<story><title>Authoritarian nations are turning the internet into a weapon</title><url>https://onezero.medium.com/authoritarian-nations-are-turning-the-internet-into-a-weapon-10119d4e9992</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mc32</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;quot;But the extraordinary case draws attention to how dictatorships are increasingly using technology to crush online dissent.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Yes, authoritarian regimes control communication.  That&amp;#x27;s been the case for over a century of radio and mass circulation dailies.  It&amp;#x27;s nothing new.&lt;p&gt;What is new is that even democratic countries are controlling free speech via speech laws or often the private companies engaging in evaluating what&amp;#x27;s permissible speech and not above and beyond what laws require.  To wit what comprises &amp;quot;hate speech&amp;quot;.  It&amp;#x27;s basically come to mean &amp;quot;point of view in disagreement with my group&amp;#x27;s current position which may change in the future&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>anigbrowl</author><text>&lt;i&gt;To wit what comprises &amp;quot;hate speech&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a rather specious argument when you have the current example of a democracy (India) simply shutting down large parts of the internet for political reasons, not to mention the widespread deployment of surveillance tech in numerous developed countries.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t to say that you don&amp;#x27;t have a point, but if you&amp;#x27;re saying it&amp;#x27;s a more pressing issue than those you might be suffering from a loss of perspective. After all, &amp;#x27;hate speech&amp;#x27; is widely unpopular (as opposed to being a highly popular thing suppressed by authoritarian states, and much &amp;#x27;hate speech&amp;#x27; treats of the desire to operate an authoritarian state that will restrict or outright terminate the freedoms&amp;#x2F;lives of the hated subjects.</text></comment>
<story><title>Authoritarian nations are turning the internet into a weapon</title><url>https://onezero.medium.com/authoritarian-nations-are-turning-the-internet-into-a-weapon-10119d4e9992</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mc32</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;quot;But the extraordinary case draws attention to how dictatorships are increasingly using technology to crush online dissent.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Yes, authoritarian regimes control communication.  That&amp;#x27;s been the case for over a century of radio and mass circulation dailies.  It&amp;#x27;s nothing new.&lt;p&gt;What is new is that even democratic countries are controlling free speech via speech laws or often the private companies engaging in evaluating what&amp;#x27;s permissible speech and not above and beyond what laws require.  To wit what comprises &amp;quot;hate speech&amp;quot;.  It&amp;#x27;s basically come to mean &amp;quot;point of view in disagreement with my group&amp;#x27;s current position which may change in the future&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simonh</author><text>I disagree this is nothing new, it&amp;#x27;s an unprecedented intrusion into private discourse but I understand why it doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be so. After all, previously private forms of communication such as direct speech are still private and written letters are still roughly as hard to intercept en masse than they were. The only change is in access to new forms of communication.&lt;p&gt;I think that&amp;#x27;s enough of a change though to constitute a grave new threat even within already oppressive regimes. Public real time messaging systems like twitter and wechat are fundamentally reshaping public discourse. We can&amp;#x27;t just say that &amp;quot;oh well, just stick to the old ways of communication and you&amp;#x27;ll be fine&amp;quot;. If the fundamental way people communicate changes, then the fact that this change enables unprecedented levels of centralised monitoring and intervention does change things a lot. Even beyond intervention is specific conversations or consequences for individuals, it gives such regimes an unprecedented insight into the opinions and attitudes of their population as a whole and various sub-groups within it and opportunities to shape and act on those.</text></comment>