As someone who studied privacy in voting, it's horrific that we have a word for this. Cat was out of the bag when the then-minister (of the interior) started pushing this. Somehow, despite the "how are you, fellow kids" vibe, the word became unstoppable.
Too bad no one explained the minister that we'd like to not enable vote buying (nor other forms of boter coercion).
(The official guidelines make a distinction between allowed - no info visible - and illegal stemfies, but no one's doing any enforcement.)
> The idea that critical communication infrastructure must be (directly or indirectly) supported by advertising interests is certainly not obvious
I think the problem is more that the trend over the last 5-7 decades has been to privatise things. The EU (for instance) has rules forcing (e.g.,) privatisation of train companies and postal services. This has caused previously government-owned services to be privatised.
In this day and age, I'd be surprised to hear of any successful case where a non-public good was made public in a Western country. (I'll restrict my surprise to there because of insufficient familiarity with other countries to make such sweeping statements.) Whether it'd be web browsers, water treatment facilities, energy-related, healthcare-related, infrastructure-related, etc.: if it's currently privatised, it will emphatically not revert to public; if it's currently public, it might be forced to be privatised.
You might think about "privatised-but-with-strings-attached" variants, like in California with "carrier-of-last-resort", or in EU with public transport concessions requiring also services that operate at a loss to service small population centers / unpopular hours. Typically, these impose restrictions on the market parties on what they must deliver in order to be granted the concession. That seems like a way to guarantee the kind of service a government would deliver, but by market parties. And it is! But once you encode rules, you can start eroding them. Every new concession tender going out, you can try to dilute such conditions. A bit is enough - every step gained can be relied upon in future negotiations ("you're asking for more than last term"). And, of course, every small step can be argued by increasing costs - because cost will always increase anyway.
The TL;DRR (didn't read the rant): the public commons has a tendency to erode in favour of privatisation. There is pressure to do so, and no real counterpressure to reverse, only to not go too fast.
> I think the problem is more that the trend over the last 5-7 decades has been to privatise things.
The private/public border is volatile and heavily contested and by all accounts will forever be a topic of political debate.
But notice how unusual the context of web technologies: Its not that a private monopoly is controlling and selling some piece of web infrastructure (that might, instead, be opened to more competition, turned into a public good etc).
No, what is happening is that a very specific business sector (advertising) is controlling universal communications infrastructure.
A loose analogy would be if a single private oil company would manufacture and distribute all automobiles in circulation - for free, but securing that they can run on nobody else's energy.
The conjectured "public-good" browser is not crowding out any private interests as there is no market for selling browsers. There is a market for advertising but its not competing for surfaces, it owns all surfaces.
Guess what, in this terminally conflicted arrangement you would never see an electric vehicle.
The highjacking of central infrastructure to serve narrow private interests will inevitably reduce innovation and welfare and any techie that is worth their title knows thats already the case.
I think it's curious that there are two models driving OS and browser development at the moment:
1) Google's model. They try to control all the ways that people discover goods and services, and then sell ads to the providers of services. Whether people are looking for electronics, flights, restaurants, contractors or nannies, they are going to use Google Search or Google Maps or another Google service to find it, and service providers need to pay Google to be discovered. Google is using ads to get a cut of every business transaction.
2) Apple's model: They try to control all the ways that people pay for things. For digital goods, that's the App Store and In-App-Purchases, for traditional things it's Apple Pay and Apple Card and Apple Cash. Apple is using payment services to get a cut of every business transaction.
Another hypothesis: being extravert means getting energised by interactions with others; being introvert means that costs energy.
(Most people will have experienced both, at different times.)
This is why I don't think that being introvert is caused by fear, nor that courage cause extraverted behaviour. For most people, whether a social situation is providing or draining energy very often depends on more than just you.
Yes, there are exceptions. But don't underestimate yourself -- in either direction. The vast majority of people need both to thrive.
> Another hypothesis: being extravert means getting energised by interactions with others; being introvert means that costs energy. (Most people will have experienced both, at different times.)
This isn't really a hypothesis so much as a restatement of the definition of each term. The person to which you are replying is giving a hypothetical explanation of _why_ the two conditions are the way they are.
I think the main issue is that regular post has addrrss info of the recipient. So the whole logistics chain is geared towards that. If you remove the need for address info for a (small) subset, you'd have to have two logistics chains somewhat intertwined with each other...
> What global players does Russia have any significant influence over?
China, N. Korea, probably Vietnam, India'll listen to them, possibly more in s.e. Asia, and they're expanding their influence in Africa (by supplying mercenary armies).
They play the game differently than the US (at the very least: with other countries), but that does not make them a 2nd rate power.
Russia is at the mercy of China. China can operate independently of them, same as India. They are trading partners, but it's a very asymmetrical relationship.
> N.Korea, probably Vietnam, [...] possibly more in s.e. Asia, and they're expanding their influence in Africa (by supplying mercenary armies).
As with all the countries they do have like some (though debatably not substantial) leverage over, they're in the global south, and most certainly not 1st rate powers.
Now, yes. Back when this happened, it was still closer to the other way around. (Well OK, China wasn't exactly "at the mercy" of Russia, but Russia was still generally regarded as the senior of the two. Perhaps mostly out of old habit.)
Basically the entire developed world has been in trade deficit with China for 2 decades now. The reality, which is slowly dawning on western countries, is that China has secured leverage – economically, financially, and in supply chains – worldwide. But this leverage all exists within the confines of globalization, and globalization is at odds with geopolitical discord, be they hot wars, cold wars, or simply the slow retreat to protectionism (and divestment to other rising powers like India) that US and some western allies are making. The world needs China, but China also needs the status quo to hum along.
check out John Mearshimer's recent content about the Ukraine / Russia conflict.
In my view: Putin is a patient, reasonable strategist who is trying to defend his country against significant aggression by US Neocons. US Neocons do not respect the maturity and sacrifice that led to the de-escalation of the cold war, and they want to incite conflict with Russia both out of ignorance of history and payments from Ukrainian oligarchs -- don't forget much of the wealth of the USSR was captured by a small number of oligarchs -- arguably including Putin -- and they don't all want Putin having all the power.
To be clear, the payments are not always direct, but across the US political spectrum there are many people who have set up shop as gatekeepers. Rudy Giulliani, Hunter Biden, and many many more are able to easily make millions a year doing the bidding of various eastern bloc billionaires. We are seeing the policy impact of their work at play in Ukraine now.
> defend his country against significant aggression by US Neocons
I'm skeptical of this argument, as a hot war or claiming of Russian territory is off the cards. Not just because of the nuclear deterrent, but because it's not really in the interests of any other country to engage in hot wars. Proxy wars between US and Russia have been a thing for a long time though. In reality, what is transpiring between Russia and the developed world is a battle for political influence, and they have, at least under their current right wing default, no interest in amenable relations with the west. And this is not because there isn't anything to be gained (particularly economically), but out of spite and injured national pride. A radical change of leadership would be great for the Russian people, its economic development, and also the border security of its neighbors.
Japan thrived post WWII because they accepted their position and made the best of the situation. And in spite of it's economic reputation, Japan is an excellent place to live, in terms of amenities. You pretty much have to be homeless on purpose. Though I think they are overworked (but much could be said of many Asian countries). Russia lost the cold war, through and through, but it still wants to live in the past, and drag everyone else down with it. The Russian leadership could just not start wars, and go back to economic development, and just in general have a less combative relationship with the rest of the world... but I'm not holding my breath.
US fighter jets flying formations around Lviv in 2016 was a clearly offensive move and was part of the strategy of trying to push the line further East and pressure Russia by removing Ukraine's neutrality.
The US will fight Russia this way till the last Ukrainian. It's a cynical policy and I feel badly for all of the people whose hearts are moved by the heroism of those in Ukraine fighting for their country. Alas the war was started by the US and the US does not care at all about Ukrainian suffering or Ukrainian lives. The whole project is just supposed to be a way for the US to harm Russia in a cost effective and politically feasible way.
Still doesn't make an actual invasion more plausible in any real way. This is something that happens all the time. Jets from both sides fly near China and North Korea all the time. Again, their sovereignty remains and...
> was part of the strategy of trying to push the line further East
... their borders remain unchanged. As Russia (and the US) well knows, you can't change borders without sending the tanks in. And as the US has learnt the hard way, even then, it's probably not worth it.
I hesitate to engage with your comment as it indicates a low level of openness to ideas. But I'll take a chance. Consider the following:
- Michael Flynn founded the Flynn Intel group in 2014 and was hired by Turkish interests, Russia Today, and is alleged to have worked on behalf of other Russian lobbyists.
- Rudy Giuliani founded Giuliani Partners and had clients in Ukraine, Qatar and Venezuela.
- The Clinton Foundation accepted numerous "donations" for alleged philanthropic work. Yet the donations dried up and the foundation dramatically shrunk after HRC lost in 2016.
- John Podesta founded the Podesta group which did lobbying work for Ukraine and Saudi Arabia
- Newt Gingrich has consulted for a variety of foreign entities.
- Bob Dole consulted for Taiwan
- John Bolton had a consulting firm that was hired by interests desiring Ukraine to join NATO
- Corey Lewandowski's firm sought foreign clients
- Paul Manafort did extensive consulting for Ukraine's pro-Russian political party
- Tony Podesta (John's brother) did extensive consulting for foreign governments
- Richard Gephardt has consulted for Turkish interests, among others.
- Jared Kushner had numerous foreign deals in play when he was a US official
FARA (the Foreign Agents Registration Act) was intended to promote transparency in these kinds of dealings. Of the people listed above, only Flynn, Manafort, the Podesta brothers and Dole registered under FARA.
The rest tread on the very large gray area of influence peddling. The thing to keep in mind is that all of the people involved in these kinds of schemes are easily bought for very little money when dealing with state-actor level budgets.
As you can see, the graft spreads across both parties and is generally concentrated a few degrees away from the ones holding current office. The Clinton Foundation was particularly ingenious and had the 2016 election gone differently would likely today be among the nation's most influential and financially successful NGOs.
I am open to being shown errors in my thinking. So far you have used the tactic of name calling but haven't offered anything that indicates critical thinking. FWIW I have never heard Putin mention any of the points I've mentioned.
I'm not a fan of Putin but he is a superb strategist and a clear communicator who has sadly outwitted US leaders over the past decades, resulting in the US wasting a lot of money and keeping its eye off the ball strategically in other areas of the world.
In the same way that lobbyists are why soft drinks in the US contain harmful ingredients like corn syrup, lobbyists have led the US to spend a lot of money on pointless, strategically stupid wars that have weakened the US tremendously relative to its adversaries.
The talking points I'm mentioning is not this list of names, it's the good old "NATO agression/expansion", "Russia was threatened", "US forced Russia into war" bullshit.
So let's see, how was Russia threatened? Who on earth was going to invade Russia? They have enough nukes to destroy the planet. They were supposed to be the 2nd military power after the US. There already are 3 NATO countries right on the border with Russia, so if the invasion was about preventing NATO getting too close, it was a failure before it even started.
It's crazy the amount of mental gymnastic Putin apologists have to come up with.
So, if it's not about Russia being invaded, what else was so unacceptable with Ukraine not being barred from joining NATO?
Well, maybe, I know it's crazy, but bear with me, maybe, Putin had great plans for Ukraine and Russia, which would have fallen appart if Ukraine suddenly could not be invaded.
But that's too simple, right? It must be about US agression, CIA biolabs, nazi organ-trafficking pedophile satanists, combat pigeons, and Russia survival.
Seriously, what would have happened if Putin didn't invade Ukraine? Nothing. Russia would be fine. But Ukraine refused Putin's ultimatum to sign a treaty disallowing it to ever join NATO. Of course they refused. How could a sovereign country accept it? I mean, if you had a neighbor, already grabbing some of your garden, which insisted you agree to never get a bodyguard, would you accept it? Russia: WE DEMAND YOU STAY WEAK AND VULNERABLE TO AN INVASION. What a joke.
So of course Ukraine refused, even though it wasn't even in the process of joining NATO at the time. That provided Putin with an half-assed pretext to invade, so he did, and he made sure to lie about it, while the world was witnessing the amassing of 150K troops on Ukraine border. He lies. All the time, every time. That's who he is, that's what he does. He lies, we know he lies, he knows we know he lies, we know he knows we know he lies. But it doesn't matter, it's just the Russian mob way.
Anyway, you're also saying Putin is a 'superb' strategist? yeah, sure, but is he as superb as Hitler? If you admire Putin's strategy, you must be in awe when it comes to Hitler strategy, right? It's just too bad the guy is the worst war criminal of all times. Or maybe it's all Western lies too?
Now, the US is deep troubles internally. But it's not due to their wars. It's not about money. The Trump cult is just out of control. They are so close to become a full blown failed kleptocratic state it's mind blowing. If Trump gets back in the white house, it's basically over, he and his friends will literally loot the US, selling state secrets, selling the sabotage of the country. You must be deeply impressed by Trump as well, right? How can someone make the 1st world power self destruct like this, in just a decade?
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was supposed to be neutral. Within the United States post cold war, there has been a faction that has wanted to push NATO boundaries east and make Ukraine non-neutral. This is what happened.
Ending the cold war took a lot of discipline and sacrifice. It is hawkish neocons in the United States (the same people who architected the Iraq war, etc.) who have nudged the US toward aggression and have tried (successfully) to shift public opinion in Ukraine toward nationalism and favoring an anti-Russia non-neutral perspective.
Putin has been responding to the antagonism with bold and efficient use of force to advance Russia's national interest in the face of such aggression.
Putin has many, many problems (authoritarian, etc.) but he's not an idiot and the whole problem was caused by US neoconservatives who incidentally don't care if many Ukrainians die in the process of trying to weaken Russia.
As usual, the US propaganda machine paints Putin as irrational and insane, just as it painted Saddam and OBL. If anything, by now we ought to realize that when we hear US neocons saying that about someone that it's probably completely false.
It's very, very sad that the people of Ukraine have been victimized first by US propaganda and second by the US using them as human shields to avoid needing to spend dollars and lives sending US troops to fight more openly with Russia.
The extent to which the US has been weakened by following neoconservative warmongering impulses is staggering. First trillions of dollars flushed in the Iraq war. We emerge from the Iraq war with the defense industry tremendously enriched and with 100x the lobbying power it had beforehand. And now we find ourselves pushing Russia and China (and many other countries who will join) into an anti-US alliance that was completely preventable.
According to? It was supposed to be sovereign. It gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for guaranties of never being attacked... Russia can't be trusted.
>there has been a faction that has wanted to push NATO boundaries east
Well, NATO membership works like this: Countries ask for membership. It's not "NATO" deciding "hmmm, let's expand east". You must be confusing with Russia expansion, forcibly annexing land, with all the war crime and deportation. Ex-soviet countries know what it's like to be occupied by Russia, so they want to be part of NATO. I'm sure you can see the difference.
> Putin has been responding to the antagonism with bold and efficient use of force to advance Russia's national interest in the face of such aggression.
Bold and efficient use of force??? Like, bold torture? Efficient killing and starving POWs? Smart kidnapping and re-education of Ukrainian children to draft them to fight against their own people? Yeah, what a genius. You're nauseating. You're talking just like a nazi would.
I think I'll stop there, I don't think it's worth discussing with people who casually admire war criminals.
> It was supposed to be sovereign. It gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for guaranties of never being attacked... Russia can't be trusted.
The US was the first to violate the agreement, unfortunately.
> It's not "NATO" deciding "hmmm, let's expand east".
Lobbying groups from inside and outside those countries advocate for membership, etc. There are hawks in the US that don't care about Ukraine being neutral because they want to squeeze Russia.
> Bold and efficient use of force???
Putin has effectively used a much weaker military to thwart the US at every turn. He is a much, much smarter strategist (again, unfortunately). I am no admirer of Putin. Most recent US presidents most certainly qualify as war criminals, for what it's worth (unfortunately).
The sad part is that the US is encouraging Ukraininans to fight and die for a cause that the US has no intention of supporting in a significant way and has no intention of truly following through with. The US has been duplicitous with Ukraine and in spite of many US hawks wanting to go all in for Ukraine, it won't happen and they know it. The best they will do is donate weapons and let Ukraine harm Russia as much as possible while there are Ukrainians left to fight and while the conflict doesn't escalate to the point of endangering the US mainland.
Incidentally, it is quite likely that Putin will be nudged into attacking the US mainland at some point, either via cyber attacks that cost lives or actual munitions.
Yeah, I know too well that rhetoric. That doesn't hold scrutiny unfortunately, and I think you know it, but it doesn't stop you from spreading it. You _sound_ wise, but you just assert things, like the "aggression by US Neocons", but you don't say what is the aggression. "Ignorance of history"? You don't say what history. You mention payments from Hunter Biden and Rudy Giulliani, but did you deduce this all by yourself, or do you have credible sources?
And then, I'm curious, what makes you think that Putin is a patient and reasonable strategist?
What is patient and reasonable, exactly?
Not only invading, but _annexing_ other nation's land?
Throwing in jail for 7 years anyone who criticize the war?
killing/poisoning your political opponents?
Airing fake demonstrations of people demanding "we nuke Europe NOW"!
Turning your country into a fascist military dictatorship, proudly putting assault rifles in the hand of children in kindergarten?
Letting state-sponsored TV hosts say the most ridiculously fascist things like “Life is highly overrated”, "Ukrainians are not humans", "Ukrainian children should be drowned in the Tysyna", "We will kill 1 million, or 5 million; we can exterminate all of you".
Pretend Ukraine is filled with nazi organ-trafficking satanist pedophiles?
While you torture and starve POWs?
Rewriting history? Pretending they fought the nazi since the beginning, while they invaded Poland hand-in-hand with the nazis, and were best friends until Hitler betrayed them. Only then they fought, for their survival, it was never a choice. Pretending they defeated the nazis alone, while the US helped them a lot with their logistics.
It's a sea of lies. You just have come up with big lies, repeat them again and again, and somehow it'll work. Textbook fascism, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie. And now, with open western social networks, it's super easy, super cheap. So, yeah, Putin is certainly not reasonable, he is just a "strategist", but he's just applying old fascist propaganda techniques, and let the useful idiots, bigots and opportunists do the rest.
Assange is alleged to have released unredacted info that exposed informants in warzones. This while running a service - not an infrastructure, a service - for exposing information.
Arguing that he hasn't personally killed anyone is not a strong rebuke against such allegations.
Compromising informants working for a foreign government invading another foreign land is not a crime, nor much of a moral dilemma.
The risk inherent to collaborationism is also not one anyone but the informant must account for. Just as mercenaries operate in that same high-risk-reward / low-solidarity space, and accordingly join the cast of characters in war zones along with spies and informants without international sympathy.
And you don't think that what happened to some folks that said/did stuff that displeased the US and UK rulers might have a similar effect on their population? Like, for example, what happened to Julian Assange?
Yes, 'decide' based on evidence not 'opine'. The jury is properly instructed to only assess the facts of the case as presented by the defense and prosecution. There's some wiggle room as to what a 'reasonable person' might consider to be plausible, but ultimately juries will only convict if they can unanimously agree that the defendant is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. This is clearly distinguishable from opinions of the public, or a potentially biased panel of judges in a military court.
The thing is, I'm not on any jury, and I'm expressing my opinion. I never claimed to be a juror, judge, or anything.
I'm saying it's my personal opinion that his case is different from the many people I've read about who were railroaded by the criminal justice system, pressured to plead guilty and serve time. Typically those look very different from an espionage act case or compromised government emails, or whistleblower-like scenarios, or questions of press freedom, whatever. Often it looks more like some African American dude you've never heard of being wrongfully accused of a violent crime or drug offense on flimsy evidence.
> Typically those look very different from an espionage act case [...] Often it looks more like some African American dude you've never heard of being wrongfully accused of a violent crime or drug offense on flimsy evidence.
I suppose? There's maybe some qualitative distinction to be made. But essentially I'd say that Assange was:
> railroaded by the criminal justice system, pressured to plead guilty and serve time.
Though time already served was factored into the sentencing. The pressure to plead guilty was the prospect of dying in solitary confinement.
The allegations I've seen floating around is that he deliberately withheld certain types of leaks. Thereby making Wikileaks no longer neutral, but politically-motivated.
> Is it not enough that one state committed a crime and he reported it?
It depends on what "it" would be enough for... but if he indeed actively surpressed damaging info leaked to him on par with the stuff he has released, yeah, that makes matters complex.
Another criticism I've seen is that the leaks did not do any redaction whatsoever - even when it clearly pertained to informants in war zones. For that, if the allegations are true, my view is simple: you shouldn't do that. And if you set up an infrastructure for leaking, it is reasonable to assume that you're capable of handling such an important and obviously necessary step.
So "isn't it enough?" - no, it is more complicated than that.
Neither of these is true. WL had a process of verifying leaks and would only publish those that it was assured were provided with full context. Typical news reporting will publish a leaked sentence or paragraph and add its own significant interpretation. WL would publish the entire source material (with appropriate redactions) once it was vetted and deemed complete, so that nobody could accuse WL of holding back part of the context that might change one's interpretation of it.
WL continued to redact information and expended significant resources doing so. If this faltered at all, it was only after the organization came under attack from multiple governments and had to undertake its mission with fewer humans available to perform that level of review. While not ideal, WL does not deserve criticism for it as WL was essentially stabbed in the back by the NY Times and other corporate news outlets.
WL wanted to team up with major corporate news outlets to ensure solid redaction and stewardship. They cooperated once before governments told them to instead publish smear stories against Assange. The timing of the diplomatic cables which embarrassed HRC was not ideal, since it led the US center-left (neocons) to get on board more fully in the character assassination campaign against Assange than would have been possible if GWB and the Iraq/Afghan war corruption was the major scandal impacting the USG revealed by WL.
Never? I can easily come up with scenarios where I think you'd also make an exception; If he was a German journalist in 1940 and he discovered what really happened at concentration camps. I'd wager exposing those papers without any redaction would be acceptable.
If you agree, then the rest is just about how you weigh certain crimes by the government, how many and what kind of names you expose, etc.
Too bad no one explained the minister that we'd like to not enable vote buying (nor other forms of boter coercion).
(The official guidelines make a distinction between allowed - no info visible - and illegal stemfies, but no one's doing any enforcement.)