Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

In recent discussions about technology, I've come to feel that there's a persistent and flawed belief in "technical utopianism" - not the beautiful future of 2050 kind - but the idea that we can use technology to solve political problems.

For example, we might think that tools like ICEBlock can solve the issue of ICE, or that duress PINs on GrapheneOS can protect whistleblowers, or that VPNs in China can defeat censorship. While these technologies can certainly help mitigate specific challenges, they don't address the underlying political issues. They also often backfire - ICEBlock could theoretically be subpoenaed, duress PIN use can come with mandatory prison sentences, VPNs in China can be detected and blocked at a network level, then traced back to your SIM card.

Historically, technological solutions alone have not resolved political problems. At best, they act as temporary workarounds. To believe otherwise risks oversimplifying complex social and political dynamics, which contributes to the us-versus-them, good-versus-evil narrative that almost never holds in reality. The banning of technological solutions does not necessarily push us towards a more authoritarian future, but forces us to confront reality without a band-aid.

This also causes any restraint on such technological solutions to become rather confused. For example, the article calls out Apple for blocking and removing VPNs in China as "evil." Tell me, what's the alternative? Apple defies the Chinese government, allows VPNs, gets iPhones blocked from all carrier networks in seconds, has their Chinese employees arrested, and almost everyone is forced to use spyware-infested Huawei devices? Amazing moral stand there. Same with ICEBlock - if Apple didn't ban it, who is to say their server company, or the author himself, wouldn't receive a visit?

That's not the issue in my view.

It's an issue of fundamental freedoms. Freedom of speech and freedom to control your own device and your own data. Freedom to decide for yourself how you use it to communicate with others.

The problem boils down to Apple's consolidatation of power in their walled garden. The fact that they can unilaterally decide to ban an app that people want to run. The fact that an authotarian government can simply apply pressure to manifest their will.

If Apple didn't have such a closed walled-gardrn, they'd be unable to do it even if they wanted to; even if an authotarian regime demanded it.

It's about separation/distribution of power.

I get that opinion, but it's the same utopian view that if Apple doesn't ban the app, it will somehow allow us to defy the government.

This is delusional - the government can easily attack the server, and arrest the people who operate it, using any obscure law from 1790 that does the job. They did it to Silk Road, they did it to The Pirate Bay, they can do it to ICEBlock. Removing it from Apple is just the asking nicely method that doesn't require putting the creator behind bars on a technicality.

The power dynamics for technical solutions are "you can resist the government insofar as the government allows," here and everywhere, and always will be. The solution is not better technical solutions, better band-aids on a severed limb, but better government.

> If Apple didn't have such a closed walled-gardrn, they'd be unable to do it even if they wanted to; even if an authotarian regime demanded it.

If we truly lived under an authoritarian regime, 90% of phones could be open source, and they would still have no qualms about kicking you off the cellular network until you purchased an approved device. No technological solution can truly resist a determined authoritarian regime. Control the infrastructure, control the border letting hardware in, control the manufacturing processes, and who cares about the devices subject to it?

Why does it have to be one or the other? I agree about better government. But it's also very reasonable to call attention to consolidatation of power and abuses of that power. Doing so doesn't automatically imply that one thinks "tech will save the world". You're constructing a straw-man here.

> This is delusional - the government can easily attack the server

I think you have an uncalibrated frame of reference for what "delusional" means here. My Android phone isn't being DDOSed for having sideloading capabilities, neither would your iPhone.

Well ThePirateBay is still up and even when they were deep into the legal fight the site was still finding ways to survive.

So, it doesn't look like a good parallel to me. Apple does have ridiculous control on what you can run on your phone and they are clearly trying to do the same with Macs nowadays. They are undefendable really.

In a world that runs on technology, where rapid communication is essential to have an advantage, secure and accessible tech is a prerequisite for mass social mobilization. You need secure channels for coordination among organizers, methods for moving funds that aren’t easy to shut down, and channels for engaging with ordinary people and ensuring your message can be heard. You need ways to communicate with journalists and sympathetic foreigners. I see this kind of dismissal of activist tech all the time here, along with FUD and trolling. Enough!

You’re on Hacker News. This is a place where users primarily discuss technology, which includes activist technology. There are plenty of people here interested in that sort of technology, and some who may build it and provide it to the less technically inclined over at Reddit (or some political forum). Then those people can do the work that they are more inclined to do, including the difficult work of organizing and mobilizing popular opposition.

I just don’t get the point of posts like this. Would you prefer that everyone be an organizer even if they lack the skills or personality for that? Or is it some kind of accelerationist argument, and you think that people will be more willing to protest if they lack the tools to organize? We don’t yet live under a regime where technology is completely locked down and restricted; the point is to fight back now before that happens!

You're making the assumption that if you build the tech, people will then use the tech, and then the government can't shut it down, because people are using the tech.

An authoritarian government never cares about the widespread availability of anything. If anything, people using it, only becomes a greater impetus to shut it down before it gets larger. The government holds the cards for shutting it down at any time, regardless of size and popularity.

> We don’t yet live under a regime where technology is completely locked down and restricted; the point is to fight back now before that happens!

If we respond by adding duress PINs on GrapheneOS and encrypting the messaging to the 9s, and then bad actors use said technologies, the government has all the ammunition they need for public opinion. We made it easier to ban with a straight face, not harder.

You build the tech, then people use it as a tool to help execute an overall strategy. The tech is not the strategy, it’s just a tool. Ideally you have multiple overlapping tools, including non-technical tools, and the loss of one does not cripple your movement.

An authoritarian government can also just start rounding up and shooting anyone suspected of being a dissident. Typically that doesn’t end well for the government!

China did it successfully. Violent oppression sometimes does work without consequence - you might even become a WTO member.

Military-grade technologies make you a threat to be dealt with by the military. An opponent with weapons is more directly an opponent to be crushed than an opponent with a microphone. Standing in the streets mourning with candlelight would probably be more effective than an encrypted messaging app. The encrypted messaging app definitely feels cooler though, but feelings don't determine reality.

The most successful revolutions in history that built cultural inertia as morally righteous were never known for their sophisticated weapons and planning. China was more freaked out over blank paper than they would have been if tens of thousands of rebels had been armed. Heck, blank paper probably rattled China more than every citizen having Signal would have.

Activism is about changing hearts and minds. It's never a logistics problem. Enter a direct competition with the government and you've already lost. From that perspective, ICEBlock has done nothing for activism.

Yes, it’s possible to fight and still lose. What you’re arguing for is unilateral disarmament, surrender in fact, due to fears that not surrendering may cause you to lose. Opposition, so long as it is ineffective and poses no real threat to power.

> The most successful revolutions in history that built cultural inertia as morally righteous were never known for their sophisticated weapons and planning.

Maybe you should spend some more time studying revolutions. Often there is a great amount of coordination that must happen, especially when going up against a strong adversary. And it’s important to match or exceed your adversary’s reaction time in order to disrupt their planning and cause them to make tactical errors of judgement. This is what leads to events like in Nepal, where the government overreacted and shut down the tools being used for organizing. This was the breaking point that led to mass mobilization, but the revolution was only possible because of the groundwork that had been laid in advance—through careful planning by activists and organizers. Planning that was carried out using modern technology!

> China was more freaked out over blank paper than they would have been if tens of thousands of rebels had been armed.

A hypothetical “just so” statement that (a) cannot be tested and (b) is unlikely to be true. China would see tens of thousands of armed rebels as an existential threat and would be “freaked out” enough to deploy the military immediately. If the population was unhappy enough and ground was prepared for revolution, this would lead to revolution as it did in the USSR. (The big problem with would-be revolutions in China is that the population is pretty happy overall, for now, thanks to improved standards of living. This effect will likely wear off in the future.)

> It's never a logistics problem.

Wrong. Activists make extensive use of technology in order to coordinate and achieve their aims. For all the reasons explained above.

> Enter a direct competition with the government and you've already lost.

Civil Rights era activists were in direct conflict with the FBI, police, and in some cases the National guard. They won.

Your confusing tactical fear with existential fear.

Encryption, weapons? These create tactical fear. Governments have no fear of your tactics when they can shut down cell towers and roll in the tanks. Governments have no fear when they can also easily identify bad actors, highlight them, and win public opinion.

Blank paper, candlelight? These create existential fear. Governments have no playbook to deal with them without looking absurd. If they try to do so anyway, then it converts into tactical fear. Every successful revolution starts with the existential before the tactical.

China has no tactical fear, at all, if tens of thousands of rebels were armed. They'll be solved by next month. China has enormous amounts of existential fear when tens of thousands of people are putting blank pages everywhere. Blank pages could turn into tactical later, but tactical never leads to existential.

The Civil Rights movement you cite? They won through lunch counter sit-ins and bus boycotts - existential challenges to segregation's legitimacy. The tactics was a side show that didn't contribute much. There never was some defining moment where the Civil Rights Warriors won a victory in the Battle of Seville through the superiority of their communication methods. Same with the Civil War - it didn't start with shooting until after the existential battle had been blazing since the Missouri compromise four decades earlier.

> Governments have no fear of your tactics when they can shut down cell towers and roll in the tanks. Governments have no fear when they can also easily identify bad actors, highlight them, and win public opinion.

Untrue. Governments are not all powerful. Armed unrest is a very serious thing to deal with, especially when facing outside pressures. The people in government aren’t generally villains sitting around waiting for their excuse to roll tanks. They have friends and families and take things very seriously when they reach that point. Besides, sending in the tanks most often biases people against, not for, the ruling government—it’s bad optics. Hence why China still forbids discussion of Tianenmen, for example. And why Kent State led to a shift in public opinion, despite preceding violence from the protesters.

> They won through lunch counter sit-ins and bus boycotts - existential challenges to segregation's legitimacy. The tactics was a side show that didn't contribute much.

??? You cite successful tactics (which were carefully planned/coordinated by the way) then you say they were an ineffective sideshow. Not sure how to parse that one.

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