This incident highlights dangers of centralized information distribution brought to us by social networks - being a single point of control they present attractive target for pressure by censors of all kinds, be it dictator regimes, powerful corporations in the west, etc. It's not unlike Napster - there is a lot of benefit to everyone being in one place, but far too easy to subvert. The solution to Facebook censorship will likely take a similar path - gradual decentralization.
> The solution to Facebook censorship will likely take a similar path - gradual decentralization.
Like the web? Sorry for the snark but being blocked from Facebook is the equivalent of being blocked from Geocities in my mind. I do think a decentralised social network would be a step forward but let's not attribute too much power to Facebook as it only gives them more legitimacy.
I do think Facebook has a lot of pull. Many people get their news through their Facebook feed (an awful idea) - at least many people that I know. And it's the largest place where you can discuss things with close friends and family in mass. Other places on the internet allow mass broadcast - for information dispersal content not only matters but also source/reputation.
Yes, similar case for Google... Looking at some countries where Google has 90% market share, when you are deleting something from Google, you are effectively mostly deleting the content page itself - at least reducing the discovery by a factor 10, which can be critical.
The web still has chokepoints at DNS and PKI, and routing is also vulnerable to blocks. USENET/FIDONET are better mental models when it comes to resilience.
There are advantages to this, at least temporarily. We can see who wants to censor the information. With a distributed network they would simply blend into the crowd.
For Navalny? Putin is shooting him down because he's gaining too much popular support exposing and fighting corruption. They don't want people on the streets supporting him.
In general, follow the money trail (or the power trail) and it's easy to see who's censoring stuff. Maybe not very obvious in other countries, but in Russia it's clear as day. In Russia-wide issues the power trail always terminates at Putin, with local issues it could be some local government official.
Unfortunately in the general case it is usually very difficult to follow the money and power trail - and one needs to first identify that there is censorship (or coercive information) to begin with. In Russia, there are many actors - the US and Western allies have a lot of interests (both monied and power) there as well - as does China.
Not sure exactly what I was expecting you to say about the general case, but thank you.
And what good does that do us? With a decentralized network those who want to censor can't, so they can be ignored, even as they call for "some kind of censorship" (you can see then who they are, too).
If you want freedom of the press, you should own the press. Today that may mean a distant web server or two, a printer, some paper, some ink. The samizdat was not built on the shoulders of some corporate behemoth.
Wherever you may live, don't expect Facebook to be your agent for freedom. On the contrary.
Your own server has much bigger chances to be banned than popular site. Because banning Facebook, Google, or ever Github will cause outrage amongst people who never heard about you.
Not so sure about that. Russian regulators normally don't care about tiny operations that don't influence the popular opinion. For example, there are lots of blogs talking trash about Putin and no one cares. But if you're as big as Google, you can't have "fuck Putin" on your front page. That usually leads to persecution for bullshit reasons like Navalny here.
The point is that instead of countless people writing their thoughts in Facebook messages or status updates, because it feels easy and free, freedom would be better served by people owning blogs and other personal channels of expression.
It's unlikely they'd be better served trying to learn how to host their own server and blog, deal with identity and spam issues, etc. I dislike FB, but don't kid yourself that it solves a lot of problems very well for a lot of people.
The relations of tech giants with totalitarian governments like Russia is a typical tragedy of the commons. The only step that makes sense for the common good is to remove all business from that country. But Facebook can't do it, because then Google will get all the profits, and Google/Yahoo/whomever can't do it for the same reason. If they all could just agree...
Holy hell, there's more to this world than profit. Of course Facebook has a choice. Or more directly in this case, Zuckerberg does. If he can unilaterally spend $19b on Snapchat and have "The Fucking CEO" on his business card, then he can certainly say, "we're pulling out of Russia, because there are more important things than money". This is disgusting.
> "we're pulling out of Russia, because there are more important things than money"
if he really thinks like that, he won't be as rich as he is today (and i m also speaking generically about those who are very rich). You don't become _that_ successful without giving up something.
Of course Facebook has a choice. It may cost them some money, but refusing to collaborate with totalitarian governments is an option. Look at Google versus China. Google had the courage to resist Chinese censorship and I really respect them for that.
Lets not forget that Google complied with Chinese censorship requests until China hacked them. As long as only minorities are the victim then these Internet giants don't give a damn. So now we just wait until Russia bans Facebook for other reasons and watch Facebook collect goodwill when they turn around and start to "stand up against censorship".
Let's also not forget that China hacked Google's portal for the federal intelligence to understand what surveillance operations were being done against their country.
Russia may ultimately ban Facebook for similar reasons. China eventually decided that it wouldn't deal with the US's weaponization of large web corporations - this may eventually be the end state of all the large powers.
> from what I hear, Facebook itself blocked it for all the users registered in Russia, so TOR can't help you.
What do you mean by “registered in Russia”? If Facebook doesn’t employ IP geolocation or something of that sort then anyone who feels strongly about the issue will simply change or unset their country in profile settings.
A bit of OT, but based on what I read on Russian Internets this Navalny person is generally recognized as a US sock-puppet even in the anti-Putin circles. His trial is clearly political, but it's less about him personally and more about keeping pressure on other agents of influence.
Facebook and Twitter though ... they don't have much choice, do they? They don't comply - they get a site-wide ban in Russia, which is hardly a headache they want being for-profit entities. Capitalism at work.
"Anti-Putin circles" is rather vague. It covers anything from the extreme right to the extreme left. If a "circle" is xenophobic then, surely, most of the centrist/liberal opposition are US sock-puppets to them, simply by the virtue of having a similar political agenda to the Western mainstream politics.
I, personally, am not a fan of Navalny (I dislike racial slur in his blog posts and some of his views that I consider chauvinist), but the trend is clear: he and Khodorkovsky have been the only viable opposition leaders in Russia in the recent years. Both of them ended up in jail on similar white-collar crime charges.
Have you ever seen any evidence to prove his or his associates guilt? Just because he was charged with anything makes him not guilty. Basically he was imprisoned for about 10 years for alleged tax evasion + for "stealing" crude oil.
p.s. I have seen a lot of the original materials of the cases and I can assure you that State failed to prove his guilt.
With Navalny cases (yes, he and his associates have been charged with many things including stealing a picture) it has reached the whole new dimension.
Despite downvote I do insist: sockpuppet does imply collaboration. And I do insist: the IRS is regularly used (with other capabilities) by American administrations to harass and discourage political opponents. This is not a contended fact and is very open to search and research.
There's certain logic to what happened to Khodorkovksy (and earlier to Berezovsky and few other people) - they all were oligarchs, they blatantly stole their way into their riches, but they were allowed by the state to use them. That is until they tried to use their money to try and un-sit those who let them become obnoxiously wealthy. They weren't the opposition per se. They were just former buddies that got drunk on money power and decided to play against their own. And they lost.
I feel like you're bending out of shape to justify the lawless voluntarism of the government. This guy deserved it because he took on the powerful. This on had it coming because he was, allegedly, a foreign agent. That other one was an oligarch, so likely a thief anyway - it's ok to gulag him. In the same vein people would say that a girl had a short skirt, so likely a slut and totally deserved the treatment she got.
What you're doing is rationalizing the crime. People do that because they can't stand the alternative - admission than those in power can and do railroad people's lives because they feel like it, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. The mere thought of it is unbearable, so it's easier to come up with an excuse as to why the victim had it coming, and therefore why this won't happen to me and people I care about. It's called "the just world fallacy" - a mistaken belief that everything happens for a reason, and so nothing needs to be done about it. It's where the fear of doing something meets the excuse for not having to do it.
But here's some good news - you can actually admit that those things are unjust, and you are not obligated to right the wrongs by yourself. It would be nice if you did, but just being honest with yourself is an achievement in its own right.
Big words, comrade, almost a thesis. It's called "switching the subject" though.
The matter of fact that Navalny's stubborn persistence doesn't correlate with his personality, at all. He looks and acts like an artificial construct with no obvious genuine motivation.
Khodorkovsky was one of them and he went against the gang. He got shot down, surprise. Was he opposed to the state? Yes. Was he an opposition? Hell, no.
So your point is that Putin only represses the oligarchs that dared to "bite the hand that fed"? OK, Khodorkovsky has spent 10 years in prison, been stripped of his billions and forced to leave the country upon release.
But Navalny and Kasparov are not, and have never been, oligarchs; however they are either in prison or in exile (I'm sure Kasparov would be prosecuted right now, but he chose to leave Russia in 2013).
Navalny and Kasparov are in trouble because they had a shot at gaining popular momentum. Khodorkovsky privately expressed desire for a more free Russia to Putin, and was shot down as a warning to others.
Putin prosecutes everyone who goes against him apart from allowing a minimal opposition to exist for the sake of appearance and venting off angry people's steam.
"Shut up, look down and you'll be allowed to live" is a very popular theme in Russia across all levels from the president down to local municipal offices. If you go against those in power you will be persecuted proportionally to their power.
The important thing to understand about modern Russia is that there is no separation of power. Putin owns the parliament, the government, the military, and the judges. As a corollary, everyone is guilty of something, and if not, they are made to be.
Putin owning the parliament, the government, the military, and the judges is not the problem. The problem is that he's not able to, or not willing to, use all that power to improve life in Russia.
But that is the problem – he has no incentive to do anything good for the country because he has absolute power and controls mass media. He is not accountable to anyone.
In fact, he sort of benefits from people struggling. When you're hungry you don't care about democracy that much.
By the way, Russians' lives did improve relative to early 1990s which is what most people remember most vividly. It's just that Putin has little to do with it, it's just a matter of rising oil prices and increased trade.
To be fair, I don't think it's that simple. He must do at least some good for the country, or the country would suffer and he wouldn't have much to parasitize upon. He must be beyond any imaginable madness to play "let's see how long I can fuck with this country"-type of game, so, by Hanlon's razor, I hypothesize it's more like he's trying to do some good (and has incentive to do so), but has completely weird ideas on what's good and by which means it could be achieved.
Still, no matter what Putin's thinking, I don't like what's going on.
Well, he does some good, sure, the kind that any generic country manager would do. Normal maintenance-mode deeds of good. But I can't recall any significant positive things that he did in the last few years, other than providing significant state support if you give birth to or adopt your second child ($10K I think). Maybe you can add Skolkovo to the list, but we are yet to see how that pans out. For now it feels like a money grab... but then again, what isn't.
On the flip side, rampant corruption makes government spending incredibly inefficient. Putin could kill all this off in a year if he wanted to, but he doesn't, because he knows how to work this kind of system. Be closer to the top, get more benefits to screw everyone else. That makes for a very stable power structure. No one will rise against him because all those with any sort of power are part of the scheme and treasure their position in the food chain.
So, even though Russia is filthy rich with oil money (50% of federal budget), they can only use a tiny fraction of that money for actual improvements to the country. Russia could by far surpass Eastern Europe in quality of life today if its government was working with any comparable efficiency, but that is the opposite of what is happening.
but that money has to go somewhere - what is being spent on? Any sort of domestic production is surely going to improve the lives of some people (ala, trickle down effect).
Also, the oil money can't last - there's limited oil after all. If the country can't produce other things except natural resources, it's going to get fucked, only a matter of time. And world war 2 is essentially a fight for resources.
The money goes to corrupt officials and contractors, the Russian 1%. Apart from some normal stuff they spend it on luxury goods – iphones, bentleys, jets, yachts, depending on the level. Showing off your status like that is exceedingly popular in Russia.
At the same time, Russia produces very few such goods and thus much of this money simply flows out of the country. Besides, rich people spend a much lower percent of their income than the average Ivan does, so they park their savings offshore – in foreign bank accounts, real estate, etc. The reason they do it is because anything they have in Russia can be taken away in a matter of hours if they ever find themselves on the wrong side of the power field.
So yes, as you see corruption leads to capital outflow which is a real problem in Russia. In fact, we had some new laws passed to address that, not sure about the extent or effectiveness.
You're right though, Russia is beginning to see resource exhaustion – easily accessible forests, oil fields, etc. are gradually drying up. That's why we're ramping up arctic research for example. So while oil money won't last forever, we could have used it to kick-start our economy and infrastructure. There are so many talented engineers in Russia.
> So your point is that Putin only represses the oligarchs
No, that's not my point. This is your strawman :)
Point being that Khodorkovsky is a mafia member going public against the boss and using his crime-sourced wealth as a stepping stone. I personally don't give a flying f#ck what his fellow clan members will do to him for that and I certainly don't want to be manipulated into thinking that his a noble martyr.
He is only recognized as "us sock-puppet" by those trying to smear critics of the regime. To add credibility to their baseless arguments, they often resort to tricks, such as ascribing the smears to some nebulous moral authority.
Contrary to latter is an example of Vkontakte russian social network refusing to block ukranian EuroMaidan groups. Which subsequently led to it's founder Pavel Durov resignation.
