I'll try my best, but obviously these are just my thoughts and a lot of other people don't necessarily agree with me.
I think all authoritarian governments rely on a chunk of their population to stay in power. This population can be very small, but sufficient.
In order to maintain their popularity they rely on:
1. Lack of education
2. Strong propaganda
3. Poverty
4. Social welfare
5. Religion & ideology
6. Fear of enemy
Within their target demographics.
So, they will end up with chunks of population who are uneducated, poor, strongly reliant on government welfare that are actually thankful for the government for their social welfare and cultural/religious alignment.
The pro-democracy people are usually middle class citizens. How do you fight uneducated, religiously/culturally motivated people with tame middle class citizens? It's not doable. That's why Taliban takes control of Afghanistan.
The only thing that I've seen work is this:
1. You try to keep communications alive with population. Google leaving a country? There couldn't be anything worse.
2. You incentivize government/regimes to stay as open as possible.
3. You wait decades for paradigm shifts within populations.
As for #1, let me give you an example. ~25 years ago I was 7. I lived in Iran. There was no internet. TV & Radio are government controlled and the country was too poor for people to travel abroad.
The _only_ thing that kept us connected to the outside world was... soccer.
Iranian state TV would broadcast a few soccer games a week (not live). For a massive chunk of the population, the only way to see there are _other_ type of people, not name Ali, Hussain, Muhammed, etc, and instead named Alessandro, Paolo, David, whatever, was soccer. Something simple like this can really keep the mind open. Allows you to realize there are other ways.
Fast forward a few years, a "reform" government was in place. The regime was relatively incentivized to talk to the US. Thus, they allowed Internet. The reform government allowed music and film to flourish again. As a result of economic growth a lot of Iranians were traveling abroad (from Turkey and Dubai to all over Europe) and as a result the middle class got more and more "western".
Fast forward to Donald Trump leaving the JCPOA, putting a "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran.
The economy went to shit (it's really a humanitarian crisis now). The government, scared of riots, locked everything down. All European brands/companies have left the country and the government is pushing to close down internet altogether.
A decade ago Iranians were pushing for democracy (Green Movement). Now, their only concern is survival. There is no hope anymore. The population is getting poorer and poorer, less and less educated.
So my question after this story is, do you think Google leaving Russia will end up helping Russians get more educated, more wealthy, more connected to the free world?
Or would it push them to the direction of poverty, isolation and disconnect?
Iran 10 years ago (before maximum pressure campaign by the republicans) was on the path to be something like Turkey. Not totally free, but somewhat OK ish country. Now it's on the path to be another North Korea (if this direction continues for another 15-20 years)
Sorry this wasn't a well written, well thought piece. It was an anecdotal dump of thoughts, but hopefully I managed to make a point.
Now I'm left wondering, what do we imagine google to be in russia when we say google should pull out?
Do we imagine that all of google will be blocked because they would no longer respond to russia's requests? Or maybe because act of pulling out is a political statement in on itself?
If google was the only connection to the western world, surely that would be different than if google was just one of many connections to the western world?
Maybe it's a slippery slope.
A bit unrelated, it seems like free satellite internet independent from state using smuggled phones could help. Maybe it's optimistic and naive, but I imagine it would be similar to getting illegal music and sharing that with your friends.
When the parent is asking for Google to leave Russia, that implies any given company in the same situation should, which would certainly be in the direction of limiting country's communication with the outside world and create more hostility between the nations.
Your assessment may be true for Iran, but I don't think they can be applied to Russia:
1. Russia has very high education -- it's ranked 3rd in the world in terms of people who attend college/university.
2. Russia is a 2nd-world country, so they don't suffer from extreme poverty.
3. Russians aren't very religious.
If Google leaves there wouldn't be much difference in terms of people accessing information on the web because most Russians already use Yandex for web search anyway.
But more importantly, the Russian government is already pushing to replaced foreign tech with Russian alternatives. They're pressuring Russian companies to switch to using local internet services, software, and they've supposedly developed the ability to "disconnect" Russian internet from the rest of open internet. So, if/when they're ready, they will do so. So, I think the point I'm trying to make is that the internet as a platform for information isn't some sort of catalyst for democracy. Russian people are smart and educated, but the authoritarian regime is as strong as it has ever been.
If google leaves and is replaced by a local alternative, Mr Putin's people will be directly monitoring and actively taking action in response to the things communicated there. Which leaves the population in a worse place than before.
> So my question after this story is, do you think Google leaving Russia will end up helping Russians get more educated, more wealthy, more connected to the free world?
Maybe, if the alternative is them cooperating with the dictator government for more effective surveillance and enforcement? Google from 2021 isn't Google from 2006.
I mean, 20 years ago I'd 100% agree with you, but modern-day big tech is... yikes! The only thing it'll do is prevent the emergence and spread of more open (and certainly harder to track) tech.
1. A western company that has to abide to Russian's unlawful and immoral requests time to time
2. A Russian company, which either belongs to the state, or is fully controlled by the state, or has absolutely 0 power against the state.
You choose 2?
Another way of looking at it for me is this:
If, one day, Iran and US governments allow Google to operate in Iran, that'd be a step forward. It's true that Google _may_ have to bow to Iran's regime from time to time. It's also true that Google may _want_ to help Iran's regime from time to time (due to whatever interest) but their interest is not 100% aligned. It's only sometimes aligned.
That, next to all the benefits of Google operating in Iran, would definitely make me choose 1.
Both of these would only serve to amplify the power of Iranian government many fold. And there is no "maybe" and no "time to time". We're talking the de-facto tools of surveillance capitalism here. When their interests aren't aligned with Iranian government, they'd be aligned with American government, and the latter is what brought upon you the former in the first place.
To be honest, I think that tech has no solution for you, and that you're only looking there because tech's what you're good at.
> Both of these would only serve to amplify the power of Iranian government many fold. And there is no "maybe" and no "time to time". We're talking the de-facto tools of surveillance capitalism here.
Your argument is definitely compelling - I share the distrust in the way things are going with “surveillance capitalism” as you call it, but, is there a risk of being too binary here?
For example, could it be possible that options 1 and 2 do not necessarily have the same negative outcome. Could an outside tech company (not state controlled) even if it’s under control of a western government that’s continually pushing for more control (and I speak as a Brit where we’re fighting our own battles on this front) still be better at helping to spread freedom of communication and ideas even marginally than the fully state controlled alternative?
It’s all relative I think. No country is perfect, no government is perfect. As a Brit my government fucks up continuously. The American government fucks up continuously. The Australian government fucks up continuously (looking at the recent legislation that we’ve talked about on HN). We’re all basket cases. But, the world is imperfect. Is it possible that even with our flaws, a more open and democratic (relatively) country’s private sector companies can still have a positive impact by having a presence in less open/democratic countries? Even if that means having to acquiesce occasionally?
I’m not sure. But I’m open to the possibility and I think the parent makes a strong case from their description of their own experience with Iran.
> I’m not sure. But I’m open to the possibility and I think the parent makes a strong case from their description of their own experience with Iran.
Of course! I'm just observing how tech is being applied in my part of the world and assuming the same thing will happen in theirs. There's a good possibility that my hypothesis is incomplete or just plain wrong. I thought it's worth sharing nevertheless.
I live in the US now and I'm no stranger to how these companies surveil you. My point is, Google has more incentives and interests than just keeping the powers to be in Iran.
But a state-owned company would only and only have 1 master, which would be the state. And it wouldn't bring any of the benefits of Google with it. It would surveil you more aggressively and it would be more devoted to the state.
> Both of these would only serve to amplify the power of Iranian government many fold. And there is no "maybe" and no "time to time". We're talking the de-facto tools of surveillance capitalism here.
I'm not so sure they would be equal. Example:
Iranians have been using Telegram/Whatsapp/Viber for many years. And every few years the government tries to block them and push their own "national" app. Every time they try to push this agenda, there is a massive massive backlash, because noone trusts the government.
Maybe Iranian government would have enough leverage against Facebook/Google to ask them to do something (like removing Navalny app) at key moments (or push to surveil some key people at certain moments) but they definitely wont have access to every single person's database like a "national" app would. That's a very big difference.
> Sorry this wasn't a well written, well thought piece.
Are you kidding? This is one of most eloquent and thoughtful responses I’ve ever had to a question on HN.
Thanks for taking the time to put your thoughts down. Everything you’ve said makes total sense, and it totally balances out my original gut reaction which was “fuck Apple and Google, just pull out of the country rather than giving in to these sorts of demands”.
Having followed Navalny’s story, I felt outraged that these two massive tech companies can’t even keep his political support app online to just give a modicum of support to the guy single-handedly (almost) taking on Putin.
What I didn’t consider, and what’s made much more clear to me by your brilliant response, is that it may only be due to the proliferation of “generally open” (relatively) tech companies like Apple and Google in Russia that has allowed Navalny to build momentum and support there in the first place.
The benefits of better communication and easier proliferation of ideas that are brought by the internet and the tech companies that enable this “communication and idea sharing infrastructure” can be easily overlooked.
If you have a blog or somewhere to publish your ideas, you should totally publish this comment as an article as it’s insightful and brilliant.
> Fast forward to Donald Trump leaving the JCPOA, putting a "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran.
> The economy went to shit (it's really a humanitarian crisis now). The government, scared of riots, locked everything down…
At the risk of digging in a bit politically here… I’m curious if Donald Trump’s actions here were a crucial tipping point in your view or if there were other factors too that were obviously at play? As much as I’d love to blame it all on Trump I’m curious if he exacerbated things that were already slipping, or if he (and the Republicans) precipitated it…
> At the risk of digging in a bit politically here… I’m curious if Donald Trump’s actions here were a crucial tipping point in your view or if there were other factors too that were obviously at play? As much as I’d love to blame it all on Trump I’m curious if he exacerbated things that were already slipping, or if he (and the Republicans) precipitated it…
There were obviously a lot of factors in play here. However, pulling out of JCPOA, against the will of all European partners and many US companies with no alternative reason was a crime. It was only to deny Obama/Democrats a win (over a good deal with Iran) which has brought a decade of misery upon Iranian people and risk of more wars among people in the region.
But the JCPOA was a massive, massive step forward and had no downsides for any of the countries involved. But leaving JCPOA was a step even more backwards and it may have pushed Iran over the edge. It may have been a point of no return for Iranian regime.
