Authoritarian nations are turning the internet into a weapon

https://onezero.medium.com/authoritarian-nations-are-turning-the-internet-into-a-weapon-10119d4e9992

by maxfan8 • 7 years ago

398 301 7 years ago

onezero.medium.com

woah3• 7 years ago

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.

Spooky23• 7 years ago

Today, in consumer space you are correct.

If you look at some of the military and police radios, they can build 10Gb mesh networks.

lalos• 7 years ago

An example would be the mesh network in NYC https://www.nycmesh.net

woah3• 7 years ago

I work in the networking space, on althea.net. Any number of GB is indeed possible on various types of networks.

What gives you high speed is 1. dedicated frequencies, 2. powerful radio with well-aimed reflectors or large antenna arrays, and 3. clear lines of sight.

Networking software can not increase the maximum speed possible, given the above factors. Phones have neither 1, 2, or 3. Radios in military networks often have all 3.

Claiming that an app will magically make your phone into a much more powerful radio is like claiming that a flashlight app will some day make your phone screen put out thousands of lumens.

"Sure, right now Flashify just turns the screen white to provide a dim glow, but in the future we think Flashify will replace all indoor lighting. Think about that, we're going to disrupt the whole lighting industry."

isthis1984• 7 years ago

A Pringles wi fi network is always a possibility https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-make-a-wifi-antenna-out...

justaj• 7 years ago

I furthermore don't understand why they're promoting what looks like a proprietary solution, while things like Briar exist: https://briarproject.org/

mc328• 7 years ago

"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"

wavefunction7• 7 years ago

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.

systematical4• 7 years ago

Some of these tech companies are so large and pervasive that they are integral parts of society. The policies they enact with that power can have a chilling effect. Now, whether we should or shouldn't do something about that is another matter. The Government has certainly shown a willingness to regulate industries that got to big for their britches before.

mc328• 7 years ago

That's only part of the equation though. People who disagree with PoVs not only want to get people suspended or banned from ubiquitous comms platforms but they also want to doxx them and publicly shame them. I'm not talking about immediate threats of violence or disgusting vile language. But more generic points of view on various contentious topics.

But let's take your objection at face value. Let's say a certain Senator has declared the senator wants to break up some certain major tech companies and these companies disagree. Under your take they would be within their rights to suspend or ban or de-rank such candidates given they already have their websites as platforms to comms and moreover that's a non event.

elfexec2• 7 years ago

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 mostly agree with you on "website/app". As for the platform, it really depends on the nature and size of the platform. If it becomes an essential platform or if it is a monopoly, then you could argue it has utility features and hence everyone has a right to it. For example, you wouldn't say a power or water company doesn't have to serve you because you can go start your own power or water company.

You could argue that twitter is an essential platform since its the primary form of communication for the president. It is a platform for you to communicated with your elected official. Hence twitter as a platform is a "utility" and cannot block US citizens from accessing it and exercising their 1st amendment rights. This actually could be an interesting Supreme Court case if anyone who has been banned wants to ligitate. It could actually be precedent-setting.

You could argue that facebook, youtube, etc are monopolies that nearly serve the purpose of a utility and hence you have a right to it.

Also, you could argue that these american companies have a duty to follow the "spirit of free speech" in our country even if they aren't legally bound to it.

There are arguments to be made on both sides. Unfortunately, it isn't being taken through the legal system.

deogeo3• 7 years ago

Because speech is meaningless without an audience, and people on mainstream platforms don't all know about or agree with those platform's moderation/censorship policies.

Sure people shouldn't be "forced to listen to everyone's message", but what if it's a message someone does want to listen to, but the platform doesn't want to transmit? And since they don't even know the message exists, they won't be seeking it out on alternative platforms.

mistermann8• 7 years ago

Your evaluation seems to disregard the relative network sizes and in turn exposure one has on a mainstream platform vs a tiny user created one. This difference seems so obvious to me, I suspect you may only have a limited subset of "issues" in mind, such as the 1st amendment.

ryukafalz• 7 years ago

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.

We're already kinda at this point. I don't condone them, obviously, but sites like the Daily Stormer and 8chan have been kicked off several registrars, and at one point one of their hosting providers got kicked off their upstream provider for hosting them.

I'm generally fine with social media companies policing their sites, but I get nervous when we start talking about similar things in core internet infrastructure. I think we're setting a dangerous precedent for the future if we do that.

dd36• 7 years ago

Examples in the US beyond terrorists or terrorist sympathizers? The rules of a platform tend to be transparent.

catalogia• 7 years ago

The rules of a platform tend to be transparent.

There are a lot of prominent youtube creators saying the rules are vague at best. And the scope of those rules is certainly not limited to terrorism. Terrorism is the boogie man governments and corporations cite when they want people to be compliant, but the bulk of enforcement in practice is against mundane shit like copyright infringement or scatological jokes that offend grandparents with sensitive dispositions.

Pfhreak• 7 years ago

LGBTQ+ creators come to mind as folks who often get demonitized.

jellicle• 7 years ago

HN runs at least one story a week along the lines of "I got banned from the app store and no one will tell me why".

jakelazaroff2• 7 years ago

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]

[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

mc328• 7 years ago

So It’s even worse because now it’s not only the government which can set rules where we can have some say in what the rules are given we elect the government, but now we are happy to have companies themselves without input from the government “do what’s best for us”.

sifar• 7 years ago

What is new is the scale at which it happens now, in the democratic countries. And ordinary people are not aware at the level at which this invades their lives. And what is worse, you are deemed a criminal/undesirable if you voluntarily try to escape this surveillance.

Ellul was right. Propaganda and surveillance is more insidious in democracies than in authoritarian regimes.

simonh• 7 years ago

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.

tim333• 7 years ago

grave new threat

There are two sides to the story of course. Repressive governments can follow who's up to what on social media and the like but on the other hand encrypted global communications and ubiquitous video make it much easier to expose bad stuff happening. It's interesting to watch the very good movie Lives of Others to get a feel of what things were like as recently as 1984 when it's set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others

pell7• 7 years ago

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.

freeflight4• 7 years ago

I feel like these things are not on the same spectrum.

As somebody living in a country with pretty heavy "caps on free speech", Germany, it's very much both on the same spectrum [0].

Because the reasons for those "caps" are very much the same reasons why India shut down the large scale: To reign in dissidence and control the Overton window.

The South Korean National Security Act [1] is another, rather blatant, example for this kind of "thought legislation" that also doesn't shy away from straight-up banning and censoring media.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/20/extincti...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_(South_K...

anigbrowl2• 7 years ago

To wit what comprises "hate speech"

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.

sillysaurusx• 7 years ago

I think you have had the good fortune not to be targeted by people in a position of power. The loss of perspective is the other way around: Until this has happened to you, you can't fully appreciate what it feels like.

"Hate speech" is a deceptive label. Even pg points out that it sounds like a phrase straight out of 1984.

Society at large seems to have become turbulent. Everywhere you look, you find people who are practically leaping for any small excuse to tear into someone, tear them down, label them various names, get them fired, and so on.

We are fortunate not to have to worry about authoritarian nations. But we still have to worry about authoritarians. They will often use excuses like "It's in the community's interest" to exact punishment that very few are inclined to disagree with.

One could argue that if few people disagree with a punishment, then by definition it's fair. I would argue that restriction of thought is a more serious matter. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21550422 was an insightful comment illustrating some of the modern decisions that one has to make.

snowedin• 7 years ago

I think you have a very good point.

The overall metapoint that both you and the parent comment agree on is this: the internet isn't being "weaponized by authoritarian states" in some unique fashion specific to authoritarianism.

I'd just round it all up to say that: like most headlines about global trends in America, this headline reenforces the meme of "American Exceptionalism" and casts the situation in a "good versus evil" narrative format that's not really helpful for understanding what's happening or what to do about it. But that itself isn't anything particularly new in itself either (queue last three decades of American headlines).

pankajdoharey• 7 years ago

India is at the top of the list in terms of Internet bans, this yr alone they have banned the internet over 360 times.

radium3d• 7 years ago

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?

ailideex14• 7 years ago

Doesn't free speech also enable lies and immoral ideals to be spread by bots/people too?

Yes. I don't think the government should be our moral police nor should it dictate what morals are acceptable.

I don't think there is a solution beyond education?

I don't think education should try and instil morals. This seems rather totalitarian to me. Where would these morals come from, how would we decide what morals our children should be indoctrinated with in school?

Tempest1981• 7 years ago

Education works for fact-based debates. And logical thinkers.

But today, there is a lot of emotional manipulation. In the US, recently, xenophobia fears are incited and played upon. Moderate bullying tactics are employed, being careful to avoid hate-speech. Not sure education plays a role when primal fear is involved.

tenebrisalietum• 7 years ago

Mostly a thought-experiment here:

There's a class of people+situations where there's a communication asymmetry. For example, someone in a position of authority can create a press conference and deliver communication to hundreds or thousands, and people can't contest and deliver communication back to all listeners in an equally timely manner. So these situations are one-sided and prone to be abused as propaganda delivery mechanisms.

Why can't we require speech in these specific situations to follow a couple rules:

- Statements of opinions must be preceded by a notice that X is your opinion, for each statement.

- Stating things that are provably incorrect is a violation of law.

- Statements that encourage behavior that is against the law is a violation of law.

wnevets2• 7 years ago

Comparing china's control of the actual pipes to twitter no hate speech policy makes you look silly.

slimsag• 7 years ago

Just because a greater evil exists doesn't mean all other evils are 'silly'.

Is it also silly to worry about hate crimes against Muslims in the U.S. because China is committing a greater crime against them?

wwweston6• 7 years ago

"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.

1000units4• 7 years ago

I too am alarmed by these spooky disinformation campaigns.

I just googled "what party was abraham lincoln in" and a big box popped up at the top saying "National Union Party". I've never even heard of this party. I assume its a euphemism sinister people use like "Democratic People's Republic".

forrestthewoods2• 7 years ago

Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws

Citing your ignorance of events is not a compelling argument.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/02/social_media_arrest...

Literally thousands of people have been arrested in recent years for things they've said on Twitter. That's just in the London.

Here's a man who was arrested and convicted of a hate crime. What did he do? Taught his girlfriend's dog to give a Nazi salute.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7785225/Supreme-Cou...

Now I would not exactly consider this an "important idea". But arresting and convicting someone for that is egregious and, dare I say, offensive.

At the same time, I could not possibly care less which ideas _you_ consider important or not. Or anyone for that matter. That's the whole point of free speech.

SmirkingRevenge• 7 years ago

What a great comment.

"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

As I understand it (could be wrong), hate crime/speech regulations only actually act as punishment modifiers for existing crimes. They don't criminalize otherwise legal acts or speech (in the US, at least).

For example, it's illegal to vandalize a synagogue with spray paint. Hate crime/speech laws generally might mean that a person who spray paints an immature, lewd picture/message on a synagogue, is treated differently that a person who spray paints a swastika. The latter would be treated more harshly - which seems reasonable to me.

AmericanChopper4• 7 years ago

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.

So you believe it’s fine for any expression that doesn’t fit in with whatever it is that you perceive to be “reasonable discourse” to be a criminal offence? A vast majority of the worlds population is religious, and most religious texts contain “hate speech”. Arresting and prosecuting people for expressing their religious beliefs has happened numerous times. There are also many political and moral issues where the views of one side are simply declared hate speech. Many people have been arrested and prosecuted for such views. A lot of the most ridiculous cases get thrown out, but not before somebody is arrested, potentially spends several days incarcerated, potentially loses their job, potentially loses future employment opportunities, and would have to pay thousands of dollars for lawyers.

Whatever it is that you, or I, or anybody else considers to be “reasonable discourse” should be completely irrelevant in the eyes of the law. You either believe that views you consider to be offensive, or vulgar, or obscene should be protected, or you believe that all views falling outside the political orthodoxy should be oppressed. Not only is this tyrannical, but it’s completely stupid. If your views happen to fall within the political orthodoxy today, that’s merely a coincidence, and you can guarantee that at some point in the future, they won’t.

zo1• 7 years ago

"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."

The definition of "reasonable discourse" is the problem here. I'd reckon a good chunk of people don't see problems with "hate speech" censorship because they only see them applied to things that they don't seem to be reasonable discourse, so "why not". Then again, the general internet is a cesspool a lot of the time anyway and "reasonable discourse" is quite often very bad-sounding, nasty and personal.

The other side of it is that "hate speech" is not being applied legally at all. Platforms are using some sort of nebulous definition of it and a few other semi-related concepts in order to appease to offended people (from the perspective of the people it's being applied to). This is what a lot of the people are fighting back against, they're not fighting against "legal censorship for the legal definition of hate speech", which practically never happens anymore in the west.

On a side note now that I think about it, you could argue what's going on in the UK, Germany & South Africa among other places as being examples of reasonable criticism & discourse online being silenced under hate-speech laws. And some people even going to jail over some of it. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung

Yes, the laws are phrased in "feel-good" ways such that at the surface it looks like they're just there to prevent bad things like "inciting racial hatred/violence", etc. But the way they get applied is not exactly that because it's open to interpretation and attempts to legislate offense and feelings which are very grey-terms. Also, these laws get "cited" by various platforms in pro-active justifications for why they remove/de-platform individuals on them, without legal or criminal proceedings ever actually taking place.

SkyBelow2• 7 years ago

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.

Now that paraphilias have been removed from the DSM and are no longer considered a mental illness, the idea that they need an acceptance and support group (of course, acting on them in a way that harms someone is still unacceptable). This has been taken to be hate speech against sexual minorities that were removed from even earlier editions of the DSM.

There is also some evidence that having some level of social acceptance results in less anti-social behavior including hurting other people (I think Germany has begun to incorporate this in therapy programs).

sdinsn3• 7 years ago

Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws

What is "reasonable" discourse? The purpose of freedom of speech is that all discourse is allowed; "reasonable" or not.

baq2• 7 years ago

democracy with free speech fails in special circumstances. it needs an authoritarian component to prevent more authoritarian form of governments from taking over.

ailideex14• 7 years ago

democracy with free speech fails in special circumstances.

like?

it needs an authoritarian component to prevent more authoritarian form of governments from taking over.

I don't think so.

odiroot• 7 years ago

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.

growlist• 7 years ago

Exactly. It's trivial to prove that Google's results have a strong political bias.

fit2rule• 7 years ago

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.

hhas01• 7 years ago

“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"”

Citations required.

usrusr• 7 years ago

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.

buboard3• 7 years ago

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.

wayoutthere3• 7 years ago

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.

forgottenpass• 7 years ago

I think the act of bringing postmodern tools to the debate was a way of playing the "I win" game by turning the conversation into inescapable morass for those that weren't accustomed to that kind of debate.

Whatever the "reactionaries" did in response was yet another step in the evolution of the back-and-forth and no more or less in bad faith than the previous step.

malvosenior3• 7 years ago

Postmodernism is the recognition that all points of view are equally valid (or invalid). Policing "hate speech" and "protecting" society are modern concepts not postmodern ones.

I think if you read classic postmodern literature (think Gravity's Rainbow) you'll find a lot of speech that would be considered politically incorrect, possibly even hate speech. That was purposefully designed by the authors to help devalue and level the meaning of all speech as that's a core postmodern principal.

Reality Is What You Can Get Away With is another postmodern classic that explores some of these themes:

https://www.amazon.com/Reality-What-You-Can-Away/dp/15618408...

Dumblydorr• 7 years ago

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.

malvosenior3• 7 years ago

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.

There's still a marketplace of ideas. Powerful entities will be competing with other powerful entities for bandwidth and attention. The people themselves will decide which messages they wish to pass on and spread and which they don't. If it was as simple as you say, the person with the most money would always win. While that does happen, we can see the from the results of the 2016 election that it doesn't always work that way. Clinton spent far more on traditional advertising and guerrilla internet tactics (c.f. Correct The Record) and didn't win because her message didn't resonate with enough people.

Long story short: free will still drives the internet and outcomes. Advertising isn't very effective and when it is, advertisers will be competing against each other for the limited access to that scarce effectiveness.

mc328• 7 years ago

True that tools have improved but also it’s no longer an exception (like wartime exceptions), but an accepted quotidian thing that’s used like propaganda to dominate people.

eli_gottlieb• 7 years ago

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.

sdinsn3• 7 years ago

"the private companies engaging in evaluating what's permissible speech"

They have the right to control how people use their property. It's a completely different discussion than the one about government control

roenxi• 7 years ago

"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!

datashow2• 7 years ago

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.

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...

throw4532u• 7 years ago

In 2014, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said in a public debate, “We kill people based on metadata.”
According to multiple reports and leaks, death-by-metadata could be triggered, without even knowing the target’s name, if too many derogatory checks appear on their profile. “Armed military aged males” exhibiting suspicious behavior in the wrong place can become targets, as can someone “seen to be giving out orders.” Such mathematics-based assassinations have come to be known as “signature strikes.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...

markdown• 7 years ago

US is throwing people who offended Trump online into jail like China is doing for Xi?

No, but it has been collecting all online data, snooping on citizens and finding out (along with everything else), who has been saying what about President Trump.

The fact that it hasn't yet criminalised that behaviour is some consolation, but the data collection itself is unsettling.

cltsang• 7 years ago

The logical fallacy[0] here is so obvious that to people who can reason, it's a joke.

Their goal is to divert the discussion and trick people without a clear mind. If we follow through their argument, or even let them trigger any emotion in us, they win. So the best reaction is to give no attention to them, such that this kind of argument sinks to the bottom.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

elfexec2• 7 years ago

As opposed to what we are doing to Assange? Or carrying out a coup against a democratically elected president in Bolivia ( Yes, I know he legally ran for a 4th time, but then so did angela merkel...). Do you know the largest "worker" population in the US is our prison population?

I just can't live with this kind of intentional defense of authoritarian by making nonsensical and shameless equalization.

Okay. How about this. A democracy is responsible for a 100 holocausts in the US with our extermination of the native. A democracy dropped nukes on hundreds of thousands of civilians. A democracy pioneered human experimentation. A democracy instituted racial slavery. A democracy has killed tens of millions of people around the world after ww2. A democracy has stolen the most land and resources around the world.

Democracy or authoritarian, both are capable of all kinds of evil. By any objective measure, the most evil nation to have ever exist was a democracy.

Now flip it. An authoritarian regime lifted 800 million people out of poverty. Easily the greatest humanitarian achievement in human history. The greatest human good in human history was achieved by those "evil" authoritarians.

If we are going to worry about the internet being weaponized, I think we should be worried about it whether "authoritarian" or "democratic".

buboard3• 7 years ago

authoritarian or democratic does not make a difference?

You think it it does? Democracy without freedom is an empty shell. And surveillance is antithetical to freedom

Vinnl• 7 years ago

I'd think the point is that the qualification in the headline might give people in non-authoritarian nations a false sense of security that GP is trying to warn us for.

ta999999171• 7 years ago

Or are you underestimating how many governments should be/are labelled Authoritarian?

bayesian_horse5• 7 years ago

I believe it is more important to focus on making sure your government doesn't have the intent or ability to punish you for things you don't want to be punished for, rather than worrying about what the government knows about you.

By "The Government" I don't mean the entity that calls itself your government, but rather the entity that has the most power. In a democracy, you have a share in that power and how it is controlled and kept in check.

But in general, in a relatively democratic society, a democratically minded citizen has an incentive to make the state (legislature+executive+judicative) pretty much as powerful as possible (within reason), while at the same time controlling its intent.

Because any power the government doesn't have, someone else has, and that someone likely isn't you.

systematical4• 7 years ago

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.

joejerryronnie3• 7 years ago

Almost all technological progress begins with a national defense purpose.

newguy12342• 7 years ago

There isn't one because all governments focus on continuance of their regime once they've gained a foothold for power.

silentsea90• 7 years ago

For the sake of argument, the link below sharing India's internet shutdowns has a fair share of temporary shutdowns to help allow tensions between communities to cool down, prevent riots etc.

https://internetshutdowns.in/

Nasrudith5• 7 years ago

"Have you tried going mad without power? Nobody listens to you!"

Technology has been used to advance agendas before there was a government. Even if the agenda was "hitting a simolodon" and the technology was "picking up a stick first".

0xmohit• 7 years ago

It's been 150 days that internet has been blocked in Kashmir by the Indian government.

The Indian government routinely blocks internet in various parts of the country. They recently even blocked it in the national capital, Delhi.

larnmar• 7 years ago

Six top level comments, and four of them are of the form “whatabout democratic nations doing the same thing, huh?”

supergirl• 7 years ago

it wouldn't be news if everyone did it no?

pell7• 7 years ago

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.

JumpCrisscross• 7 years ago

let's not forget what the NSA from the land of the "free" does

Nobody is forgetting it. But just as discussions about authoritarian nations’ tactics get derailed by these comments, discussions about the NSA get railroaded by “but at least it’s not China” messaging.

pell7• 7 years ago

Fair point.

mamborambo• 7 years ago

The risks of government abusing Internet is omnipresent, but this risk is out of control in countries where the constitutional courts are weak and lawmakers compliant. It shows that tech disruption is ultimately still less powerful than political disruption -- only that can fundamentally bring this civilization forward.

umvi• 7 years ago

but let's not forget what the NSA from the land of the "free" does

Collects tons of data and then does nothing with it?

joejerryronnie3• 7 years ago

They could also be finding valuable patterns in communication data and withholding it from other government agencies.

chasd004• 7 years ago

hah that reminds me of the demotivator "Government, if you hate our problems just wait until you see our solutions".

Razengan• 7 years ago

Authoritarian? As if America has NOT been turning the internet into a weapon?

joejerryronnie3• 7 years ago

C’mon man, the Internet started out as a weapon.

aabbcc1241• 7 years ago

When talking about censorship, I want to discuss about zeronet.

It appear to be censorship free. Yes, the zite owner can apply censorship, but anyone can clone the zite and become the new admin (similar to fork in the GUI of github).

And there is hub mechanism so people can see aggregated content from multiple zites.

Zeronet may be not as good as the FANG but it's already usable.

bardan• 7 years ago

Zeronet feels too monolithic to be an effective web replacement to me, given it's almost all delivered through that its frontend. I'm more interested in systmes like ipfs

isacikgoz• 7 years ago

Being authoritarian should be a property of the governments. I don’t think nations become intentionally authoritarian.

smt884• 7 years ago

I don’t think nations become intentionally authoritarian

They absolutely do. Most democracies and republics in history have transitioned to authoritarianism at the behest of their own citizens. Centralized power is seen as a route to fast, urgent reform. The most famous example, of course, is Julius Caesar's assumption of power.

This is partially why "populist" can have a negative connotation in political or historical discussions. Putin is (supposedly) very popular, and Stalin is still remembered fondly by a surprising number[1] of Russians. South America has had tons of popular authoritarians, like Juan Perón[3], Alberto Fujimori[4], and Getúlio Vargas.

1. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2019-05-...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Per%C3%B3n#Fascist_influe...

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Per%C3%B3n#Fascist_influe...

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Fujimori

aey2• 7 years ago

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.

smt884• 7 years ago

Propaganda wars aren't better because they "don't directly kill". It's part of the same chain of events -- just a little earlier.

Propaganda has been a necessary precursor for most recent civil wars, genocides, and regime changes. It's the most important ingredient in acts that can be labeled terrorism.

Organized violence can't really happen without spreading information, and the internet has democratized the ability to spread information.

I don't know whether it's net-good or net-bad, but I consider it to be unknowable what the net effect of all this propaganda is until it either leads to something or it doesn't.

bayesian_horse5• 7 years ago

For the most part, those who don't want that violence seem to win, though.

staplers• 7 years ago

Star Trek thought differently:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

Worth a watch on this subject.

newguy12342• 7 years ago

Keep in mind that propaganda wars can kill people. Les not forget that Hitler was able to turn his conspiracy theory ideas about what should happen to the Jews into reality. Germany pre-hitler's rise was a vibrant democracy with many political parties.

paganel• 7 years ago

Keep in mind that propaganda wars can kill people.

Quoting Albert Speer [1]:

Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and later Minister for Armaments and War Production, later said the regime "made the complete use of all technical means for domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and loudspeaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent thought."

and to quote Goebbels himself [2], i.e. the Nazis' propaganda minister:

It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio...It is no exaggeration to say that the German revolution, at least in the form it took, would have been impossible without the airplane and the radio…[Radio] reached the entire nation, regardless of class, standing, or religion. That was primarily the result of the tight centralization, the strong reporting, and the up-to-date nature of the German radio.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Workings_of_th...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propaganda#Nazi_Germany

TheCoelacanth• 7 years ago

Vibrant democracy is probably an exaggeration. It was a fledgling democracy that didn't have much of a tradition of peaceful transfer of power. Opposing political parties regularly devolved into armed conflict.

AdamHede• 7 years ago

I often find it hard to tell if authoritarian governments are strengthened or weakened by internet... The mass shutdowns tells me it's the latter.

I think you are more right than most people here want to admit. Sure, surveillance is bad, and so is censorship, and we should fight it, and not let short-term moral panics like drug wars and terrorism forfeit our fundamental rights.

But let's realize how impossibly hard information is to contain and control. With maybe the exception of China, let's imagine sitting in the Iranian or Saudi secret service. You might have vast funds at your disposal, but you also have a rapidly increasing sophistication in your populations technological awereness. Every day, New VPN technologies spring up and things like sudden critical mass of mesh networking threatens to turn everything upside down. You whack new exist points, but you also know, fundamentally, hundreds of thousands of you people have unrestricted access, and you best weapon is a frustrating shutdown, whenever things truly get out of hand.

chasd004• 7 years ago

things like Starlink will make access to information even harder to control/shutdown. I suppose it could be jammed but signal will still squirt out here and there. It's not as easy as controlling the physical fiber crossing your border.

Applejinx2• 7 years ago

Unpopular because the end goal is most definitely real-world extermination of unwanted races and/or classes. That doesn't count as liberal or free. Propaganda without an end-game would be a pretty meaningless thing.

Nasrudith5• 7 years ago

Nothing so directed is needed - the object of power is power. Although those with said intentions would find it useful for said ends. The dirty secret is they often want or need "undesirables" as a scapegoat. The difference may wind up academic though when dupes take the cynical scapegoating seriously long past the relevance of the propaganda. Like the European history of anti-semetism and the complete dumbasses who take the hundreds of Jewish expulsions as signs of guilt instead of being used as a political tool.

Certainly not liberal or free and should still be opposed of course.

buboard3• 7 years ago

more liberal and free

I think you 're confusing "alive" with "free". Merely surviving in a world of surveillance is not a life worth living.

aey2• 7 years ago

Even 70s Soviet surveillance was comparatively brutal to todays Russia's troll farms. Ask any soviet jews.

molteanu• 7 years ago

I agree, US has always used the internet as a weapon. This being actually in line with the article's title.

imvetri• 7 years ago

Innovations can't win over evil.

mrobot• 7 years ago

The US had thousands of bots defending the Evo Morales Bolivia coup. Barely anyone in Bolivia speaks English.

j88439h84• 7 years ago

Source?

proc0• 7 years ago

Not sure what your point is, but Evo is the authoritarian that would do what the article is describing. He wanted to be dictator and wanted all kinds of controls on the people there including media. Also if you ever been there you will realize the majority of people understand English, if not actually speak it pretty well.

smt884• 7 years ago

This is at least preferable to the older US practice of assassinating[1] world leaders.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/05/cia-long-his...

gen_greyface• 7 years ago

Surprised to see India not mentioned in the article.

https://internetshutdowns.in/

mrlanderson• 7 years ago

The Western Firewall is forming.

bayesian_horse5• 7 years ago

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.

adamsea9• 7 years ago

if only because politics can eventually tackle any technology.

This. 100%. I think a lot of technologists struggle with this for various (understandable) reasons.

0x8BADF00D• 7 years ago

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.

Frost1x• 7 years ago

We're heading in the opposite direction because decentralization typically flies in the face of business interests. It's essentially the Apple IBM 1984 commercial, all over again.

If a business has something to sell, they want to he the central authority of it, otherwise someone else is making money.

Decentralized technologies/IP can certainly grow inside a given business but they still want to maintain some sort of stranglehold so as not to make that IP public if possible or maintain some sort of legal restrictions on its usage.

guavaNinja• 7 years ago

And I couldn't access the link because medium is blocked here in Egypt. The irony

neiman• 7 years ago

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.

netcan• 7 years ago

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.

alerighi• 7 years ago

As Stallman said, this technology would have been Stalin's dream.

We must control the amount of data that we put in the hands of others, and we must do that avoiding the use of services that tracks us, avoid Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and we must use only encrypted communication. Who says that in our democratic country in a couple of years will not arrive a dictator that will use this data that was collected to repress us? To me is not only possible, but probable, seeing the cult of the strong man in power that is appreciated nowadays.

talkingtab2• 7 years ago

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.

johnday2• 7 years ago

I think it's easier and more correct to view it the other way round: propaganda is a form of advertising. Specifically it's political advertising which intends to bring you round to some viewpoint.

Viewed this way it's much easier to see the evils that advertising can and does propagate.

pelliphant2• 7 years ago

Isn't it easier to see the evil parts of advertising if one calls it a form of propaganda than the other way around?

In my opinion: using the first sentence of the wikipedia articles for advertising and propaganda, I would argue that advertising is a sub-set of propaganda:

Propaganda is information that is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.

Advertising is a marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service or idea.

Nasrudith5• 7 years ago

The second paragraph's is irrelevant - it doesn't matter what we consider okay for businesses, these aren't businesses and they just need access to communication. Propaganda was already being used - it just took a few decades for them to catch on and refine their methods, ones which are separate from advertising but similiar.

talkingtab2• 7 years ago

If a purpose of the discussion is to understand a problem and consider what we can do to fix it, then it is relevant. Invasive advertising has acclimated us, legitimized and provided a vast mechanism for user manipulation. And you are correct there are other mechanisms and methods.

sdinsn3• 7 years ago

What does this have to do with the article?

fredley• 7 years ago

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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04

mc328• 7 years ago

Kinda but advertising was called propaganda in some places before the term was marred by WWII and was afterwards rebranded as advertising.

dangerlibrary• 7 years ago

In some languages it was never rebranded (I believe the Portuguese word for "advertisement" is just "propaganda")

mAEStro-paNDa• 7 years ago

It was rebranded "public relations", as noted in the referenced documentary. A central figure in the film is Edward Bernays, who was referred to as "the father of public relations".

buckminster• 7 years ago

It was the 1920s after WWI.

rpastuszak• 7 years ago

I haven't watched the documentary, but I assume you're familiar with the impact of behaviorism on the advertising industry, before WW2?

John B. Watson[0] (founder of the behavioural psychology school) pivoted to advertising in the beginning of the 20th century.

For those who are not familiar with the subject or his research methods, I recommend reading up on the Little Albert experiment[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Albert_experiment

malvosenior3• 7 years ago

The Century of the Self does cover advertising being born from early 20th century psychology:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self#Overvi...

I don't remember if Watson is explicitly mentioned though (it's possible he is, it's been a while since I've seen it).

lammalamma25• 7 years ago

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.

dmos62• 7 years ago

Western business practices is the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the title. The internet has been a weapon for a while now. The authoritarians are late to the party and they are putting their specific spin on it, but we've been doing it for some time now. NSA, Cambridge Analytica, mass surveillance by big-business, general manipulation through media (e.g. news outlets, advertisement). The authoritarian regimes function differently, so they do it differently. I've no sympathy for them, but pointing fingers saying "they've weaponized the internet" is severe hyperopia.

einpoklum• 7 years ago

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.

ChrisMarshallNY• 7 years ago

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.

at_a_remove• 7 years ago

Database Nation (Simson Garfinkel, 2000) was a nice intro to the topic. I agree that the abstraction into a computer jargon renders the topic more distant, somehow, to people than the Violent Femmes bit: "I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record."

m000• 7 years ago

Oh those nasty authoritarians! IMHO, that's a pretty narrow point of view, reminiscent of cold-war rhetoric. There's a 2016 documentary called Black Code [1] on the weaponization of the internet. While the documentary also focuses on "authoritarian" nations, their commentary was more insightful:

it feels, I think to many, exotic and different and it couldn't happen here. And I think, in fact, what you're seeing in Syria is this is what happens when the risks get higher but the technology is the same.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5937964/

ljw1001• 7 years ago

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.

gcmptra• 7 years ago

Yea, must fight back!

Authoritarian nations are turning the internet into a weapon

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