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Digital colonialism... you can't be serious? You really think giving villages or tribes with limited or no internet service is a bad thing? There were quite a

Digital colonialism... you can't be serious? You really think giving villages or tribes with limited or no internet service is a bad thing? There were quite a few tribes given Starlink to fix their school computers so their children could get a proper education. You shoved in a lot of other nonsense in there too, but I'd thought I'd call out the most ridiculous first. > Starlink was intentionally curtailed during the Ukraine war in order to provide tactical advantage to Russian forces Starlink was given to Ukraine for humanitarian reasons. Ukraine wanted to use it for drone strikes and wanted the area expanded. Musk did not want Starlink used offensively. You seem to support the US government being able to tell private citizens what they have to do or who they have to kill with the technology they create? Ukraine is not even a NATO ally and we are not in war with Russia.

nimbius 3y ago
i mean, its sort of offtopic since many American readers here might not know about it, but the free internet scheme in India was sort of a dismal failure their effort was called: "internet.org" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org#Net_neutrality_criticism_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org#Net_neutrality_cr... it basically just dumped unmoderated facebook on most of India. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/25/facebook-india-hate-speech-misinformation-muslims-social-media https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/25/facebook-india-hat...
itslennysfault 3y ago
I certainly wouldn't argue that providing internet to anyone is a bad thing, and I'd love to see as much of the world as possible have access. However, I do think it's a little comical that in doing so he is enabling the spread of the "woke mind virus" to new regions and people. So, it's conceivable that he will eventually think it was a bad thing.
- inemesitaffia 3y ago
  No reason to believe the influence won't be in reverse though.
- theultdev 3y ago
  Let's say I build airplanes. Let's also say I think communism is a mind-virus (I do). I can still build airplanes knowing that communist leaders use them to spread their mind-virus. That's because in my view, the benefit of connecting non-ideological people far outweighs the negatives of what the communist leaders spout off. (ie, you're not only spreading that mind virus, but all thoughts, including the ones that CHALLENGE the mind virus. The biggest threat to an ideology is DISSENT)
the_other 3y ago
> Digital colonialism... you can't be serious? You really think giving villages or tribes with limited or no internet service is a bad thing? Prior to the 20th century, my hazy memory says more like ~17th, the Emperor of China or his emissaries would give lavish gifts to other nations. It worked like a "soft colonialism". Later they would expect favourable deals, trades, taxes, military support and so on. [0] Facebook gives you free tools to contact your friends and influences, but in return they build models of you so that commercial bodies and political parties can tailor their messaging to include just the right keywords to make you look twice at their ads. Churches have always come with offerings of peace and generosity to the poor and otherwise disadvantaged, and yet somehow the Catholic Church now has an untouchable principality and 10s or 100s of millions of people follow what they say. > There were quite a few tribes given Starlink to fix their school computers so their children could get a proper education. > You shoved in a lot of other nonsense in there too, but I'd thought I'd call out the most ridiculous first. The benefits are real. But history tells us repeatedly to be suspicious of rich powerful entities offering free or cheap QoL boosts to the needy. It's really the easiest play in empire building because it's almost irresistible. Real, honest solutions to the problems of the disadvantaged group would involve actual risk to the powerful and be based education, patent access, loans with flexible terms, culture exchanges. Gifting just sets up dependencies and obligations. [0] source https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06r84qy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06r84qy but it might have been a different episode
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

nimbius 3y ago

i mean, its sort of offtopic since many American readers here might not know about it, but the free internet scheme in India was sort of a dismal failure their effort was called: "internet.org" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org#Net_neutrality_criticism_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org#Net_neutrality_cr... it basically just dumped unmoderated facebook on most of India. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/25/facebook-india-hate-speech-misinformation-muslims-social-media https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/25/facebook-india-hat...

itslennysfault 3y ago

I certainly wouldn't argue that providing internet to anyone is a bad thing, and I'd love to see as much of the world as possible have access. However, I do think it's a little comical that in doing so he is enabling the spread of the "woke mind virus" to new regions and people. So, it's conceivable that he will eventually think it was a bad thing.

inemesitaffia 3y ago
No reason to believe the influence won't be in reverse though.
theultdev 3y ago
Let's say I build airplanes. Let's also say I think communism is a mind-virus (I do). I can still build airplanes knowing that communist leaders use them to spread their mind-virus. That's because in my view, the benefit of connecting non-ideological people far outweighs the negatives of what the communist leaders spout off. (ie, you're not only spreading that mind virus, but all thoughts, including the ones that CHALLENGE the mind virus. The biggest threat to an ideology is DISSENT)

the_other 3y ago

> Digital colonialism... you can't be serious? You really think giving villages or tribes with limited or no internet service is a bad thing? Prior to the 20th century, my hazy memory says more like ~17th, the Emperor of China or his emissaries would give lavish gifts to other nations. It worked like a "soft colonialism". Later they would expect favourable deals, trades, taxes, military support and so on. [0] Facebook gives you free tools to contact your friends and influences, but in return they build models of you so that commercial bodies and political parties can tailor their messaging to include just the right keywords to make you look twice at their ads. Churches have always come with offerings of peace and generosity to the poor and otherwise disadvantaged, and yet somehow the Catholic Church now has an untouchable principality and 10s or 100s of millions of people follow what they say. > There were quite a few tribes given Starlink to fix their school computers so their children could get a proper education. > You shoved in a lot of other nonsense in there too, but I'd thought I'd call out the most ridiculous first. The benefits are real. But history tells us repeatedly to be suspicious of rich powerful entities offering free or cheap QoL boosts to the needy. It's really the easiest play in empire building because it's almost irresistible. Real, honest solutions to the problems of the disadvantaged group would involve actual risk to the powerful and be based education, patent access, loans with flexible terms, culture exchanges. Gifting just sets up dependencies and obligations. [0] source https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06r84qy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06r84qy but it might have been a different episode

deleted 3y ago
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