. Untrue commercial speech like
| false advertising is pretty much in that category. This
| is why we allow attorneys-general to bring cases against
| false advertisers, for example.
|
| Usually the remedy is monetary damages, but injunctive
| relief is also available.
|
| I can easily maintain that this is sensible and
| reasonable without "arresting people for showing a 3 watt
| bulb they claim to be 5 watts."
| skeaker wrote:
| Isn't the crime of false advertising in the failure to
| deliver what was claimed, and not the claim itself? You
| can very well falsely advertise your product however you
| like provided you don't actually sell it to anyone,
| because once you deliver them a product that isn't what
| you claimed, that's when the actual crime occurs.
| [deleted]
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Is there a sale or not? If there's not a sale it's not
| advertising. If it's not advertising it should be
| allowed, false or not. If it is advertising it's not just
| speech. You lack the consistency to make your argument
| work. So again, I guess you're fine with arresting people
| over light bulbs.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| > If there's not a sale it's not advertising.
|
| This is a really strange perspective. Advertising is only
| advertising once the advertised product is sold? A
| billboard is simultaneously an advertisement and not an
| advertisement depending on whether the observer has
| purchased the advertised item?
|
| Not the GP but no, I'm not fine with arresting people
| over light bulbs. I am totally cool with arresting them
| for fraud if it meets that standard. I am also cool with
| the business being fined or otherwise sanctioned for
| false advertisement. The product is beside the point. The
| deception is what the punishment is intended to address.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| There's an implicit conversion between intent to sell and
| actually selling. For there to be advertising, one of the
| two has to be true. If I'm showing off my car, am I
| advertising anything?
| [deleted]
| LadyCailin wrote:
| But now YOU are deciding that "if a sale is involved,
| speech can be restricted."
|
| Why can I not decide "if it would result in people dying,
| speech can be restricted?"
|
| I mean, if you told me I could only restrict one of
| these, then surely I would pick the second anyways.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| No, I'm saying that if you decide to make a sale, and
| decide to have it mediated by the government by paying
| sales tax, then whether or not you get punished for false
| advertising has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
| Whether such taxes are voluntary in the first place is a
| different argument, but I think they should be. So
| there's no inconsistency on my side.
| mjburgess wrote:
| _Advertising_ is speech; there is no sale.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| If there is to be no sale, then is it really advertising
| at all? If I "advertise" that I own a thing with no
| intention of selling that thing, then laws about honest
| advertisement don't apply to me.
|
| My car (not for sale) has a nuclear reactor and can
| travel through time.
| mjburgess wrote:
| yes
| LarryMullins wrote:
| No, not in a sense that triggers truth in advertising
| laws.
| tremon wrote:
| If you advertise a product without intent to sell, you're
| also breaking truth in advertising laws: you're selling
| vaporware.
| VanTheBrand wrote:
| You are getting lost in the weeds of an imperfect
| metaphor.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| But I have a perfect metaphor. Should it be illegal to
| post a picture of a 3 watt bulb, captioned as 5 watts?
| vkou wrote:
| No, his scenario is not equivalent, but here's a few
| more:
|
| "Hello, this is just a reminder that your voting station
| will be open between 5 pm and 9 pm in (somewhere where
| it's not actually located), please remember to vote!"
|
| "Hello, if you would like a free ride to your voting
| station, please text us 'YES', and wait at (location)
| between X and Y pm (Nobody will show up)."
|
| "Hello, we have a great offer for auto insurance, blah,
| blah, blah."
|
| "Hello, just a reminder, millions of trustworthy people
| believe that <opposition candidate> was responsible for
| <something untrue and horrible>. This isn't slander,
| because we are just strongly implying it in this
| robocall. Also, they live at XY address, and won't
| someone rid is of this meddlesome priest?"
|
| "Hello, all the doctors are lying to you, buy our snake
| oil wellness supplements, instead. They are supplements,
| not drugs, we don't answer to the FDA."
|
| "Hello, let's go down to sixth and Broadway next Tuesday,
| and make some noise/put the fear of God into <group>"
|
| "<Ethnic minority group> is burning this country's
| forests down using space lasers."
|
| "Hello, please be aware that it's illegal to discuss your
| salary with your coworkers."
| gameman144 wrote:
| Just so I'm clear, is your argument that these statements
| should be censored?
|
| Lots of these seem reprehensible, but totally within a
| reasonable space of legitimate free speech. Barring the
| cases with calls for imminent harm (e.g. turbulent
| priests and such), it seems that there's a big risk in
| trying to draw a legal line here.
|
| In your polling station example, for instance, that has
| some clear negative impact. If I instead said "The
| library will be closed for the next month", is that
| protected though? What if I say "Arby's will be giving
| out free sandwiches from noon to two o'clock tomorrow"?
| All of these statements have negative impact.
|
| The rationale for more extensive free speech is that it
| is expected that individuals have the right to hear what
| others are saying, and evaluating how bogus those are.
|
| To be clear, some censorship is absolutely accepted in
| society today (e.g. libel laws, imminent threats,
| marketplace standards, etc), but the fear of an ill-
| defined line that can be shifted to suit political winds
| seems like a very reasonable one.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| "Hello, X is hosting strip shows with men dressed in
| women's clothes and are grooming your children!"
| peyton wrote:
| Except for the last, those are just lies that people in
| power find inconvenient. People were saying way more
| ridiculous things in the summer of 1787, and yet the
| country I live in enshrined free speech rights.
| vkou wrote:
| > Except for the last, those are just lies that people in
| power find inconvenient.
|
| A few of them are plain-old voter suppression, and ~50%
| of the time, people in power find them incredibly
| convenient.
|
| You don't see them very often, because in most free
| countries, trying any of them is an incredibly serious
| offence.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| They also enshrined slavery, assuming you mean the US.
| Who cares what they enshrined? They have no credibility.
| If the merit of the argument holds no weight, then the
| fact that "the founding fathers" made it doesn't make it
| more (or less) correct.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Half of these scenarios are just variations of the
| comment I replied to. Again, there's a contract of sale.
| Your speech isn't being violated when you sign a contract
| promising you're selling what you claim to be selling.
|
| As for the rest, you're free to make whatever lies you
| want about others. Free speech doesn't allow you to
| initiate force against others so I'm not particularly
| concerned with any of it. We have gun rights to deal with
| people that try to enter your house or attack you over
| your skin colour and space laser accusations.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Fraud and censorship are different.
|
| Saying these bulbs have 5 when they have three is a lie
| but shouldn't be censored. Selling someone 3 but saying
| it is 5 is fraud. Selling/buying have different laws and
| standards.
| [deleted]
| pmontra wrote:
| That's not censorship. That's preventing fraud.
| Censorship would be preventing you to talk against those
| frauds.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Even though the printed text is surely the
| manufacturer 's speech._
|
| This is a terrible analogy, and evidence that the people
| who claim we can't protect all speech have no idea what
| "free speech" actually is.
|
| Hint: no, it's not fraud.
| guelo wrote:
| Now that you've accepted that we should censor fraud
| speech you have to define the grey line between
| unacceptable fraud and acceptable disinformation.
| pmichaud wrote:
| I have seen the same thing, but I think the cause is more
| that maybe the overwhelming majority of people can't
| meaningfully do abstraction? Like they blow a gasket
| between conceiving of individual actions and beliefs vs
| policies related to actions and beliefs?
|
| So people like this will say sentences like "censorship is
| wrong" but implicit in the sentence for them is "censorship
| of correct and/or my information is wrong" because the
| sentence in their mind must be concretely about something
| like "correct information". There's no way for them to
| easily think the thought "censorship is wrong in the
| abstract."
|
| This also feels related to being able to use "veil of
| ignorance" type reasoning. I don't think they know how to
| imagine being not only a different person, but an unknown
| person.
|
| I also don't think they know how to imagine being wrong in
| some sense, not in the epistemic humility sense (although,
| yes, that too, much of the time), but in the "suppose I'm
| just deeply confused about everything, how would I want to
| be treated? How might I recover?"
|
| I think all these are bottlenecked on a mental abstraction
| ceiling, and I think all these things work together to
| contribute to the effects you noted.
| oivey wrote:
| I agree, probably almost no one truly believes censorship
| is wrong in the abstract. Similarly, very few people
| believe in absolute freedom. I'm not sure there are
| really any belief systems where those two things can be
| really consistent. There is a real issue with people wrap
| themselves up as absolutist ideologues while spouting
| "illegal for thee, but not for me."
| LarryMullins wrote:
| The way American public schools (and I presume other
| schools) teach kids about censorship and propaganda
| probably has something to do with it. It's not
| "propaganda" unless it's telling lies. And it's not
| "censorship" when it seems justified. Propaganda is
| taught to be synonymous with the promulgation of
| falsehoods, but in reality propaganda will tell the truth
| whenever the truth is convenient to the propagandist. To
| a propagandist, truth and fiction are simply tools to be
| used whenever either helps the propagandist accomplish
| their objective.
| jhugo wrote:
| Sad to see this being downvoted. Rational voices have been
| censored on many western platforms for saying things that
| went against the popular narrative, the most recent obvious
| example being during the pandemic. Some of the things
| censored were batshit crazy, some of them not, but blocking
| discussion and letting those in positions of power decide
| what is "disinformation" and what is "information" isn't the
| way to deal with the crazy stuff.
| luckylion wrote:
| Not sure that would make a difference. Western societies have
| an issue with genocide, so Russia claims Ukraine was
| committing genocide against Russians. If Westerners didn't
| care about genocide, Russia would've claimed something else,
| Putin certainly has no issue with genocide.
|
| So if our thing du jure wasn't misinformation, I'm sure
| they'd just claim they're using their powers to combat hate
| speech or whatever else is culturally okay. If there's really
| nothing available, there's always "we need to protect the
| children from predators who are trying to abuse this dire
| situation". In the end, it doesn't matter if you're in power.
| Your tribe will always be with you, no matter the reason
| you're giving, and the opposition will be silenced.
| hkpack wrote:
| You probably don't understand nuances of why Russia says
| what, it is not only about the western values, but just a
| very effective tactic in the information warfare.
|
| I know about at least three major points:
|
| * Russia always blame other party of the crimes it about to
| commit. It ties the enemy and allies into the "you did, no
| your did" kind of arguments. This also helps to push all
| sorts of fake narratives into the enemy population. We
| witness this over and over.
|
| * It is a power play. Russian people enjoy very much the
| fact that their officials can say and do whatever they
| want, and the world can do nothing. This gives Russians
| true joy (as witnessed first hand). It also demoralises
| enemy heavily, because instead of pointing to the obvious
| crime, "not everything is so clear" now.
|
| * It cements alternative history. For example, children in
| school all over Russia will learn about the current events
| based on the "official" alternative reasoning.
| luckylion wrote:
| I believe the Western values are what makes it an
| effective tactic, and it's the same reason why they're
| calling the Ukrainians Nazis while simultaneously running
| towards fascism: if you say that X is a Nazi and is
| committing genocide, you'll have a visceral reaction in
| the West that creates sympathies/doubts of other
| narratives in at least part of the population (this will
| not work the same way/to the same degree in non-Western
| societies). If the West was fascist, I'm sure Russia
| wouldn't be talking internationally about Nazis and
| genocide because it wouldn't have any impact.
|
| You're very right about the historical narrative as an
| internal component. Connecting current conflicts to WW2
| will make people fall in line much more quickly than
| saying "it's about natural resources that were mistakenly
| buried on the wrong side of the border and also we want a
| land connection to Crimea". Much like Americans will
| always invoke freedom because it's part of their national
| identity and people are less likely to question why
| they're invading Iraq if you mention it. Russia being
| threatened by fascist forces in the West is a
| continuation of the existing historical narrative and
| neatly ties into it.
|
| It's definitely a much better PR strategy than Germany
| had in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom
| where our secretary of defense prominently said that
| Germany's security was being defended at the hindu kush.
| It's makes sense in abstraction ("we need to confront
| those who disregard human rights even if they're 5000 km
| away") but it's not concrete and it didn't increase
| support for the war at all.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Maybe... but Russia has for decades carefully tended to
| the WW2 mythos of Soviets defending the world against
| nazis.
|
| The anti nazi propaganda is not only for foreign ears,
| but for domestic consumption as well. "Us against the
| world, who is out to get us. All current problems stem at
| its root from the blow dealt to us during the Great
| Patriotic War."
| jim_inont wrote:
| I am old enough to remember when Turkish army was
| overthrowing its government on behave of the West and abusing
| its own citizens, none of you bleeding heart liberals where
| shedding any tears.The world does not subscribe to liberal
| secular values, and Muslim world does not. You can censor all
| you want, but when Charlie Hebdo published cartoons making
| fun of earth quakes and while ugly hordes of Indian gloating
| over the death and destruction, it is only prudent to censor
| this kind of garbage.
| foronetimeonly1 wrote:
| [dead]
| Sunspark wrote:
| If you are unhappy living in the West, there is no reason
| whatsoever why you cannot move to a country with more
| compatible values. Russia is accepting new immigrants and
| that is certainly an option available to you.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| You're being naive.
|
| This has happened _because_ 'western countries and social
| media companies ... normalise censorship re-branded [as]
| "fighting disinformation"'.
|
| They've literally shown the rest of the world how to do this.
| sorethescore wrote:
| Nonsense, if you tolerate disinformation you get more
| disinformation. Countries that fail to address it will fall
| and the world will be worse off because of it. The right to
| free speech does not include the right to a free platform or
| free promotion.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Agreed, disinformation is dangerous and it should be
| treated as such. Just because you say/write it doesn't mean
| I'm required to host it. Freedom to promote stupidity does
| not outweigh my right to unplug my microphone.
| thatsagreatcomm wrote:
| Who decides what's disinformation?
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| This narrative has killed many republicans who feared
| getting vaccinated, and it will only kill more. One could
| argue that it is their own actions, but I am not keen on
| blaming people for their circumstances.
|
| The answer is _we_ decide what is disinformation through
| our institutions and the value we place on them. Your and
| I 's opinion on certain matters should never weigh
| remotely as much as an expert's on a particular topic
| unless we are such experts.
|
| We ought to measure the value of one's speech through the
| scrutiny it has to go through to be published at trusted
| channels.
| yibg wrote:
| I hear this question posed a lot in this context, but we
| already done this now don't we? Someone (or ones) decides
| which laws are valid, which educational material to teach
| our kids etc. Are those not ok because some person or
| body of people have decided for the rest of society?
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| These companies are already in the dark deep of hyper
| partisan censorship. Take reddit for example. Nearly every
| sub is a left wing echo chamber, with essentially the same
| comment being made, and opposing viewpoints hidden, shadow-
| banned, or deleted under the guise of 'disinformation' even
| if they are factually accurate. Some of it is partly driven
| by liaisons within US and other governments, and supported by
| media. That is both problematic and terrorizing. Media was
| always supposed to be a counter-balance to government over-
| reach, but today, media is in on the scheme.
| andybak wrote:
| Except you can start your own subreddit and choose your own
| moderation policies. The inaccurately named /r/conservative
| has a lot of traffic and there are many more.
| zaroth wrote:
| I think some people tried that once...
| atlantic wrote:
| Being able to start a subreddit is meaningless, when
| right-leaning subreddits are systematically shut down, or
| restricted to the point of becoming inoperative, as soon
| as they pass a certain threshold popularity.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| In practice, the threshold of popularity seems to be that
| where the members of the subreddit feel comfortable
| raiding others.
| andybak wrote:
| Citation needed
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| That's a funny joke considering 99% of subs which don't
| carry water is eventually banned for "misinformation" and
| is filled with bad actors and sock puppets.
| [deleted]
| geysersam wrote:
| That depends where one finds oneself on the political
| scale. A communist is only going to find neoliberal semi
| fascist conservative consensus where someone on the extreme
| right finds a socialist echo chamber.
|
| What reasonable viewpoints do you perceive are being
| deleted and accused of being disinformation?
| 8note wrote:
| Reddit is pretty right wing overall.
|
| Stuff like /r/shitredditsays exist/existed to point out
| reddit being misogynistic, and capitalism is the name of
| the game for all the large subreddits.
|
| I don't think you'll find a large subreddit that is
| actually leftist. It's just centered on what the population
| thinks, both for overall trends and for the reddit user
| base.
|
| This doesn't match US politics because US politics don't
| match popular opinion, driven instead by the arbitrary
| layout of states and congressional districts
| root_axis wrote:
| That's unavoidable when moderation is routinely and
| deliberately conflated with political repression.
| beefield wrote:
| How do you propose western countries and social media
| companies fight disinformation?
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Force is only justified in response to force.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| So true! Now please step into the boxcar. If you resist,
| you're the one at fault.
| greatgib wrote:
| The solution is obvious, it is called education and
| critical thinking. But the same kind of gov are also very
| afraid of a too educated population that could challenge
| their authority!
| ars wrote:
| I propose they don't. That's not their job.
|
| Block only speech is actually illegal by the laws of the
| country. It's not their job to decide what is true and
| false.
| beefield wrote:
| well, we see where that ends by looking at 4chan. Why are
| you posting here and not there?
| EricE wrote:
| Why is it up to companies and "western countries" to fight
| disinformation? Especially when it often turns out they are
| the biggest propagators of it?
| beefield wrote:
| Because their customers/voters want it? Me, I very much
| prefer censored HN to free speech 4chan. The question is,
| what are you doing here if you prefer 4chan where the
| "truth" is not censored?
| quanticle wrote:
| As someone who visits both HN and 4Chan, I like having
| the choice. I definitely don't want the government
| deciding that 4Chan is illegal and wiping it off the 'Net
| because it contains disinformation.
|
| When you ask, "How should governments fight
| disinformation," what you're really asking is, "How can
| governments deny their citizens the right to choose what
| information they read, watch or listen to." When it's
| phrased like that, it's not so appealing, is it?
| beefield wrote:
| No, it is the other way round. If there are no places
| where companies and/or governments censor/limit free
| speech/fight misinformation, _every_ place turns into
| 4chan and _you_ lose your ability to choose. I 'm happy
| there are places where speech is not restricted. And I'm
| even more happy that there are places where speech _is_
| restricted. Do you think HN should stop moderating
| discussion?
| quanticle wrote:
| Do you believe _every_ online forum accessible to
| Americans should have as strict, or stricter moderation
| than HN, because it 's been demanded by a subset of
| voters?
| beefield wrote:
| > I'm happy there are places where speech is not
| restricted.
|
| that means no. Do you want to remove _every_ moderation
| made by companies/governments in all online forums,
| including HN?
| quanticle wrote:
| There's a hidden assumption in your argument that the
| only way that forums like Hacker News, etc, can moderate
| is if the government allows it. Else why would you
| mention governments and private forums in the same
| sentence?
|
| I support private forums being able to moderate. I oppose
| governments having that same power.
| JTbane wrote:
| Should they? One political party's disinfo is another's
| creed.
| m0llusk wrote:
| Dmytro Zolotukhemin at the Institute of Information
| Security in Ukraine has an interesting take on this which
| he talks about in detail on an interview with Silicon
| Curtain on YouTube. He asserts that the idea of
| disinformation is so slippery and hard to work with that it
| is not worth it. What we really have is stories that people
| share. His idea is that the right way to regulate this is
| to provide people with tools for assessing information
| themselves. Basic critical thinking and internet searches
| can go a long way to revealing both truth and ambiguity.
| This is a specific variation of the idea that the answer to
| bad information exchange is more and better information
| exchange.
| FpUser wrote:
| Definitely not by telling we are the good guys hence hold
| the monopoly on truth.
| quanticle wrote:
| The same way they ought to fight drugs.
|
| Don't.
| wtetzner wrote:
| There isn't a way to fight disinformation other than
| helping people get better at critical thinking.
|
| Using censorship to fight disinformation just means we've
| picked some group of people that get to decide what the
| "truth" is.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| The solution to bad speech is more speech. Not less.
| kibwen wrote:
| This is a bit like saying "the darkness is bad, so the
| solution is light, and if the light ever becomes
| blinding, the solution is _more light_ ". Speech is not
| the point, it's just a medium for useful information.
| More speech is only good to the extent that it
| proliferates useful information. If useless spam speech
| is used to overwhelm useful speech, then that undermines
| the whole point of the principle of free speech. And with
| the advent of modern technology, overwhelming the useful
| speech is easier than ever. Our historic ideas of free
| speech are wholly unprepared to deal with the overflow
| attacks that are possible in the modern age. Is it not
| "censorship" to shout over someone so loudly that they
| can't be heard?
| egeozcan wrote:
| People learn to wear sunglasses. Just stop trying to give
| them "the right amount of the right kind of light".
| dvt wrote:
| > This is a bit like saying "the darkness is bad, so the
| solution is light, and if the light ever becomes
| blinding, the solution is more light"
|
| Completely untenable analogy. Why people say is that the
| solution is more speech is due to the antecedent concept
| of the _marketplace of ideas_ and that, by and large,
| ideas are sifted via free speech and the good ones last
| while the bad ones die. You cannot have this sorting
| process in a system that stifles free speech.
|
| If you want to attack free speech absolutism, at least
| attack Mill's axioms, not some made-up poorly-formed
| straw man of an analogy.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| >while the bad ones die.
|
| I am really not seeing this.
| kibwen wrote:
| A.k.a. "the marketplace of ideas can remain irrational
| longer than free society can remain solvent".
| WaxProlix wrote:
| > concept of the marketplace of ideas and that, by and
| large, ideas are sifted via free speech and the good ones
| last while the bad ones die
|
| This might be the core of it then, because while I
| generally agree with the idea of Free Speech in the
| abstract, I don't think that it's been having good
| outcomes for society in the era of the cultic milieu, and
| I think that has to do with this 'marketplace' idea not
| really holding water. (Maybe I just don't want to admit
| that my sense of what makes a "good idea" is wrong, and
| the success of eg Qanon as a meme means that I should
| just change my thinking and accept it as a winning meme
| and therefore a Good Idea.)
| dvt wrote:
| The problem with alternatives to the "free marketplace of
| ideas" is that they are all (by definition)
| authoritative. And who's the best "authority" here? The
| government? Me? You? Who decides what ideas get to be
| censored? Imo, there's _more_ problems with the
| authoritative model than the marketplace model.
|
| Kind of like Churchill's famous quote about democracy:
| "it's the worst form of government, except from all the
| others that have been tried."
| kibwen wrote:
| This was true in practice _before_ technology made
| communication and synthesized speech trivial.
| Unfortunately for us all, we no longer live in a world
| where "more speech is unambiguously better" is true.
| Technology has ruined the meme of free speech. I'm not
| saying there are any unambiguously good alternatives; we
| are all diminished by its loss. But clinging to its
| corpse isn't doing anyone any good.
|
| As for the Churchill quote, the reason that democracy has
| those qualities is because it inherently involves
| compromise. An uncompromising philosophy like "more
| speech is always better" is quite a different thing. We
| need a new rallying cry to replace the meme of free
| speech, probably something to do with the notion of
| signal:noise ratios, but it's beyond me to invent such a
| meme.
| dvt wrote:
| > As for the Churchill quote, the reason that democracy
| has those qualities is because it inherently involves
| compromise.
|
| But it's the same with free speech: you said it yourself,
| there's a lot of noise, _that 's_ the compromise. You
| don't _know_ what the "one true Good Opinion is" until
| you hear from everyone, and that might include racists or
| nazis or whatever. I don't really think technology has
| anything to do with it. In fact, the printing press
| probably made a much larger impact on speech than the
| internet did (and we got through that just fine).
| joshfee wrote:
| I think a large part of the problem we have today is lack
| of attribution. It is too easy for participants to
| pretend to be 1000 voices instead of a single voice. I
| don't think being able to pretend to be multiple people
| is particularly helpful to the "marketplace of ideas".
| Conversely if I see/hear the same sentiment a 1000 times
| and can distinguish between "1000 voices" and "one voice
| a thousand times" then that is useful for me determining
| how much weight to give to those ideas when forming my
| own ideas.
|
| The other nice aspect of attribution is that there is a
| factual answer to "who is speaking". I don't need to
| evaluate the merits to your speech in order to understand
| who is speaking. In today's world it may not be
| easy/possible to know the specific answer to "who is
| speaking", but by observing any speech I know that there
| must have been _someone_ speaking.
|
| As for how to get to a world with attribution... not so
| sure what the options are that don't suffer a lot of the
| same problems. But it at least seems like an approach
| that doesn't require authoritative assessment of the
| underlying speech itself to yield societal benefits.
| kibwen wrote:
| Re: "the marketplace of ideas", there is a modern
| philosophy that ascribes mythical qualities to markets,
| but the fact is that markets are not magic, they are
| merely useful tools that are appropriate for some
| contexts and inappropriate for others. There are numerous
| ways markets can either fail or be worse than useless,
| and one of those ways is by obscuring information about
| the market, and it's increasingly trivial to use
| unfettered free speech to effectively censor any other
| market participants, thereby distorting the market.
| Uehreka wrote:
| I see your "The solution to bad speech is more speech"
| and raise you a "A lie can spread around the world before
| the truth can get its pants on". Call or fold?
| geysersam wrote:
| Call. It's not about who's fastest, it's about who stays
| in the end. Despite us humans being a lying, cheating
| bunch, knowledge and access to education continues to
| grow all over the world. That's certainly not thanks to
| censorship!
| mylidlpony wrote:
| > It's not about who's fastest, it's about who stays in
| the end
|
| And that's where authoritarian regimes get you. People
| usually aren't that invested in a conversation, or in
| disproving firehose of falsehoods style comments placed
| by people incentivized monetarily to make sure the
| correct opinion stays in the end. If the platform has
| rating system they also generate accounts to manipulate
| it for the same purpose.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Not so fast, pardner. The market can remain irrational
| longer than you can remain solvent.
|
| You are making two mistakes here: the simplest one is
| thinking that the winner of the argument is whoever has
| the last word. This is very frequently not the case, as
| any troll could tell you. Often, the power move is to get
| opponents mad and then move on, leaving them impotently
| fuming about how terrible that person is.
|
| You're also identifying with the larger group at the
| societal/species level, which is valid, but is also a way
| of ignoring problems in the here and now. It's like
| zooming out from a bloody battlefield to look at the
| earth in space. With an extraplanetary perspective, Earth
| looks so beautiful and peaceful...but that doesn't help a
| single person who is impacted by the bloody battle.
| throwaway53523 wrote:
| >It's not about who's fastest, it's about who stays in
| the end.
|
| This is contradictory. Not every reader is going to "stay
| in the end" to learn what's really true. The past few
| years have given plenty of evidence for that.
| [deleted]
| nradov wrote:
| Call.
|
| How do you define a lie? Please be precise. What source
| of truth is used to evaluate possible lies, and who gets
| to make the final determination? What level of confidence
| is required? Does intent matter? Does a statement count
| as a lie if it is factually correct, or at least not
| provably incorrect, but still potentially misleading or
| lacking relevant context?
| smcn wrote:
| That would only be the solution if the problem was bad
| speech. The problem is that algorithms optimise for
| engagement and therefore amplify increasingly extremist
| views. You cannot talk your way out of that position, it
| surely must include intervention?
| sampo wrote:
| Maybe you also cannot algorithm out of the position that
| algorithms took you in.
| slg wrote:
| These algorithms are a multiplier to the problem, but
| they aren't the root cause. You can find plenty of
| misinformation on cable news and you can't blame that
| exclusively on algorithms.
| smcn wrote:
| Not the root cause, no. I'd say the root cause is
| reliance on advertising for income because that means
| that you now need to draw as many viewers/users as
| possible, and that's why they start to create content
| which maximizes reactions or engagement.
| slg wrote:
| But advertising still isn't the root cause. Why does this
| type of content draw more viewers?
| smcn wrote:
| Are you trying to say that biology is the root cause? The
| content is successful as it emits a reaction from us.
| Whether a good reaction or a bad one, we still engage
| with it. Whether you're binge watching a TV show you love
| or hate scrolling a subreddit that makes you angry, the
| content is designed to elicit some form of reaction that
| keeps you coming back or memetically passing it on.
|
| However that is not a new development in our biology,
| we've always been that way. It's just that we're
| exploiting those aspects of ourselves more and more.
| Weaponising it to extract as much profit as possible.
|
| You could go another way, I guess, and say that
| capitalism is the root cause as "profit at any cost"
| allows the justification of these actions.
| slg wrote:
| There are two aspects to the root cause. You mentioned
| the first part, basic human biology pushes us towards
| content that elicits a reaction. The second part is that
| lies inherently have an advantage over the truth to
| elicit a reaction because they are only limited by human
| imagination while the truth is limited obviously by the
| truth.
|
| As long as humans have the free will to engage with
| whatever content they choose, there is a natural human
| reaction to engage with lies. Therefore, the idea that
| truth eventually wins out over lies is inherently flawed.
| It isn't the fault of capitalism or algorithms. The
| problem is human nature doesn't respond properly to bad
| speech. We can't change human nature, so the only option
| left is stopping bad speech.
| smcn wrote:
| We haven't recently invented the concept of a lie, so the
| idea of "that's just how we are" rings hollow. People are
| being radicalised by qanon, incels, redpill, the alt-
| right, <insert the group you dislike> at an increased
| rate because they're being force fed this content on a
| daily basis, and they're being siloed into custom fit
| echochambers by algorithms optimising for their
| engagement.
| slg wrote:
| Which brings us back to my original point. Algorithms are
| just a multiplier.
|
| If you give people two history books, one with actual
| history and one with interesting conspiracy theories
| sprinkled throughout, most people are going to find the
| one with the conspiracies more interesting. Stopping
| people from photocopying the book will help slow the
| spread of the false information in the book, but it does
| nothing to stop the underlying problem that people are
| writing fake history books.
| smcn wrote:
| It's a multiplier sure, but this is a completely new
| issue we're having (at least on this scale). It's caused
| by social media, that's not really up for debate.
|
| You cannot prevent lies or deception, that's not within
| the realm of what we're capable of. Don't let good be the
| enemy of perfect.
| slg wrote:
| This isn't a new issue created by either social media or
| the internet. It is an innate problem with absolute free
| speech and has directly led to the US entering multiple
| wars over the last 125 years. It doesn't matter if the
| lies are disseminated through newspapers, cable TV, or
| Twitter. Mass media is just an amplification device. That
| has been true for centuries. The only new aspect is that
| the rate of amplification is increasing which leads to
| the underlying issue becoming even more problematic.
| smcn wrote:
| I don't blame you for having a US centric view point but
| I will say that this issue is affecting far more
| countries than just the US.
|
| [edit] Sorry, to directly reply: I'm unsure what it is
| that you would prefer happen? Nothing? It's just the done
| thing?
| slg wrote:
| I would argue that the reason this is becoming a bigger
| problem across the world is because the US is exporting
| its ideas of free speech through the internet, tech
| companies, and social media in a way that wasn't done in
| prior generations of mass media.
|
| I think we need to change the way we think about free
| speech. We already have laws that restrict free speech
| when that speech it defrauds or defames an individual. We
| need more general laws when it is society at large that
| is defrauded or defamed.
| smcn wrote:
| Would Chinas inability to contain conversations give you
| pause as to how achievable that goal is?
|
| Would you be looking at criminalising lies and the
| spreading of them, even without knowing its a lie? If so,
| how many people would be prosecuted? If not, how will it
| help?
| slg wrote:
| China is trying to control conversations as a means of
| controlling the population. That comes with its own
| problems that are unrelated to regulating speech.
|
| >Would you be looking at criminalising lies and the
| spreading of them, even without knowing its a lie?
|
| I don't know what you mean by this. We don't know whether
| a potentially defamatory statement is a lie or not until
| there is a trial. This would be no different. We don't
| need a Federal Truth Commission or anything. American
| society already seems satisfied letting a jury decide
| what is or is not a lie today.
| smcn wrote:
| So in effect you don't care about the issue and are
| content with how things are? I'm sorry, I'm not sure that
| I understand what stance you're taking. Misinformation is
| not an issue to you, would that be correct?
|
| Requiring a trial to do anything about a lie on social
| media would mean that there would be no change. By the
| time the trial comes, the lie is old news and there is
| some new conspiracy taking grip.
|
| That would be, essentially, meaningless. Not in any way,
| shape, or form preventative.
| slg wrote:
| If we lower the speed limit of every road in the country,
| the average speed of cars would drop even if we didn't
| increase the number of people we ticket for speeding.
|
| We should change our laws to allow for more restrictions
| on purposeful lies that damage society. We shouldn't
| allow ExxonMobil to spend decades researching carbon
| emissions while knowingly lying about the conclusions of
| that research to the public. They should face
| repercussions for that as well as the people who
| knowingly spread that misinformation. I think that would
| be more effective than what you seem to be proposing
| which appears to be either limitations on recommendation
| algorithms or ad supported content.
| saurik wrote:
| It sounds like the problem implicit in your framing then
| is "algorithms", not extremists--a stance I agree with--
| which would imply the disinformation isn't coming from
| big tech's users, it is caused by big tech itself, and
| maybe it is the algorithms that should be limited and
| regulated instead of the discussions.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I doubt this, because it was possible to 'go viral' to a
| limited degree way back in the days of Usenet, with any
| algorithmic selection or amplification going on at all.
| _preferential attachment_ is a social phenomenon which
| businesses leverage for profit (not just int he era of
| social media, but since the establishment of brands and
| before that, the awareness by politicians and theatrical
| promoters of how compelling parasocial relationships can
| be). Algorithmic manipulation is a problem, but you could
| switch it all off in the morning and you would still have
| the same issues. _Any system can and will be gamed._
| beefield wrote:
| ChatGPT integrations to online forums: Hold my beer.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Give it 3 days, and it will populate the myth that purple
| elephants are responsible for 9/11, because their pink
| mousy overlords demanded more moon-rock cheese with
| lizard-flavor.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| People do a good enough job of making up their own
| nonsense about 9/11 being perpetrated by the usual
| suspects using space lasers, holograms, mininukes, etc.
| We don't, and shouldn't, censor any of that.
| swasheck wrote:
| the low s/n then makes it about who can be loudest and/or
| most provocative. i don't disagree that disinformation
| shouldn't just be squelched, but it's not as simple as
| "education" or "more speech" and as humans we tend to
| prefer the path of lead resistance.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| DDOSing humans rarely benefits the truth. In case of
| cognitive overload, humans tend to favor the simple
| answers, not the correct one.
| geysersam wrote:
| I really don't think that's the case. What makes you
| think so? In my experience exposure to more viewpoints,
| even flawed ones, increases understanding and helps
| critical thinking.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. A
| lot of social media dynamics are _not reasoned arguments_
| , they are the product emotional outbursts which can be
| manufactured and herded.
|
| The world is not made up of Spock-like rationalists, and
| although most people are capable of rationality, many
| social settings are not conducive to it. Look at stampede
| disasters: every year people die because panic breaks out
| among a crowd in a constricted space and people start to
| operate on instinct instead of thought.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > What makes you think so?
|
| Experience. We've also basically seen in it in the
| pandemia all over the world happening in the last years.
| Though, this was a bit of an extreme situation for
| everyone.
|
| > In my experience exposure to more viewpoints, even
| flawed ones, increases understanding and helps critical
| thinking.
|
| Simple exposure is only helpful if the people are able to
| handle it, and willing to invest the time, and the one
| delivering it has no bad intention. The ones where it
| will not work, are left as the victims of this strategy.
| Maybe they will find their way after a long painful
| process. But then the harm is done.
| triceratops wrote:
| You've been exposed to alternative viewpoints about free
| speech right here in this thread and it hasn't changed
| your thinking one iota.
|
| Most people aren't interested in changing their minds.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Cliches aren't an argument, but they're good for clicks.
| You can do better.
|
| The solution is not as simple as 'more speech' because we
| are dealing with a historically unprecedented volume of
| amplified and recorded speech at scale, so things like
| signal:noise ratio become very important. Simplistic
| responses like yours suggest an unwillingness or
| inability to engage with the complexity of the issue.
|
| A simple example of why you're wrong is that it's easy
| for an actor with access to an echo chamber to launch a
| viral cascade by modeling outrage over some made-up or
| minor issue to boost engagement. Fans of the actor share
| it out of agreement, amusement, or for the pleasure of
| owning their opponents, while opponents of the actor
| either deride or argue. The actor gets to appear in the
| day's trends, gain new followers/subscribers, boosting
| influence and financial intake.
|
| But there's also a more subtle transfer of wealth, not so
| obviously measurable by the metrics of the social media
| platform. The actor spends 1-5 minutes composing their
| message, like you spend only a short period to select and
| repost your cliched response. The time that other people
| spend replying takes at least as long and often longer.
| So while the actor may have invested 5 minutes out of
| their 24 hour day in amplifying their own profile, by
| saying something deliberately controversial, they've
| caused others to put in significantly more time to
| responding.
|
| Here, that's not such a big deal because HN discussions
| are not that complex and people have time to read and
| consider every comment in a thread they're interested in
| - so your claim has _some_ validity. But on large social
| media platforms, the scope is radically different. A
| provocative tweet can generate thousands of negative
| replies, so that an investment of 5 minutes by the
| provocative actor can cause people to collectively put
| _hundreds_ of hours into their responses, which
| unconscious social labor serves to amplify the
| provocateur. There are lots of influencers who have this
| down to a system and do it on an almost daily basis. It
| 's essentially a theft of time - a little from their
| fans, a lot from their anti-fans, with that time being
| converted into engagement and increased reach.
|
| This is why your reflex response is wrong. Bad speech can
| be _designed_ to yield more speech that amplifies the
| original bad message for fun and profit. Your concept of
| reasoned debate only functions in forums where there are
| some leveling factors like equal time allocations or
| legal procedures for the allocation of time. Here on HN
| and on many small forums, that function is done by
| moderators (who can ban intentionally disruptive users or
| manage anti-spam filters) and to some extent by users
| (whose expressed preferences have direct weight like
| downvotes or flags, and indirect weight by their long-
| term community participation making them familiar to each
| other). On big platforms, the calculus is completely
| different and your model of reasoned debate breaks down.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| Exactly! In the US we routinely have "blessed" media
| organizations openly discussing the need to legislate/limit
| threats to their ability to "control the message"...but
| Erdogan cuts to the chase and everyone flips out.
|
| I mean...the day Musk took over Twitter, lots of comments
| here were calling for twitter.com to be kicked off the
| internet...
| flyinglizard wrote:
| However disinformation may very well lead to totalitarian
| regimes, propped on distorted reality and fake news. A
| democracy must be able to defend itself.
| comboy wrote:
| Can anybody elaborate why? I understand if it's financial
| crisis or some other gov fuckup. But this is a natural disaster
| on an unprecedented scale, government may not have enough
| resources to handle it. What's the game here?
| mrtksn wrote:
| Let me try.
|
| So Erdogan himself came into power after the 1999 Earthquake
| devastating the country and wrecking the economy, leading to
| early elections, leading to his party winning landslide
| election in 2002.
|
| That earthquake was like nothing seen before, hitting the
| most industrialised and populous part of the country and they
| had to introduce new taxes like Luxury consumption tax to fix
| the damage and prepare so that this never happen again.
|
| This luxury tax is applied pretty much on anything and that's
| why an iPhone 14 Pro cost 2300$ in Turkey(US price is 1000$).
| Turks also pay 2x to 5x the price of the price in EU or US on
| purchasing automobiles, so it's a big deal. They also have
| lot's of safeguards so people just don't buy from abroad,
| therefore everyone chips in.
|
| Also, Erdogan's primary achievement is construction business.
| He made sure that the builders can build and profit hugely,
| they also destroyed a lot of nature in the process and fine
| tuned the economy to serve the construction sector through
| the years. Guess what was the first Covid measures Erdogan
| announced at the start of the pandemic? He announced credit
| facilities for purchasing homes, no joke.
|
| Also, the new buildings were supposed to be built according
| to the new code which is quake resilient and it was one of
| the prime motivations of this construction based economy.
|
| Fast forward 20 years and we were struck with another huge
| earthquake.
|
| The initial response is very weak, in contrast to the 1999
| quake because in that one the Turkish Army was summoned
| immediately but this time for some reason Erdogan doesn't
| request assistance from the army and the protocol allowing
| local governments requesting assistance was removed by
| Erdogan in the previous years.
|
| A full day passes without anything to show as a response when
| people are sending selfies from under the rubble with their
| address, seeking help. Most places receive no help whatsoever
| and people go into a winter night under the rubble or on the
| streets without electricity, food or water.
|
| Videos showing newly build homes collapsed, people find
| promotional materials claiming quake resistance and the new
| buildings are collapsing like the old ones
|
| The luxury tax, AKA the earthquake tax collected wasn't used
| to be ready for the next quake. This was something widely
| known and criticised but now we have videos of newly built
| buildings collapsed. It materialised.
|
| Anger builds up, Erdogan is no where to be seen and the
| ministers are giving ridiculous speeches about how everything
| is under control and use a language crafted for the upcoming
| elections.
|
| Then Erdogan appears on the TVs giving the speech you can
| watch.
|
| So yes, he fucked it up for about 20 years and fucked it up
| on the disaster night. He used to be huge critic of the way
| the politician he replaced handled the quake and he ended up
| doing exactly the same, even worse. If the irony has not set
| in yet, let me tell you that Turkey is in economical crisis
| for some years now and Erdogan is in a coalition with the guy
| who was in a coalition with the guy who he replaced. It's
| almost poetic.
| ikeserbestian wrote:
| Thank you.
| comboy wrote:
| Holy shit, thank you.
| egeozcan wrote:
| Amazing summary, thank you!
|
| Some additions:
|
| Erdogan also gained immensely from the economic measures
| taken after the 1999 earthquake and the following economic
| depression. He eventually rolled back a significant portion
| of them, and further wrecked the economy by lowering
| interests in the face of inflation, and multiple times:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkyudz4w5Gc
|
| > the earthquake tax collected wasn't used to be ready for
| the next quake. This was something widely known and
| criticized
|
| It was openly admitted by a minister that it was spent on
| building roads. A lot of those roads have now giant cracks
| on them, because of the earthquake.
|
| > ministers are giving ridiculous speeches about how
| everything is under control
|
| One even said that the rescue operations are going slowly
| to make sure people under the rubble aren't crushed.
| gwright wrote:
| Yet another example of why inculcating the virtues of free
| speech and limited government into a culture is so important.
| It is too easy for those in power to infringe on individual
| speech rights by labeling something as "disinformation" or
| "misinformation" as their justification.
| throw93 wrote:
| Wow, this is eerily similar to what happened in India during
| second wave of COVID. Tweets complaining about oxygen shortage or
| handling of Covid in general were restricted in India.
|
| It's just weird why some governments do that. Playing down the
| crisis just delays the recovery efforts.
|
| Source - 1) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56883483.amp 2)
| https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/recode/22410931/india-pande...
| albertopv wrote:
| Turkey should not be considered a democracy anymore, that's the
| sad reality. A country becoming a de factor dictatorship should
| not stay in NATO.
| murat124 wrote:
| That's fine. Turks will depose him soon. As for NATO, Turkey
| leaving NATO only helps Russian sphere of influence and any
| anti-dictatorship person would be against that.
| foronetimeonly1 wrote:
| [dead]
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