14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

These governments that block social media or control/monitor the internet to avoid critics of government or dissent, whether that be Nepal, Tunisia, Turkey, UK, Germany, China, Egypt, US, Russia, Israel, are always shocked when there is an uprising. Unsurprisingly when a government tries to control people this closely many will see the flaws in it and make a stand and rightly so whether that be digitally or in person. It's understandable why so many tech knowledgeable dissidents create or use apps that bypass ridiculous laws.

> These governments that block social media or control/monitor the internet to avoid critics of government or dissent, whether that be Nepal, Tunisia, Turkey, UK, Germany, China, Egypt, US, Russia, Israel, are always shocked when there is an uprising.

I beg to differ. I don’t think that any of these governments are shocked that the people eventually fight back. I think that they simply make the mistake of underestimating the power of the people (especially when united) and severely overestimating their ability to suppress the people and their dissent. That’s how tyranny works.

That said, freedom of speech is always worth fighting for! Once you lose your right to speak freely, it’s only a matter of time before you start to lose everything else.

India ?

but look at those engagement numbers tho, numbers the like of which may never be seen again.

sacrifices were made - people put in long nights working, missed their childrens birthdays, anniversaries etc. years of A/B testing and tweaks to the algorithm went into fermenting that genocide.

facebook engineers really earned their pizza party that week.

Interesting. Are you arguing in that case censorship would have been a good thing? Is there a principled stance to be made here, or is it just "people should have freedom of speech when I agree with their goals, and be censored if I don't"?

Since you are being downvoted, perhaps out of ignorance, I posted to back your assertions - you are absolutely right that social media fuelled the Islamophobia that has now culminated in the ongoing genocide of Rohingyas. My country too has experienced how social media (especially WhatsApp and Facebook) actually normalised hate speech against the minorities (mostly Muslims and Christians), weakened our nations' secular fabric, and lead to the rise of the right- in India.

(But I don't blame FB alone - US and China's cyber warfare division is definitely involved in all those social media experiments on fuelling hate, attempting to create unrest, and change people's political opinion in a country, using their country's various social media platform).

Not OP, but I don't consider regulating social media as "censorship" at all because the nature of foreign owned social media platforms means that you do not know if it is your own citizens talking or some foreign agent with their own vested interest. Media and communication platforms in every country is regulated. All countries also have stricter regulations for foreign media and telecom companies. Online platforms - who are now media and communication platform - have somehow managed to wriggle by most governments so far, and even become dominant, without any oversights. That does not bode well for any country, including democratic ones. This kind of digital colonisation is the most egregious mistake made by the Global South, and they are just now waking up to it, hoping to reign it before it is too late.

"Stricter regulations" like what? It's easy to talk in the abstract about how "someone ought to do something", but if you're not asking for censorship then what exactly are you asking for? Without any specifics, "government oversight" of what people are saying to each other on social media gives off some very Orwellian vibes in my mind...

I didn't argue anything, I gave you a history lesson.

You said the problem was caused by:

> failing to reign in social media

That's a prescriptive statement which implies you have an opinion on what should have been done instead (to "reign in social media") that you're advocating for.

>you do not know if it is your own citizens talking or some foreign agent with their own vested interest

You wouldn't know that if the site was from your own country either. Could you be sure your neighbor is not a foreign spy?

>I don't consider regulating social media as "censorship" at all

To clarify, you don't consider it censorship because you believe your government would make it more difficult for foreigners alone to use their speech, and never your own countrymen. You're either delusional or adorably naive.

Inevitably, censorship will get used against you, either to silence you or to silence speech you would want to hear. Anyone who calls for censorship is a useful idiot.

> "Stricter regulations" like what?

For communication platforms (messengers) - the same kind that telecom companies are bound to, for example. For social media platforms - similar to what older media platforms are bound on content, editorial / journalistic format and integrity etc. Both also require new, stricter privacy and data laws. I live in a democracy and I find the idea of BigTech "regulating" itself while also being a bastion of "free speech" to be an oxymoron, especially a foreign one.

I am just restating my faith in my country's democracy to protect my rights, than any private BigTech or foreign government. You, on the other hand, are deliberately ignoring that foreign media platforms have, and are, used for malicious purposes against a state.

I'm not ignoring it, I simply don't care. I recognize that misinformation is going to be spread and act accordingly, by fact-checking and suspending judgement. What you want is for a government entity to decide for you which statements are "true" and which are "false" and to be shown only the "true" ones. It's idiotic. Even if the government has your best interest in mind (which it doesn't; at any given time the ruling party is self-interested), outsourcing your critical thinking faculties is not something you should want.

>For communication platforms (messengers) - the same kind that telecom companies are bound to, for example.

So, like, maximum response time to outages? That kind of thing? Do you actually understand what you're asking for? Those sorts of regulations exist as consumer protections, because you're paying for a service, so a minimum standard of quality is required. You don't pay for WhatsApp, Telegram, Matrix, etc. If your country tried asking for something unreasonable out of those companies, all it would do is make those companies block your country off.

>For social media platforms - similar to what older media platforms are bound on content, editorial / journalistic format and integrity etc.

Totally absurd. First, social media platforms are not journalistic outlets. What, because Bloomberg posts videos to YouTube, every YouTuber should abide by the same kinds of standards that Bloomberg abides by?

Second, I don't know where you live, but if your country has free speech in its constitution, it doesn't have regulation of journalists. Those things are in direct contradiction. Now, of course there are defamation laws, but other than that, the government in a country with free speech cannot regulate the speech of journalists. Things like journalistic integrity and such are matters of etiquette, not legality. There are no laws that, say, forbid a journalist from revealing his sources; it's just that if he does, no one will trust them again.

> Do you actually understand what you're asking for? Those sorts of regulations exist as consumer protections, because you're paying for a service ...

Yes, I do understand what I am asking for - these should indeed be paid services (subsidised by the government through a common national communication infrastructure, to make it cheaper for ordinary people). This gives three benefits - (1) strong consumer rights (no grey areas about who owns your data, better privacy, better recourse on poor service, mandated inter-connection between networks etc.), (2) creates a more competitive market (right now, the biggest problem with "free" services are that you need a lot of money, for a very long period, to compete with them, thus giving rich, foreign corporates a natural advantage) and (3) reduces surveillance capitalism and protects national security.

> You don't pay for WhatsApp, Telegram, Matrix, etc.

We do pay for it with our personal data that is mined to create profiles which is then used to manipulate us with advertisement. This data is also sold to (foreign) intelligence agencies thereby endangering a country's national security.

> First, social media platforms are not journalistic outlets.

If you speak publicly, to a mass audience, you need to care about what you say, just as newspapers / news channels are obliged to do so. If you create content for a mass audience, you should abide by the content regulation that the television and movies do too.

> if your country has free speech in its constitution, it doesn't have regulation of journalists.

My country (India) doesn't prescribe absolute free speech for individuals, like the US does (for various reasons, which we indians are comfortable with). Indian courts however uphold a higher threshold for restricting free speech in the media, to prevent governments from abusing their power.

By regulation for editors and journalists, I was talking about a different kind of regulation - in the old media (newspapers) once you appointed an editor or a journalist, there is a very high bar to fire them. This kind of job security allowed editors and journalists more freedom to resist editorial interferences from their employees, thus empowering the fourth estate in our democracy. There is also a high restriction to hiring foreigners for such jobs. (This is no longer the case for newer media and we can already see the crap it has become). A similar kind of setup can be enforced for social media reviewers too, ensuring platform owners and algorithm don't control the flow of info on it, and local people (and not foreigners) do.

>these should indeed be paid services

Okay... But they're not. I don't think it's possible to force someone to accept payment for something they want to give away for free.

>subsidised by the government through a common national communication infrastructure, to make it cheaper for ordinary people

So you want to make a free service paid, and then make it cheaper? Are you a politician? I can't imagine anyone else saying something like this. You could have said anything here. You could have said that the service should be paid by the state, which would legitimize intervention. Instead you went the preposterous, populist route.

>creates a more competitive market (right now, the biggest problem with "free" services are that you need a lot of money, for a very long period, to compete with them, thus giving rich, foreign corporates a natural advantage)

I have an XMPP server running at home, facing the Internet. I could tell my friends to install any XMPP client and hit me up there. Or we could use Tox. The problem is not investment, it's network effect and convenience.

>We do pay for it with our personal data

In other words, you don't pay for it.

>This data is also sold to (foreign) intelligence agencies thereby endangering a country's national security.

You always have the option not to use those services.

>If you speak publicly, to a mass audience, you need to care about what you say

Generally speaking, yes, I agree. I don't agree that the government should be regulating this. All it would do is harm small content creators.

>just as newspapers / news channels are obliged to do so. If you create content for a mass audience, you should abide by the content regulation that the television and movies do too.

Why, though? There's something about newspapers, TV, and cinema that legitimizes regulation. Newspapers are sold out in the open, so you can't print tits on the front cover. TV used to be sent over public airwaves, so it used a common resource. With cinema, there's a monetary exchange, so there's some expectation of standards.

With user-generated content, like with chat platforms, there's no such thing. When you watch a YouTube video, you're connecting to a server owned by a foreign company that stores a file created and uploaded probably by a foreign national and you're allowed to view that content for free. Other than your ISP ensuring a minimum QoS, what would legitimize the government stepping in in that scenario?

>A similar kind of setup can be enforced for social media reviewers too, ensuring platform owners and algorithm don't control the flow of info on it, and local people (and not foreigners) do.

What do you mean? You're just talking about worker's rights. What does that have to do journalism? You don't have an employer-employee relationship with either social media platforms or the users who post on them. Please, what kind of setup you have in mind, because I honestly have no idea what you're talking about.

To summarise - I want my democratically elected government to have a strong influence and control over foreign corporates when they operate in my country, to protect my country's national interest and enforce my rights as a citizen. I do not trust a foreign company or a foreign government to do so, whether they are American or Chinese. What I've suggested are some of the ways we can regulate foreign online corporates to (1) to create a competitive market (2) to protect consumer rights (3) to protect national interests. If you still do not understand or appreciate that, let's just realise that we have different political values.

What our values are is not even a concern in this discussion. I just think you have no fucking clue how the real world works, or how these ridiculous ideas of yours could possibly be implemented.