National security through the control of information. The internet has been used in the past by imperialists to foment discontent and even stage color revolutions. Just look at the entire social media site ZunZuneo created by the CIA to attempt a color revolution in cuba.
I assume it’s the same reason china has their firewall
It’s also a good strategy to push for domestic innovation, as long as your country has plans and resources to follow through.
Like, banning Chinese electric cars in the US only hurts citizens because the US doesn’t even have the ability to manufacture competitive products. They have no realistic plans to change this.
Banning US social media in China worked because they are educating their own software developers who then created similar alternatives.
The latter is harder to do if your citizens or parts of your societal infrastructure rely on an existing technology from a country like the USA. Look at the proliferation of WhatsApp across many Western European countries, but also places like Nepal. Business owners, from large chains to individual trekking guides, rely on it for communication and similar apps for payments. A domestic product for Nepalese people would have to have millions of marketing dollars to break through that existing barrier.
interesting! thank you for the feedback ^^
i see, thank you for the comment ^^ i understand it better now
have you seen what this shit does to most people
fair point lol ngl
A better question is, why doesn’t every country? Just like a government has the duty, right and responsibility to protect its land, maritime territory and airspace, so too should it protect its digital and information space. Allowing hostile actors into your information spaces to psychologically manipulate your people is a recipe for destabilization and loss of sovereignty. China and the DPRK both understand this. China is now a little more open because it is so large and so powerful that it has its own domestic digital ecosystem that can in some aspects rival that of the US, but smaller countries do not have the same resources that China does and should adopt a DPRK like protectionist digital model instead to prevent their digital spaces being completely dominated by US platforms and services, which as we know are weaponized for hostile intelligence operations and hybrid warfare.
the web would also be less cluttered if each nation had it’s own space. it would be awesome to have the option to navigate the global internet or just my nation internet.
I’m not advocating full separation. That would be both counter-productive and practically impossible. But in the same way that China started with special economic zones for free international trade (a concept which both the DPRK and Cuba have since also implemented), nations could have dedicated “entry-ports” to their national internet, through which interfacing with the global internet can take place in a controlled way, in a safe space, without fully surrendering control over their national digital ecosystems.
Sounds good.
This right here.
yeah, bourgeois control and influence permeates through all faucets of the internet.
Western governments just give no shits about internet security/privacy, lest it influence their capital.
thank you for your feedback ^^
A better question is, why doesn’t every country?
Holy shit! I’m glad the USA doesn’t, I’d be more wretchedly ignorant. Like yeah, I could’ve done without watching a beheading or few… But it was what got me started looking into why.
Actually the USA does have that. It is one of the only countries in the world that has full digital sovereignty, alongside China and the DPRK.
Thanks to its position of global hegemony, practically none of the US digital ecosystem is colonized by the products and services of other countries in the way that US products and services have colonized Europe for example and most of the global south.
And in the rare instances when it does happen that a foreign platform becomes popular in the US, the government quickly identifies that as a national security threat and seeks to either ban or acquire control over it, as we saw with Tiktok.
Yes you get glimpses of other countries because those countries are forced to use US platforms, so there is some intermingling, but the exchange is extremely unequal and US culture dominates.
I doubt, for instance, that you get even a tenth as much German cultural products and German media for example as Germany gets US cultural products and US media. And the German government has absolutely no say in what US citizens see on their own social media platforms.
Whereas what German citizens see on their social media platforms is strongly influenced by the wishes of not just their own government but also the US government, because they are on US platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, etc. which obey US law.
The US digital ecosystem is sovereign because it is made up of overwhelmingly US companies controlled by the US government, which is precisely why other countries should get out of that ecosystem and build their own.
We have seen far too often US platforms used as vehicles for mass psychological operations to foment discontent, support color revolutions, influence elections, and destabilize countries that are not digitally sovereign.
None of this ever really happens in reverse to the US (despite farcical attempts to claim otherwise, such as the notion that Tiktok was being used by the CPC to influence Americans, or the Russiagate hoax).
Ah yes! I could have specified, that after my introduction to the Internet researching papers for school, my real introduction to the Internet was irc, chatting with people way above my intellectual development. Germans, Australians, Moldovans (one that was decidedly westernized, I used to tease him), Chinese, from the Iberian Peninsula, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Canada, before it was so so liberalized, India, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico (but I also lived and worked among Mexicans and Puerto Ricans), and more where I didn’t know their countries of origin. They introduced me to the undemonized/Western washed sides of communism and anarchy. Thanks for the fond recall.
I really didn’t spend much time in liberated spaces online after the early aughts, until I came to .ml spaces. US almost erased/diluted them all, and I nearly forgot almost all the irc explorations.
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Information sovereignty is essential to a anti-colonial/anti-imperialist society. Allowing enemy powers to project their propaganda inside a struggling nation is like fighting with a megaphone blasting in your ears.
so that americans and other westerners cant brainwash people into overthrowing the government. honestly good for them. the internet has a lot of good sides but its also horrible and exposes us to some shit we are just not evolutionarily prepared for. i’m imagining that their internet is just like ours but no racism, child porn or even distressing style memes because those also damage you psychologically. i’m still uncomfortable when watching spongebob because in 2023 it was a trend to use spongebob scenes for those distressing memes about serial killers, kidnapping, etc. i still remember comforting my friend in 2022 bc she saw a video of a man begging for his life but then being shot to death, i also heard an audio of Mason Greenwood doing the unspeakable to his girlfriend, just some bullshit that nobody should ever be exposed to
yeah… i think ultimately a traumatized society is much easier to control and bend to the will of capitalism as well…
Internet is rife with the corrupt culture of bourgeois society, which the WPK is very wary of, since the unfettered flooding of socialist republics, leading up the destruction of the USSR by bourgeois, counter-revolutionary propaganda, had devastating effects to the culture of the people of those socialist countries. The culture of overindulgence, phillistinism, liberal idealism, reaction, idolizing the capitalist class and its celebrity proponents is incompatible with socialist society; this is the culture of bourgeois, capitalist societies; this is how the masses of liberal democracies are largely made “compatible” or subservient to the dictatorship of capital. The Internet is neat to have, but when one has to encounter the rancid character of Western phillistinism and liberalism/fascism, especially as a communist, it becomes a very unpleasant place to be. I would not wish that upon our comrades in the DPRK.
well put. i never thought of that, but thinking back on it, i can remember countless examples of bourgeois influence and creators which are just capitalist/fascist apologists. It is exhausting to be in such a space
whats wrong with it?
Communism no iPhone Twitter Facebook.
what…?
i never implied that there was anything wrong with it, i was just curious about why it was there ^^
Reading the comments, i understand why, and tbh im glad they have a seperate, domestic internet.
