Russia restricts opposition election voting app
netblocks.org
netblocks.org
- YouTube blocks videos with Smart Vote instructions.
- Telegram blocks a bot with Smart Vote the instructions
You mean like Roskomnadzor has already tried to do to Telegram, and failed?
They've restored the bot functionality for accounts that are registered with non-Russian phone numbers though.
It's the difference with e.g. Chinese expats who, as I expect, would usually be reasonably loyal to Chinese state.
Huge win of the current government in their intimidation tactics.
My personal opinion is that telegram’s actions are reasonable in this context.
Navalny’s team fucked up by publishing their recommendations only on the 15th, two days before voting. I don’t understand that decision at all.
If you know the candidates beforehand, you can bully them before the election, see who wins nevertheless, and bully those again.
> to have all 225 “recommended” candidates withdraw?
Having some of them withdraw is also useful, it's a numbers game.
Smart Voting™ creates these popular candidates in the districts where all competitors of Putin's guy are more or less equally popular. Knowing whom they will make popular is an advantage for Putin, don't you agree?
I have a feeling you're arguing out of stubbornness. My original point was that announcing the Smart Voting lists in the last moment can be useful, I think gave some good reasons for it.
Smart voting does not create new popular candidates. It’s a way to concentrate the 5 % they can access (or 2 %, if badly mismanaged by publishing the list too late) in an efficient way.
Twitter does not, Facebook does not, Telegram does not - nobody cares except for France.
How is Russia different?
As a Russian: the election has a limited relevance beyond a certain type of signaling. The majority of United Russia is largely guaranteed by the “electoral sultanates”, so votes cast now will not impact new legislation over the next five years.
If your purpose is to signal things, being morally clean is more important than the number of votes you manage to achieve. If a law is reasonable, and a norm in multiple other well-regarded systems, it makes sense to comply.
Source: observing one.
It is strictly enforced in France. But Internet knows no borders so the statistics of votes (which is is illegal to provide in France during the voting day) are available outside of France (usually in French speaking Belgian / Swiss online newspapers, or Twitter/FB/...).
My point is that a country cannot expect that other countries (and services in these countries) will follow their rules.
> If your purpose is to signal things, being morally clean is more important than the number of votes you manage to achieve. If a law is reasonable, and a norm in multiple other well-regarded systems, it makes sense to comply.
I am not sure I understand that point.
It’s not strictly enforced. Exit polls published outside France are collected inside France. Those who collect with clear intent to immediately publish are subject to French law, and may be fined. Which, from what you are saying, does not happen.
> I am not sure I understand that point
I am not sure how to explain it better. You should not both demand lawful election and circumvent electoral laws at the same time. You can, and people do, but it’s not a strong position.
Exit polls are legal. Publishing them is not. They are published by non-French entities, which cannot be fined because of some internal law of ours.
> You should not both demand lawful election and circumvent electoral laws at the same time. You can, and people do, but it’s not a strong position
The rules are from the times where information was provided by printed newspapers, radio and TV. It is time to realize that we are in a different world and adapt.
If we allow foreign newspapers to publish data (because we cannot forbid that), we should give an equal chance to the French ones.
Deleting Navalny's bot seems like a response to a threat from Apple and Google. To fight this, it would be great to abandon Apple and distribute all apps via Android APKs, circumventing the app stores. (Not gonna happen, I know)
First they came for the American opposition, then they came for the Russian opposition, then there was no opposition at all.
Setting aside any speculation as to whether they are in fact a state-backed covert operation, last time I checked it appeared to be a tiny company of undisclosed structure, which—while in a way glamorous/romantic—does not strike me as a radically more acceptable/sustainable state of affairs, as it makes the individuals involved liable to be influenced (including through [in]direct fear for personal safety, a mechanism markedly more effective than fines or legal action) by whomever is able to find them.
For now, Google and Apple ban "another dangerous organization," not political opposition. Google and Apple already censor all the content and application for local markets.
It's nothing new. Many youtube videos are restricted in some countries but accessible in others. Companies want to make money, not to play political games, and to declare war for freedom. It's not their responsibility. But in Russia, many local players dream about a ban of Google and Apple to finally take all the market.
Mail.ru, Yandex, Vkontakte, Sber, etc., all these companies got money from an oligarchy in Russian, and for them, Google and Apple are the leading competitors in the market. Many local clones of google search, mail, WhatsApp, youtube, twitch, TikTok, and other services, but they can't win the market because of US companies.
I think, in the future, Russia will ban US giants on their market. Everything goes to this.
I actually researched it. All sources that every story about 'they asked' cited in the end pointed to RosKomNadzor press release on their own website. And it is very well known that Russian government never lies.
There were no public confirmation from either Google or Apple that they did receive such request and refused to act on it, like they earlier did on LinkedIn.
You can read the legal part of Google Play, starting from section 8 and to the end. https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreeme...
TLDR: it's your responsibility to observe any regulation change and decision by google in your app. Suppose any content got banned on the platform by "applicable law" in any country's jurisdiction. In that case, you must apply this decision to your app because, legally, you must inherit all Google's decisions. If you don't do that, your app can get takedown without any notice.
I'm not sure when Google changed its policy about Crimea. I can verify it from my ex-company experience and legal department. Around 2015 our application got takedown without any details because we provide access to people who live in Crimea. Still, after our legal department contacted Google, they answered that it's our responsibility to observe these decisions and apply them.
Durov didn't wait for a takedown and applied app stores' decision to Telegram. Anyway, I think his message about this "silent day" is stupid, and the worst thing that can happen for Telegram is probably takedown for Russian users in stores for a few weeks.
I just checked now, and you have access to this bot if you are registered with any other phone number except these from Russia. My Ukraine and US numbers work fine with the bot.
UPD.: To clarify, I don't say everything happened because of this Google legal agreement, I'm not so into everything in Russia politics, Telegram, etc. It's my stupid opinion on the whole situation, with assumptions based on my experience. Take it with a grain of salt.
There was news about Russian investments in Telegram and agreements between Telegram and the Russian government, so maybe it's part of agreements, nothing more.
More frequently as a joke but sometimes you start thinking: "what if?"
If the app is open source, it could also be hosted on F-droid (or just as an .apk on some website).
These kind of situations are exactly why we fight against walled gardens and centralizatiom. It's not a problem until it is.
The opposite of this is true. Blocking a web application is very easy for Russian authorities, there are well-established legal and technical protocols for that, it's a routine, it happens every day. The opposition uses apps precisely because they are more difficult to censor.
The advantage of a web app is that it can be distributed in any number of ways though. It's trivial to take it and re-host it on different servers, as an onion service, or go the full decentralized route with IPFS or similar.
Already if you go in a country with restrictive internet, you'll find the average working-age person knows how to use a VPN. Regular drug users in western countries know how to use Tor. Hong-Kong protestors were using a bluetooth mesh network app.
99% of the people are on the big email providers.
Also, you will quickly find out that sending many emails from random addresses (ie: spamming) doesn't work these days, they will be blocked by existing anti-spamming techniques, as evidenced by multiple posts on HN of people trying to do that from their own mail server.
You need to go through a whitelisted mail service (MailChimp, ...) which is another block point.
You don't need to mail links, you just need to mail required information. Asking Google to filter out some specific e-mail (which could be somewhat randomized for every recipient) probably will not work.
> You need to go through a whitelisted mail service (MailChimp, ...) which is another block point.
Russia can't ask US service to deny making business with US citizen (for example). It's completely outside of their territory.
Not sure what US citizens have got to do with this. Russia obviously was able to order Google to block relevant apps and documents for Russian people. Why would they care that US citizens can still access them?
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/security-world/2016/12/explain...
Although in this case, the generated domains are all under global.ssl.fastly.net and similar CDNs, not traditional TLDs.
(You are right about not requiring completely unique urls per user by the way).
This is a nation state suppressing information, I don't see why wholesale blocking services like cloudflare or any of the other possible options would be a non-starter, given it only needs to last for a weekend. There also doesn't appear to be any evidence that this app uses any of these techniques either as far as ive sedn.
It's obvious cooperation of governments that can help each other, one with tech to control, and the other with cheap resources for manufacturing. (you can google how Russian almost sold part of territories to China, there are even cities where all the administration are Chinese).
Really making the world a better place. How hard would it be to have employees from outside the country make the app review, and shield local employees from this? These companies do what they want to do, and they didn't think this was a hill worth fighting for, which is sad.
They want to market and engineers there, but they don't want to risk working in authoritative countries with batshit crazy wannabe emperors. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/12/google-closes-...
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Список_кандидатов_по_одноманда...
> You may not see this option if: You've changed your country within the last year.
> You aren’t currently in a new country.
> How does Google know my location?
> Depending on the products that you’re using and the settings that you choose, you may provide Google with different types of location information that are critical to making some services work and making others more useful for you. Location can come from real-time signals, like your IP address or device location, and also your past activity on Google sites and services, to tailor experiences for your context. Below are the primary ways we may get information about your location.
Never, never, never ever enable the GLS, and emergency location service (read the disclaimer, it's the same GLS)
If you never had GLS enabled, the only way Google can guess your location is your IP.
There is no opt out later in account setting to remove GLS info forever.
This is how they detect proxy users for Geoblocks
Looking on Latin America it's always ends with something violent.
On the other side: in Asia it's usually transforms into something not that bad, e.g. South Korea.
I can't accept that, and no one should.
At least it's not trying to make you an obedient slave
Russia was blamed with USA elections rigging because someone payed for facebook ads to promote one of the candidates.
In this case we have every evidence, that a group of people, financed by foreign organizations, created multiple apps, websites and other sources to manipulate people voices.
Wake up guys, such activity should and will be banned in every country.
You're delusional if you believe that the current Russian government doesn't manipulate people's votes already. https://ruxpert.ru/images/3/3a/146%25.jpg
US is a totalitarian state where people are manipulated by oligarch-controlled mass-media, with non-transparent voting process.
Oh, sorry, it's the other way around. I always confuse one with another.
Which really won't help much, since his friends are everywhere. The whole structure is rotten. But it could start something at least.
The list of candidates has very little to do with ideological support for the actual candidates on it. Most of them I'd say are crooks and shills themselves, but they are not THE crooks and shills the government wants to see in the State Duma.
Preferential voting is much better voting system as you vote is not wasted on candidate who will not pass election threshold.
Smart here means the vote is used to make a difference and not get wasted
Source (in russian) https://www.dw.com/ru/pavel-durov-soobshhil-o-blokirovke-bot...
The government could do the same - but if Google and Apple were really concerned about democracy, they could just delete the fake entries faster than the real entries.
Lawmakers stop GOP attempt to rig election.
Wise technosleuths uncover plot to fix election.
No, stopping the app isn't stealing the election.
Now let's flip sides:
Trump disenfranchises minority voters.
Trump kills app designed to help underserved communities.
Machine learning can identify left and right news sources, this tells me they are not news but biased propaganda. It would be nice to have reporting without bias and use the same word playbook for every story.
Let's say there is a niche party or organization, which is ineligible to participate in the elections. So they get this bright idea: let's figure out who's the most proficient challenger in every district and recommend people vote for them. Seems like a decent way to shift the scales, but with plain majority voting the plan would not change the winner, only the margin he'd win by.
The key point is though: those challengers are working hard to improve their election results, in many cases they are really nice people who really want to do some good (in many other cases, they want to do some good only to themselves, but that's beyond the point). So they campaign and meet people and talk and generally work hard to get their ideas to the public. On election night they manage to snip another 5 percent points on top of their previous result from the juggernaught which is the local United Russia's candidate. They did good, right?
What happens now is that instead of talking about how they worked hard and tried to do some good and whatever, suddenly people start tweeting and telegramming about a great success for "smart voting", which is deemed the only reason the opposition candidate has improved his percentage. People talk about how the niche party (which has done nothing apart from distributing a list of names) is the actual "people's winner of the elections" as they managed to "kick UR's ass" and "make Putin afraid". They don't talk about the challenger candidates, those become puppets for "smart voting" after the fact and without any option to not participate.
Now imagine you are this hard-working opposition candidate, robbed of your accomplishments in the public eye. What would you think of "smart voting" and people behind it?
We are years away from the global fascists superpowers (with mass surveillance, AI, nuclear and bio weapons), but no one seems to care. Let's feed the beast even more.
I’m just so sure of it.
They would never.
- optional: keep the current phone and refuse to upgrade it (a few months)
- get a pinephone
- check compatibility and get a rootable Android phone
- dumbphone and pocket camera
Actually owning your own phone to the point of deciding yourself what runs on it and what does not and being able to repair it easily are two huge features when you start to think about it.
Most users don't have any utility in detailed control. They don't even know what to do with it.
Can I chime in and say that:
- Surprisingly many are getting uncomfortable with the current situation.
- If this had been our collective conclusion 20 years ago we wouldn't be sitting here working on blazingly fast Linux dev machines running dirt cheap servers in vast clouds, we would have been stuck with Windows (and probably an inferior version to Windows 10, since without competition there's less pressure to perform)
Here in the rarefied air of HN, things look different than they do on the ground. Granted, developers have an outsized impact on what users will end up getting... But not by pretending PinePhone is anywhere near "ready for prime-time." I have one sitting on my desk right now; it's not. Rather, we should recognize the vast gap of work that needs to be done to get there and put the time in to get it there if we believe it's the right direction (and also recognize that if it's going to succeed in the marketplace, a lot of users are going to want something in PinePhone that's as easy to use for discovery and app maintenance as an app store; app stores introduced to users the concept "There is one simple and effective way to put apps on your phone," and they don't want to go back to the DIY days of yore. On the plus side, nothing about PinePhone requires only one app store).
That'll teach em a lesson!
A lot of people have reached the point of needing an iPhone. Nope, Android won't do, because it's not an iPhone. Too much friction and learning curve to ever use anything else than an iPhone. Game over.
https://www.houkconsulting.com/2020/07/blue-green-bubbles-im...
It is a clever marketing ploy where Apple users make Android users feel bad for using a product because the colour of their messages is different.
Anecdotally (and randomly), I've seen "the blue bubble" can put additional pressure on males to get iPhones since "women use iPhones more, so I don't stand a chance if I have the green bubble."
I hate iMessage. Because of the blue bubble phenomenon, there are a lot of people in the US with iPhones just out of the need (pressure) to use iMessage. iPhones are ridiculously popular with American teenagers (probably over 90% usage in rich areas) and I've heard it isn't necessarily about iPhones being better. No, it is literally about iMessage and winning the social approval of their peers.
Since they have iMessage, suddenly you need to too. And so on.
I don't believe marketing or features or whatnot is what makes the iPhone popular. No, it is the crushing social pressure of iMessage.
F*ck iMessage.
One of those instances where if I had an iphone, I actually think I would have developed closer relationship in the group. It's very off-putting to think about the impact of brand choice.
Since black people have Android more often, Apple is basically bringing back segregation.
I have an iPhone and iPad, and recently have been experiencing phantom rings. My iPhone/iPad would ring simultaneously for half a second and then flash "Unknown Audio" (instead of "Unknown Caller" or the caller ID). And, for phone calls, there's supposed to be a green phone icon, but these calls have blue phone icons. And the notifications don't stay in the notification screen. They're gone after the ring. I can't tell whether my phone's on the fritz or my data is being exfiltrated. Last weekend, I received 3 phantom calls in a span of 5 minutes. My phone can't be trusted for FaceTime calls and iMessages. Fucking irony.
We cannot grant absolute trust to any one entity. Do not fully trust Apple. Do not fully trust Google. Do not fully trust not your government. Granting them absolute trust grants them absolute power that can be corrupted against you absolutely. Even though Google is a privacy invasive company, at least Google doesn't have power over Android to the extent that Apple has power over iOS. Android users can still side-load the Navalny app because Google built this weakness into their system. Apple's complete authoritarian power over iOS means users don't have power to choose. Prefer to use apps/services like Signal that cannot kowtow to authoritarian regimes because these kinds of apps/services have little power that they can themselves abuse.
But actually, fuck apps, fuck serfdom. Prefer the open web. Prefer distributed systems. Self host.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/28/18201383/apple-facetime-b...
For calls use simplest phone available. Actual phone calls are the best user experience. Emotionally fair and transparent. You don't have to write thousand emojis to express emotion. You don't wait someone to respond or ignore. Things are direct and effective.
On the app side of things. There is no app that I need and I don't have on my laptop. 4G LTE Mifi with VPN. Intel core 2 duo / PureOS (removed ME). I am fan of big and powerful desktops and multi-monitor setups. Recently I discovered my dream desktop computer: https://shorturl.at/apqP3 https://shorturl.at/ceB06 If I want a photo, I have a small camera. If I know I will shoot, I grab my Leica.
It is all about the information diet. I want my mind to be clear and my perceptions sharp.
Smartphone UX and small screens in general are not the best way to consume information. iPad was cool middle ground solution, but I cannot trust Apple or any closed source software anymore.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...
* I'm not affiliated with the product/company
* I'm not affiliated with the product/company
And very often, the law doesn't give a shit for your freedom. Especially not outside the 'West'.
Probably don't want to think too much about that, much better be outraged about far away distant lands as your moral sword.
In terms of voting - people can still lookup candidates proposed by Navalny's team online without breaking the law.
Surprisingly most of them are from Communist party of Russia.
It's not surprising at all. The communist party is the second-largest party here (polling at around ~20% in the last polls I saw). The point of the Navalny app is to highlight the candidates most likely to win against Единая Россия (Putin's party) in each district, which will usually be the candidate of the second largest party (with some exceptions).
(Just providing this information, I don't support Navalny)
It wasn't storing the address either - it just has a search field where you input your address any time you need to use it.
The amount of money and power they wield in the market and society is huge, but it doesn't even rank in competition to the power of the state. (For scale, the US, just a single country, has spent, only on the military, 4.3x the entire market cap of Apple ($2410B) since the iPhone was introduced.)
They have to do whatever the CCP tells them to do, as they are completely, inescapably beholden to the millions of people near the factories that produce 100% of the iPhones and iPads ever that hold machine guns (the PLA). Apple cannot exist without the consent and cooperation of the CCP; they will ban any emoji, text message content, camera content, VPN app, or protest coordination app that they are told to.)
(Yes, the 100% is slight hyperbole - Apple has started assembling a relatively small number of iOS devices in other places, but my point stands.)
Same goes for any large market, like Russia or the USA. If the state comes knocking, Apple and Google do not have a choice.
Even their options for public resistance are limited.
Remember, corporations are only allowed to exist or engage in trade with the consent of the state.
Given that, one would assume they are willing to take a hit in profit (by not selling & not cooperating) in places like Russia and China.
And as it seems, they prefer profit. Which kinda make all their marketing talk as purely virtue signaling.
If Apple didn't cooperate with China, there would be no iPhones, and Apple wouldn't meaningfully exist. iPhones are nearly exclusively manufactured in China. All the chips in iPhones, iPads, and now the most important macs are exclusively manufactured immediately adjacent to China, in a territory claimed by China.
China is the iPhone.
The CCP has veto power over the production of all iPhones and iPads (and soon Macs) in the whole world. This has little/nothing to do with Taiwan, other than their unfortunate proximity to China.
If Apple wants to continue existing in any meaningful form, they must presently do what the CCP wants.
This goes the same for selling their devices in any given jurisdiction, such as Russia, to keep this on topic for TFA.
(And no, Taiwan can not be taken in matter of hours).
"Do no evil" from Google, or "Think differently" from Apple, really, how naive one must be to think the end game isn't only about money and keeping the board happy about exponential growing sales?
They absolutely have a responsibility to fight for human rights and freedom. By your logic, no one would ever engage in any kind of civil obedience and no one would be able to effect change: the government, after all, is also more powerful than any individual protestor and many of them are risking their livelihoods or even their lives by protesting.
(In an ultimate irony, Tim Apple keeps a picture of him (MLK) on the wall in his office, alongside a picture of the guy who signed the order as Attorney General to have the FBI put him under 24/7 surveillance (RFK), which resulted in the FBI sending him (MLK) anonymous letters attempting to blackmail him into suicide.)
Apple knows which way the wind blows. Even if they wanted to engage in the maximum amount of resistance that is feasible/practicable, that's not really very much, especially when an organization friendly to the US military has literally every single rich/connected person and the entirety of the executive, legislature, and judiciary under bulk surveillance at all times.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903613/apple-hiding-tai...
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/10/768841864/after-china-objects...
https://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/tim-cook-barack-obama...
https://gigaom.com/2014/09/18/apples-warrant-canary-disappea...
Including 99% of Russian legislators. They're suckers for luxury.
To be fair, though, executing political pressure through this kind of means might raise certain red flags back in US, even if that only happens in Russia, one time.
Also, consider that Apple, Google, Microsoft essentially have a backdoor on every piece of consumer electronics. They can push updates and do anything they want. Granted, this is a one-shot thing and might be ruinous for the company if abused, but if I was a foreign government I would be terrified.
I bet there are a lot of beind the scenes power struggles going on - the US supplies a lot of critical software, the PRC lots of hardware, Tawian has TSMC, Europe has ASML (and this is just the tech sector). Nobody wants to use their nuclear options, but with every public development you see, these powers are priced in. Probably, Google and Apple had long conversations with the state department, and somewhere the decision was made to comply with the Russian government. But the result could have easily been different.