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Maybe this is just a detail of Vice's way to sell their articles, but how is providing free services to people who could otherwise not afford them 'colonialism'

Maybe this is just a detail of Vice's way to sell their articles, but how is providing free services to people who could otherwise not afford them 'colonialism'?

labster 11y ago
The colonialism is attempting to enforce Western mores and laws about copyright on the Angolan population. As well as Wikipedia's own culture which is pretty Western itself. While Wikipedia may be attempting to colonize Angola with some of its community conduct values, the population there has another view of Wikipedia's purpose which might be equally valid.
- elcapitan 11y ago
  Maybe I missed the part of the article where it said that people in Angola are being forced to use Wikipedia.
  - amazon_not 11y ago
    Encouraged, is perhaps more appropriate, as Wikipedia is the service being zero rated rather than something else that would be more suitable to the task at hand. Forced, to the extent that they cannot afford to use other services that are not zero rated. The article mentions $2.5 for 50 Mb which is quite expensive by any measure.
  - marcus_holmes 11y ago
    This is the objection to zero-rated services. Angolans get to use the internet, but they only get to use the zero-rated bits of it. And they have to use them in ways that westerners approve of. It comes down to money, really. Do we put a "you must be this rich to use the internet" sign up on the planet's communications, or do we allow people to bring their culture and ideas to the party despite their poverty? This whole thing reminds me of UseNet in the early days. It was supposed to be about news and conversations. It ended up being about sharing copyrighted content, because it was one of the only ways we could do it. So we (Westerners) misused our internet services to share copyrighted content in the early days of our internet experience, why are we even surprised, let alone objecting, that others are doing the same?
    - elcapitan 11y ago
      I still don't understand the argument why people who are suddenly given a free thing, and not forced to use it, are now a victim of that and entitled to get everything for free. If we give free drugs for certain diseases to a poor country, would that mean that we enforce our "Western view on health" on them, and that they are actually entitled to get all drugs for free, otherwise it is a form of colonialism?
      - __jal 11y ago
        That, generally, is not the argument. The side you don't see goes a bit like this[1]: Folks in poor countries aren't stupid, and know Facebook isn't just being nice. Zero-rating strangles local startups who have to compete with the free walled garden; it is a spigot for western culture, which many object to[2]; and it smacks of a particularly Valley-flavored mix of paternalism, greed, and the sort of tote-bagger do-gooderism that led to some major travesties of charity. (You could go look up how Jello Biafra picked his stage name on Wikipedia, over a zero-rated link, if you like.) Suffice to say, there are good reasons why many people in poor countries are extremely wary of westerners bearing gifts. This bit isn't directed at the parent, and is something I wanted to say in a different thread about poverty, but here's a rule of thumb that may help: If you observe something that doesn't make sense to you, it is likely that you don't have the whole picture. This rule applies to the behavior of people with less money than you, as well. [1] If you're really interested, reading some history of colonialism would be good. I don't know your background, but if it involved typical high school U.S. history, you likely learned that colonialism was a sort of adventure-phase where westerners explored and planted flags and whatnot, mostly ignoring the commercial interests driving it. And a lot of the horror. [2] Not even going to get in to that one, aside from saying that if leading contenders in the Republican primary can hate on U.S. culture, so can folks who actually got the pointy end of the stick.
        rpgmaker 11y ago
        While your critique is valid when targeted to the "Free Basics" programs (or similar) when it comes to this particular instance of piracy you're reading too much into it. This is just a piracy hack. People everywhere have been doing this kind of thing for as long as there has been an internet and the reason is usually convenience, not some PolSci-level critique of neoliberalism.
  - fredguth 11y ago
    Maybe colonialism, like racism, is something much more easy to spot when you are the side suffering from it. They are not forced to use Wikipedia. They just happen to live in Africa, where most people live in 19th century by Western/Northern standards and they are hacking their way to 21st century. What would you do if you had to pay 80% of your salary for 1Gb of internet? The hacker culture is about "creatively circumventing limitations of systems to achieve novel and clever outcomes". I can't find a better example of it. Let the others call them pirates, but here I think we should celebrate what they did and call them by what they really are, true hackers.
    - elcapitan 11y ago
      I was never arguing the creativity part of the wikipedia hack, I adore that and welcome it. I can absolutely understand why they do it and how they do it. I was just questioning the sense of entitlement that is apparently hidden in the "colonialism" criticism, but this seems to be so ideological that it's hard to get to a basic agreement. Different views on the world, I guess.
      - tobitobi 11y ago
        I can understand the sentiment of feeling offended by the term "colonialism" when giving away something for free. It implies a negative intent when really people/organizations intended to do something charitable. That said, I can also understand the sentiment of feeling "colonialized" when people are only allowed to use something under conditions/mores imposed by a "foreign party". Different world views then? I think it's more like two sides of the same coin...
      - jtnegrotto 11y ago
        It might be more comparable to missionary work. Wikipedia is providing valuable resources, but that charitable work can be interwoven with foreign ideals. But it seems like Wikipedia are conscious of that, so they've taken a hands-off approach to this.
    - theoh 11y ago
      Hacking doesn't always cost the system operator anything, in fact I think the confusion between hacking as the activity of creating creative improvised solutions and the circumvention of security comes from settings like the hacking of the phone system where the cost to the phone network of phreakers making calls was negligible. File sharing is a big resource hog. It's a totally different story.
  - Avshalom 11y ago
    Well define 'forced' in your view please. If I hold a gun to your head and say your money or your life am I reeeallly forcing you to give me you money or are you giving me your money out your own choice? Absent Mindflayers 'forced' is always going to be on a continuum. So if I roll in and say "Here have this access to this thing everyone in the world claims is an economic and social miracle. Free!" and then later once you start using it I roll back around and say "oh yeah, by the way you have to follow the laws of the United States, the laws of a country you are entirely unrepresented by, if you want to use this thing that you're already using. This thing which every one swears is an absolute game changer, this thing that people claim will jump you into the 21st century* , this thing that everyone around the world swears you need." Okay it's not a gun to their head but it certainly feels more than a hair coercive. *people being varying levels of racist/ignorant in believing that "the 21st century" is not a date on a calendar but instead a particular sort of culture.
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      It may "feel" coercive but you didn't make any sort of case that it is. You may view words as having personal definitions that make your point valid but that is a linguistic trick, not an argument.
      - Avshalom 11y ago
        and by 'personal definition' do you mean 'apparently in agreement with half the posters here and at least one editor and journalist at vice'?
- NotMeIndeed 11y ago
  It's not about Western mores, it's about people stealing other peoples stuff. I'm sure stealing in Angola is not tolerated, stealing from these "pirates" would make them angry.
  - ingenieros 11y ago
    Didn't Zuckerberg steal the Facebook idea from the Winklevoss twins?? Aren't folks in the west also using platforms like YouTube and Facebook to post copyrighted videos and content??
  - kwhitefoot 11y ago
    1. Copyright violation is not theft 2. Copyright is not a right, it is a government granted, time limited, monopoly. In the Act of Anne it was for 12 years and that is how it should have stayed. Now it is life plus 75 which is simply oppressive and counterproductive.
- notahacker 11y ago
  Would you express the same cultural relativistic sentiments about the validity of purpose if a small group decided to repurpose your Wiki? It's very damaging to trade with the developing world if we start accusing companies of "attempting to colonize" because they have the temerity to expect people granted subsidised access to their website to actually play by the same rules as everyone else. I mean, if we start assuming that Angolans can't or shouldn't abide by the same rules as everyone else, it's very easy to just ensure services aren't affordable to the average Angolan again. Angolans might have more reason to avoid paying for content than the rest of the world and they might have more reason to use Wikipedia or Facebook as a vector for delivering pirated content than the rest of the world, but the people pirating the content in this manner are at least as aware and deliberate in their circumvention of rules as crackers in other countries, and they should be respected for their clever hacks and blocked from uploading just like crackers elsewhere, and not patronised as people who couldn't possibly be expected to understand or accept Western mores.
  - zahmahkibo 11y ago
    For several centuries "trade" with the third world has essentially meant theft and imperialism, so to answer your question, yes.
  - emodendroket 11y ago
    OK, then let's stop pretending this is a benevolent effort by Internet companies to get people on the Internet if that's not what it is. Facebook wants to have it both ways.
    - notahacker 11y ago
      And the rampant profiteering entity that is Wikipedia? Are you seriously arguing the Wikimedia Foundation's intentions can't possibly be benevolent because they won't let Angolans turn their server space into a repository of pirated content?
      - emodendroket 11y ago
vacri 11y ago
It's training users to only use their products, and by the time access becomes cheaper, those products will be able to crowd out any competitors. It also means that any local competitors don't get fair treatment, and will automatically lose to these services provided by the 'colonials'.
- elcapitan 11y ago
  Is that an argument that makes any sense in the context of Wikipedia? Where users actually form the content itself, and where access and content are free anyway everywhere?
  - robotastronaut 11y ago
    I thought it was a liberal use of colonialism (but still fair) until I reached the part in the article about disabling IP ranges for not using the service in ways that align with admin sensibilities. In particular, the reenabling of an account because its contributions were seen as valuable illustrates the power relationships at play here. Angolans don't seem to be able to form content the way they think it should be formed, and are required to go through an outsider gatekeeper. Colonialism becomes more relevant when you consider that these services are the only ones that were made free and widely accessible. Over time, it pushes western/northern concepts of knowledge, data organization, copyright, etc onto a culture that didn't ask for it. That's colonialism.
    - makapuf 11y ago
      I'm largely in favor of a reduction in quite a few of those concepts here in the West(North). HOWEVER, you can survive if you can't pirate and edit wikipedia at the same time. You can use wikipedia for free, and express yourself better, within wikipedia rules. Same for all of us. That's a pure bonus (that some poor people I know here would like to have for education btw). How does that prevent you from having a better internet ? Because you're too poor as a country ? Well preventing to have Free wikipedia will not solve that. having a free wikipedia will 1) show you the greatness of internet even if limited, 2) make you more educated so potentially richer so potentially with more disposable income to afford full internet. Then you can't say well, it discourages you from getting anything other than wikipedia because it's good enough AND you're missing an important part of internet which is pirating US movies (which are much more invasive worldwide). I don't see many differences between this situation and the one in the west ~10/15 years ago without torrents sites, and barely a few sites available for free if you used the free AOL 50hour CDs, trying to pirate photoshop with disks. We managed to survive and grow internet also. Of course, Facebook offering is entirely different. Offering free internet for the whole earth would be nice. It's not a requirement however.
diskcat 11y ago
Basically anything that involves somebody from africa not being 100% happy with something from the west = colonialism to some people.
tryitnow 11y ago
It's colonialism because it's patronizing. You can have this much of the Internet, but no more. If that's your approach then you don't understand the main value proposition of the web. These programs are silly and ineffective. Facebook and Wikipedia should just channel their funds to a join effort at making all of the Internet accessible. We've been down this road before, it didn't work for AOL, why keep trying it?
usrusr 11y ago
Inhibiting development by providing imports at prices that are difficult to match by local offerings, that's about as colonialistic as it can get. In the case of pirated entertainment on donated bandwidth, the effective price of those imports is zero. But this is surely not what the article meant by "digital colonialism", so your question remains unanswered.
placeybordeaux 11y ago
The concept is basically that facebook is trying to establish a colony of users by drastically undercutting the competition in terms of $/byte. They establish an unequal playing field tilted in their favor. IMO the real losers are facebook competitors.
WizardlySquid 11y ago
It's not, Vice is just full of edgy hipsters.
jrochkind1 11y ago
>how is providing free services to people who could otherwise not afford them 'colonialism'? The British sold cloth in India at lower prices, undoubtedly providing many people with cloth they could not otherwise afford, and destroying India's textile industry making India dependent on buying British cloth. Oh, they also insisted upon opium (that China could not otherwise afford?) being legal in China, when China wanted to prohibit it, and fought a war over it, because they wanted to sell opium in China.

Maybe this is just a detail of Vice's way to sell their articles, but how is providing free services to people who could otherwise not afford them 'colonialism'?

labster 11y ago

The colonialism is attempting to enforce Western mores and laws about copyright on the Angolan population. As well as Wikipedia's own culture which is pretty Western itself. While Wikipedia may be attempting to colonize Angola with some of its community conduct values, the population there has another view of Wikipedia's purpose which might be equally valid.

elcapitan 11y ago
Maybe I missed the part of the article where it said that people in Angola are being forced to use Wikipedia.
- amazon_not 11y ago
  Encouraged, is perhaps more appropriate, as Wikipedia is the service being zero rated rather than something else that would be more suitable to the task at hand. Forced, to the extent that they cannot afford to use other services that are not zero rated. The article mentions $2.5 for 50 Mb which is quite expensive by any measure.
- marcus_holmes 11y ago
  This is the objection to zero-rated services. Angolans get to use the internet, but they only get to use the zero-rated bits of it. And they have to use them in ways that westerners approve of. It comes down to money, really. Do we put a "you must be this rich to use the internet" sign up on the planet's communications, or do we allow people to bring their culture and ideas to the party despite their poverty? This whole thing reminds me of UseNet in the early days. It was supposed to be about news and conversations. It ended up being about sharing copyrighted content, because it was one of the only ways we could do it. So we (Westerners) misused our internet services to share copyrighted content in the early days of our internet experience, why are we even surprised, let alone objecting, that others are doing the same?
  - elcapitan 11y ago
    I still don't understand the argument why people who are suddenly given a free thing, and not forced to use it, are now a victim of that and entitled to get everything for free. If we give free drugs for certain diseases to a poor country, would that mean that we enforce our "Western view on health" on them, and that they are actually entitled to get all drugs for free, otherwise it is a form of colonialism?
    - __jal 11y ago
      That, generally, is not the argument. The side you don't see goes a bit like this[1]: Folks in poor countries aren't stupid, and know Facebook isn't just being nice. Zero-rating strangles local startups who have to compete with the free walled garden; it is a spigot for western culture, which many object to[2]; and it smacks of a particularly Valley-flavored mix of paternalism, greed, and the sort of tote-bagger do-gooderism that led to some major travesties of charity. (You could go look up how Jello Biafra picked his stage name on Wikipedia, over a zero-rated link, if you like.) Suffice to say, there are good reasons why many people in poor countries are extremely wary of westerners bearing gifts. This bit isn't directed at the parent, and is something I wanted to say in a different thread about poverty, but here's a rule of thumb that may help: If you observe something that doesn't make sense to you, it is likely that you don't have the whole picture. This rule applies to the behavior of people with less money than you, as well. [1] If you're really interested, reading some history of colonialism would be good. I don't know your background, but if it involved typical high school U.S. history, you likely learned that colonialism was a sort of adventure-phase where westerners explored and planted flags and whatnot, mostly ignoring the commercial interests driving it. And a lot of the horror. [2] Not even going to get in to that one, aside from saying that if leading contenders in the Republican primary can hate on U.S. culture, so can folks who actually got the pointy end of the stick.
      - rpgmaker 11y ago
        While your critique is valid when targeted to the "Free Basics" programs (or similar) when it comes to this particular instance of piracy you're reading too much into it. This is just a piracy hack. People everywhere have been doing this kind of thing for as long as there has been an internet and the reason is usually convenience, not some PolSci-level critique of neoliberalism.
- fredguth 11y ago
  Maybe colonialism, like racism, is something much more easy to spot when you are the side suffering from it. They are not forced to use Wikipedia. They just happen to live in Africa, where most people live in 19th century by Western/Northern standards and they are hacking their way to 21st century. What would you do if you had to pay 80% of your salary for 1Gb of internet? The hacker culture is about "creatively circumventing limitations of systems to achieve novel and clever outcomes". I can't find a better example of it. Let the others call them pirates, but here I think we should celebrate what they did and call them by what they really are, true hackers.
  - elcapitan 11y ago
    I was never arguing the creativity part of the wikipedia hack, I adore that and welcome it. I can absolutely understand why they do it and how they do it. I was just questioning the sense of entitlement that is apparently hidden in the "colonialism" criticism, but this seems to be so ideological that it's hard to get to a basic agreement. Different views on the world, I guess.
    - tobitobi 11y ago
      I can understand the sentiment of feeling offended by the term "colonialism" when giving away something for free. It implies a negative intent when really people/organizations intended to do something charitable. That said, I can also understand the sentiment of feeling "colonialized" when people are only allowed to use something under conditions/mores imposed by a "foreign party". Different world views then? I think it's more like two sides of the same coin...
    - jtnegrotto 11y ago
      It might be more comparable to missionary work. Wikipedia is providing valuable resources, but that charitable work can be interwoven with foreign ideals. But it seems like Wikipedia are conscious of that, so they've taken a hands-off approach to this.
  - theoh 11y ago
    Hacking doesn't always cost the system operator anything, in fact I think the confusion between hacking as the activity of creating creative improvised solutions and the circumvention of security comes from settings like the hacking of the phone system where the cost to the phone network of phreakers making calls was negligible. File sharing is a big resource hog. It's a totally different story.
- Avshalom 11y ago
  Well define 'forced' in your view please. If I hold a gun to your head and say your money or your life am I reeeallly forcing you to give me you money or are you giving me your money out your own choice? Absent Mindflayers 'forced' is always going to be on a continuum. So if I roll in and say "Here have this access to this thing everyone in the world claims is an economic and social miracle. Free!" and then later once you start using it I roll back around and say "oh yeah, by the way you have to follow the laws of the United States, the laws of a country you are entirely unrepresented by, if you want to use this thing that you're already using. This thing which every one swears is an absolute game changer, this thing that people claim will jump you into the 21st century* , this thing that everyone around the world swears you need." Okay it's not a gun to their head but it certainly feels more than a hair coercive. *people being varying levels of racist/ignorant in believing that "the 21st century" is not a date on a calendar but instead a particular sort of culture.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    It may "feel" coercive but you didn't make any sort of case that it is. You may view words as having personal definitions that make your point valid but that is a linguistic trick, not an argument.
    - Avshalom 11y ago
      and by 'personal definition' do you mean 'apparently in agreement with half the posters here and at least one editor and journalist at vice'?
NotMeIndeed 11y ago
It's not about Western mores, it's about people stealing other peoples stuff. I'm sure stealing in Angola is not tolerated, stealing from these "pirates" would make them angry.
- ingenieros 11y ago
  Didn't Zuckerberg steal the Facebook idea from the Winklevoss twins?? Aren't folks in the west also using platforms like YouTube and Facebook to post copyrighted videos and content??
- kwhitefoot 11y ago
  1. Copyright violation is not theft 2. Copyright is not a right, it is a government granted, time limited, monopoly. In the Act of Anne it was for 12 years and that is how it should have stayed. Now it is life plus 75 which is simply oppressive and counterproductive.
notahacker 11y ago
Would you express the same cultural relativistic sentiments about the validity of purpose if a small group decided to repurpose your Wiki? It's very damaging to trade with the developing world if we start accusing companies of "attempting to colonize" because they have the temerity to expect people granted subsidised access to their website to actually play by the same rules as everyone else. I mean, if we start assuming that Angolans can't or shouldn't abide by the same rules as everyone else, it's very easy to just ensure services aren't affordable to the average Angolan again. Angolans might have more reason to avoid paying for content than the rest of the world and they might have more reason to use Wikipedia or Facebook as a vector for delivering pirated content than the rest of the world, but the people pirating the content in this manner are at least as aware and deliberate in their circumvention of rules as crackers in other countries, and they should be respected for their clever hacks and blocked from uploading just like crackers elsewhere, and not patronised as people who couldn't possibly be expected to understand or accept Western mores.
- zahmahkibo 11y ago
  For several centuries "trade" with the third world has essentially meant theft and imperialism, so to answer your question, yes.
- emodendroket 11y ago
  OK, then let's stop pretending this is a benevolent effort by Internet companies to get people on the Internet if that's not what it is. Facebook wants to have it both ways.
  - notahacker 11y ago
    And the rampant profiteering entity that is Wikipedia? Are you seriously arguing the Wikimedia Foundation's intentions can't possibly be benevolent because they won't let Angolans turn their server space into a repository of pirated content?
    - emodendroket 11y ago

vacri 11y ago

It's training users to only use their products, and by the time access becomes cheaper, those products will be able to crowd out any competitors. It also means that any local competitors don't get fair treatment, and will automatically lose to these services provided by the 'colonials'.

elcapitan 11y ago
Is that an argument that makes any sense in the context of Wikipedia? Where users actually form the content itself, and where access and content are free anyway everywhere?
- robotastronaut 11y ago
  I thought it was a liberal use of colonialism (but still fair) until I reached the part in the article about disabling IP ranges for not using the service in ways that align with admin sensibilities. In particular, the reenabling of an account because its contributions were seen as valuable illustrates the power relationships at play here. Angolans don't seem to be able to form content the way they think it should be formed, and are required to go through an outsider gatekeeper. Colonialism becomes more relevant when you consider that these services are the only ones that were made free and widely accessible. Over time, it pushes western/northern concepts of knowledge, data organization, copyright, etc onto a culture that didn't ask for it. That's colonialism.
  - makapuf 11y ago
    I'm largely in favor of a reduction in quite a few of those concepts here in the West(North). HOWEVER, you can survive if you can't pirate and edit wikipedia at the same time. You can use wikipedia for free, and express yourself better, within wikipedia rules. Same for all of us. That's a pure bonus (that some poor people I know here would like to have for education btw). How does that prevent you from having a better internet ? Because you're too poor as a country ? Well preventing to have Free wikipedia will not solve that. having a free wikipedia will 1) show you the greatness of internet even if limited, 2) make you more educated so potentially richer so potentially with more disposable income to afford full internet. Then you can't say well, it discourages you from getting anything other than wikipedia because it's good enough AND you're missing an important part of internet which is pirating US movies (which are much more invasive worldwide). I don't see many differences between this situation and the one in the west ~10/15 years ago without torrents sites, and barely a few sites available for free if you used the free AOL 50hour CDs, trying to pirate photoshop with disks. We managed to survive and grow internet also. Of course, Facebook offering is entirely different. Offering free internet for the whole earth would be nice. It's not a requirement however.

diskcat 11y ago

Basically anything that involves somebody from africa not being 100% happy with something from the west = colonialism to some people.

tryitnow 11y ago

It's colonialism because it's patronizing. You can have this much of the Internet, but no more. If that's your approach then you don't understand the main value proposition of the web. These programs are silly and ineffective. Facebook and Wikipedia should just channel their funds to a join effort at making all of the Internet accessible. We've been down this road before, it didn't work for AOL, why keep trying it?

usrusr 11y ago

Inhibiting development by providing imports at prices that are difficult to match by local offerings, that's about as colonialistic as it can get. In the case of pirated entertainment on donated bandwidth, the effective price of those imports is zero. But this is surely not what the article meant by "digital colonialism", so your question remains unanswered.

placeybordeaux 11y ago

The concept is basically that facebook is trying to establish a colony of users by drastically undercutting the competition in terms of $/byte. They establish an unequal playing field tilted in their favor. IMO the real losers are facebook competitors.

WizardlySquid 11y ago

It's not, Vice is just full of edgy hipsters.

jrochkind1 11y ago

>how is providing free services to people who could otherwise not afford them 'colonialism'? The British sold cloth in India at lower prices, undoubtedly providing many people with cloth they could not otherwise afford, and destroying India's textile industry making India dependent on buying British cloth. Oh, they also insisted upon opium (that China could not otherwise afford?) being legal in China, when China wanted to prohibit it, and fought a war over it, because they wanted to sell opium in China.