Uganda bans social media ahead of election

https://www.dw.com/en/uganda-bans-social-media-ahead-of-election/a-56204121

by tosh • 6 years ago

65 66 6 years ago

dw.com

tosh• 6 years ago

I can see a future where something like this becomes default in most countries. Unthinkable just a few years ago.

whatshisface2• 6 years ago

Iran and China both banned stuff all the time. I think a few other countries did too, those just leapt to mind first.

wolco53• 6 years ago

When they were shutting down the internet during the arab spring uprising?

dang3• 6 years ago

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

onethought2• 6 years ago

It wasn’t and isn’t unthinkable in most of the world. “Free Speech” is an US thing. It pretty much doesn’t exist anywhere else as a right, and never has.

ImamBayildi• 6 years ago

What about in Canada, Germany, England, France, India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Spain, Italy, etc?

eunos2• 6 years ago

I think even democratic country like India would start to consider "national" social media for national security purpose. Of course, Jio might be a strong lobbyist for that.

treesrule• 6 years ago

We've been doing this for a while: https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/uk-elections-media-b...

meekmockmook2• 6 years ago

I saw Twitter's Public Policy team melting down about this. What did they expect? Pandora's Box has been opened

nostromo• 6 years ago

Turns out the censors don't like to be censored.

solidasparagus3• 6 years ago

Please. Uganda ran newspapers out of the country, they routinely arrest opposing politicians, and they remove anything that might get in the way of the dictator staying in power. Museveni shuts down opposition - it has nothing to do with Twitter other than the fact that Twitter is a popular form of communication.

meekmockmook2• 6 years ago

Well, yeah, it's a dictatorship run by warlords.

It turns out that once you shut down the leader of the world's largest empire, every tinpot thug who fears losing their ability to control their citizens will shut down access to your platform. Whoda thunk? It has nothing to do with right and wrong and everything to do with realpolitik.

dcolkitt• 6 years ago

That may well be. The problem is that Twitter has lost their credibility on the issue. If you make a habit of rolling around in the mud, then don't be surprised if people assume you stink.

This is the rejoinder to those who defended them by saying "they're a private platform, they can do whatever they want". And I actually agree with that. But in spheres of life without explicit legal protections, people will come to rely on informal reputation and cultural norms.

Twitter is learning the hard way about why companies jealously guard their reputation for fairness and neutrality. Taking a public and divisive stand on the culture war issue du jour is rarely smart business. Like many tech darling Icaruses, Jack Dorsey probably thought the time-tested rules of business didn't apply. Watching 10% of his company's value vaporize in a few days was a hard way to learn that's not true. Hopefully $5 billion was worth it to keep attending Bay Area cocktail parties.

At the end of the day Twitter has wrecked its reputation as a fair and neutral platform. It will take at least a generation to repair. A consequence of this will be that in situations like Uganda, nobody will afford it the benefit of the doubt any more.

vkou2• 6 years ago

Nonsense. This ban was not a result of the backlash Trump is suffering. The government of Uganda didn't take some principled stand, here.

I can confidently say that it would have happened anyways, because banning Twitter and Facebook has already been used, multiple times, by various governments in an attempt to illegitimately retain power.

The only Pandora's box that has been opened is one of domestic American politics... And that lid was popped open ~5 years ago. You can't easily put that genie back in the bottle, now.

guscost• 6 years ago

Twitter’s official statement on this is one for the history books:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Policy/status/1349059275461685250

wolco53• 6 years ago

It's strange how they think they are part of an open internet movement.

zionic• 6 years ago

Maintaining the illusion is an important part of any propagandists toolset. Of course your enemies will see right through it, this kind of content is produced for the people you have thoroughly cut off from all other sources of information. It reenforces the the true believer's inner narrative that they are a part of GoodGuyInc.

eplanit• 6 years ago

Wow, exactly.

The phrase of the day is "Cognitive Dissonance".

have_faith• 6 years ago

What's the link? twitter banning a single user for repeatedly breaking the rules is comparable to a countries government banning the social network ahead of an election? seems tenuous.

Anon1096• 6 years ago

Access to information and freedom of expression, including the public conversation on Twitter, is never more important than during democratic processes, particularly elections.

The jokes write themselves

Darmody• 6 years ago

It's funny.

The first tweet condemns internet shutdowns. In the second tweet they say they suspended a number of accounts targeting the election in Uganda.

sergiotapia• 6 years ago

Hilarious - it should be abundantly clear that Twitter are the guys.

kube-system2• 6 years ago

I don't think so. There's a big difference between a reactive censorship of a single powerful person by Twitter and the proactive censorship of an entire population of people with very little power by a government -- both functionally and philosophically.

Trump can summon a press conference 24/7 and have his message broadcast to the entire world. He controls publication on multiple personal and government websites. What comparable publication powers do the people of Uganda have besides social media?

The impact of censorship is only relevant in the context of power.

LordFast2• 6 years ago

Trump wasn't banned before the elections. He wasn't banned after Charlottesville, and then wasn't banned for 3.5 more years while he continued to undermine American institutions. He was only banned after refusing to accept the election results and inciting insurrection with conspiracies.

People are /really/ reaching for something that isn't there. To be clear, I don't think Twitter is "the good guy", but the comments in this subthread are very disappointing.

cpursley• 6 years ago

Are the people running Twitter high 24-7 or just during election season?

themaninthedark• 6 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25704433

RankingMember3• 6 years ago

The difference, as I understand it, is that the government made the choice for people rather than a private organization. Under the US constitution, free speech means that the government cannot limit your speech except in narrow circumstances. This has no bearing on private organizations, which is why Twitter can ban users.

whatshisface2• 6 years ago

US constitution? This happened in Uganda.

RankingMember3• 6 years ago

Right. What I'm saying is that people making comments about this being the same thing Twitter did with the @realDonaldTrump account and others are maybe missing the differences between the two situations.

blisterpeanuts2• 6 years ago

This is splitting hairs. Twitter has no problem booting millions of people off their platform for political purposes. Clearly, they also don't mind that a rising competitor (Parler) was put out of business overnight.

Yet, they don't like it when a country blocks them. This is hypocrisy, regardless how people might try to distinguish one kind of "blocking" from another.

It would be better if Uganda didn't block social media. It would also be better if social media didn't block users here in the U.S.

beervirus• 6 years ago

It would be best of all if social media did not exist.

RankingMember3• 6 years ago

It would also be better if social media didn't block users here in the U.S.

Would it, though? Do you think social media should be a completely unbounded venue for discourse? HN has rules; if I violate them by attacking others or otherwise being a jerk and get banned, is that really a bad thing? I don't think so, personally. We've all been places online with lax standards and absent/ignorant mods, and, generally, it's a shitshow race to the bottom of personal attacks and racism.

fumar• 6 years ago

Should elected officials be allowed to use social networks to communicate with the people? I don't consider myself a traditionalist, but this is one area where I prefer to see elected officials use government and journalistic channels for broadcasting information.

blisterpeanuts2• 6 years ago

But what's the definition of a journalistic channel?

The White House has an official twitter account, also a Youtube channel and a Facebook account. That's a reasonable use of social media, don't you think?

scollet• 6 years ago

The imbalance is clear though. If Museveni can leverage social and state media but Wine can't, then it makes organization, outreach, and exposure much more difficult.

twelfthnight3• 6 years ago

This doesn't look good for Twitter, but comparing blocking an entire country from social media a few days before an election and blocking a few leaders who have clear ties to inciting violent riots via conspiracy theories seems like a false equivalence. Instead of justifying censorship as "good" or "bad" in some essential fashion, I think it's important to be clear about the context.

EDIT: In fact, Twitter has done more than just ban a few leaders, removing many accounts associated with QAnon, for example [1]. The point still stands that context matters and the two situations don't appear to be exactly equivalent. (It can still be argued that Twitter's ban was not good for society, but the argument should be more nuanced than "because censorship is always bad".)

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/11/trump-t...

johndevor2• 6 years ago

clear ties to inciting violent riots

https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1347302588434284544

Twitter selectively enforces their rules, largely targeting conservatives.

twelfthnight3• 6 years ago

I updated my post to be more accurate about the extent of Twitter's actions regarding bans. Also, to be fair, conservatives are associated with the conspiracy theories and the Capitol riots, so it makes sense they would be targeted. I agree it is a shame if there are some conservatives who are not promoting conspiracy theories that have been silenced.

fwsgonzo• 6 years ago

When tens of millions of people protest something, it could just be because they have a legitimate grievance.

That said, it should be perfectly OK to permanently ban seditionists and traitors, as well as those who egg them on. If those are conservatives to you, then that's your words, not mine.

tmpz222• 6 years ago

Are you saying the personal comments of a MSNBC reporter are equivalent to the personal comments of a sitting US president or Senator?

einpoklum• 6 years ago

What you've linked to is a splicing of several segments of video which attempts to link together events, groups, places people and organizations most of which are not actually linked together. For example:

* A person says "looting", and in a following or preceding segment another person, on another channel at another time says "Antifa".

* An image of cars on fire in the background, and segments by some anchors or pundits saying that protests are important, or should not be polite.

So, while I'm no fan on MSNBC, CNN etc., and think they're being rather hypocritical with their treatment of the confirmation protesters - that clip is just under-handed smearing by its author and by you.

kube-system2• 6 years ago

Every large platform selectively enforces rules. The squeakiest wheels get the grease. The Twitter firehose is a notoriously large amount of data; difficult for computers to parse, and impossible for a human to review unless brought to their attention. I don't think it's fair to automatically attribute it to malice.

Also, not sure I'm following what that link is supposed to demonstrate. Twitter has no power to censor cable news networks.

Andrew_nenakhov2• 6 years ago

Double standards are bad. Principles should matter more than your biases.

twelfthnight3• 6 years ago

I'm trying to make the case in my comment above that I don't believe the situations are equivalent and thus there is no double standard. (You can of course disagree with this and I'd be interested in your argument)

There is one standard for leaders who promote documented conspiracy theories and another for blocking an entire country's access to social media in an effort to alter the outcome of an election.

d33lio• 6 years ago

I mean, maybe it sounds like an over step for a country that has day to day violent rebel problems - but honestly... sounds based.

markdown• 6 years ago

This is wonderful, and I hope my country follows suite. We already have laws banning election campaigning in the 24hrs leading up to the elections, but there's no way to control that on social media.

Shutting off FB, Twitter, and Insta during that 24hrs is a great idea.

dang3• 6 years ago

Discussed a couple days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25704433

with an informative top comment from a Ugandan HNer.

Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25749447

shruubi• 6 years ago

Some part of me feels like a ban on social media during an election period is not all that bad. The US has proven to the entire world that people can't be trusted to act civilised and honestly discuss issues, and that lack of trust extends from the highest levels of government down to the average citizen.

That's not to say I am advocating the suppression of speech. All people should be free to speak about corruption and misinformation. But the last twelve months or so have, at least to me, shown that most people would rather burn the public square to the ground than speak of corruption and misinformation. And it does make me wonder what elections would be like in all countries if, at least for the campaign and election period, sites like Twitter were just outright banned.

Uganda bans social media ahead of election

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