> 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

> 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