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Twitter Steps Down From the Free Speech Party
- bpodgursky 12y ago> Experts in the country question whether these requests have any legal authority As much as it sucks that Twitter is forced to do this, the government of neither Russia or Pakistan has a legal system which I would trust to fully respect the rule of law in this matter--either is likely to simply block the service if the requests are not acknowledged. As principled as Google's stand was in refusing to pull an offensive video, it probably did more to stifle the free flow of information than had they pulled the "offensive" video on request. At least that way people would have an idea of which specific videos the government didn't want them to see, rather than the entire site being blocked out.
- GauntletWizard 12y agoNo, really, no. Russian users will notice that Twitter is being blocked by the government a lot more than they'll notice that a few tweets have been blocked. Twitter has the position, and responsibility, to play hardball with these governments. A few days of lost revenue from a Russian block is nothing compared to the lost revenue from an entire nation under tyranny. Only in China do you have a population so brainwashed that they think these things are being done for their benefit. Russians have an active dissent. Feed it; It will bear fruit.
- cnphil 12y agoI'm from China and I just don't know how to refute your last line. Google has been blocked for about half a month now, but average people would not feel a thing about it. That's just sad.
- bx_ 12y agoBut that's not on account of brainwashing, that's could be on account of having no need for it. I've lived in China for 5 years and have survived without Google fine. Could also be that most young/modern Chinese have an apathetic split-mind: don't give a shit about Google and don't give a shit about who is blocking them from it or why. They aren't uninformed, they just don't care.
- rurounijones 12y agoI think that is because China has such a home grown ecosystem for google/twitter etc. alternatives Russia? Not so much I think.
- zht 12y agoThe last line about China seems extremely unnecessary and inaccurate.
- Nuk 12y agoI am Chinese. In practice blocking Twitter and Youtube protects Chinese companies like SinaWeibo and Youku from competing with their American rivals. The point is that China is a market big enough to play the game on its own courtyard.
- joshjdr 12y agoFor the record, I've yet to see any North Koreans respond to my comment... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7886916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7886916
- coldtea 12y ago>Only in China do you have a population so brainwashed that they think these things are being done for their benefit. Russians have an active dissent. Feed it; It will bear fruit. Well, and only in America they believe such naive things. For one, Russian people voted predominantly for Putin. The "dissent" you mention is mostly the US promoting some of his political rivals, feeding them (you nailed that one) and over-playing them for western audiences, so as to make a big fuss out of nothing to try to influence Russian policy for its own purposes. That's 90% of the "active dissent". And China is a world player. They want (and deserve) their own Google or Twitter, not to be tied to externally controlled services. (Of course people whose own country is doing the controlling will disagree). Those kind of actions enable local players to sweep the market (why send control of internet search and ads to Mountain View?).
- abdullahkhalids 12y agoIn Pakistan (from where I am from) the laws we have in place do not actually state who, if anyone, within the country can block anything on the internet. So despite 1. court orders to the effect that the government must seek ways of blocking only only offending content on youtube and not whole website 2. a resolution in the national assembly that youtube should be unblocked nothing has happened towards unblocking. Activists have gone around and convinced everyone possible that youtube should be blocked. Everyone has claimed they are open to youtube being unblocked. Yet it remains blocked.
- Paul-ish 12y ago>As principled as Google's stand was in refusing to pull an offensive video, it probably did more to stifle the free flow of information than had they pulled the "offensive" video on request. It definitely feels like a lose-lose situation for liberty when governments can pressure websites to censor at the risk of a total block. Google is currently working on a crowdsourced proxy called uProxy in order to push back against censorship. If uProxy succeeds, it will no longer be necessary to meet censors half way.
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- monochr 12y ago> Last week, Maxim Ksenov, deputy head of Roskomnadzor, took to Russian newspaper Izvestia to complain about an unnamed Twitter account that "published monstrous things" and called for the overthrow of the political regime and the destruction of capitalism. Ksenov threatened to block Twitter entirely unless they "listen to us and periodically remove illegal content." Wait, so calling for the destruction of Capitalism is illegal now in Russia? That might be news to the quarter of the Duma who are Communists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_the_Russian_Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_the_Russian...
- MikusR 12y agoThere is a saying: Умом Россию не понять (You cannot understand Russia with your mind).
- estebank 12y agoThat reminds me of an argentinean comic's line: American: "Can you explain argentinean politics to me?" Pinti: "Noo, no chance. You have it, you endure it, but you can't explain it."
- drdaeman 12y agoCalls for the overthrow of the political regime are frequently considered extremist in Russia. Oh, and in my opinion, Communist Party of Russian Federation is about communism as much as Liberal-Democratic Russian Party is about liberalism or democracy. That is, not really.
- joshjdr 12y agoIs it better to censor an open forum than delete it entirely? This is a hard answer for a fan of free speech. I reserve respect for those willing to open a dialogue in an adverse environment. I respect Twitter, at least, for being open for business and allowing people to post. At least some people view it versus none. However, one must consider that when a government is allowed to censor, or “manipulate,” the content that is being seen by its own people, and possibly the world – then we have essentially created a forum for propaganda that may not represent how the people of that society actually view the world. Consider what we know of media in North Korea – are all North Koreans really in full love and support of Kim Jung Un? Think about how such a platform could have been used to support the Nazi agenda in World War II. Personally, I feel that when an autonomous corporation that was designed to allow for the free passage of ideas and experiences comes under the control of an oppressive government or dictatorship, that corporation is lending itself to corruption.
- dror 12y agoWhich is one of the reasons major communication systems should be distributed and standards based like email, rather than proprietary and run by a single company.
- GuiA 12y agoThe problem is that in the short term, it is trivial for a well funded private company to offer a better product in the eyes of the end user (eg. GMail when it came out over every other open source mail system). The only solution to that problem that I can think of is to better educate the end user, and to make them see that even though company X's shiny product seems better right now, in the long term there is everything to lose by using their communication systems. That's a hard fight though.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoIn other words, we need to train end users how to accept poor user experiences for their own good?
- PavlovsCat 12y agoNot poor, just less shiny, and even that mostly at first. That is, if everybody used the stuff regardless of it being less shiny, a lot more development would flow into it, and it might even end up just as shiny. It's a bit of a chicken/egg thing.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoMany idealist developers brush off well designed and feature rich artifacts as shiny because they simply just don't get it and never will. So having users use a "less shiny" but more "ideal" artifact isn't going to magically make it better; the developer is still oblivious.
- PavlovsCat 12y agoYeah, but I don't, and I don't see how that follows from what I said either. I was actually more thinking of things like old Opera vs. the current minimalistic trend in browsers - "shiny" to me has nothing to do with features, and in the worst case features even get sacrificed for shinyness. If two things have the same functionality, the more "shiny" one wins, obviously. But that wasn't what I was talking about at all; I have nothing against beauty, but form should follow function, and function should be king.
- glomph 12y agoWeird to title this as steps down. It kind of implies they actively said something to the eff rather than passively changed their behaviour.
- mindcrime 12y agoIt's funny how a lot of people (especially those of the anti-capitalist / left'ish wing ilk) cite cyberpunk literature in which corporations achieve a level of power approaching - or exceeding - that of Nation States... and decry that hypothetical scenario as a horrible and undesirable thing. But in this case, what we see is a situation where we'd like to see Twitter stand up to various world governments... perhaps even the US government. But we all know that, in the end, there's a limit to how much they can contest the will of the government because the governments are the ones with "men with guns". Maybe companies / corporations with enough power to actually challenge the governments of the world isn't such a bad thing after all. Or, perhaps it would be better to say "maybe corporations with enough power to challenge the governments of the world" is, at least, not a universally bad thing.
- ekianjo 12y ago> It's funny how a lot of people (especially those of the anti-capitalist / left'ish wing ilk) cite cyberpunk literature in which corporations achieve a level of power approaching - or exceeding - that of Nation States Reminds me of the ludicrous scenario for Deus Ex Human Revolution. Nation States (at least in developed countries) are concentrating far more power than most multinational companies anyway, so I'd say anything that puts some balance of power is probably a good thing.
- jacobgreenleaf 12y agoIn South Korea, some argue that Samsung has that position: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-s-korea-the-republic-of-samsung/2012/12/09/71215420-3de1-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-s-korea-the-republic-...
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- PhasmaFelis 12y agoDemocratic governments are at least notionally beholden to their people. I realize that's something of a bread-and-circuses fantasy, but at the very least they have to act like they're listening and taking action, or they get voted out next election. Corporations are under no such compulsion. Their sole motive is profit. Put Wal-Mart in charge, and they'll happily kill half the population and feed them to the other half if the accountants say it will cut costs somehow. Yeah, every now and then you get someone with a conscience in charge of a big company, but if you're going to rely on that you might as well just cut out the middleman and go straight to a "benevolent" dictatorship. Oh, the other thing you missed is that most corpocracy scenarios (including the one that we're actually living in) aren't about corporations standing up to the government, but about them using money and influence to make sure that the government does what's best for the corps instead of what's best for the people. Giving the corps more power doesn't create a balance, it just makes it easier for them to pull the puppet strings.
- coldtea 12y ago>There can be no doubt that the Russian government is putting tremendous pressure on Twitter as part of its effort to crack down on free expression on the Internet. The case for free speech is important, but it's dissapointing to see foreign powers with huge resources sponsor whole campaigns and try to influence public opinion, policy and election outcomes in third countries, trying to get friendly lackeys in power. In tons of countries where there are large external "strategic interests" wanting to rip them off, there are paid (or indirectly sponsored through other means) "activists" and "vocal minority leaders" that are used as propaganda personel for foreign powers. So it's not enough that speech should be free -- it should also be independent.
- tempodox 12y agoThe same money-grabbing Ferengi as the rest of the U.S. No surprise there. Any of us would sell the Constitution to the lowest bidder, just to get rid of it. Never let anyone's “rights” stand in the way of profit!