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Comment by 3RTB297 | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, those are usually cases where the reason they turned off the internet is entirely unrelated to anyone doing something questionable, and more about personal political whims as security theater. As long as you keep the bribes flowing to the dictatorship, you aren't at risk of being shut down for what you're doing.

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Wow that's fucking dark.

Does the tech industry still even see technology as a source for good in the world, or do we now see ourselves as the dictators' keys to power.

What future do we have if we have become totally cynical and Amoral?

US corporations have always had these kinds of relationships with foreign governments. If a given government won't accept bribes the CIA will work to overthrow them, financing and puppeting "democratic" groups to that end.

btw the US isn't the only country that does this

Dark? That's just business as usual in a large chunk of the world, across every industry. Ask any company with a large, multi-continent presence and you'll get stories for days about this kind of stuff.

Can the dictator turn off the power? Turn off the phones? Turn off the internet? Close the ports of entry? Hold food hostage? Hold your shipment hostage? Stop fuel imports, production, and distribution? Nationalize anything and potentially everything? Run off or genocide entire ethnic groups? Yeah. And it happens often enough that examples are easily found of most of these (note: turning off power and stopping fuel imports are possible, but would simply piss people off, so it's usually bad politics).

Not sure what's dark about how the world works. Doesn't make it right or just, but that doesn't mean it can't be how things are.

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