Nepal moves to block Facebook, X, YouTube and others

Interesting that Mastodon was blocked. How exactly was that ban supposed to be enforced, by blocking every single instance in existence?

> switch your DNS, and you're good to go

Except you might get a visit from the FCC equivalent.

> switch your DNS, and you're good to go

That would definitely allow you to access the sites again, but is it illegal to do that now, or is this kind of just a soft block without legal ramifications?

BlueSky still good i guess.

TikTok is still allowed? Isn't it the most damaging?

What’s the justification? Only a state religion could provide the societal justification. I don’t know, I’m recently living under Trump, so a failed authoritarian state is very new to me. Can anyone explain how normalized and day-to-day news like this is over there?

For example, we really don’t know what to do with news like this here, most of us just go on with our lives.

Signal? Fuck your government. That shit ain't right.

So, nothing of value was lost?

banned whatsapp too

Its a double edged sword. social media is also the only reason any of us know about the genocide going on in gaza right now. I'm pretty sure thats why there's such a rush to start locking down the internet since western governments aiding theocracies in mass murder puts a real "are we the bad guys?" kind of taste in your mouth.

It's such an obvious poison. Social media is responsible for the destruction of civility on so many levels. It has destroyed a generations attention span. It is a drug that is more powerful and addictive than something like weed. It seems like people here are too young to remember a life before it. It has transformed society negatively in just a decade. It absolutely should go. I'm glad you did something positive on it. Or found a community. You can still do that without social media. It needs to go.

I saw a really good analogy the other day (on X, natch) that said subscribing to modern social media is like inviting a clown to come in your house every 10 minutes and scream, "It's gotten worse". I think about that a lot. Curation goes a long way, but it takes work.

I'm not a big fan of banning things like this. There's good mixed in with the bad and banning things will only lead to new social media sites rising in their place. I don't expect them to be any better.

This is basically a fight against human nature. If I could get one wish, it would be legislation that forces social media sites to explain in detail how their algorithms work. I have to believe that a company could make a profitable social media site that doesn't try all the tricks in the books to hook their users to their site and rile them up. They may not be Meta-sized, but I would think there would be a living in it.

> pushes content triggering strong emotional reactions should be banned

Aren't you describing your own comment? Aren't upvotes pushing that to the top? So isn't HN the thing that needs to be banned according to your comment?

Let's start with banning the monetization model.

I like this, but it also leaves the door wide open to censorship. Also this would include Youtube which would be a marked detirioration in learning.

Fortunately the US federal government is standing up for the interests of US tech companies, and for the principle of free speech. They won't let the EU get away with such an extreme authoritarian move.

Yes, let's give more power to the EU, the entity that's been trying to ban encryption within the EU for the last 3 years and wants to read all your messages, scan all your pictures, but pinky promise, it won't use the data to hunt down political dissidents or silence opposing views.

I am sure it's going to be swell.

Let's also require tech companies to only allow content that has been approved by the central committee for peace and tolerance (TM) while we are it!

No risk of censorship there.

I don't know Nepal's political situation, but I could imagine companies not wanting to have a potential hostage that they're directly responsible for in more authoritarian countries. Why does there have to be a contact in the country? Couldn't they have a contact outside the country?

Censors always use something superficially "reasonable", and another part you're missing: there is no way anyone reasonable would do the ban for such trivial infractions if these demands were all there is to that.

The affected don't care enough about the market to submit to the demands so soon?

It’s not reasonable although it can link like it. Brazil demanded the same thing, and then ended up jailing local representatives (even lawyers) and was forcing the company agreed to implement the government’s censorship. Even though it violated their constitution to demand such censorship. Ultimately these policies are just anti free speech and are an indicator of authoritarianism.

They are pretty much the same as other content moderation around the world. There is some government body that determines their own content moderation policy then requires companies to implement it. Same as the EU, Brazil, etc.

I think a lot of westerners trust the EU government to use better judgement, and maybe they are even correct, but the fundamentals of the law are pretty much the same.

The biggest difference is these large companies dont really care that much about business in Nepal.

The can't be bothered. FA*NG companies care about China and the USA because that's where the money is. They resentfully pay a little attention to the EU. Nobody at these companies has time for Nepal.

I would love Signal to register a representative, the rest of the companies listed can go die in a hole as far as I am concerned.

Maybe Youtube also, but nah, Google is almost as much a candidate for dying in a hole as Meta. Good riddance.

> Why do these decisions always have to be black and white.

This decision seems to be very different than that. Those companies were asked to "provide a local contact, grievance handler and person responsible for self-regulation", otherwise be blocked.

It really isn't surprising that someone asks them to follow the laws of their country, and if the companies are ignoring them, block them since they're unable to follow the local laws.

The companies really forced Nepal's hand here by repeatedly ignoring their requests.

> block cars in cities a couple of days per week, individually selected per person.

The net result in São Paulo (Brazil) for (something that approaches) this is that people end up buying a second vehicle.

Why should well behaving people be punished for the actions of those who aren't?

These sorts of suggestions always remind me of the various people who, during my teen years, loved to give unsolicited advice suggesting that if my parents didn't apply arbitrary restrictions to my hobbies, they'd be setting me up for failure (my hobby was teaching myself higher level math, gpu programming etc, things that led to my current career).

Day restrictions for vehicles can be temporarily worthwhile when the air quality becomes too poor or as a transitory step towards a more significant ban and restructuring of thr city's transportation systems. But if kept in-place as-is long term, they just lead to people finding workarounds (like second cars).

IIRC Paris has done something that in the past - you could only drive in the city on certain days depending on the registration of your car (even vs odd numbers).

The panny-D was great for that, early days saw stuff like clean air in China, India, wildlife coming into the cities, clean water in Venice, etc - and that was after only a few weeks.

We've had car-free sundays in the past a few times, but that was also due to oil crises. But also, a lot of inner cities have a ban on cars, a restriction on cars (only locals and suppliers at fixed times), or environmental zones (no older Diesel engines, some are going a step further and banning all vans and trucks, promoting electric alternatives for last-mile deliveries). They're all having a significant impact on the health and liveability of city centers.

But it makes a lot of sense too, as they're 1000 year old city centers that were never designed for cars anyway. Often the only roads that can support cars at a normal in-city speed are on the outside of where city walls used to be.

Anyway, speaking for myself, I haven't used FB in forever, I don't think a blanket pause would affect most people that much, I posit it's only a small minority that falls into the problematic FB usage category.

Agreed. These services offer a lot of valuable social infrastructure, and it would be nice to keep the good and stop the bad.

On a personal level I do something like this on my home router by adding latency to specific websites and I totally recommend this to anyone trying to cut the habit. A few hundred ms of extra latency can really kill the doomscroll’s grip while still giving you access to messages from friends. Doing this is also not too hard to configure using a pi hole and some vibe networking.

I have personally seen a couple family members go more than a little nuts on fb, and I've been stalked there. It is poison for some.

Reminescent of cigarette smoking a few decades ago. "Everyone" was smoking so it was okay. Now they walk around with portable oxygen generators. If they can still walk.

Repulsive addictive product.

Judging by the down votes I guess the US military has this system up and running. </sarc>