Corruption, American style. Americans love their elaborate and borderline-tiring corruption schemes and PR propaganda.

Let’s just hope that this has a noticeable impact on the hyperscale CSPs bottom lines in 4-6 quarters. Europe has a very a very bad habit of kicking the can down the road and not rocking the boat. Now is not the time for such meekness.

If you don’t live in the US, you’re asking for trouble if you use American tech. Doesn’t matter if the provider is sane or not, they are still subject to the whims of a proto-facist regime. But even beyond the regime, the American business community is extremely corrupt. They might not see it as corruption (corruption is what happens in some shithole), but that’s just an excuse.

And with all due respect to sane Americans, unless there is a massive change in their risk tolerance, it is unlikely there will be any movement away from proto-facism in the short to medium term.

Things aren’t going to magically sort themselves out.

philosoraptor_meme.avif

Sure, and people like quick solutions to problems and largely don’t think about long-term consequences. And then they’re all “surprised pikachu” when that thing inevitably morphs into something they don’t like.

Again, that’s on the given members of a society. Surveillance and blocking social are not inherently (in a physical sense) good or bad. These are social tools that can be used for good (and sometimes must be used to protect the lives of your fellow citizens) or can be used for bad.

This is a bit of a hyperbolic example, but let’s say you have a CSAM-focused social network, even without an imminent danger to society it is reasonable to block such a social network if it’s hosted in another jurisdiction.

In the US, we have a concept of an “enemy of the state,”

American concepts of “enemy of the state” and “imminent danger” don’t map one to one in the global context.

A country (Albania or otherwise) has the right to counteract influence for foreign nationals/entities on their political process. But that’s just one example.

There is also the FB and genocidal Myanmar and more recently FB and Ethiopia.

A media org is committed to journalism and communicating accurate information and good faith debate. These are not the priorities of Chines social networks (subject to control of the CCP) or Americans social network (subject to control of local oligarchs and criminal groups).

I think we’ve had a good discussion and it’s clear we have our own perspectives.

At this point, I am just trying to point out that there nuances to my OP and it’s not a matter of merely supporting government censorship. The world is a complex place and absolutes are not a viable approach.

If you give the government a new power, they will abuse it, it’s just a matter of time. … because the government perpetually expands the scope of whatever powers we grant it.

I don’t believe in treating the government as a black box. If what you’re saying is true, then that’s a reflection of society. You want a government that has the capability to implement surveillance and ban social networks when the situation calls for it. In the global context, there will be such situations. And you need to have a political and social system that limits such powers when they are not needed anymore.

A specific individual or a group of individuals cannot independently collaborate to implement counter intelligence policies to identify traitors who are providing location data for missile strikes and helping kill your fellow citizens who are fighting for your safety on the front-lines. The government must have deep surveillance capabilities in such a situation.

It’s the personal responsibility of every citizen to contribute to a functioning government system. If it doesn’t function well, that’s on the individuals that make up society. Blanket bans on government surveillance or control external social media is not a viable approach in our world (not just in Ukraine).

In the US context (I’ve lived there, but I am of course more knowledgeable on Eastern Europe), I would argue that continued renewal of the Patriot act (if it even was needed initially, but one can argue after 9/11 there was a period of shock and fear for Americans) is a reflection of the failures of the US political system. Specifically the lack of competitive elections beyond two parties. This is on some level the responsibility of US citizens and not a “black box” model of government.

I understand the need for certain policy changes during wartime. When Russia started its aggressions (arguably, long before Crimea), I can understand a temporary ban on Russian propaganda, because it’s an active war. Maybe it doesn’t include fighting yet, but it does have a credible threat of devolving into that. So I support temporary restrictions while an imminent, credible threat exists or the country is currently at war.

It’s not that simple though. One could frame pre-invasion (i.e. pre Feb 2014 when they invaded Crimea) restrictions on russian social media and services as government overreach. On the other hand, one could frame it as a forward looking government initiative attempting to protect the lives of its citizens. We currently have the benefit of hindsight, so it’s easy to see which approach is correct, but that’s not the case in the moment.

As I mentioned in my OP, I don’t know much about Albanian politics. What I do know is that you don’t need an imminent threat of a physical invasion to limit the influence of much larger countries on your political environment. I do not support having local politics being subject to unaccountable (see Facebook and Rohingya genocide), callous operators; doesn’t matter if they are based in the US or China.

I am not that knowledge on China, but I do know how russia operates. Similar to what you mentioned, I think TikTok operates much closer to the VK/Odnoklassniki models used by the russians. You don’t want the CCP promoting political movements that they have bribed or see as being more beneficial to their interests. You want politics and political messaging to be accountable to the people who live in your country. I will point out that pre-invasion (2014), the russians very much used soft power from their internet services/social media/TV channels to influence politics within Ukraine. That’s unacceptable and has lead to large scale deaths, destruction and misery.

Perhaps dealing with an invasion for a decade plus made me a bit paranoid, but I do support the government being able to regulate the ability of foreign social media/services to influence local politics and spread misinformation and propaganda.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s not all black and white. There are legitimate cases (even without an imminent invasion) where you need to have a measure of control over foreign influence, be it American-style Zuckerburg enabling genocide in Mynmar or Chinese influence campaigns. I don’t see this as being supportive of a Chinese-style total censorship model.

This might be nonsense to you, but it’s possible that I have much more experience with what we are discussing than you do and my perspective actually has some nuance (which admittedly I never clarified in my OP).

See the following reply in this thread:

https://lemmy.world/post/27885728/16300020

I would argue your approach is narrow both in terms of pragmatic realities and broad social changes in the information age.

I mentioned earlier in this thread how I am from Ukraine and how I of course support our government banning russian social media and internet services in 2014. It’s good to talk about “government not forcing people to be better of” and so on, but when your family is forced to leave their city and sell their homes at 10% of market value due to an invasion from a large, aggressive and genocidal neighbour (that uses langauge as a key element of their imperialist policies), you start taking a more sober look at such matters. Mind you, I am talking about Donbas in 2014, not the full scale invasion in 22.

Not saying you’re American, but I would often hear similar polemics when I lived in the US; didn’t find them in the least convincing. It was clear that supporters of such polemics never really encountered any difficult situations that would test their commitment (and understanding) of their claimed beliefs. Some life experience outside of Ukraine (i.e. unrelated to invasions) also contributed to this perspective. Unfortunately, it’s not a black and white type topic as far as I am concerned.

The above mentioned points refer to real world examples. I would argue there are also more abstract arguments for my point of view.

We are currently going through massive social change due to the development of information and communication technology. We don’t yet know what the best practices are with respect to managing the externalities of the modern ICT landscape.

In 1890, much of the world was still ruled by kings and emperors. In many cases they were positioned literally as god’s messengers to humanity. In retrospect, it was clear that the imperial/colonialist model was not going to survive contact with modernity (industrialization, commoners learning to read, rise of easily accessible political messaging) and that new models had to take their place.

One could argue that the same is true of current attitudes towards information technology. It’s possible that the drivers that led to rapid ICT growth (e.g. US service providers not being responsible for the content on their platforms) also resulted in certain social externalities that at the end of the day will need to be accounted for (one example would be FB’s callousness and contribution to the Rohingya genocide).

I am not arguing for Chinese-style total control of the internet, but perhaps the optimal approach lies somewhere in the middle between US-style “no responsibility for anything” approach and excessive Chinese governmental paternalism.

Just some thoughts, I know I come off as condescending, but it is honestly not my intention.

That’s fair.

I was just trying to point that American attitudes (theatrical polemics claiming some sort allegiance to free speech) around social networks are not always applicable or desirable.

In my own country, Ukraine, we banned all Russian social networks and internet services in 2014 after they invaded. This is a reasonable action.

Depends how you look at it. If enemy states are actively leveraging their social networks to undermine democracy in your country, 2 months before the election may be the perfect time to ban US/Chinese commercial social networks.

Can’t speak for Albanian internal politics (I will speculate the incumbent administration is almost certainly likely to use to their own benefit), but more countries need to start banning large commercial American and Chinese social networks.

www.theregister.com

They cover mainstream topics, but they have a lot of in-depth enterprise tech news and they have their own voice and humour.

www.linuxgizmos.com www.cnx-software.com

Both these sites covers SBCs (not only Raspberry Pi), microcontrollers and random DIY stuff

www.osnews.com

Some mainstream coverage, but also a lot of random news about open source, niche and historical operating systems and computers

www.hackaday.com

DIY hardware news and projects

www.restofworld.org

Lots of tech news on non-western countries, mainstream topics are covered as well, but often with a different perspective.

www.semiengineering.com www.chipsandcheese.com

Very specialized sources on semiconductor developments. Very in-depth, many of the articles are difficult to understand even if you have solid (armchair) knowledge of semiconductors.

Self-promotion: I am a mod at !hardware@lemmy.world, while coverage includes a lot of mainstream tech hardware topics, there is content on more nitty gritty semiconductor topics (a lot of business type news though), battery tech and unique hardware devices (some retro coverage too). The sidebar includes more specialized tech communities on Lemmy that might be of interest to you.

What the fuck is this shit?

I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s very easy to manipulate American oligarchs. However, they are relatively provincial and lack the capabilities to deal with truly complex challenges.

They operate in an environment with no real risk. They’ve never dealt with any real challenges. The US judicial system is a joke (even in China, Alibaba’s Jack Ma immediately regretted going on a public chimp out). US society is either openly supportive of corruption and criminality or lacks the capability (true desire and risk tolerance) to address corruption.

This is not to underestimate American oligarchs. They are extremely sophisticated and absolutely committed to their “number go up” fetish, but you also have to be real about what they are.

Let’s just hope they move fast and aren’t afraid to break things.

Regular ublock origin does a great job for both automated and manual page cleanup.

For cases when the page is still borderline unusable, Firefox’s reader view is a must.

Bread and circuses

Not a fan of Chinese tech products either. That being said, US products weren’t that great on privacy even before Trump. And all American firms are involved in corruption to one extent or another.

My hope is recent developments in the US can give some breathing space for platforms/companies that are not Chinese or American.

US products are less risky in the short time, but by using them one is simply kicking the can down the road.

There is a very high possibility that the US will permanently become a de facto proto-fascist oligarch-run plutocracy. And it’s not even a Trump thing, the oligarchy was there before him.

No disrespect to sane Americans, I do wish you all the best and I hope I am wrong. However, I hope you understand that the topic at hand requires a sober, cautious evaluation of the situation.

Not only is this the first Pura series phone to run fully on Harmony, including the core infrastructure, but it is also the first time for Huawei’s flagship line to come embedded with Harmony Intelligence, the company’s answer to Apple Intelligence.

…

Huawei is on course to fully replace Android OS on its mobile devices and Windows OS on personal computers with HarmonyOS Next, which is also adopted by Chinese automobile makers such as Chery Automobile and Seres Automobile for their electric vehicles.

Yu said the first HarmonyOS-powered notebook will be launched in May this year.

The company also aims to enlarge its developers’ ecosystem to bring in more applications that can run on its Huawei Mobile Services (HMS), a replacement for Google Mobile Services (GMS) and its popular Gmail and Google Map apps. Huawei announced that some big names have already joined Huawei AppGallery, including ride-hailing and food delivery service Grab and airline Emirates.

The much more important news in the article is that they have another other phone fully running on their Harmony Next OS (that has no connection to Android).

I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next ~10 years China will largely replace Windows/Android/iOS with homegrown alternatives.

While I am no fan of the CCP, this is a smart move. The United States is unreliable, petty and extremely corrupt; not the qualities you want in the home country of your main technology platform providers.

What is the formal definition of “AI Power” and what metrics or/and index system is used to create rankings?

I doubt anyone will use this except for crypto bagholders who have no interest in music (or anything really) and are just looking to dumb their bags the next mark.