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Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube
- cherylskylar 6y agoImportant to see whether the ban imposed by telecoms are to be permanent, or whether they will be lifted after the election. Great civil unrest may arise if people still don't have access to the digital infrastructure they feel they are entitled to after an election favorable to the current govt
- ilaksh 6y agoI disagree. Censoring everyone and even further shutting down a critical infrastructure like app stores during an election means you have to wonder if that government is doing more harm than good.
- tester756 6y agohow's "app store" critical infrastructure? internet access should be enough
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago"The internet" is both browser based web pages as well as various mobile phone based apps.
- frenchy 6y agoWhile you might consider software that runs on the internet to be part of the internet itself, not being able to run some of the software doesn't mean you can't access the internet. A little bit less pedantically though, while this is certainly a blow to internet freedom, and not a good thing, I think most of us would agree (at least in the long-term) that access to the web is more important to freedom that a collection of proprietary apps.
- tester756 6y agowhat critical stuff is not avaliable via web browser but is via app?
- throwaway45349 6y agoBanking, for one.
- tester756 6y agowhy would banking not be avaliable via www?
- throwaway45349 6y agoMany banks don't provide HTTP endpoints (except for business versions). My bank, Monzo, does not. My other bank TSB does provide a website, but it's awful.
- owowow 6y agoWait, you have to use a smartphone app to interact with your bank? There is no website with 95% of the functionality (or bonus functionality that the app doesn't have) available as a website for desktop users? This is rather unusual, the credit union I use in the USA offers an iOS and Android app that is literally a webview of their mobile website, plus a dash of OCR for check handling. Using the PWA is nearly identical, it even works on a PinePhone with Maemo or any other operating system that can run a semi-modern browser.
- throwaway45349 6y agoYup that's pretty much it. To Monzo's credit they seem to make a point to work without Google Play Services, but iOS users would be screwed in the event the App Store was blocked.
- meibo 6y agoWhat can you do on your Apple iPhone without Apple servers? Hint: it's nothing.
- colejohnson66 6y agoThe stock apps include a web browser, email client, and more. Sure, the apps are what make the phone, but to say you can’t do anything on a stock iPhone is a lie. And for those inclined enough, there’s AltStore for sideloading.
- meibo 6y agoYou do need an Apple account and constant connection to Apple servers to be able to sign development and AltStore apps - I assume for a govt that wants to block the store, blocking auth or signing servers is just one more line on a memo. But of course you're right - you can use the web fine, provided the modern web apps you're using aren't crippled by Apple's slow API adoption in Safari, which is of course to drive you to the better experiences that are waiting for you in the hypothetically accessible App Store.
- zxspectrum1982 6y agoMeaning Epic is right: the Apple Store dependency and monopoly is abusive.
- zepto 6y agoIf you choose to buy something like that, how is it ‘abuse’?
- throwaway45349 6y agoSure, but there are only two choices.
- zepto 6y agoSo what? One choice gives you what you want.
- BlueTemplar 6y agoIt's critical for those people who's only computer is an iPhone.
- depressedpanda 6y agoA single point of failure, so easily subverted by nefarious actors, seems like a grave architectural flaw on the iPhone to me.
- jimkleiber 6y agoI remember when building an Android app back in 2012-2014, that if it had in-app purchases, it seemed to have to go through the Play Store. I wonder if banning the Play Store will hinder apps that rely on in-app payments. Anybody know?
- hulahoof 6y agoThird party apps can handle payment however they want (e.g. gambling apps) but I would expect apps downloaded from the play store not to work if they are connect via play services
- nevi-me 6y agoApps and updates to apps. If much of the internet is crippled already, targeting app stores and YouTube could be seen to be limiting options effectively for users. With app stores blocked, what prevents the government from blocking messaging apps next, as they won't have ways of providing updates to users? I'm referring to Telegram and what they've previously done to try circumvent blocking techniques.
- ilaksh 6y agoWhat Trump was doing was extreme, but stories like might make you think twice about enthusiasm for censorship.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tobylane 6y agoWhat if I’m enthusiastically against censorship and enthusiastically for deplatforming in cases like Trump? Which makes me strongly dislike the news in the post.
- jedimastert 6y agoI'm not arguing for or against anything, but those views seem opposed to each other. Can you talk more about how you can allow for any form of de-platforming while also feeling strongly against censorship?
- jtr1 6y agoI'd guess you could point at the metaphor implied in the word "de-platforming." Free speech doesn't necessitate that every person gets a stage and a microphone. If we were in a physical auditorium and the president started encouraging violence among the audience, is it a violation of free speech for the theatre to cut his mic? That said, I'm still conflicted about this. I think it's possible to believe both that 1) there is a material threat of violence from continuing to give the president the equivalent of a giant megaphone, and 2) giving private corporations unilateral decisions-making power over who gets a platform is probably not in the long-term best interests of democracy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dleslie 6y agoCensorship is the Government stating that person A must not communicate with person B. Deplatforming/cancelling is person C _asking_ person A not to communicate with person B, under threat of person C no longer communicating with person A.
- mc32 6y agoGiven how given to certain narratives some of these services are, I’m not surprised and I would predict more governments will do similar things pre-election. Now of course most of the governments that would do this would be authoritarian and would look to control their own narrative, I think this illustrates how unbalanced and agenda-driven these media and social graph services have become who bring in foreign values to local elections. This interference used to be called neo-imperialism not too long ago by the same people who now advocate for these narratives.
- vbezhenar 6y agoSome governments can force *Store to ban whatever they want. Some can't, so they have to resort to banning stores.
- bilbo0s 6y agoOnly going from what I've observed on the continent, (especially in the EAC), but I think it's a bit deeper than that right now. Today, right across Africa, governments are studying the possibilities of restricting foreign internet services. Both as a way of controlling the information their populations get to view, but also as a means of addressing high youth unemployment among educated workers by giving their domestic internet firms the room to take root. This is actually an interesting sideshow in the more global tendency towards balkanization. But take my word for it, young startup type guys from Entebbe-Kampala, (and, with AfCFTA, even places like Dar and Nairobi), will be very active trying to press their advantage. The political side of this shutdown is predictable, but the interesting action is the long game. I think these kinds of shutdowns are dry runs for the sort of internet world African leaders are quietly pressing for in their future.
- amolo 6y agothis is incorrect. Majority of African leaders and regimes are not interested in addressing high youth unemployment among educated workers by giving their domestic internet firms the room to take root. Even local startups have little to no support from their own countries. This is purely authoritarian. They are more interested in retaining power to continue exploiting their own people.
- sbhn 6y agoRemember that british company called Cambridge Analytica
- mimikatz 6y agoIf I ran was in charge of a government after watching them all ban Trump's ability to communicate at the same time, I too would think about banning them to protect myself.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- andrewzah 6y agoOr maybe you could do some introspection and think about what would have to lead up to you being banned? Every politician on twitter has been fine except for 1 particular individual. Nevermind that 1 individual -chose- to use twitter as their primary base of operations, instead of the usual channels.
- BlueTemplar 6y agoWeren't others banned at the same time as Trump?
- stevehawk 6y agotwitter did start banning some left extremists... i had never heard of a lot of them so I'd love to hear from someone educated on it if these other bans were just to appear bipartisan or actually meaningful
- ivnubinas 6y ago> Or maybe you could do some introspection and think about what would have to lead up to you being banned? Having the wrong party affiliation?
- mimikatz 6y agoWhy would you as a leader of the country leave it up to chance? What if your country was in conflict with America whose side do you think Google and Apple would side with?
- johndevor 6y agoTime to decentralize everything
- nostromo 6y agoIt’s not fully decentralized, but I’d love to see Signal take on some Twitter and Facebook use cases.
- kawfey 6y agoI would reckon that if Signal were to take over these use cases, Signal itself would just turn into the next big tech baddie.
- im3w1l 6y agoIt's 0% decentralized. Banning the president on Signal would not be hard.
- Daniel_sk 6y agoSignal is not a social platform. It's meant for 1:1 or small groups communication (there is a hard limit of members in conversation) as if people met in real life. We can't compare it. Trump would not be able to use it the same way as social platforms, the same way he can't go and talk to every person.
- ajconway 6y agoBanning (or, more precisely, disturbing operation of) a decentralized service is much easier than a big, important centralized one. You just need to obtain the DNS names or IP addresses of the nodes the same way everyone else does — by participating in the network. This way you can even selectively ban the "bad" nodes. Banning a centralized service like gmail is easier, but then you lose in productivity as 90% of your country's businesses are likely to rely on it. As far as privacy goes, it's also easier to coerce admins of smaller nodes to disclose valuable information than fighting with a multinational foreign corporation. This is not an argument against decentralization. It's just not immediately obvious that decentralization does not automatically lead to censorship resistance. To do that we need onion routing or mix networks as a base for all our communications, so that banning the network would be equivalent to disconnecting the ISP from the Internet altogether.
- laurent92 6y ago> foreign values Not even foreign values. Only subset of foreign values which are only shared by the Silicon Valley. Beyond that, half the US people disagree with Google/Apple/Twitter/Facebook’s non-neutral stance on politics, who weighed their full weight in censoring 50% of the political spectrum. I will not call it the pied piper because Uganda weighs nothing, but the GAFA’s politics are now visible as directly harmful in USA, with calls to leftist violence given full platform since 4 years while censoring the 50% rest of the political spectrum, and any country who lets them operate their ideological platform is doomed to live through the Congress event again. Good one, Uganda.
- lallysingh 6y ago50% isn't really the right number, is it? Where did you get it? If you're counting people's political beliefs, the popular vote is a good estimator.
- enedil 6y agoI think this was just an approximation. Nonetheless the order of magnitude is right.
- michaelmrose 6y agoNearly half of the population on average votes Republican because their views align better with the red team but that doesn't mean every one of them is aligned with the far right that is more like 12% of the population not half.
- tehwebguy 6y agoIt’s a guess, and it’s certainly not split R/D in the US.
- amscanne 6y agoThe popular vote is still ~50% in terms of party split — are you questioning the accuracy or precision of the parent’s 50% figure? Edit: I wish people downvoting this question would explain. I literally don’t understand and am asking for clarification.
- rattlesnakedave 6y agoDoes anyone else feel like we’re going down the path of internet Balkanization? Not in any immediate sense, but it seems like a slow rolling type of narrative that we will retrospectively see at the end of the 21st century. I don’t have any _real_ evidence to support this feeling of mine, but occasionally there are blips like this that make me wonder.
- mc32 6y agoI think governments that can will for a couple of reasons. One is to maintain their own narrative, to minimize the influence of foreign players who have little stake in a country. Another is to preserve their own culture and not be overrun by the culture and politics of the service. Another is that these entities can’t be held to account locally. After witnessing how they used their heft and influence in the US you better believe the likes of India, Russia, China, Nigeria, Brazil, etc., will evaluate their relationships with these services.
- klodolph 6y agoI don’t think so, but my guess is as bad as anyone else’s. People have too many family members, coworkers, friends, etc. across country borders. There’s a high cost to cutting your country off from the rest of the internet in any real way. The cost of intercepting / controlling / severing internet communication is high and gets higher as communication volumes get higher, the economy relies more heavy on international communication, and encryption becomes more commonplace. I do think we’re going to see a lot more geofencing as time goes on.
- selfhoster11 6y agoThis was the narrative before Brexit, and yet that didn't ultimately stop it. Game theory rarely helps when the actors aren't perfectly rational, which they aren't.
- throwaway45349 6y agoFrom the perspective of an "irrational actor": Brexit was much more about not liking the political policies of the EU than about cutting the UK off from the rest of the world.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 6y agoI wish there would be a societal awakening in Europe and people would boycott American services. Countries need to reclaim their digital sovereignty if they hope to preserve their culture. Back in college everyone I knew browsed reddit, 9gag, facebook, etc for hours every day. The european youth is getting raised by America and fed its political ideology one meme/discussion thread at a time. It took me a long while to realize I had been brainwashed. A lot of people I know tout themselves as citizens of the world, and consider nationalism a useless thing of the past, seemingly oblivious to the adversarial relationship we're in with our western allies wrt culture and trade.
- systemvoltage 6y agoSo you want to idolicize the model of China?
- ad404b8a372f2b9 6y agoI feel like you're being disingenuous. Just because China does something doesn't mean it's a bad idea, it's certainly in line with their economic interests. I think Americans are very aware of what a treacherous situation you put yourself in when you depend on people ideologically opposite to yourself (e.g: oil and manufacturing). But to be clear I'm not advocating for the Chinese model. I think each country should have their own software platforms to preserve their sovereignty and the interests of their citizens but I think they should be regulated to follow common standards to preserve the openness of the internet.
- dang 6y ago"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Aerroon 6y agoI think the problem is language. English offers a far wider platform to engage people, but it also means that discussions/engagements will be dominated mostly by Americans. Computer use also favors using English. As a result, American influence is kind of inevitable. At the same time though, America also feels the influence from all those other cultures.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- williesleg 6y agoOf course, we're all trying how to block them, they control us all and report to no one.
- eunos 6y agoSeems the great social media purge towards GOP personals really made many countries rethinking their information sovereignty. There's no way they would allow access to social media, the 21st century mass communication be controlled by some Silicon Valley companies located in the USA. Expect the indigenization also occurs in financial ecosystem, etc.
- digdigdag 6y agoDid you even read the article? The reason the Ugandan government is blocking these apps is with the intent, as the article suggests, of stopping misinformation through "citizen journalism", not because the nation of Uganda suddenly had fears of Google or Apple moderating their nation's discourse. Furthermore, the article goes on to say that this kind of block has occurred before in 2016.
- eunos 6y agoI am talking in a more general term. And also they do want ability impose sovereignty upon the narrative. That include the ability to prevent Silicon Valley companies propagate narrative that is not compatible with the sovereign.
- digdigdag 6y agoNo one is forcing you to use "Silicon Valley" products. There's already a precedent set in the courts when a bakery refused to offer service to a gay couple because of personal beliefs. Likewise, Twitter et. al. are simply following the same precedent set to enforce their values in the products they offer. The social media app is not public square and no one is certainly entitled to use it.
- eunos 6y agoAgain I'm talking from sovereign point of view. You don't want Silicon Valley companies to control your country's information flow. There's no guarantee that those companies won't ban the account of government apparatus for whatever reason.
- njanirudh 6y agoA really dangerous precedent if bring set here
- ConfusedDog 6y agoThis is like Feudal Era. All the warlords in different lands are fighting each other.
- MattGaiser 6y agoFacebook and Twitter might do well to just ban politics entirely at this point. It costs them a lot to touch it.
- wffurr 6y agoGood luck defining what counts as “political” speech.
- bordercases 6y agoIf they use any definition at all, that's what matters. We've crossed that rubicon long ago. Platform centralization + corporate privilege gives no lever to challenge definitions at the enforcement level.
- permo-w 6y agoHacker News definitely should
- rvz 6y ago> Facebook and Twitter might do well to just ban politics entirely at this point. So your point is to have Facebook and Twitter policing and monitoring everyone's posts for discussions on general politics. Good luck with that. You better have a definition and where to draw the line on which posts, images, text and speech that fit your definition of 'politics'.
- bordercases 6y agoWhat do bans of radical political groups amount to?
- permo-w 6y agoIs this the first English-speaking country to do something like this? Will be interesting to see what their internet turns out looking like if this is permanent
- blendo 6y agoAny chance of Apple shipping a default VPN in the base iOS image? Running the required servers might be too hard, though.
- vbezhenar 6y agoIt's easy to block that default VPN (or directory server). I don't think there's an easy way for Apple to get around it. IP protocol is too easy to block. I think that it's possible to develop better protocols where every peer will proxy packets if necessary, so it'll be impossible to block it, but that's probably not something that'll replace Internet.
- type0 6y agoIt is often the form of american cultural imperialism that can be revolting to see, everything from calling other people names to that they're not https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=LatinX https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=LatinX to other such bullshit claiming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG5nqlMv48c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG5nqlMv48c
- dang 6y agoPlease do not take HN threads further into ideological or nationalistic flamewar.
- type0 6y agoI had not made any ideological or nationalistic comment I merely stated that culturally american values are very different and is often forced upon people in other countries via the internet. I don't wish HN to become that way, once I see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html enforcing conformity to american culture I will stop using it as I'm sure many users in other countries will. Thank you Dang for moderating accordingly.
- dang 6y agoIf you had expressed it the way you just did here, that would have been fine. But when you frame it with words like "imperialism", "revolting", and "bullshit", that becomes flamewar. As for your general point, HN users are about 50% in the US, and of course some of those are immigrants/expats. So HN is a highly international site. It certainly has a US orientation, but I think that's far from "conformity to American culture" and certainly we have zero intention of forcing that. We want people to be themselves and have curious conversation across their differences. In a way I think a bigger problem here is the opposite to what you're saying. Because so many of the non-American users here have such incredibly good English, it seems on the surface that the site is much more uniform than it is. People have no idea how diverse the community here is, and it makes for a lot of misunderstandings, often bitter ones.
- jhanschoo 6y agoCan someone with more familiarity with Ugandan politics comment? My understanding is that outside developed states, lawful democracy can be very brittle especially in states containing multiple nations and tribes, and when there is a long history where the people tend to put their own nation and tribe before the others in the same state, leading to conflict. The rationale and measure seems to be a better evil if the politics are thusly brittle.
- Synaesthesia 6y agoUganda is ruled by a virtual military dictatorship. There is substantial democratic opposition which is suppressed by the govt. It's quite an oppressive country, you see soldiers in black patrolling the streets on trucks.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoThat latter sentence is true in the "biggest democracy in the world" India as well. I think it's just a common feature in most countries...
- Apocryphon 6y agoHere's some info about the current situation, and the charismatic challenger Bobi Wine: https://twitter.com/PopulismUpdates/status/1341432399683407873 https://twitter.com/PopulismUpdates/status/13414323996834078... https://twitter.com/PopulismUpdates/status/1339695271173705729 https://twitter.com/PopulismUpdates/status/13396952711737057...
- refurb 6y agoI’m currently work from Asia so I follow the local and regional news quite closely. What’s fascinating is that many countries are using the whole tech censorship to justify their own behavior. It’s a bit of “see, even the US agrees dangerous speech should be censored” or “do you want to end up like the US? this is why we have laws about speech”.
- nromiun 6y agoI predict that more and more govts will take similar steps in the future. In the last few days Twitter and Facebook showed the world what they can do (and how effective it is) and govts all over the world are now watching them very closely.
- max_ 6y agoUgandan here, to provide more context; This is clock work, every election period they shutdown social media & electronic payments. It happened in 2016[0] But when an "OTT" tax was imposed on social networks (Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Linkdin) in 2018[1]. Majority didn't want to pay an extra tax(required to use social media) on top of paying for internet. So majority learnt how to use vpns. As a result, the OTT tax was a complete failure [2] and now the Uganda Revenue service is planning on bundling it with internet data costs. Since people now know how to use vpns, social media cant be blocked. So the reason for blocking smartphone app stores is to essentially, STEP 1 i.e Stop people from installing VPNs. STEP 2 will probably be the total blocking of all social media. [0]:https://theatlantic.com/amp/article/463407/ https://theatlantic.com/amp/article/463407/ [1]:https://dw.com/en/uganda-one-year-of-social-media-tax/a-49672632 https://dw.com/en/uganda-one-year-of-social-media-tax/a-4967... [2]:https://techjaja.com/ott-tax-fails-as-ura-proposes-tax-on-internet-bundles/ https://techjaja.com/ott-tax-fails-as-ura-proposes-tax-on-in...
- Apocryphon 6y agoThanks for the additional context. A lot of Americans in this thread are conflating their own country's issues with what's going on in the rest of the world.
- jimkleiber 6y agoFrom what I can tell, my friends in UG with VPN can no longer access WhatsApp. It seems they may have also blocked the VPNs somehow.
- max_ 6y agoThe entire internet was blocked. [0] [0]:https://qz.com/africa/1957137/uganda-cuts-off-internet-ahead-of-election-polls-opening/ https://qz.com/africa/1957137/uganda-cuts-off-internet-ahead...
- onetimemanytime 6y ago>>“We are now having a challenge of citizen journalism. Social media propaganda is certainly not in the best interest of this country’s security. We are looking for a way of dealing with it.” Ah, OK then comrade. Cancel elections as well since you've figured it all out.
- banjomet 6y ago"We never thought it would happen, but in 2024, the year of our lord, it did. It seems that governments are requiring full access to iPhones and using features in ways we didn't think possible. People are now using infrared broadcasting, attached to weapons, government vehicles and buildings, to prevent taking photos near protests and riots. This is the first time it's happened that we know of, and we are scared of the precedent. Over 4,150 people died in a protest in the [redacted African country] at the hands of newly 'elected' military regime, and we have no digital evidence of it, except for the older analog cameras that some people still possessed." https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-patent-disables-camera-at-concerts-2016-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-patent-disables-camera...