>"But the extraordinary case draws attention to how dictatorships are increasingly using technology to crush online dissent."
Yes, authoritarian regimes control communication. That's been the case for over a century of radio and mass circulation dailies. It's nothing new.
What is new is that even democratic countries are controlling free speech via speech laws or often the private companies engaging in evaluating what's permissible speech and not above and beyond what laws require. To wit what comprises "hate speech". It's basically come to mean "point of view in disagreement with my group's current position which may change in the future"
That's a rather specious argument when you have the current example of a democracy (India) simply shutting down large parts of the internet for political reasons, not to mention the widespread deployment of surveillance tech in numerous developed countries.
This isn't to say that you don't have a point, but if you're saying it's a more pressing issue than those you might be suffering from a loss of perspective. After all, 'hate speech' is widely unpopular (as opposed to being a highly popular thing suppressed by authoritarian states, and much 'hate speech' treats of the desire to operate an authoritarian state that will restrict or outright terminate the freedoms/lives of the hated subjects.
I disagree this is nothing new, it's an unprecedented intrusion into private discourse but I understand why it doesn't seem to be so. After all, previously private forms of communication such as direct speech are still private and written letters are still roughly as hard to intercept en masse than they were. The only change is in access to new forms of communication.
I think that's enough of a change though to constitute a grave new threat even within already oppressive regimes. Public real time messaging systems like twitter and wechat are fundamentally reshaping public discourse. We can't just say that "oh well, just stick to the old ways of communication and you'll be fine". If the fundamental way people communicate changes, then the fact that this change enables unprecedented levels of centralised monitoring and intervention does change things a lot. Even beyond intervention is specific conversations or consequences for individuals, it gives such regimes an unprecedented insight into the opinions and attitudes of their population as a whole and various sub-groups within it and opportunities to shape and act on those.
"Hate speech" has specific functional meanings when it comes to legal jurisdictions in which it applies. The idea that it's a tool for arbitrary suppression of disagreement is approximately correct as the idea that any other limitation on free speech (libel, slander, fire in a crowded theater, verbal assault, time place manner, etc) can be used arbitrarily -- which is to say, generally incorrect, although interpretation and application of the law matters (libel or time place manner judgments have been used to mute speech).
Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws, but, you know, feel free to make a list of the important ideas that you feel are being SILENCED.
Private companies: not that different in the fundamentals, but there are additional issues that lean towards both the right of ownership to speak and restrict speech that comes through them. You likely wouldn't want anyone to force you to repeat ideas you believe are incorrect, or contrary to key personal interests even where narrowly correct, or even lead to effects you find personally undesirable. If freedom of speech means anything, it has to include some measure of judgment about what your personal faculties are used to express, and to some more moderated extent what/how your property is used. There may be balancing concerns in the latter case, but whether we're at that point is another issue. Again, I can think of very little in the realm of valuable discourse that's been walled off here; if there's anything at all, I suspect the relevant mechanism is essentially social values that are held widely enough that contrary expressions bring social consequences, and while you can create some spaces for robust contrary discussion ("safe spaces", if you like), you can't eliminate the kickback from broad social consequences without treading more heavily on other liberties of equal or greater importance to speech.
Honestly, if there's any issue at all here, it's that there has never been an EASIER time to express ideas -- even very unpopular ones -- quite widely, and it's the way that these ideas carry widely that's leading to a level of tension that people are still figuring out how to manage.
And really, this is the weaponization issues: 50 years ago, authoritarian countries didn't have the capabilities of broadcasting ideas or disinformation into your average household, much less an individual handheld device. A world-of-ends internet means that they do.
while voters are busy arguing online about their "free speech" , their leaders are busy controlling every other aspect of their lives. We live in a world of extensive transit control, capital flow controls, commodities control, banking control, monetary manipulation, visual-data-financial surveillance, data regulations, behavior regulations (i.e. drug/alcohol/vaping prohibitions) and punitive taxation.
We have accumulated too many powers in the hands of "our" democratic leaders, and the political parties are being used as weapons against the other party. The Ruler Worshippers have won. In many ways (economic, regulatory, even behavioral) the West is in freedom deficit compared to those oppressive countries. I think it's fair to say the world has stooped to their level.
>What is new is that even democratic countries are controlling free speech via speech laws or often the private companies engaging in evaluating what's permissible speech and not above and beyond what laws require.
So, are you referring to India's last steps to shut down the internet in multiple regions where dissent forms? Or is this about caps on free speech in certain countries? I feel like these things are not on the same spectrum.
That said, the power of Google, Facebook and somewhat less so Twitter is scary.
Doesn't free speech also enable lies and immoral ideals to be spread by bots/people too? It seems it's a double edged sword in a way but I don't think censorship is a solution. I don't think there is a solution beyond education?
I don't think its new for democracies to control free speech, they just have far,far better tools to do so today. Lincoln didn't have the Internet, but he did suppress opposition by suspending habeas corpus and clapping a supreme court justice in irons. Robespierre, the man of the people for part of the French Revolution, which supposedly valued liberty and fraternity, decapitated numerous political enemies until finally he himself became the enemy.
I could go on, but humans have been bending and breaking democratic egalitarian rules for centuries. Modern technology is just so pervasive, Putin and Trump can affect the information at everyone's fingertips always with social media and online information.
Indeed, any powerful entity can buy anything online: clicks, bots, comments, views, accounts, literally anything they want to say can reach millions of people. This would be ameliorated by ethical and moral information platforms, which we seem to not use and not build for profit reasons.
> What is new is that even democratic countries are controlling free speech via speech laws or often the private companies engaging in evaluating what's permissible speech and not above and beyond what laws require.
That's not new at all. Here are a few of the many, many examples from the past century or so:
- The Comstock laws, passed in the 1870s, criminalized the sending of "obscenity", contraceptives and sex toys via USPS [1]
- There was literally a US agency called the "Office of Censorship" during WWII! [2]
- The US entertainment industry denied employment to many people suspected of affiliating with Communism in the 1950s [3]
- Lenny Bruce was arrested multiple times and eventually convicted for obscenity (saying e.g. "cocksucker" onstage) in the 1960s [4]
- During the Jim Crow era, it was a misdemeanor in Mississippi to publish materials advocating social equality or interracial marriage between white and black people [5]
- Laws against child pornography have apparently only existed in the US since 1977 (!) but still exist today [6]
It used to be, you didn't care about the nationality of the Internet person whose texts you are reading. Its still a little bit like that, but I believe that the contention that 'democratic countries' is even still a thing is pretty banal. Sovereignty is dead. The 21st Century killed it.
If you ask your average western citizen whether their government really represents their interests and needs, you'll find a dire scene. Most westerners feel imprisoned by their government, and have zero desire to take responsibility for their government, or their military' actions, as good citizens do.
What has happened is that, over two decades at least, maybe a little more, a large portion of the intelligent decadent western public has woken up to the fact that their democracies have failed, and think that the Internet is there to save them.
Only to have had it all rubbed in their faces with the Snowden revelations that all technology is flawed and should never be trusted unless you built it yourself. Which is, interestingly enough, the same conclusion one makes in political systems such as democracy.
However, this is not an ultimate conundrum, because while it is true that all large human groups are eventually corrupted by smaller groups, its also a driving force behind technological progress.
Those with the technology to do so, can still use the Internet to heal society and re-build it in new forms. It'll take a few more big group/small group battles, though, before the tribes finally work out we're all on the same team.
I think what has come out of the postmodern dialectic is the recognition that there are no neutral points of view.
Policing “hate speech” is an attempt to address the fact that differences in perspective exist, but there are still some behaviors that are not tolerated because they lead to a breakdown of society.
The problem is that reactionaries see it as a loophole that they can use to play the victim while continuing to dehumanize others. Nothing means anything when people argue in bad faith.
>private companies engaging in evaluating what's permissible speech and not
I don't feel this is an issue until you can't spin up your own website/app/platform and allow whatever speech you want. I am interested for any responses as to why I might be mistaken from people who disagree with me, though.
>To wit what comprises "hate speech". It's basically come to mean "point of view in disagreement with my group's current position which may change in the future"
Well, in America, sometimes. In other countries there are actual hate-speech laws that designate the central cases and set limits on the corner cases.
Controlling communication goes back much further. The oldest example I can think of right now is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_noir but I'd be surprised if it didn't go as far back as writing itself.
> What is new is that even democratic countries are controlling free speech via speech laws
Yes, I think this is much worse. We don't expect anything better from the North Korea, Iran, Russia etc. We have intrinsically higher standards regarding our western, liberal democracies. And now we, the citizens of said states, are the slowly boiled frogs.
democracy with free speech fails in special circumstances. it needs an authoritarian component to prevent more authoritarian form of governments from taking over.
“To wit what comprises "hate speech". It's basically come to mean "point of view in disagreement with my group's current position which may change in the future"”
The whole industry of advertising as we understand it today was created by those who had done propaganda during the first and second world war, and realised they could apply their skills in the field of business.
To learn the history of propaganda, advertising and how it is embedded deeply in our current political machine, watch The Century of the Self, a 2002 documentary:
"Authoritarian Nations are..." makes it sound like the same trends aren't prevalent everywhere.
The cost of monitoring and enforcing compliance with the law is dropping very rapidly. Cameras, automated monitoring systems, etc, have all blossomed since around 2007 when phones suddenly became computers and cameras in one fell swoop.
It is no longer a default expectation that someone can commit a crime without being detected. Or do anything without it being recorded in triplicate on the internet. We'd better all hope we aren't doing anything the government doesn't like!
I'm not sure what is your point, authoritarian or democratic does not make a difference? Both kind of nations have same kind of access to citizens' private information? Both use the monitoring for the same purpose? US is throwing people who offended Trump online into jail like China is doing for Xi?
I just can't live with this kind of intentional defense of authoritarian by making nonsensical and shameless equalization.
Invasive advertising is a kind of propaganda - information that is intended to manipulate people. Bruce Schneier said that surveillance was the business model of the internet, but perhaps more precisely, propaganda is the business model of the internet. At least the user facing part of it.
Put simply, we have come to accept that it is okay for businesses to manipulate people, so it should not come as much of a surprise that other entities will use that same well-oiled machinery for their own purposes.
It seems like this is a return to the normal. Before the internet, repressive regimes had an easier time censoring mass media, monitoring telecommunications and stop organizing efforts.
The major problem isn't so much the surveillance technology, but the intent and power of those governments. The solution must be political, rather than technological, if only because politics can eventually tackle any technology.
I remember, in the mid-1980s, I was attending an event called MacHack (long since gone the way of the dodo).
There was an Australian gentleman there, who was writing database code as a contractor for the Sultan of Oman.
It was basically a "people tracker," and he expressed misgivings about its use (not enough to prevent him from taking the money, though).
In the US, people think that keeping guns is some sort of guarantor of freedom.
I posit that the computer database is the single biggest threat to freedom on Earth. It's just a bit more difficult to understand databases, so we ignore them, and keep updating our Facebook status.
> If an app — let’s say Uber — adopts our tech, you would be able to use Uber [without the internet],” says Jorge Ribs, CEO of Bridgefy
There have been a few of these phone mesh startups (OpenGarden, RightMesh, Bridgefy) over the years, and they all seem to dramatically oversell the abilities of a phone's radio.
Basic physics mean that a network made up of only phones will be extremely slow, even if everyone has the app. Text messages delivered unreliably is probably the best you're going to get in the foreseeable future.
I'm sure it's tempting to embellish the abilities of one's technology to investors and press, but the quote above is obviously false.
This story seems to focus on the minor offenses, ignoring the huge one - not seeing the forest from the trees.
> Twitter employees ... spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia ... passed private information about more than 6,000 Twitter users
2 employees, 6,000 spied on. How about: All employees, everybody spied on? Hundreds of millions of people?
> For most people, the news sparked concerns that companies like Twitter are failing to keep user information secure
For the rest of us, no concern was sparked, because we:
1. Know that some companies were always about selling user information to advertisers and other interested parties, and
2. Noticed when Ed Snowden revealed that the large companies (Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, maybe others) transmit all user information to the US government.
It seems like a lot of US media has been making an effort - one might say an active effort - to have the knowledge of mass (US) government surveillance fade out of our memories.
> Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described cybersecurity as “an arms race,”
It's more of a quarrel among thieves. Facebook has the "loot" - users' information, which is not kept safe from the company itself (though in many ways it could!) - and whoever has access to the loot can pass it on to other seedy elements.
> As governments get better at imposing online censorship
Censorship is a crude, blunt instrument. Governments try it and mostly fail. It's much more effective to drown stories out with noise and junk and drivel; or to create strung prejudice which prevents people from being open to regime-undesirable opinions and positions.
Unpopular opinion: Its a sign of the world becoming more liberal and free. These kinds of weapons don’t directly kill hundreds of thousands of people. It’s propaganda wars. Let’s hope all future wars are fought only on the internet.
Surely not a fan of China's internet censorship or India shutting down the internet whenever people protest their insane nationalistic politics, but let's not forget what the NSA from the land of the "free" does.
Fragmentation is relative, and "weoponization" in the sense described in the article is global.
That doesn't mean we're equally affected and government type doesn't matter. If a scary dictatorship gets access to journalist communications, for example, a scary dictatorship will more aggressively action that.
That said, almost any of these "weaponization" trends happen everywhere and affect everyone. Strong democracies have certain defenses, but that doesn't make them immune.
Spying, censorship, propoganda, media manipulation, disruption of activist or political groups... These uses are growing. Democratic norms and institutions are not absolute, or necessarily even even effective at preventing abuses of a totally new communication ecosystem.
It's not as if our high courts, parliaments or whatnot have been breaking new ground recently. The ground however, keeps moving regardless.
I'm trying to think of an instance where a government (authoritarian or not) hasn't used technology to advance its agenda, or more to the point of the article, for espionage. I can't think of one.
Nations are turning the internet into a weapon. It's terrible when it comes to authoritarian nations, as it's so difficult to imagine an upheaval taking place under internet surveillance, but it's even scarier with democracies.
The law in a democracy is not meant to describe the future. It describes what people do in the past. But democracies rely on people occasionally breaking the law in order to evolve and improve. If we use the internet to monitor and surpass every possible violation, we lose what makes democracies great.
This is why decentralized protocols are so important, especially if you live where govt censorship is rampant. Internet was designed with decentralization in mind, first and foremost.
Companies that collect what could be very sensitive information about people should be subject to criminal negligence charges if someone comes to harm because of their carelessness. This is especially true where they promote highly politicized speech to drive engagement.
Civil suits won't do the trick when the chiefs are super-rich. No court would ever fine Facebook enough that Mark Zuckerberg could be inconvenienced in the slightest.
What's the answer? I grew up in the late 2000s and really believed the internet would challenge existing power structures to change. I think in a lot of ways it did. Even as a fairly technically sophisticated user I can't seem to think what to do about the backslide though. Maybe good open source tools? Maybe a career in cybersecurity? It seems like the bad has more resources and incentives than the good now.
[+] [-] mc32|6 years ago|reply
Yes, authoritarian regimes control communication. That's been the case for over a century of radio and mass circulation dailies. It's nothing new.
What is new is that even democratic countries are controlling free speech via speech laws or often the private companies engaging in evaluating what's permissible speech and not above and beyond what laws require. To wit what comprises "hate speech". It's basically come to mean "point of view in disagreement with my group's current position which may change in the future"
[+] [-] anigbrowl|6 years ago|reply
That's a rather specious argument when you have the current example of a democracy (India) simply shutting down large parts of the internet for political reasons, not to mention the widespread deployment of surveillance tech in numerous developed countries.
This isn't to say that you don't have a point, but if you're saying it's a more pressing issue than those you might be suffering from a loss of perspective. After all, 'hate speech' is widely unpopular (as opposed to being a highly popular thing suppressed by authoritarian states, and much 'hate speech' treats of the desire to operate an authoritarian state that will restrict or outright terminate the freedoms/lives of the hated subjects.
[+] [-] simonh|6 years ago|reply
I think that's enough of a change though to constitute a grave new threat even within already oppressive regimes. Public real time messaging systems like twitter and wechat are fundamentally reshaping public discourse. We can't just say that "oh well, just stick to the old ways of communication and you'll be fine". If the fundamental way people communicate changes, then the fact that this change enables unprecedented levels of centralised monitoring and intervention does change things a lot. Even beyond intervention is specific conversations or consequences for individuals, it gives such regimes an unprecedented insight into the opinions and attitudes of their population as a whole and various sub-groups within it and opportunities to shape and act on those.
[+] [-] wwweston|6 years ago|reply
Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws, but, you know, feel free to make a list of the important ideas that you feel are being SILENCED.
Private companies: not that different in the fundamentals, but there are additional issues that lean towards both the right of ownership to speak and restrict speech that comes through them. You likely wouldn't want anyone to force you to repeat ideas you believe are incorrect, or contrary to key personal interests even where narrowly correct, or even lead to effects you find personally undesirable. If freedom of speech means anything, it has to include some measure of judgment about what your personal faculties are used to express, and to some more moderated extent what/how your property is used. There may be balancing concerns in the latter case, but whether we're at that point is another issue. Again, I can think of very little in the realm of valuable discourse that's been walled off here; if there's anything at all, I suspect the relevant mechanism is essentially social values that are held widely enough that contrary expressions bring social consequences, and while you can create some spaces for robust contrary discussion ("safe spaces", if you like), you can't eliminate the kickback from broad social consequences without treading more heavily on other liberties of equal or greater importance to speech.
Honestly, if there's any issue at all here, it's that there has never been an EASIER time to express ideas -- even very unpopular ones -- quite widely, and it's the way that these ideas carry widely that's leading to a level of tension that people are still figuring out how to manage.
And really, this is the weaponization issues: 50 years ago, authoritarian countries didn't have the capabilities of broadcasting ideas or disinformation into your average household, much less an individual handheld device. A world-of-ends internet means that they do.
[+] [-] buboard|6 years ago|reply
We have accumulated too many powers in the hands of "our" democratic leaders, and the political parties are being used as weapons against the other party. The Ruler Worshippers have won. In many ways (economic, regulatory, even behavioral) the West is in freedom deficit compared to those oppressive countries. I think it's fair to say the world has stooped to their level.
[+] [-] pell|6 years ago|reply
So, are you referring to India's last steps to shut down the internet in multiple regions where dissent forms? Or is this about caps on free speech in certain countries? I feel like these things are not on the same spectrum.
That said, the power of Google, Facebook and somewhat less so Twitter is scary.
[+] [-] radium3d|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dumblydorr|6 years ago|reply
I could go on, but humans have been bending and breaking democratic egalitarian rules for centuries. Modern technology is just so pervasive, Putin and Trump can affect the information at everyone's fingertips always with social media and online information.
Indeed, any powerful entity can buy anything online: clicks, bots, comments, views, accounts, literally anything they want to say can reach millions of people. This would be ameliorated by ethical and moral information platforms, which we seem to not use and not build for profit reasons.
[+] [-] jakelazaroff|6 years ago|reply
That's not new at all. Here are a few of the many, many examples from the past century or so:
- The Comstock laws, passed in the 1870s, criminalized the sending of "obscenity", contraceptives and sex toys via USPS [1]
- There was literally a US agency called the "Office of Censorship" during WWII! [2]
- The US entertainment industry denied employment to many people suspected of affiliating with Communism in the 1950s [3]
- Lenny Bruce was arrested multiple times and eventually convicted for obscenity (saying e.g. "cocksucker" onstage) in the 1960s [4]
- During the Jim Crow era, it was a misdemeanor in Mississippi to publish materials advocating social equality or interracial marriage between white and black people [5]
- Laws against child pornography have apparently only existed in the US since 1977 (!) but still exist today [6]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist
[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_Bruce#Obscenity_arrest...
[5] https://www.nps.gov/malu/learn/education/jim_crow_laws.htm
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography#History
[+] [-] fit2rule|6 years ago|reply
If you ask your average western citizen whether their government really represents their interests and needs, you'll find a dire scene. Most westerners feel imprisoned by their government, and have zero desire to take responsibility for their government, or their military' actions, as good citizens do.
What has happened is that, over two decades at least, maybe a little more, a large portion of the intelligent decadent western public has woken up to the fact that their democracies have failed, and think that the Internet is there to save them.
Only to have had it all rubbed in their faces with the Snowden revelations that all technology is flawed and should never be trusted unless you built it yourself. Which is, interestingly enough, the same conclusion one makes in political systems such as democracy.
However, this is not an ultimate conundrum, because while it is true that all large human groups are eventually corrupted by smaller groups, its also a driving force behind technological progress.
Those with the technology to do so, can still use the Internet to heal society and re-build it in new forms. It'll take a few more big group/small group battles, though, before the tribes finally work out we're all on the same team.
[+] [-] wayoutthere|6 years ago|reply
Policing “hate speech” is an attempt to address the fact that differences in perspective exist, but there are still some behaviors that are not tolerated because they lead to a breakdown of society.
The problem is that reactionaries see it as a loophole that they can use to play the victim while continuing to dehumanize others. Nothing means anything when people argue in bad faith.
[+] [-] wavefunction|6 years ago|reply
I don't feel this is an issue until you can't spin up your own website/app/platform and allow whatever speech you want. I am interested for any responses as to why I might be mistaken from people who disagree with me, though.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] eli_gottlieb|6 years ago|reply
Well, in America, sometimes. In other countries there are actual hate-speech laws that designate the central cases and set limits on the corner cases.
[+] [-] usrusr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wnevets|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdinsn|6 years ago|reply
They have the right to control how people use their property. It's a completely different discussion than the one about government control
[+] [-] odiroot|6 years ago|reply
Yes, I think this is much worse. We don't expect anything better from the North Korea, Iran, Russia etc. We have intrinsically higher standards regarding our western, liberal democracies. And now we, the citizens of said states, are the slowly boiled frogs.
[+] [-] baq|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hhas01|6 years ago|reply
Citations required.
[+] [-] CommieDetector|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] puPoh|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dd36|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] growlist|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredley|6 years ago|reply
To learn the history of propaganda, advertising and how it is embedded deeply in our current political machine, watch The Century of the Self, a 2002 documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
[+] [-] roenxi|6 years ago|reply
The cost of monitoring and enforcing compliance with the law is dropping very rapidly. Cameras, automated monitoring systems, etc, have all blossomed since around 2007 when phones suddenly became computers and cameras in one fell swoop.
It is no longer a default expectation that someone can commit a crime without being detected. Or do anything without it being recorded in triplicate on the internet. We'd better all hope we aren't doing anything the government doesn't like!
[+] [-] datashow|6 years ago|reply
I just can't live with this kind of intentional defense of authoritarian by making nonsensical and shameless equalization.
Plug:
China Sentences Wang Yi, Christian Pastor, to 9 Years in Prison https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/world/asia/china-wang-yi-...
Kaifeng Jewish Community Suffers New Suppression https://bitterwinter.org/kaifeng-jewish-community-suffers-ne...
Inside China’s Push to Turn Muslim Minorities Into an Army of Workers https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/world/asia/china-xinjiang...
[+] [-] ta999999171|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] talkingtab|6 years ago|reply
Put simply, we have come to accept that it is okay for businesses to manipulate people, so it should not come as much of a surprise that other entities will use that same well-oiled machinery for their own purposes.
[+] [-] bayesian_horse|6 years ago|reply
The major problem isn't so much the surveillance technology, but the intent and power of those governments. The solution must be political, rather than technological, if only because politics can eventually tackle any technology.
[+] [-] adamsea|6 years ago|reply
This. 100%. I think a lot of technologists struggle with this for various (understandable) reasons.
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|6 years ago|reply
In the US, people think that keeping guns is some sort of guarantor of freedom.
I posit that the computer database is the single biggest threat to freedom on Earth. It's just a bit more difficult to understand databases, so we ignore them, and keep updating our Facebook status.
[+] [-] woah|6 years ago|reply
There have been a few of these phone mesh startups (OpenGarden, RightMesh, Bridgefy) over the years, and they all seem to dramatically oversell the abilities of a phone's radio.
Basic physics mean that a network made up of only phones will be extremely slow, even if everyone has the app. Text messages delivered unreliably is probably the best you're going to get in the foreseeable future.
I'm sure it's tempting to embellish the abilities of one's technology to investors and press, but the quote above is obviously false.
[+] [-] isthis1984|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justaj|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooky23|6 years ago|reply
If you look at some of the military and police radios, they can build 10Gb mesh networks.
[+] [-] 0xmohit|6 years ago|reply
The Indian government routinely blocks internet in various parts of the country. They recently even blocked it in the national capital, Delhi.
[+] [-] einpoklum|6 years ago|reply
> Twitter employees ... spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia ... passed private information about more than 6,000 Twitter users
2 employees, 6,000 spied on. How about: All employees, everybody spied on? Hundreds of millions of people?
> For most people, the news sparked concerns that companies like Twitter are failing to keep user information secure
For the rest of us, no concern was sparked, because we:
1. Know that some companies were always about selling user information to advertisers and other interested parties, and
2. Noticed when Ed Snowden revealed that the large companies (Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, maybe others) transmit all user information to the US government.
It seems like a lot of US media has been making an effort - one might say an active effort - to have the knowledge of mass (US) government surveillance fade out of our memories.
> Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described cybersecurity as “an arms race,”
It's more of a quarrel among thieves. Facebook has the "loot" - users' information, which is not kept safe from the company itself (though in many ways it could!) - and whoever has access to the loot can pass it on to other seedy elements.
> As governments get better at imposing online censorship
Censorship is a crude, blunt instrument. Governments try it and mostly fail. It's much more effective to drown stories out with noise and junk and drivel; or to create strung prejudice which prevents people from being open to regime-undesirable opinions and positions.
[+] [-] aey|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pell|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netcan|6 years ago|reply
That doesn't mean we're equally affected and government type doesn't matter. If a scary dictatorship gets access to journalist communications, for example, a scary dictatorship will more aggressively action that.
That said, almost any of these "weaponization" trends happen everywhere and affect everyone. Strong democracies have certain defenses, but that doesn't make them immune.
Spying, censorship, propoganda, media manipulation, disruption of activist or political groups... These uses are growing. Democratic norms and institutions are not absolute, or necessarily even even effective at preventing abuses of a totally new communication ecosystem.
It's not as if our high courts, parliaments or whatnot have been breaking new ground recently. The ground however, keeps moving regardless.
[+] [-] guavaNinja|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] systematical|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neiman|6 years ago|reply
The law in a democracy is not meant to describe the future. It describes what people do in the past. But democracies rely on people occasionally breaking the law in order to evolve and improve. If we use the internet to monitor and surpass every possible violation, we lose what makes democracies great.
[+] [-] 0x8BADF00D|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ljw1001|6 years ago|reply
Civil suits won't do the trick when the chiefs are super-rich. No court would ever fine Facebook enough that Mark Zuckerberg could be inconvenienced in the slightest.
[+] [-] lammalamma25|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] isacikgoz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] larnmar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supergirl|6 years ago|reply