6 ms·

Nepal Bans 26 Social Media Platforms, Including Facebook and YouTube

102 points by 01-_- 1y ago

SilverElfin 1y ago
Sad to see anti free speech sentiments all over the world. It was constrained to only some areas but now it’s normalized even in places like the UK. I guess with all that’s happening, Nepal doesn’t surprise me.
- sonicggg 1y ago
  Ironic to read about free speech here where a bunch of stuff gets "[flagged]" when it does not agree with the hive mind.
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    i believe a true(tm) free speech platform would allow itself to be flooded with spam. few spaces like that exist sadly, and they're rarely intentional :( the worst part is that im only half joking.
  - DangitBobby 1y ago
    Lol. Every fucking forum has people constantly bellyache about the moderation systems. Hivemind is a dead giveaway for thoughtless criticism. It's so tiresome. If it's flagged on HN it's almost always lowest common denominator mindless drivel or flamebait. No one serious would advocate for a system where comments can't be flagged as such.
    - DaSHacka 1y ago
      You should enable showdead in your user preferences, I think you may be surprised to see what gets flagged. I think the big issue is new accounts aren't allowed to downvote posts, but can flag them. In effect, the "flag" merely becomes the new downvote, leading to unpopular but relatively high-efffort coments becoming dead and invisible rather than downvoted. Honestly just switching the two around (anyone can downvote, but only 500+ karma can flag) would go a long way to ensure only actual low-effort posts and spam get flagged, and unpopular posts get downvoted. As it is now, I rarely see an unpopular opinion that was downvoted and isn't already flagged.
  - _Algernon_ 1y ago
    https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
    - DaSHacka 1y ago
      "Its free speech when I talk, but if you, someone who says things I disagree with talks, then you're merely an asshole being shown the door" I wonder what his opinion on pro-Palestinians getting banned on twitter is? Is it different then? What about the canning of Stephen Colbert? I love these smug posts about how "free speech as a concept only applies to the government censoring people" that were made a couple years ago, where now the same figures are unbelievably opposed to sites like Twitter "excercising their right" to ban dissidents. Turns out this free speech thing might be a pretty useful ability to have, huh?
      - perching_aix 1y ago
        > Turns out this free speech thing might be a pretty useful ability to have, huh? > "Its free speech when I talk, but if you, someone who says things I disagree with talks, then you're merely an asshole being shown the door" Did you mean to demonstrate this with that strawman of a quote? Not exactly a stellar display of free speech's utility and benefits I'd say. I'm sure you will also passionately go around telling everyone how you just got unfairly censored for it if you even manage to get it flagged. It's especially rich considering this started with the dude above pulling out the hivemind card, which is also notoriously useful and productive of course.
- mschild 1y ago
  I'm conflicted. On the one hand, curtailing free speech is a problem and a lot of governments have started doing it to a massive degree. On the other hand, social networks are a cancer that are used to spread misinformation, steal information, and invade privacy like nothing else before. In that regard I do believe that banning them is a net benefit to society, but I fear that for the most part it is done out of the wrong intentions with more sinister goals.
  - Fade_Dance 1y ago
    That has always been a feature of having free speech. If only "good" free speech is allowed, it's not free speech. Much of it is going to be disagreeable to some people's views and/or objectively harmful in some ways. There is allowance for a red line, but it only covers a sliver of the universe. That of course begs the parallel to social media being harmful and over the red line - the equivalent of "yelling fire in a movie theater" - and this worthy of a ban within a free speech framework, but I think that is disingenuous, and it's more like banning harmful political tabloids and misinformation (which is at the root of the history of free speech itself). Moving the red line of acceptability back essentially results in a China style state controlled system, where maybe social media is allowed, but "harmful" aspects are banned by the state. (An outright band of all social media would be quite a bit more extreme than China). I'm not saying that the latter is necessarily a bad solution, to be clear. There are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches. I certainly don't have the authority or cultural knowledge to project views onto Nepal. On the other hand, I do feel quite confident in saying that the Chinese state control approach to social media is incompatible with any western democracy that is built with values of freedom and free speech. There are other good options for western democracies though, such as Britain and the BBC (before they went through the privatization wave specifically) - state sponsored options don't have to be the only option, stronger regulations for children, and even strong legal restrictions in certain specific areas like dangerous misinformation on public health (which quite arguably passes the red line test even in a liberal free speech framework) or knowingly making up disparaging statements about other people that hurts them. Of course sanctity of the democratic process itself has always been an area where democracies have tighter regulations, and necessarily so. Now for a country like America especially, most of that may be idiologically "off the table" in the views of some, but if we take a more moderate European democracy for example, when I'm ultimately getting out is that there is a lot of middle ground to explore. Ban vs allow is too black or white, especially after being realistic about the fact that bans don't work - people will move to the next paradigm after TikTok/after VR gains mass scale, etc.
- dyauspitr 1y ago
  Social media is cancer. Let’s go back to expressing free speech in the old fashioned way- at town squares and leaflets.
  - ffjffsfr 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - perching_aix 1y ago
      So like when somebody insists on calling or meeting up, rather than texting or email? I know a lot of those.
  - sobkas 1y ago
    You mean free speech zones...
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - perching_aix 1y ago
      Yeah, like a "public space" or something.
- owisd 1y ago
  Free speech existed before social media, so banning social media can't be any less free speech than how things were then. Also the USA has for decades been an outlier in taking an extreme interpretation of free speech that considers, say, Fox News an acceptable use of free speech. Plenty of countries where the regulator would find Fox News unacceptable rank higher than the USA on freedom & democracy indices, so there was always going to be pushback from other countries if the USA attempted to impose the Fox-Newsification of social media on others.
  - mopenstein 1y ago
    Freedom of speech existed before almost everything. Before the wheel, before the airplane, before newspapers, before radio and TV, and even before pen and paper. I wonder how much less free we'd feel if those things were banned as well?
- exe34 1y ago
  this one has nothing to do with free speech though. they want to know who's providing the megaphone. they requested for a named employee to be responsible for what the business chooses to do in their country.
  - SilverElfin 1y ago
    That’s the strategy Brazil used to stop free speech. They then arrest whoever the representative is when they don’t comply with government censorship.
    - exe34 1y ago
      Imagine a foreign company operating in the US refusing to adhere to US law.....
- password54321 1y ago
  These platforms themselves don't support free speech. On top of that everything is now heavily algorithmically driven. Everyone is pushed to consume the same type of content while thinking they have free will in their choice not realising they are being subtly manipulated right below their ability to recognise it. At this point, YouTube probably has a better idea what you will consume next than you yourself do.
gnabgib 1y ago
Discussion (275 points, 2 days ago, 262 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45137363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45137363
perching_aix 1y ago
I'm doing basically the same, but voluntarily. It's a calmer life. YouTube is still going strong for me though, I have to admit.
- iancmceachern 1y ago
  Same here,youtube is getting to be more like the rest as time goes on.
- geocrasher 1y ago
  Facebook for a couple things, IG for keeping up with friends, sharing pics with friends. And a carefully curated YouTube subscription list. Only stuff that's worth watching: People I can relate to, have no ego, and are just having a good time sharing what they do. I gravitate toward hackaday worthy stuff and off-road exploration type videos. I limit intake of news sites, and instead try to focus on living my own life, accomplishing goals that I have set, and focusing on improving myself so I can help others. Also, being a Gen-X-er who grew up without any of this stuff, I have to snicker just a little bit at people being up in arms about a ban on things that didn't exist 20-30 years ago. I know there is FAR more nuance to it. I simply found the thought humorous at a simplistic level.
  - mdp2021 1y ago
    If it is clear to you that it is simplistic, why do you publish it anyway?
    - perching_aix 1y ago
      Why shouldn't they?
      - mdp2021 1y ago
        "Hunger in Abysland" // "Ah, right, I just started a diet" // "Immediately I thought it funny to remember that once we also had little to eat" Appropriateness.
forgotoldacc 1y ago
It's pretty strange how the floodgates opened in 2025 and seemingly every government decided to try this to some extent in unison. I wonder what their real reason is for this and how much governments discussed this together.
- ekaryotic 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    have you tried checking?
- Finnucane 1y ago
  you don’t really need a lot of collusion. Control of the media and communication channels is a natural impulse of authoritarian goverments.
  - hulitu 1y ago
    > Control of the media and communication channels is a natural impulse of authoritarian goverments. and of surveillance capitalism. Funny how they collude with one another.
    - Finnucane 1y ago
      But surveillance capitalism wants unrestricted access, and they will gladly share with authorities in order to profit from it. They don't want governments to cut them off.
  - password54321 1y ago
    And who do you think is controlling most of these platforms?
- thisislife2 1y ago
  It's because the rest of the world has realised how deeply tied Western and Chinese BigTech are deeply tied to US and Chinese intelligence agencies, respectively (surveillance capitalism). The active lobbying made by the US government against data privacy laws (especially to store data locally and not share it with foreign entities) is just one example of a red flag that has lead to this. (I fully support this move - there is absolutely no way any foreign government should have control and influence over your - communication platform and your media platforms.)
egypturnash 1y ago
Good for them.
merelysounds 1y ago
https://archive.is/tFaAq https://archive.is/tFaAq
whatsupdog 1y ago
Americans: social media is bad! It should be banned. Americans, after an Asian country does it: free speech!!!
- Fade_Dance 1y ago
  It's almost like it's a country of 300 million people with a diverse set of views. The group that outright wants social media banned in the US, talks down Zuckerberg, etc, by and large will be perfectly fine with other countries banning it if not celebrate it. You have built a strawman. The "free speech" cohort is largely anti-banning. They want platforms like X, where anything goes, and are often quite militant about their views on this subject.
  - DangitBobby 1y ago
    I for one think both "social media is bad" and "free speech is important" which puts me in a real bind. Turns out when you let bad faith actors accumulate billions, the outcomes of the systems they create aren't always great.
    - scrollaway 1y ago
      It's just people here deciding pretty blindly that the two are mutually exclusive, but they're not, any more than eg "Nestle is a bad company" and "I like Nescafe" would be mutually exclusive. And there's always the question of who gets to be the arbiter of those things.
  - monkaiju 1y ago
    If the latter were consistent it'd be much more interesting. X banned most large leftist accounts after Musk took over, so like most "free speech" advocates they really mean they want to be able to say hateful rightwing speech.
- cloverich 1y ago
  Social media causes active harm to people, we know that. Social media has also been demonstrably used to help overthrow authoritarian governments. Thus you have a context-dependent dichotomy in how we view it, and if you eschew the context (and pretend it is purely nationalistic / ethnic), it feels a bit like you are intentionally trying to derail an otherwise productive conversation that could be had instead.
hnsep25 1y ago
[dead]
ffjffsfr 1y ago
People in the west are so used to freedom of speech and so focused on problems with social media. They miss the fact, that many authoritarian governments in Asia see freedom of speech in social media as a threat. They are not banning Facebook to improve quality of life, they want to limit freedom of speech.
- IAmGraydon 1y ago
  >They are not banning Facebook to improve quality of life, they want to limit freedom of speech. Please post your evidence of this regarding Nepal. Also, are you suggesting that Nepal has an authoritarian government? Picking up a book may be helpful, as they literally abolished their authoritarian government in 1990 and their monarchy in 2008.
- isaacremuant 1y ago
  What freedom of speech? The "first world countries" in Europe are slowly turning up the surveillance state to not let people online if they don't provide their IDs, they want to surveil every private conversation you have at home, if it uses the internet in any way, they'd love banning encryption, VPNs, etc... but you have freedom of speech? Except when talking about thinks that are deemed "pro enemy" (Russia or whoever it is this time around). Come on, we're living in extremely authoritian governments that pretend to be something else.
  - ycombigators 1y ago
    Democracy cannot survive unless we find a way to ensure we know when are listening to the people that are part of our demos and NOT people that are outside of it, actively trying to destroy it. We had freedom of speech in the west before the Internet. That speech was not anonymous.
    - isaacremuant 1y ago
      Hahaha. Fuck off with the "it's the enemy bullshit". You'll call people "russians" if they don't agree with your jingoism. You'll try and get people against wars fired. Post your name right now. Real name and address. If that's what you want, right?
xyzal 1y ago
This paragraph should be emphasized. > The government now requires platforms to register for a license and to appoint a representative who can address grievances. “We requested them to enlist with us five times. What to do when they don’t listen to us?” said Gajendra Kumar Thakur, a spokesman for the ministry. I wonder what were the platforms expecting, ignoring local government. You have to play by the rules society agrees on. Or do the companies think they are too big for consequence?
- nirava 1y ago
  True, which is why I am somewhat conflicted. So after sacking the wildly (and deservingly) popular Chairman of the National Electricity Authority, after allowing ministers to set arbitrary and uncapped salaries for themselves and their workers, after obstructing and undermining the wildly (and deservingly) popular mayor of the Capital, and after doing like 15 of these really major, objectively anti-nation things, and getting called out for it in Social Media by the commoners, the 73 year old Prime Minister (in many ways a Trump-like figure; immune to shame or criticism) moves to ban social media in the country. Obviously a bad thing. At the same time, a 2 year old law that still hasn't convinced the companies with valuations higher than my countries GDP to throw like $10k to set up an office here and maintain it with less than $5k a month to keep their services running. It doesn't feel right to fight to keep them around either. PS: The previous paragraphs might have portrayed the current government in a (deservingly) negative light. I wonder if I'll have to start browsing hackernews with a VPN in the future.
pelorat 1y ago
When something like this happen the companies affected should terminate the accounts of all government officials under the guise "if the population can't use our site, neither can you who work in the government"
nme01 1y ago
Weren’t only the platforms that failed to register with the government banned? As I understand it, if they comply with the new regulations, they should be unblocked.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Dwedit 1y ago
I heard it was a DNS-based block, and picking any other DNS server would bypass the block.
throwaway984393 1y ago
[dead]
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45137363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45137363
nutanc 1y ago
Other than the obvious discussions around free speech(very valid points), do we have any real studies on the actual effects of social media? What if social media platforms didn't exist. Would the world have been a better place? I don't know the answer, but atleast from my observations it feels as if almost every country in the world has moved to the right but by bit. We have moved away from globalization and are into protectionism. Is social media to be blamed for this? I think it has certainly played it's part for sure. One advantage of social media I see is that it has allowed people to create D2C businesses.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  I don’t think it’s a coincedence that both social media and conservatism thrive on viral fear and outrage. The two are most certainly connected. The world would probably be a very different place today if instead hope and joy were the bread and butter of Twitter, Reddit, etc.
- jerome-jh 1y ago
  Social media platforms are no more closed circles. They are platforms for advertisers and "click fishers". And people engage with content which revolt them. As a consequence social platforms, and low quality newspapers, have converged to show the bad news from all over the world. There is no shortage of them. This affects people's morale, confidence. Have you noticed how people you talk to can be very concerned about seemingly minor events that occurred on the other side of the world, to which they cannot change anything, and which should not change anything in their life? Turns out today I have cut access to Youtube, Google Play to my 12 years old daughter. Internet is limited to a whitelist of sites, with only Wikipedia for now. She had turned phone addict in an unmanageable way. Blame Youtube and Tiktok. Unfortunately she needs a smartphone for school, she would otherwise have a dumb phone. Of course there is wonderful content on Youtube. But the "shorts" is a literal trap for kids. As for the adults (well, me) it is just painful to see the list of trending videos, such that I seldom go and never stay. This is a stinky place. Ask the dictator in me and I would say blocking Youtube makes more good than bad.
  - sixtyj 1y ago

102 points by 01-_- 1y ago

Sad to see anti free speech sentiments all over the world. It was constrained to only some areas but now it’s normalized even in places like the UK. I guess with all that’s happening, Nepal doesn’t surprise me.

sonicggg 1y ago
Ironic to read about free speech here where a bunch of stuff gets "[flagged]" when it does not agree with the hive mind.
- perching_aix 1y ago
  i believe a true(tm) free speech platform would allow itself to be flooded with spam. few spaces like that exist sadly, and they're rarely intentional :( the worst part is that im only half joking.
- DangitBobby 1y ago
  Lol. Every fucking forum has people constantly bellyache about the moderation systems. Hivemind is a dead giveaway for thoughtless criticism. It's so tiresome. If it's flagged on HN it's almost always lowest common denominator mindless drivel or flamebait. No one serious would advocate for a system where comments can't be flagged as such.
  - DaSHacka 1y ago
    You should enable showdead in your user preferences, I think you may be surprised to see what gets flagged. I think the big issue is new accounts aren't allowed to downvote posts, but can flag them. In effect, the "flag" merely becomes the new downvote, leading to unpopular but relatively high-efffort coments becoming dead and invisible rather than downvoted. Honestly just switching the two around (anyone can downvote, but only 500+ karma can flag) would go a long way to ensure only actual low-effort posts and spam get flagged, and unpopular posts get downvoted. As it is now, I rarely see an unpopular opinion that was downvoted and isn't already flagged.
- _Algernon_ 1y ago
  https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
  - DaSHacka 1y ago
    "Its free speech when I talk, but if you, someone who says things I disagree with talks, then you're merely an asshole being shown the door" I wonder what his opinion on pro-Palestinians getting banned on twitter is? Is it different then? What about the canning of Stephen Colbert? I love these smug posts about how "free speech as a concept only applies to the government censoring people" that were made a couple years ago, where now the same figures are unbelievably opposed to sites like Twitter "excercising their right" to ban dissidents. Turns out this free speech thing might be a pretty useful ability to have, huh?
    - perching_aix 1y ago
      > Turns out this free speech thing might be a pretty useful ability to have, huh? > "Its free speech when I talk, but if you, someone who says things I disagree with talks, then you're merely an asshole being shown the door" Did you mean to demonstrate this with that strawman of a quote? Not exactly a stellar display of free speech's utility and benefits I'd say. I'm sure you will also passionately go around telling everyone how you just got unfairly censored for it if you even manage to get it flagged. It's especially rich considering this started with the dude above pulling out the hivemind card, which is also notoriously useful and productive of course.
mschild 1y ago
I'm conflicted. On the one hand, curtailing free speech is a problem and a lot of governments have started doing it to a massive degree. On the other hand, social networks are a cancer that are used to spread misinformation, steal information, and invade privacy like nothing else before. In that regard I do believe that banning them is a net benefit to society, but I fear that for the most part it is done out of the wrong intentions with more sinister goals.
- Fade_Dance 1y ago
  That has always been a feature of having free speech. If only "good" free speech is allowed, it's not free speech. Much of it is going to be disagreeable to some people's views and/or objectively harmful in some ways. There is allowance for a red line, but it only covers a sliver of the universe. That of course begs the parallel to social media being harmful and over the red line - the equivalent of "yelling fire in a movie theater" - and this worthy of a ban within a free speech framework, but I think that is disingenuous, and it's more like banning harmful political tabloids and misinformation (which is at the root of the history of free speech itself). Moving the red line of acceptability back essentially results in a China style state controlled system, where maybe social media is allowed, but "harmful" aspects are banned by the state. (An outright band of all social media would be quite a bit more extreme than China). I'm not saying that the latter is necessarily a bad solution, to be clear. There are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches. I certainly don't have the authority or cultural knowledge to project views onto Nepal. On the other hand, I do feel quite confident in saying that the Chinese state control approach to social media is incompatible with any western democracy that is built with values of freedom and free speech. There are other good options for western democracies though, such as Britain and the BBC (before they went through the privatization wave specifically) - state sponsored options don't have to be the only option, stronger regulations for children, and even strong legal restrictions in certain specific areas like dangerous misinformation on public health (which quite arguably passes the red line test even in a liberal free speech framework) or knowingly making up disparaging statements about other people that hurts them. Of course sanctity of the democratic process itself has always been an area where democracies have tighter regulations, and necessarily so. Now for a country like America especially, most of that may be idiologically "off the table" in the views of some, but if we take a more moderate European democracy for example, when I'm ultimately getting out is that there is a lot of middle ground to explore. Ban vs allow is too black or white, especially after being realistic about the fact that bans don't work - people will move to the next paradigm after TikTok/after VR gains mass scale, etc.
dyauspitr 1y ago
Social media is cancer. Let’s go back to expressing free speech in the old fashioned way- at town squares and leaflets.
- ffjffsfr 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    So like when somebody insists on calling or meeting up, rather than texting or email? I know a lot of those.
- sobkas 1y ago
  You mean free speech zones...
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    Yeah, like a "public space" or something.
owisd 1y ago
Free speech existed before social media, so banning social media can't be any less free speech than how things were then. Also the USA has for decades been an outlier in taking an extreme interpretation of free speech that considers, say, Fox News an acceptable use of free speech. Plenty of countries where the regulator would find Fox News unacceptable rank higher than the USA on freedom & democracy indices, so there was always going to be pushback from other countries if the USA attempted to impose the Fox-Newsification of social media on others.
- mopenstein 1y ago
  Freedom of speech existed before almost everything. Before the wheel, before the airplane, before newspapers, before radio and TV, and even before pen and paper. I wonder how much less free we'd feel if those things were banned as well?
exe34 1y ago
this one has nothing to do with free speech though. they want to know who's providing the megaphone. they requested for a named employee to be responsible for what the business chooses to do in their country.
- SilverElfin 1y ago
  That’s the strategy Brazil used to stop free speech. They then arrest whoever the representative is when they don’t comply with government censorship.
  - exe34 1y ago
    Imagine a foreign company operating in the US refusing to adhere to US law.....
password54321 1y ago
These platforms themselves don't support free speech. On top of that everything is now heavily algorithmically driven. Everyone is pushed to consume the same type of content while thinking they have free will in their choice not realising they are being subtly manipulated right below their ability to recognise it. At this point, YouTube probably has a better idea what you will consume next than you yourself do.

gnabgib 1y ago

Discussion (275 points, 2 days ago, 262 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45137363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45137363

perching_aix 1y ago

I'm doing basically the same, but voluntarily. It's a calmer life. YouTube is still going strong for me though, I have to admit.

iancmceachern 1y ago
Same here,youtube is getting to be more like the rest as time goes on.
geocrasher 1y ago
Facebook for a couple things, IG for keeping up with friends, sharing pics with friends. And a carefully curated YouTube subscription list. Only stuff that's worth watching: People I can relate to, have no ego, and are just having a good time sharing what they do. I gravitate toward hackaday worthy stuff and off-road exploration type videos. I limit intake of news sites, and instead try to focus on living my own life, accomplishing goals that I have set, and focusing on improving myself so I can help others. Also, being a Gen-X-er who grew up without any of this stuff, I have to snicker just a little bit at people being up in arms about a ban on things that didn't exist 20-30 years ago. I know there is FAR more nuance to it. I simply found the thought humorous at a simplistic level.
- mdp2021 1y ago
  If it is clear to you that it is simplistic, why do you publish it anyway?
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    Why shouldn't they?
    - mdp2021 1y ago
      "Hunger in Abysland" // "Ah, right, I just started a diet" // "Immediately I thought it funny to remember that once we also had little to eat" Appropriateness.

forgotoldacc 1y ago

It's pretty strange how the floodgates opened in 2025 and seemingly every government decided to try this to some extent in unison. I wonder what their real reason is for this and how much governments discussed this together.

ekaryotic 1y ago
[flagged]
- perching_aix 1y ago
  have you tried checking?
Finnucane 1y ago
you don’t really need a lot of collusion. Control of the media and communication channels is a natural impulse of authoritarian goverments.
- hulitu 1y ago
  > Control of the media and communication channels is a natural impulse of authoritarian goverments. and of surveillance capitalism. Funny how they collude with one another.
  - Finnucane 1y ago
    But surveillance capitalism wants unrestricted access, and they will gladly share with authorities in order to profit from it. They don't want governments to cut them off.
- password54321 1y ago
  And who do you think is controlling most of these platforms?
thisislife2 1y ago
It's because the rest of the world has realised how deeply tied Western and Chinese BigTech are deeply tied to US and Chinese intelligence agencies, respectively (surveillance capitalism). The active lobbying made by the US government against data privacy laws (especially to store data locally and not share it with foreign entities) is just one example of a red flag that has lead to this. (I fully support this move - there is absolutely no way any foreign government should have control and influence over your - communication platform and your media platforms.)

egypturnash 1y ago

Good for them.

merelysounds 1y ago

https://archive.is/tFaAq https://archive.is/tFaAq

whatsupdog 1y ago

Americans: social media is bad! It should be banned. Americans, after an Asian country does it: free speech!!!

Fade_Dance 1y ago
It's almost like it's a country of 300 million people with a diverse set of views. The group that outright wants social media banned in the US, talks down Zuckerberg, etc, by and large will be perfectly fine with other countries banning it if not celebrate it. You have built a strawman. The "free speech" cohort is largely anti-banning. They want platforms like X, where anything goes, and are often quite militant about their views on this subject.
- DangitBobby 1y ago
  I for one think both "social media is bad" and "free speech is important" which puts me in a real bind. Turns out when you let bad faith actors accumulate billions, the outcomes of the systems they create aren't always great.
  - scrollaway 1y ago
    It's just people here deciding pretty blindly that the two are mutually exclusive, but they're not, any more than eg "Nestle is a bad company" and "I like Nescafe" would be mutually exclusive. And there's always the question of who gets to be the arbiter of those things.
- monkaiju 1y ago
  If the latter were consistent it'd be much more interesting. X banned most large leftist accounts after Musk took over, so like most "free speech" advocates they really mean they want to be able to say hateful rightwing speech.
cloverich 1y ago
Social media causes active harm to people, we know that. Social media has also been demonstrably used to help overthrow authoritarian governments. Thus you have a context-dependent dichotomy in how we view it, and if you eschew the context (and pretend it is purely nationalistic / ethnic), it feels a bit like you are intentionally trying to derail an otherwise productive conversation that could be had instead.

hnsep25 1y ago

[dead]

ffjffsfr 1y ago

People in the west are so used to freedom of speech and so focused on problems with social media. They miss the fact, that many authoritarian governments in Asia see freedom of speech in social media as a threat. They are not banning Facebook to improve quality of life, they want to limit freedom of speech.

IAmGraydon 1y ago
>They are not banning Facebook to improve quality of life, they want to limit freedom of speech. Please post your evidence of this regarding Nepal. Also, are you suggesting that Nepal has an authoritarian government? Picking up a book may be helpful, as they literally abolished their authoritarian government in 1990 and their monarchy in 2008.
isaacremuant 1y ago
What freedom of speech? The "first world countries" in Europe are slowly turning up the surveillance state to not let people online if they don't provide their IDs, they want to surveil every private conversation you have at home, if it uses the internet in any way, they'd love banning encryption, VPNs, etc... but you have freedom of speech? Except when talking about thinks that are deemed "pro enemy" (Russia or whoever it is this time around). Come on, we're living in extremely authoritian governments that pretend to be something else.
- ycombigators 1y ago
  Democracy cannot survive unless we find a way to ensure we know when are listening to the people that are part of our demos and NOT people that are outside of it, actively trying to destroy it. We had freedom of speech in the west before the Internet. That speech was not anonymous.
  - isaacremuant 1y ago
    Hahaha. Fuck off with the "it's the enemy bullshit". You'll call people "russians" if they don't agree with your jingoism. You'll try and get people against wars fired. Post your name right now. Real name and address. If that's what you want, right?

xyzal 1y ago

This paragraph should be emphasized. > The government now requires platforms to register for a license and to appoint a representative who can address grievances. “We requested them to enlist with us five times. What to do when they don’t listen to us?” said Gajendra Kumar Thakur, a spokesman for the ministry. I wonder what were the platforms expecting, ignoring local government. You have to play by the rules society agrees on. Or do the companies think they are too big for consequence?

nirava 1y ago
True, which is why I am somewhat conflicted. So after sacking the wildly (and deservingly) popular Chairman of the National Electricity Authority, after allowing ministers to set arbitrary and uncapped salaries for themselves and their workers, after obstructing and undermining the wildly (and deservingly) popular mayor of the Capital, and after doing like 15 of these really major, objectively anti-nation things, and getting called out for it in Social Media by the commoners, the 73 year old Prime Minister (in many ways a Trump-like figure; immune to shame or criticism) moves to ban social media in the country. Obviously a bad thing. At the same time, a 2 year old law that still hasn't convinced the companies with valuations higher than my countries GDP to throw like $10k to set up an office here and maintain it with less than $5k a month to keep their services running. It doesn't feel right to fight to keep them around either. PS: The previous paragraphs might have portrayed the current government in a (deservingly) negative light. I wonder if I'll have to start browsing hackernews with a VPN in the future.

pelorat 1y ago

When something like this happen the companies affected should terminate the accounts of all government officials under the guise "if the population can't use our site, neither can you who work in the government"

nme01 1y ago

Weren’t only the platforms that failed to register with the government banned? As I understand it, if they comply with the new regulations, they should be unblocked.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Dwedit 1y ago

I heard it was a DNS-based block, and picking any other DNS server would bypass the block.

throwaway984393 1y ago

[dead]

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45137363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45137363

nutanc 1y ago

Other than the obvious discussions around free speech(very valid points), do we have any real studies on the actual effects of social media? What if social media platforms didn't exist. Would the world have been a better place? I don't know the answer, but atleast from my observations it feels as if almost every country in the world has moved to the right but by bit. We have moved away from globalization and are into protectionism. Is social media to be blamed for this? I think it has certainly played it's part for sure. One advantage of social media I see is that it has allowed people to create D2C businesses.

cosmic_cheese 1y ago
I don’t think it’s a coincedence that both social media and conservatism thrive on viral fear and outrage. The two are most certainly connected. The world would probably be a very different place today if instead hope and joy were the bread and butter of Twitter, Reddit, etc.
jerome-jh 1y ago
Social media platforms are no more closed circles. They are platforms for advertisers and "click fishers". And people engage with content which revolt them. As a consequence social platforms, and low quality newspapers, have converged to show the bad news from all over the world. There is no shortage of them. This affects people's morale, confidence. Have you noticed how people you talk to can be very concerned about seemingly minor events that occurred on the other side of the world, to which they cannot change anything, and which should not change anything in their life? Turns out today I have cut access to Youtube, Google Play to my 12 years old daughter. Internet is limited to a whitelist of sites, with only Wikipedia for now. She had turned phone addict in an unmanageable way. Blame Youtube and Tiktok. Unfortunately she needs a smartphone for school, she would otherwise have a dumb phone. Of course there is wonderful content on Youtube. But the "shorts" is a literal trap for kids. As for the adults (well, me) it is just painful to see the list of trending videos, such that I seldom go and never stay. This is a stinky place. Ask the dictator in me and I would say blocking Youtube makes more good than bad.
- sixtyj 1y ago