4 ms·

Western dotcoms really need gang up together, and look at creating a solution for "unbannability." The Facebook, Amazon, Google hosts a double digit portion of

Western dotcoms really need gang up together, and look at creating a solution for "unbannability." The Facebook, Amazon, Google hosts a double digit portion of the Internet, and can take an even bigger part of it hostage. They can easily force countries to either block Internet completely, or bend over.

IncRnd 5y ago
That is literally the definition of someone calling for companies to act as gangsters and engage in racketeering.
rajivjain 5y ago
It’s not that simple. Twitter has business, operations, and employees in India. Twitter can choose to stop doing business in India. This decision will hurt both Twitter and Indian economy. It’s not in the interest of both parties to keep escalating.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > It’s not in the interest of both parties to keep escalating. I think it clearly is. Modi is set to Robinhood them. If options are set to doing that, and winning the election, or not doing that, and loosing, he will certainly do so. If he will be set to lose it if he not bans them, or bans them, but still lose, he will be way more pliable. Way more.
Sebb767 5y ago
How? Honest question. These companies are large, but they don't have too much power in these countries. Especially China has a lot of internal alternatives (Aliexpress cloud and Baidu for example), so external pressure will really only help them. Case in point: Huawei's Playstore ban - this would probably have killed the phone division of a western country. Then there's the problem of biting the (kid's) hand that builds your hardware and/or servers and the one that pays your bill (AWS customers are not going to be happy when their Chinese customers are blocked). Irrespective of the discussion on whether the tech giants taking such massive political influence is a good thing, I simply don't see how they could.
- baybal2 5y ago
  IP addresses, American dotcoms taken together control a double digit percentage of all IPV4 addresses. + Android + Windows
  - drexlspivey 5y ago
    Then they will just ban the IPs?
    - baybal2 5y ago
      And half of the Internet
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    IP adresses don't matter much - China has a lot of them and in the worst case, they could simply reroute them at the firewall and reuse them internally. Android is fully open source, oonly the play store is controlled by Google. China already has a lot of alternatives (and have a look at Huawei on how well that block worked). Windows would put hurt a bit, yes, but cracked versions of it are not a rarity. Additionally, there's always Linux. So unless MS remote-wipes their machines (and kill themselves by doing so), it would probably not hurt either. And if the country is smaller, like Nigeria, China will be happy to offer their help for a bit of political influence.
    - baybal2 5y ago
      > And if the country is smaller, like Nigeria, China will be happy to offer their help for a bit of political influence. And why not to let them? Half the kingdom for a privilege to kill somebody's Facebook page? A very good trade. Dictators are even more well aware than democracies what opening the door to Beijing means. They will rather not to.
- agustif 5y ago
  They could just allow a handful of their devforce to open source the means (software) for being able to connect to the (real and free) internet from anywhere in earth, no matter what govt rules you've to abide too or whatever! Doesn't this happen somehow? it's just hard technically, I'm sure we can improve the UX
throwaway6250 5y ago
Why would Indians want their politics to be dictated by the west? Indians sacrificed blood sweat and tears to get the British out, why should they have to fight to get the Americans out?
- baybal2 5y ago
  Right now, the educated, and progressive part of Indian society sacrifice blood sweat and tears to get Modi out.
swiley 5y ago
The solution is to not run everything from one organization. I'd like to see Nigeria ban mastodon. Sure they could ban instances and if they got very aggressive with policing they could make it hard to host within the country but it certainly wouldn't be as easy as banning twitter was. FANG will never do this because the centralization gives them an incredible amount of power.
wyattpeak 5y ago
Why on Earth would this be a good thing? I'm all for freedom of information, but I'm even more for foreign companies not ignoring the laws set by the government I elected. Things get murkier when governments don't come to power in kosher ways, but I'm absolutely certain that the solution is not to have a bunch of profit-motivated companies from a completely different country and culture decide what's best for a nation. What happens when they get together and decide to make an unbannable advertising network instead?
- baybal2 5y ago
  What do you want more?
  - wyattpeak 5y ago
    Self-determination. Always.
    - baybal2 5y ago
      > Self-determination. Always. This is the self determination of Nigerian people: https://foreignpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/buhari-nigeria-resign.jpg https://foreignpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/buhari-... You do not like it? Do you like Mr. Bukhari, and his troopers who can shoot you to death, and rob you completely randomly? I think ousting a man who lets his men murder, and rob random people is a very good thing.
      - wyattpeak 5y ago
        I'm not going to speak for Nigerians. If you want Nigerian opinions, ask Nigerians. I am going to say that I don't see how laws imposed by an unelected foreign company are better than laws imposed by an unelected local government. And when we're talking about companies creating unbannable sites, we're absolutely talking about companies dictating law. Edit: Please stop editing your comment after I've responded.
kaladin_1 5y ago
I'd rather people are aware of solutions on a protocol level. Say for example if more people knew how to connect and use Tor. At the moment many Nigerians have downloaded and installed (free) VPNs but I'm afraid of the massive scam that'd follow it. Many of the unknown VPN companies would just harvest people's financial information and all what not...
factorialboy 5y ago
Western dotcoms are pretty impotent when it comes to the Chinese ban. Local alternatives will always crop up
- baybal2 5y ago
  > Western dotcoms are pretty impotent when it comes to the Chinese ban. Because they never even tried.

IncRnd 5y ago

That is literally the definition of someone calling for companies to act as gangsters and engage in racketeering.

rajivjain 5y ago

It’s not that simple. Twitter has business, operations, and employees in India. Twitter can choose to stop doing business in India. This decision will hurt both Twitter and Indian economy. It’s not in the interest of both parties to keep escalating.

baybal2 5y ago
> It’s not in the interest of both parties to keep escalating. I think it clearly is. Modi is set to Robinhood them. If options are set to doing that, and winning the election, or not doing that, and loosing, he will certainly do so. If he will be set to lose it if he not bans them, or bans them, but still lose, he will be way more pliable. Way more.

Sebb767 5y ago

How? Honest question. These companies are large, but they don't have too much power in these countries. Especially China has a lot of internal alternatives (Aliexpress cloud and Baidu for example), so external pressure will really only help them. Case in point: Huawei's Playstore ban - this would probably have killed the phone division of a western country. Then there's the problem of biting the (kid's) hand that builds your hardware and/or servers and the one that pays your bill (AWS customers are not going to be happy when their Chinese customers are blocked). Irrespective of the discussion on whether the tech giants taking such massive political influence is a good thing, I simply don't see how they could.

baybal2 5y ago
IP addresses, American dotcoms taken together control a double digit percentage of all IPV4 addresses. + Android + Windows
- drexlspivey 5y ago
  Then they will just ban the IPs?
  - baybal2 5y ago
    And half of the Internet
- Sebb767 5y ago
  IP adresses don't matter much - China has a lot of them and in the worst case, they could simply reroute them at the firewall and reuse them internally. Android is fully open source, oonly the play store is controlled by Google. China already has a lot of alternatives (and have a look at Huawei on how well that block worked). Windows would put hurt a bit, yes, but cracked versions of it are not a rarity. Additionally, there's always Linux. So unless MS remote-wipes their machines (and kill themselves by doing so), it would probably not hurt either. And if the country is smaller, like Nigeria, China will be happy to offer their help for a bit of political influence.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > And if the country is smaller, like Nigeria, China will be happy to offer their help for a bit of political influence. And why not to let them? Half the kingdom for a privilege to kill somebody's Facebook page? A very good trade. Dictators are even more well aware than democracies what opening the door to Beijing means. They will rather not to.
agustif 5y ago
They could just allow a handful of their devforce to open source the means (software) for being able to connect to the (real and free) internet from anywhere in earth, no matter what govt rules you've to abide too or whatever! Doesn't this happen somehow? it's just hard technically, I'm sure we can improve the UX

throwaway6250 5y ago

Why would Indians want their politics to be dictated by the west? Indians sacrificed blood sweat and tears to get the British out, why should they have to fight to get the Americans out?

baybal2 5y ago
Right now, the educated, and progressive part of Indian society sacrifice blood sweat and tears to get Modi out.

swiley 5y ago

The solution is to not run everything from one organization. I'd like to see Nigeria ban mastodon. Sure they could ban instances and if they got very aggressive with policing they could make it hard to host within the country but it certainly wouldn't be as easy as banning twitter was. FANG will never do this because the centralization gives them an incredible amount of power.

wyattpeak 5y ago

Why on Earth would this be a good thing? I'm all for freedom of information, but I'm even more for foreign companies not ignoring the laws set by the government I elected. Things get murkier when governments don't come to power in kosher ways, but I'm absolutely certain that the solution is not to have a bunch of profit-motivated companies from a completely different country and culture decide what's best for a nation. What happens when they get together and decide to make an unbannable advertising network instead?

baybal2 5y ago
What do you want more?
- wyattpeak 5y ago
  Self-determination. Always.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > Self-determination. Always. This is the self determination of Nigerian people: https://foreignpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/buhari-nigeria-resign.jpg https://foreignpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/buhari-... You do not like it? Do you like Mr. Bukhari, and his troopers who can shoot you to death, and rob you completely randomly? I think ousting a man who lets his men murder, and rob random people is a very good thing.
    - wyattpeak 5y ago
      I'm not going to speak for Nigerians. If you want Nigerian opinions, ask Nigerians. I am going to say that I don't see how laws imposed by an unelected foreign company are better than laws imposed by an unelected local government. And when we're talking about companies creating unbannable sites, we're absolutely talking about companies dictating law. Edit: Please stop editing your comment after I've responded.

kaladin_1 5y ago

I'd rather people are aware of solutions on a protocol level. Say for example if more people knew how to connect and use Tor. At the moment many Nigerians have downloaded and installed (free) VPNs but I'm afraid of the massive scam that'd follow it. Many of the unknown VPN companies would just harvest people's financial information and all what not...

factorialboy 5y ago

Western dotcoms are pretty impotent when it comes to the Chinese ban. Local alternatives will always crop up

baybal2 5y ago
> Western dotcoms are pretty impotent when it comes to the Chinese ban. Because they never even tried.