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Comment by mw67 | Hacker News Reader

Crazy that these mega corporations still bow to the requests of countries. Would they do the same of any important actor requesting censorship? like if Elon or Bezos make a request, they'd get ignored, even though they're more powerful than Kuwait.

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Elon and Bezos aren't more powerful than Kuwait. Kuwait is a sovereign government, with authority to write laws, raise an army, and do whatever it wants with its 5M+ citizens (draft them, imprison people, execute people, etc.) with pretty much no consequence unless they're absurdly reckless. There is more to power than money.

I think the argument being made is that they don't have any meaningful power over Meta's corporate decision-makers, even if they do have power over some other people.

Right, but if you control access to a market of millions of people, a lot of companies will do what you say (i.e. follow your laws) in order to retain access to that market, as well as protect their local employees from jail. I would say that counts as meaningful power.

In theory, but the last two years have also seen Zuckerburg, Musk and Cook openly defying the EU, one of the largest markets on the planet.

> the last two years have also seen Zuckerburg, Musk and Cook openly defying the EU, one of the largest markets on the planet

I think it's fair to say the chances of Kuwait acting decisively against Zuckerberg, Musk or Cook is far higher than the EU.

They also shipped 0 barrels of oil last month, the basis for 90% of gov revenue, 50% of its GDP. Clearly their faux workforce of subsidized "natives" and "indentured servants" is heading for a fulminant blowup, with no one in charge with the faintest clue towards mitigation.

So now there's no power, no money. Hence the attempts at message control. I don't think it's for Meta to soften their fall.

Kuwait cannot do any of that unilaterally. They are a vassal state in the american hegemony.

are we talking in theory or practice?

Kuwait's sovereign fund has about 1 trillion under management. A couple of phone calls about disposals and its surprising what changes.

However, its my understanding that this page was promoting/representing the Muslim Brotherhood.

> They are a vassal state in the american hegemony.

Whatever happened to just calling a country an ally? "Vassal state in the American hegemony" does sound a lot cooler I guess.

We fought what, two wars for this vassal? Deleting an account is a pretty minor favor compared to that.

If you’re Elon or Bezos you know how to make the request in a plausible deniability way.

The fact it gets public shows you are a b-tiwr customer, the bigbs have a sort of psychological warfare suit available. You dont loose your account, you loose your sanity.

Google (including YouTube) has black-holed content at the request of the Chinese and Pakistani governments and in response to domestic Muslim pressure groups. This effects content shown everywhere, including within the United States:

https://lee-phillips.org/youtube/

> these mega corporations

The US would "bow" to the requests of Kuwait, too. Because it's less "bowing" than that they don't care about you, and Kuwait now owes them a favor.

> if Elon or Bezos make a request, they'd get ignored

Not a chance. Elon and Bezos could probably tell Kuwait to kill somebody and they would.

Did you forget that Elon literally bought out an entire major international social media platform and fundamentally re-oriented its algorithmic editorial policy? He did a lot more than "ask". He literally took the thing over and personally dictated censorship.

It's crazy that mega corporations follow the country's regulations.

Bad stuff. I know.

Well, homosexuality is criminalized in Kuwait for example, do we see Meta banning accounts because of it? Suddenly the company doesn’t follow the country’s regulations. Meta aligns with israel narrative (notorious against anything that goes against that), and it seems that person account wasn’t aligned with that, so they got banned, that’s the real reason, it’s never about following other countries’ laws or whatever, just a legal justification so the company isn’t directly blamed for it, selective censorship.

Your point is that Meta should selectively follow on a part o f the regulations of that country?

That wouldn't end up well.

Access to Kuwait's market is far more valuable than anything Elon or Bezos has to say about how meta operates its business.

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