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In Turkey as in many other countries it's a case of a person takes control over the country through populistic propaganda, then censor all news. The only news a

In Turkey as in many other countries it's a case of a person takes control over the country through populistic propaganda, then censor all news. The only news available is the government approved news about how great the great leader is. The population doesn't speak English so even if they could get a hold of uncensored news from the outside, they couldn't read it. Absolutely everything that has to do with trying to protest the government or critique them, or being connected to anyone that do, will lead to prison on terrorist charges. It's not that people want to live under oppressive maniacs, it's that the oppressive maniac is depicted as a wonderful great leader that fights for the small people like them and will make their country great again. So even if you hold fair elections, a huge chunk of people think the oppressive maniac seems like a pretty okay guy and will vote for him again.

gazorpazorpaway 9y ago
This is what excites me about the future. As technology develops it will hopefully be harder to control information in a whole country. Imagine if it was impossible for any government to block or censor anything.
- mamon 9y ago
  No, exactly the opposite. Technology, especially Big Data and Machine Learning enable more strict information censorship by government. Take Facebook ML algorithms blocking accounts for "hate speech" as an example and extrapolate.
  - gazorpzorpaway 9y ago
    Unfortunately I also agree with you completely on this. Automatic processing (blocking) of information will be much easier if you are a government. But what I mean is that we got more transparency into the world as we have started using the Internet. Before I had to rely on the travel agencies promising words about an hotel. Now I can read hundreds of reviews from past visitors. This isn't to say that this data is not open to manipulation. But at least in a lot of ways the floodgates are open and we are not going to go back to a world where zero transparency exists in a lot of areas. Hopefully this can expand to how you were treated by the police, the sources of income of scientists releasing papers about how sugar is great for kids and so on. You get the point. Getting reliable news is obviously one of the big hard problems, as we have seen in last years and as in the example you mentioned. I guess it's another discussion (but relevant to oppressive regimes).

gazorpazorpaway 9y ago

This is what excites me about the future. As technology develops it will hopefully be harder to control information in a whole country. Imagine if it was impossible for any government to block or censor anything.

mamon 9y ago
No, exactly the opposite. Technology, especially Big Data and Machine Learning enable more strict information censorship by government. Take Facebook ML algorithms blocking accounts for "hate speech" as an example and extrapolate.
- gazorpzorpaway 9y ago
  Unfortunately I also agree with you completely on this. Automatic processing (blocking) of information will be much easier if you are a government. But what I mean is that we got more transparency into the world as we have started using the Internet. Before I had to rely on the travel agencies promising words about an hotel. Now I can read hundreds of reviews from past visitors. This isn't to say that this data is not open to manipulation. But at least in a lot of ways the floodgates are open and we are not going to go back to a world where zero transparency exists in a lot of areas. Hopefully this can expand to how you were treated by the police, the sources of income of scientists releasing papers about how sugar is great for kids and so on. You get the point. Getting reliable news is obviously one of the big hard problems, as we have seen in last years and as in the example you mentioned. I guess it's another discussion (but relevant to oppressive regimes).