Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube

Ugandan here, to provide more context;<p>This is clock work, every election period they shutdown social media &amp; electronic payments. It happened in 2016[0]<p>But when an &quot;OTT&quot; tax was imposed on social networks (Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Linkdin) in 2018[1].<p>Majority didn&#x27;t want to pay an extra tax(required to use social media) on top of paying for internet. So majority learnt how to use vpns.<p>As a result, the OTT tax was a complete failure [2] and now the Uganda Revenue service is planning on bundling it with internet data costs.<p>Since people now know how to use vpns, social media cant be blocked.<p>So the reason for blocking smartphone app stores is to essentially, STEP 1 i.e Stop people from installing VPNs.<p>STEP 2 will probably be the total blocking of all social media.<p>[0]:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theatlantic.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;article&#x2F;463407&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theatlantic.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;article&#x2F;463407&#x2F;</a><p>[1]:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dw.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;uganda-one-year-of-social-media-tax&#x2F;a-49672632" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dw.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;uganda-one-year-of-social-media-tax&#x2F;a-4967...</a><p>[2]:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techjaja.com&#x2F;ott-tax-fails-as-ura-proposes-tax-on-internet-bundles&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techjaja.com&#x2F;ott-tax-fails-as-ura-proposes-tax-on-in...</a>

Given how given to certain narratives some of these services are, I’m not surprised and I would predict more governments will do similar things pre-election.<p>Now of course most of the governments that would do this would be authoritarian and would look to control their own narrative, I think this illustrates how unbalanced and agenda-driven these media and social graph services have become who bring in foreign values to local elections.<p>This interference used to be called neo-imperialism not too long ago by the same people who now advocate for these narratives.

Does anyone else feel like we’re going down the path of internet Balkanization? Not in any immediate sense, but it seems like a slow rolling type of narrative that we will retrospectively see at the end of the 21st century. I don’t have any _real_ evidence to support this feeling of mine, but occasionally there are blips like this that make me wonder.

Can someone with more familiarity with Ugandan politics comment? My understanding is that outside developed states, lawful democracy can be very brittle especially in states containing multiple nations and tribes, and when there is a long history where the people tend to put their own nation and tribe before the others in the same state, leading to conflict.<p>The rationale and measure seems to be a better evil if the politics are thusly brittle.

Seems the great social media purge towards GOP personals really made many countries rethinking their information sovereignty.<p>There&#x27;s no way they would allow access to social media, the 21st century mass communication be controlled by some Silicon Valley companies located in the USA.<p>Expect the indigenization also occurs in financial ecosystem, etc.

I predict that more and more govts will take similar steps in the future. In the last few days Twitter and Facebook showed the world what they can do (and how effective it is) and govts all over the world are now watching them very closely.

I’m currently work from Asia so I follow the local and regional news quite closely.<p>What’s fascinating is that many countries are using the whole tech censorship to justify their own behavior. It’s a bit of “see, even the US agrees dangerous speech should be censored” or “do you want to end up like the US? this is why we have laws about speech”.

Important to see whether the ban imposed by telecoms are to be permanent, or whether they will be lifted after the election. Great civil unrest may arise if people still don&#x27;t have access to the digital infrastructure they feel they are entitled to after an election favorable to the current govt

Time to decentralize everything

&quot;We never thought it would happen, but in 2024, the year of our lord, it did. It seems that governments are requiring full access to iPhones and using features in ways we didn&#x27;t think possible. People are now using infrared broadcasting, attached to weapons, government vehicles and buildings, to prevent taking photos near protests and riots. This is the first time it&#x27;s happened that we know of, and we are scared of the precedent. Over 4,150 people died in a protest in the [redacted African country] at the hands of newly &#x27;elected&#x27; military regime, and we have no digital evidence of it, except for the older analog cameras that some people still possessed.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;apple-patent-disables-camera-at-concerts-2016-6" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;apple-patent-disables-camera...</a>

&gt;&gt;<i>“We are now having a challenge of citizen journalism. Social media propaganda is certainly not in the best interest of this country’s security. We are looking for a way of dealing with it.”</i><p>Ah, OK then comrade. Cancel elections as well since you&#x27;ve figured it all out.

Facebook and Twitter might do well to just ban politics entirely at this point. It costs them a lot to touch it.

Is this the first English-speaking country to do something like this?<p>Will be interesting to see what their internet turns out looking like if this is permanent

Any chance of Apple shipping a default VPN in the base iOS image?<p>Running the required servers might be too hard, though.

If I ran was in charge of a government after watching them all ban Trump&#x27;s ability to communicate at the same time, I too would think about banning them to protect myself.

I wish there would be a societal awakening in Europe and people would boycott American services. Countries need to reclaim their digital sovereignty if they hope to preserve their culture. Back in college everyone I knew browsed reddit, 9gag, facebook, etc for hours every day. The european youth is getting raised by America and fed its political ideology one meme&#x2F;discussion thread at a time. It took me a long while to realize I had been brainwashed. A lot of people I know tout themselves as citizens of the world, and consider nationalism a useless thing of the past, seemingly oblivious to the adversarial relationship we&#x27;re in with our western allies wrt culture and trade.

&gt; foreign values<p>Not even foreign values. Only subset of foreign values which are only shared by the Silicon Valley. Beyond that, half the US people disagree with Google&#x2F;Apple&#x2F;Twitter&#x2F;Facebook’s non-neutral stance on politics, who weighed their full weight in censoring 50% of the political spectrum.<p>I will not call it the pied piper because Uganda weighs nothing, but the GAFA’s politics are now visible as directly harmful in USA, with calls to leftist violence given full platform since 4 years while censoring the 50% rest of the political spectrum, and any country who lets them operate their ideological platform is doomed to live through the Congress event again.<p>Good one, Uganda.

What Trump was doing was extreme, but stories like might make you think twice about enthusiasm for censorship.

This is like Feudal Era. All the warlords in different lands are fighting each other.

It is often the form of american cultural imperialism that can be revolting to see, everything from calling other people names to that they&#x27;re not <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.urbandictionary.com&#x2F;define.php?term=LatinX" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.urbandictionary.com&#x2F;define.php?term=LatinX</a> to other such bullshit claiming <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=yG5nqlMv48c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=yG5nqlMv48c</a>