WhatsApp and Other Social Media Platforms Restricted in Zambia Amid Ongoing Elections (techcrunch.com) 20
Several users from Zambia have taken to Twitter informing the general public that WhatsApp has been restricted in the country amidst ongoing general elections holding today. From a report: The president and parliamentary elections culminate in a face-off between current President Edgar Lungu and opposition Hakainde Hichilema. Internet monitoring organization Netblocks further corroborated these reports adding that multiple internet providers in Zambia had restricted access to the American social messaging platform. Some of these networks include Zambian government-owned Zamtel, Airtel Zambia, Liquid Telecom, and MTN. Just this week, reports circulated that the Zambian government had threatened to shut down the internet if Zambians "failed to use the cyberspace during this year's election correctly." The reports say the government intended to go through with its plans from Thursday, the polling day, till Sunday, when vote counts are expected to have ended.
Dummies! (Score:2)
So they cut out the middleman of threats if the companies don't silence the political opposition?
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we ought to recover Usenet
It's not gone.
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we don't even need ISPs to run the servers
We still need them to connect, and they can block the servers
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and they can block the servers
Who are 'they'? And why would they risk an antitrust suit for interfering in some other business?*
*Most remaining Usenet servers provide access for a fee. Even if it's only a couple of bucks a month. Block those and their operators have standing for a lawsuit.
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Block those and their operators have standing for a lawsuit.
Yeah, maybe in the US, DMCA and terrorism/porno, etc. charges will make it all very expensive. Globally we need something more ad hoc, multipath, peer to peer oriented, more resistant against interference.
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Sorry,
*They* are the ISPs. they will comply with whatever orders they receive, or make up their own. Lawsuits will be irrelevant.
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*They* are the ISPs.
My ISP is very hands off. They don't sniff content, try to block servers or assist in IP blocks by content providers.
There are a few DoD contractors near me. And the last thing ISPs need is a federal investigation for espionage. Better to not know what goes out over the network.
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we ought to recover Usenet
It's not gone.
But it's moribund to the point of death. Groups that used to have many comments every day might have one comment a month. And it's probably spam.
To add to that: (Score:1)
IRC, E-Mail and XMPP are designed like that too. The term is "federation". It's a federated network.
Sadly, the eternal September people who think they should rule the Internet now, even though they are so clueless, they literally cannot tell the WWW from the Internet, have ruined them, by turning them into the twisted Lovecraftian nightmares that are Discord, webmail and WhatsApp.
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Don't knock it until you've tried it...
(Seriously, don't eat caterpillars. Many of them are *extremely* poisonous. ... Unless you know they're not. Then, Bon Appetit! ;)