12 ms·

PM orders internet blocked for anyone spreading info that might frighten people

209 points by troydavis 5y ago

zabzonk 5y ago
Well, this frightens me!
- giantrobot 5y ago
  Same. Where do I report the Thai PM?
- 6510 5y ago
  That's just how our fearless leader intended it.
troydavis 5y ago
The site seems to be down, so here’s a different article about the same order: https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2156803/fearmongers-targeted-under-prayut-new-order https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2156803/fearmon... AP coverage: https://apnews.com/article/business-health-media-coronavirus-pandemic-ebbe28f11fb5a2f12b6663522a148765 https://apnews.com/article/business-health-media-coronavirus...
- chadlavi 5y ago
  Maybe it scared someone
anigbrowl 5y ago
Pretty much all of us at HN are against censorship, but we habitually fail to get to grips with the very real problem of deliberate lying. There's abundant evidence that the 'marketplace of ideas' is in no way self-perpetuating. I think this conception is a side effect of software development, where the computer is a pretty reliable honest referee, so ultimately either your code works or it doesn't. The problem is that wetware is inherently messier, and it can quite profitable to mess with it. Consider this (graphic and horrifying) example of fake news I saw a troll circulating earlier today: https://m.beforeitsnews.com/politics/2021/07/tortured-baby-corpses-come-to-surface-during-european-floods-3240656.html https://m.beforeitsnews.com/politics/2021/07/tortured-baby-c... This website is obviously trash, but it pulls in an estimated $30k/mo in revenue: http://www.whoismark.org/beforeitsnews.com http://www.whoismark.org/beforeitsnews.com More importantly, there are quite a lot of people who buy into this sort of nonsense, and it's a problem.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  Where did you see the troll circulating that page earlier today? You want to link to the post, wherever it is?
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    No, I don't want to link to it. It was not on HN.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      So I'm just supposed to take your word for it that you saw someone circulating it earlier today? You can link to the misinfo itself but not your source for it?
      - anigbrowl 5y ago
        Sure, why not? I don't save the URL of every troll post I see. This is the originator if you want to follow their posts. https://disqus.com/by/lore11/comments/ https://disqus.com/by/lore11/comments/
  - throwanem 5y ago
    If you want to see people trying to spread conspiracy theories on HN, turn on showdead in your profile and, soon enough, you will. It's not all that common, but it does happen, and has proven a fairly fertile source of search terms for my own occasional research interest in the subject. Would that that interest could remain as academic as it was when the Internet and I were both young, and the stuff was all UFO abductions, or similarly innocuous and rather silly. On the other hand, it tickles my historiographical curiosity to watch a new iteration of American revivalism, rehashing the "Satanic ritual panic" of a few decades ago, evolve in near real time. So I suppose at least there is some consolation for the regret.
    - reedjosh 5y ago
      Curious, so I turned on shadowdead, but what does it actually do?
yann2 5y ago
These are like iterations towards solving Info Asymmetry problems. The politicians under pressure are always going to come up with a bunch of hacks cause there are no great solutions. You in 10th grade dont take advantage of the knowledge gaps of that kid in 3nd grade. But its all hazy who is in what grade. Frightening shall continue. Maybe Musk will frighten Bezos and Bezos will get him kicked off the internet.
bovermyer 5y ago
Ignore, for a moment, the idea of freedom versus authority. That topic is really important, always timely, and full of nuance. Just for the next hour or two, go down a rabbit hole of reading about the history of Thailand/Siam/Ayutthaya, for no other purpose than learning something about a group of humanity very different from the Western experience. After that, take a breath, then re-read this article. Your reaction will probably be the same, but it'll have a more interesting story behind it.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
  Got a starting point for us?
  - bovermyer 5y ago
    This is a good one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayutthaya_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayutthaya_Kingdom From a book perspective, I adored A History of Thailand by Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit.
    - bjcy 5y ago
      I can agree, A History of Thailand is an excellent recommendation.
- bjcy 5y ago
  For anyone wanting to add to their perspective how some younger generations are bringing in their thoughts on freedom/authority: - https://thisrupt.co https://thisrupt.co - https://thestandard.co/homepage/ https://thestandard.co/homepage/ (Thai language only, but you can attempt to Google Translate)
  - chana_masala 5y ago
    How do thisrupt authors not get arrested? The commentary seems very inflammatory Edit: I don't mean that I think they should - I mean that given e.g. Lese Majeste, I would have expected them to be persecuted.
taherchhabra 5y ago
One more market for starlink to sell
- Renaud 5y ago
  The average monthly salary in Thailand is USD250. It's unlikely that Starlink will be anything else than niche in countries where it would cost people half of their salary. Assuming that they can get the equipment at all. StarLink may be successful in sparsely populated areas of North America and Australia and may have some success in rural areas of Europe. Anywhere else, it won't be affordable or it won't have the local infrastructure (regional base stations), or distribution of the equipment will be banned or heavily controlled by local governments or the link access will have to follow the same rules as other internet connections, or it will just not be needed at all. I'm curious to see how it's going to pan out given the high maintenance costs of the infrastructure, but it's clearly not going to have any effect on the average Thai's access to information.
  - natch 5y ago
    For the cost concern, do Starlink as backhaul, and sell fractional access. They’ve already said this will happen in some places. But you’re right, in that scenario while it may address your cost point, the government can still censor it, so that censorship point stands.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    Have you ever been to these countries? They are loaded with Internet cafes and that type of arrangement can easily pay the US monthly price (and that’s assuming SpaceX won’t offer lower prices in lower demand countries).
    - Renaud 5y ago
      I have basically lived in those countries for the past 25 years... Internet cafes get their internet from local ISP, which get their licenses from the government (usually the cafe also needs a license from the government/local authorities). If you want a Starlink dish and decoder, it needs to be available and distributed in your country, which also falls under government import rules. Say managed to get your hands on an illegally imported dish, and assume that Starlink enables your location. And how long will your access last once someone notices they can access stuff that's otherwise censored in the country? Do you really think cafe owners will jeopardise their business or their freedom for that? Starlink can subsidise some costs, but the reality of their infrastructure is that it's always going to be very costly: they need to replace all their 1000s of satellites every 4-5 years, and build regional stations (although they claim they will have satellite to satellite comms once density is enough, but it's not operational now). That also means sending these satellites to space. Even if the price of that comes down (it won't much, a rocket is a rocket and most of it is not reusable and will still cost millions to launch). Each satellite also has a bandwidth limit. You end-up with a fairly costly system to run, and if you really want poor countries to be able to afford it, you need to subsidise it, which cost you even more and need to rely on a limited number of high-paying customers to cover all costs and make a profit. I personally don't think Starlink is viable in the long run. It's not a technical issue, we can clearly make stuff like this work, but the running cost is too high for what people are ready to pay, and you end up hitting hard limits. It will probably be rescaled down and targetted to government contracts for the military, emergency services, etc, and they will limit the number of users to make it workable to those who are ready to pay a lot for it.
daenz 5y ago
He's saying the quiet part out loud. You're supposed to collaborate with tech companies to de-rank and filter people with undesirable opinions.
- decremental 5y ago
  That's the democratic way. Pointing this out won't be well received on a site used by people who are in favor of censorship, many of whom work at the companies that are collaborating with governments to enable it.
covidiot321 5y ago
FUCK ALL COMMIE FUCK!
exikyut 5y ago
Reading this from a totally naive/optimistic perspective, my first response was "wow, this just effectively shut down cyberbullying of minority groups, those with mental health issues, etc. Awesome." And then I open the comments and face the broad spectrum of reality. (And then of course that the opinions of underrepresented groups are not necessarily likely to have their voices heard in situations like this, not even taking the locality (which I'm completely naive about) into account...) It's so annoying that this whole field is a minefield of mutually conflicting Pandora's boxes.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
zerof1l 5y ago
In case people are not aware here, he had seized power during the coup in 2014. Since then, he had worked hard to remain in power. This order will be used to deal with protesters and those people who oppose the government. Specifically, regarding Covid-19, Thai government managed it in a very bad way. Many people are pissed at the government for that. https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/covid-widens-thai-class-divisions https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/covid-widens-thai-class-divis...
- studentrob 5y ago
  Useful context, thank you.
ericls 5y ago
If government officials can just order things like this, why don’t they just order everyone to be happy and order this world to be perfect? Stupid. Study human. I’m not saying I agree or disagree with the intent, just an “order” is the most ineffective thing one can do.
yesbut 5y ago
Boo!
throwaway319039 5y ago
Currently in Thailand. This is probably a reaction to a recent art works display protesting the goverment's handling of the current delta wave: https://www.thephuketnews.com/police-probe-staged-protest-photos-of-bodies-left-on-phuket-town-streets-80869.php https://www.thephuketnews.com/police-probe-staged-protest-ph... On the ground, the situation is rapidly going from bad to worse and people are both scared and also growingly discontent. The level of public outcry is getting higher and higher, specially in context of harsh laws to try to silence opposition.
toastal 5y ago
Offline, the lockdowns have been an excuse to pacify activists. There's been ever increasing tensions since the current effectively-a-dictatorship party stole the previous election that was supposed to be the first Democratic election in ages by giving themselves 300 free votes (which ASEAN and most embassies publicly stated was a sham). Making matters worse is there's very little awareness paid towards one's personal data in Thailand as civil unrest has grown. Everyone's using real names and posting publicly on Facebook, Instagram, LINE, and TikTok has made it cake for the government and doxxers to track people down. We saw like a month ago Google having to take down a public map of anti-monarchy, pro-democracy activists by address around the country. PornHub is now blocked because with the government being able to pressure YouTube into taking down content, PornHub was seen as the best alternative to upload protest videos. A couple weeks ago, a food delivery driver was caught in an act of protest wearing the company jacket and was fired with a statement on Twitter (which in this case led to millions of app and account deletions to the point that the delivery service disabled account deletions).
- wsc981 5y ago
  I believe PornHub was taken down because it had movies of a very influential person in the country. Not movies that would fit his stature.
  - toastal 5y ago
    Well that too; I can't quite remember but it's still the case that the default alternative platform to post videos that were harder to ban instead of YouTube was on PornHub. For those that don't know, there is/was a video of this person at a pool party with multiple women and if it were anyone else not an eyelid would be batted. Most every YouTube video even talking objectively, like the one by RealLifeLore, about lèse-majesté is blocked inside Thailand because it's easy for the government to coerce Google. There is a lot of specific censorship to save face. The Wikipedia page still exists though (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9_in_Thailand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9_in_Thai...) which has a section about internet censorship.
TeeMassive 5y ago
> It prohibits anyone from “reporting news or disseminating information that may frighten people or intentionally distorting information to cause a misunderstanding about the emergency situation, which may eventually affect state security, order or good morality of the people.”. What's even more frightening is that we see this same kind of language used in liberal democratic countries.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
cal5k 5y ago
This is only a slightly more exaggerated version of what's going on in Canada: >Cabinet would appoint a chief censor, called the Digital Safety Commissioner, to provide “advice on content moderation” and issue compliance orders on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other service providers under threat of $25 million fines. >Censored content was not defined but anonymous complainants could trigger an investigation over websites deemed to “distort the free exchange of ideas by discrediting or silencing targeted voices” or “threaten national security, the rule of law and democratic institutions,” wrote staff. >The Safety Commissioner would be empowered to block websites or “make the content inaccessible” in Canada. Their justification for this? It might hurt the feelings of public officials: >“We have seen too many examples of public officials retreating from public service due to the hateful online content targeted towards themselves or even their families,” said Guilbeault. >“I have seen firsthand alongside other Canadians the damaging effects harmful content has on our families, our values and our institutions.” >Guilbeault in January 29 testimony at the Commons heritage committee went further in suggesting prohibited content should include hurtful criticism of federal institutions. >“Canada has a world-renowned public service and it’s integral that we don’t attack them,” he said. It's an alarming attack on freedom of expression that obviously isn't unique to Canada. We may be in for some dark times as we rediscover why democracy cannot work without free speech.
patchtopic 5y ago
probably banned in Thailand but a great background: https://secretsiam.news/p/the-palace-and-the-pandemic https://secretsiam.news/p/the-palace-and-the-pandemic
- zntfdr 5y ago
  Not banned yet, thank you for sharing!
exporectomy 5y ago
"They argued no one should be prosecuted for sharing truthful information, even when it is frightening." Those academics are tightening the ratchet of expectations. What happened to freedom to share false information? Gone?
- sofixa 5y ago
  > What happened to freedom to share false information? Gone? In today's interconnected world, it's a very dangerous right that has resulted in deaths - be it Rohingya people in Myanmar, or even Samuel Paty in France, just to name two recent examples of the top of my head. A good discussion needs to be had on the limits we ( per country) want to have on that right. Too many people today can't disseminate truth from bullshit, and many bullshiters, on a small or big ( e.g. Alex Jones or Fox News or Boris Johnson) scale profit from this with serious consequences for the health of people ( death, mental health for people thinking they're always under attack by X) and societies. What good is a freedom when society is falling apart because everyone hates/is afraid of each other and nobody can agree on anything?
  - telxos 5y ago
    Are you just that historically ignorant of how this goes? 3000 people also die a year from asprin. Everything in life is a trade off.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      And people used to die of polio and measles, why do anything about it? And genocides happened, why prevent another one? As they say, "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths merely a statistic". Don't fall into this trap.
      - bitcurious 5y ago
        Famously attributed to a man who did his best to protect the populace from misinformation, leading to millions of… statistics.
graderjs 5y ago
In the world today: only the government, the media, the entertainment industry and certain protected groups are allowed to frighten people. Thank God for progress Individuals with dangerous and, God forbid, frightening ideas are the real threat to the stability and peace of our world. They cannot be permitted to exist. They must be stamped out within civilized society, because the standard of morals in civilized society that separates good from bad is if someone, somewhere might be frightened by it, then it, whatever it is, must be bad. Otherwise, it might be good. Fear is the overarching principle around which we ought organize our world. Ask not what you can do for your country, rather ask what things you might be frightened of that you need to report to Miniluv.
- bigger_inside 5y ago
  Also, only entertainment companies are allowed to push your buttons, outrage you, grind your gears and send you into a tailspin of social media "criticism" of that content, because that is their attention economy business model. If private people do it, it's hate speech, the most vile thing that destabilizes civilization.
- forcry 5y ago
  > allowed to frighten people. No, no. They call it "awareness"..
squarefoot 5y ago
“reporting news or disseminating information that may frighten people or intentionally distorting information to cause a misunderstanding about the emergency situation, which may eventually affect state security, order or good morality of the people.” Note the wording. What is written left of that "or" makes the rest purely redundant and unnecessary, although it serves its purpose as smoke in the eyes. And the "good morality" part is also 100% subjective. If taken to the letter, a mere reporting of a coming tsunami wave could have someone arrested. Vague laws that can be easily bent or taken to the letter, according on whom they're applied to (friend/enemy) are always a telling sign of heavily corrupt governments.
bladefire 5y ago
Well that was frightening.
villgax 5y ago
When the stupid think they know how civil liberties & tech work
JohnClark1337 5y ago
there goes the SCP Foundation

209 points by troydavis 5y ago

zabzonk 5y ago

Well, this frightens me!

giantrobot 5y ago
Same. Where do I report the Thai PM?
6510 5y ago
That's just how our fearless leader intended it.

troydavis 5y ago

The site seems to be down, so here’s a different article about the same order: https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2156803/fearmongers-targeted-under-prayut-new-order https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2156803/fearmon... AP coverage: https://apnews.com/article/business-health-media-coronavirus-pandemic-ebbe28f11fb5a2f12b6663522a148765 https://apnews.com/article/business-health-media-coronavirus...

chadlavi 5y ago
Maybe it scared someone

anigbrowl 5y ago

Pretty much all of us at HN are against censorship, but we habitually fail to get to grips with the very real problem of deliberate lying. There's abundant evidence that the 'marketplace of ideas' is in no way self-perpetuating. I think this conception is a side effect of software development, where the computer is a pretty reliable honest referee, so ultimately either your code works or it doesn't. The problem is that wetware is inherently messier, and it can quite profitable to mess with it. Consider this (graphic and horrifying) example of fake news I saw a troll circulating earlier today: https://m.beforeitsnews.com/politics/2021/07/tortured-baby-corpses-come-to-surface-during-european-floods-3240656.html https://m.beforeitsnews.com/politics/2021/07/tortured-baby-c... This website is obviously trash, but it pulls in an estimated $30k/mo in revenue: http://www.whoismark.org/beforeitsnews.com http://www.whoismark.org/beforeitsnews.com More importantly, there are quite a lot of people who buy into this sort of nonsense, and it's a problem.

betwixthewires 5y ago
Where did you see the troll circulating that page earlier today? You want to link to the post, wherever it is?
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  No, I don't want to link to it. It was not on HN.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    So I'm just supposed to take your word for it that you saw someone circulating it earlier today? You can link to the misinfo itself but not your source for it?
    - anigbrowl 5y ago
      Sure, why not? I don't save the URL of every troll post I see. This is the originator if you want to follow their posts. https://disqus.com/by/lore11/comments/ https://disqus.com/by/lore11/comments/
- throwanem 5y ago
  If you want to see people trying to spread conspiracy theories on HN, turn on showdead in your profile and, soon enough, you will. It's not all that common, but it does happen, and has proven a fairly fertile source of search terms for my own occasional research interest in the subject. Would that that interest could remain as academic as it was when the Internet and I were both young, and the stuff was all UFO abductions, or similarly innocuous and rather silly. On the other hand, it tickles my historiographical curiosity to watch a new iteration of American revivalism, rehashing the "Satanic ritual panic" of a few decades ago, evolve in near real time. So I suppose at least there is some consolation for the regret.
  - reedjosh 5y ago
    Curious, so I turned on shadowdead, but what does it actually do?

yann2 5y ago

These are like iterations towards solving Info Asymmetry problems. The politicians under pressure are always going to come up with a bunch of hacks cause there are no great solutions. You in 10th grade dont take advantage of the knowledge gaps of that kid in 3nd grade. But its all hazy who is in what grade. Frightening shall continue. Maybe Musk will frighten Bezos and Bezos will get him kicked off the internet.

bovermyer 5y ago

Ignore, for a moment, the idea of freedom versus authority. That topic is really important, always timely, and full of nuance. Just for the next hour or two, go down a rabbit hole of reading about the history of Thailand/Siam/Ayutthaya, for no other purpose than learning something about a group of humanity very different from the Western experience. After that, take a breath, then re-read this article. Your reaction will probably be the same, but it'll have a more interesting story behind it.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
Got a starting point for us?
- bovermyer 5y ago
  This is a good one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayutthaya_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayutthaya_Kingdom From a book perspective, I adored A History of Thailand by Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit.
  - bjcy 5y ago
    I can agree, A History of Thailand is an excellent recommendation.
bjcy 5y ago
For anyone wanting to add to their perspective how some younger generations are bringing in their thoughts on freedom/authority: - https://thisrupt.co https://thisrupt.co - https://thestandard.co/homepage/ https://thestandard.co/homepage/ (Thai language only, but you can attempt to Google Translate)
- chana_masala 5y ago
  How do thisrupt authors not get arrested? The commentary seems very inflammatory Edit: I don't mean that I think they should - I mean that given e.g. Lese Majeste, I would have expected them to be persecuted.

taherchhabra 5y ago

One more market for starlink to sell

Renaud 5y ago
The average monthly salary in Thailand is USD250. It's unlikely that Starlink will be anything else than niche in countries where it would cost people half of their salary. Assuming that they can get the equipment at all. StarLink may be successful in sparsely populated areas of North America and Australia and may have some success in rural areas of Europe. Anywhere else, it won't be affordable or it won't have the local infrastructure (regional base stations), or distribution of the equipment will be banned or heavily controlled by local governments or the link access will have to follow the same rules as other internet connections, or it will just not be needed at all. I'm curious to see how it's going to pan out given the high maintenance costs of the infrastructure, but it's clearly not going to have any effect on the average Thai's access to information.
- natch 5y ago
  For the cost concern, do Starlink as backhaul, and sell fractional access. They’ve already said this will happen in some places. But you’re right, in that scenario while it may address your cost point, the government can still censor it, so that censorship point stands.
- kortilla 5y ago
  Have you ever been to these countries? They are loaded with Internet cafes and that type of arrangement can easily pay the US monthly price (and that’s assuming SpaceX won’t offer lower prices in lower demand countries).
  - Renaud 5y ago
    I have basically lived in those countries for the past 25 years... Internet cafes get their internet from local ISP, which get their licenses from the government (usually the cafe also needs a license from the government/local authorities). If you want a Starlink dish and decoder, it needs to be available and distributed in your country, which also falls under government import rules. Say managed to get your hands on an illegally imported dish, and assume that Starlink enables your location. And how long will your access last once someone notices they can access stuff that's otherwise censored in the country? Do you really think cafe owners will jeopardise their business or their freedom for that? Starlink can subsidise some costs, but the reality of their infrastructure is that it's always going to be very costly: they need to replace all their 1000s of satellites every 4-5 years, and build regional stations (although they claim they will have satellite to satellite comms once density is enough, but it's not operational now). That also means sending these satellites to space. Even if the price of that comes down (it won't much, a rocket is a rocket and most of it is not reusable and will still cost millions to launch). Each satellite also has a bandwidth limit. You end-up with a fairly costly system to run, and if you really want poor countries to be able to afford it, you need to subsidise it, which cost you even more and need to rely on a limited number of high-paying customers to cover all costs and make a profit. I personally don't think Starlink is viable in the long run. It's not a technical issue, we can clearly make stuff like this work, but the running cost is too high for what people are ready to pay, and you end up hitting hard limits. It will probably be rescaled down and targetted to government contracts for the military, emergency services, etc, and they will limit the number of users to make it workable to those who are ready to pay a lot for it.

daenz 5y ago

He's saying the quiet part out loud. You're supposed to collaborate with tech companies to de-rank and filter people with undesirable opinions.

decremental 5y ago
That's the democratic way. Pointing this out won't be well received on a site used by people who are in favor of censorship, many of whom work at the companies that are collaborating with governments to enable it.

covidiot321 5y ago

FUCK ALL COMMIE FUCK!

exikyut 5y ago

Reading this from a totally naive/optimistic perspective, my first response was "wow, this just effectively shut down cyberbullying of minority groups, those with mental health issues, etc. Awesome." And then I open the comments and face the broad spectrum of reality. (And then of course that the opinions of underrepresented groups are not necessarily likely to have their voices heard in situations like this, not even taking the locality (which I'm completely naive about) into account...) It's so annoying that this whole field is a minefield of mutually conflicting Pandora's boxes.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

zerof1l 5y ago

In case people are not aware here, he had seized power during the coup in 2014. Since then, he had worked hard to remain in power. This order will be used to deal with protesters and those people who oppose the government. Specifically, regarding Covid-19, Thai government managed it in a very bad way. Many people are pissed at the government for that. https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/covid-widens-thai-class-divisions https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/covid-widens-thai-class-divis...

studentrob 5y ago
Useful context, thank you.

ericls 5y ago

If government officials can just order things like this, why don’t they just order everyone to be happy and order this world to be perfect? Stupid. Study human. I’m not saying I agree or disagree with the intent, just an “order” is the most ineffective thing one can do.

yesbut 5y ago

Boo!

throwaway319039 5y ago

Currently in Thailand. This is probably a reaction to a recent art works display protesting the goverment's handling of the current delta wave: https://www.thephuketnews.com/police-probe-staged-protest-photos-of-bodies-left-on-phuket-town-streets-80869.php https://www.thephuketnews.com/police-probe-staged-protest-ph... On the ground, the situation is rapidly going from bad to worse and people are both scared and also growingly discontent. The level of public outcry is getting higher and higher, specially in context of harsh laws to try to silence opposition.

toastal 5y ago

Offline, the lockdowns have been an excuse to pacify activists. There's been ever increasing tensions since the current effectively-a-dictatorship party stole the previous election that was supposed to be the first Democratic election in ages by giving themselves 300 free votes (which ASEAN and most embassies publicly stated was a sham). Making matters worse is there's very little awareness paid towards one's personal data in Thailand as civil unrest has grown. Everyone's using real names and posting publicly on Facebook, Instagram, LINE, and TikTok has made it cake for the government and doxxers to track people down. We saw like a month ago Google having to take down a public map of anti-monarchy, pro-democracy activists by address around the country. PornHub is now blocked because with the government being able to pressure YouTube into taking down content, PornHub was seen as the best alternative to upload protest videos. A couple weeks ago, a food delivery driver was caught in an act of protest wearing the company jacket and was fired with a statement on Twitter (which in this case led to millions of app and account deletions to the point that the delivery service disabled account deletions).

wsc981 5y ago
I believe PornHub was taken down because it had movies of a very influential person in the country. Not movies that would fit his stature.
- toastal 5y ago
  Well that too; I can't quite remember but it's still the case that the default alternative platform to post videos that were harder to ban instead of YouTube was on PornHub. For those that don't know, there is/was a video of this person at a pool party with multiple women and if it were anyone else not an eyelid would be batted. Most every YouTube video even talking objectively, like the one by RealLifeLore, about lèse-majesté is blocked inside Thailand because it's easy for the government to coerce Google. There is a lot of specific censorship to save face. The Wikipedia page still exists though (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9_in_Thailand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9_in_Thai...) which has a section about internet censorship.

TeeMassive 5y ago

> It prohibits anyone from “reporting news or disseminating information that may frighten people or intentionally distorting information to cause a misunderstanding about the emergency situation, which may eventually affect state security, order or good morality of the people.”. What's even more frightening is that we see this same kind of language used in liberal democratic countries.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

cal5k 5y ago

This is only a slightly more exaggerated version of what's going on in Canada: >Cabinet would appoint a chief censor, called the Digital Safety Commissioner, to provide “advice on content moderation” and issue compliance orders on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other service providers under threat of $25 million fines. >Censored content was not defined but anonymous complainants could trigger an investigation over websites deemed to “distort the free exchange of ideas by discrediting or silencing targeted voices” or “threaten national security, the rule of law and democratic institutions,” wrote staff. >The Safety Commissioner would be empowered to block websites or “make the content inaccessible” in Canada. Their justification for this? It might hurt the feelings of public officials: >“We have seen too many examples of public officials retreating from public service due to the hateful online content targeted towards themselves or even their families,” said Guilbeault. >“I have seen firsthand alongside other Canadians the damaging effects harmful content has on our families, our values and our institutions.” >Guilbeault in January 29 testimony at the Commons heritage committee went further in suggesting prohibited content should include hurtful criticism of federal institutions. >“Canada has a world-renowned public service and it’s integral that we don’t attack them,” he said. It's an alarming attack on freedom of expression that obviously isn't unique to Canada. We may be in for some dark times as we rediscover why democracy cannot work without free speech.

patchtopic 5y ago

probably banned in Thailand but a great background: https://secretsiam.news/p/the-palace-and-the-pandemic https://secretsiam.news/p/the-palace-and-the-pandemic

zntfdr 5y ago
Not banned yet, thank you for sharing!

exporectomy 5y ago

"They argued no one should be prosecuted for sharing truthful information, even when it is frightening." Those academics are tightening the ratchet of expectations. What happened to freedom to share false information? Gone?

sofixa 5y ago
> What happened to freedom to share false information? Gone? In today's interconnected world, it's a very dangerous right that has resulted in deaths - be it Rohingya people in Myanmar, or even Samuel Paty in France, just to name two recent examples of the top of my head. A good discussion needs to be had on the limits we ( per country) want to have on that right. Too many people today can't disseminate truth from bullshit, and many bullshiters, on a small or big ( e.g. Alex Jones or Fox News or Boris Johnson) scale profit from this with serious consequences for the health of people ( death, mental health for people thinking they're always under attack by X) and societies. What good is a freedom when society is falling apart because everyone hates/is afraid of each other and nobody can agree on anything?
- telxos 5y ago
  Are you just that historically ignorant of how this goes? 3000 people also die a year from asprin. Everything in life is a trade off.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    And people used to die of polio and measles, why do anything about it? And genocides happened, why prevent another one? As they say, "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths merely a statistic". Don't fall into this trap.
    - bitcurious 5y ago
      Famously attributed to a man who did his best to protect the populace from misinformation, leading to millions of… statistics.

graderjs 5y ago

In the world today: only the government, the media, the entertainment industry and certain protected groups are allowed to frighten people. Thank God for progress Individuals with dangerous and, God forbid, frightening ideas are the real threat to the stability and peace of our world. They cannot be permitted to exist. They must be stamped out within civilized society, because the standard of morals in civilized society that separates good from bad is if someone, somewhere might be frightened by it, then it, whatever it is, must be bad. Otherwise, it might be good. Fear is the overarching principle around which we ought organize our world. Ask not what you can do for your country, rather ask what things you might be frightened of that you need to report to Miniluv.

bigger_inside 5y ago
Also, only entertainment companies are allowed to push your buttons, outrage you, grind your gears and send you into a tailspin of social media "criticism" of that content, because that is their attention economy business model. If private people do it, it's hate speech, the most vile thing that destabilizes civilization.
forcry 5y ago
> allowed to frighten people. No, no. They call it "awareness"..

squarefoot 5y ago

“reporting news or disseminating information that may frighten people or intentionally distorting information to cause a misunderstanding about the emergency situation, which may eventually affect state security, order or good morality of the people.” Note the wording. What is written left of that "or" makes the rest purely redundant and unnecessary, although it serves its purpose as smoke in the eyes. And the "good morality" part is also 100% subjective. If taken to the letter, a mere reporting of a coming tsunami wave could have someone arrested. Vague laws that can be easily bent or taken to the letter, according on whom they're applied to (friend/enemy) are always a telling sign of heavily corrupt governments.

bladefire 5y ago

Well that was frightening.

villgax 5y ago

When the stupid think they know how civil liberties & tech work

JohnClark1337 5y ago

there goes the SCP Foundation