I have to explain to foreign brands that I cannot post on TikTok because the platform is blocked in Albania.”
Elvi Nuhu, 27, is a content creator in Tirana. Having amassed 115,000 followers on TikTok, he makes a living from social media. Speaking to iMEdD, he sounds anxious.
“The biggest problem is with foreign brands that want to sponsor their products or services on my TikTok. Because maybe foreign brands don’t know the situation in Albania,” he explains.
In early March, the Albanian government announced a year-long ban on TikTok, citing concerns over protecting minors from violent content and hate speech. The government decision began to be implemented gradually after March 13.
Opposition politicians in Albania, civil society members, and journalists who spoke to iMEdD argue that Prime Minister Edi Rama’s real objective is to silence government critics and manipulate the upcoming elections in May.
I would argue your approach is narrow both in terms of pragmatic realities and broad social changes in the information age.
I mentioned earlier in this thread how I am from Ukraine and how I of course support our government banning russian social media and internet services in 2014. It’s good to talk about “government not forcing people to be better of” and so on, but when your family is forced to leave their city and sell their homes at 10% of market value due to an invasion from a large, aggressive and genocidal neighbour (that uses langauge as a key element of their imperialist policies), you start taking a more sober look at such matters. Mind you, I am talking about Donbas in 2014, not the full scale invasion in 22.
Not saying you’re American, but I would often hear similar polemics when I lived in the US; didn’t find them in the least convincing. It was clear that supporters of such polemics never really encountered any difficult situations that would test their commitment (and understanding) of their claimed beliefs. Some life experience outside of Ukraine (i.e. unrelated to invasions) also contributed to this perspective. Unfortunately, it’s not a black and white type topic as far as I am concerned.
The above mentioned points refer to real world examples. I would argue there are also more abstract arguments for my point of view.
We are currently going through massive social change due to the development of information and communication technology. We don’t yet know what the best practices are with respect to managing the externalities of the modern ICT landscape.
In 1890, much of the world was still ruled by kings and emperors. In many cases they were positioned literally as god’s messengers to humanity. In retrospect, it was clear that the imperial/colonialist model was not going to survive contact with modernity (industrialization, commoners learning to read, rise of easily accessible political messaging) and that new models had to take their place.
One could argue that the same is true of current attitudes towards information technology. It’s possible that the drivers that led to rapid ICT growth (e.g. US service providers not being responsible for the content on their platforms) also resulted in certain social externalities that at the end of the day will need to be accounted for (one example would be FB’s callousness and contribution to the Rohingya genocide).
I am not arguing for Chinese-style total control of the internet, but perhaps the optimal approach lies somewhere in the middle between US-style “no responsibility for anything” approach and excessive Chinese governmental paternalism.
Just some thoughts, I know I come off as condescending, but it is honestly not my intention.
I am, just for context and because I’ll reference US policy in my reply.
And if I do, please know that is not my intention at all either. That said, let’s get into it.
Let’s look at surveillance for a second. Here’s how things unfolded here in the US:
We’re currently somewhere around 4 or 5, but we were at step 1 just 25-ish years ago (expanded to 2 w/ the Patriot Act in response to 9/11), and every few years we took another step with a “renewal” of the Patriot Act (changed names and added/removed some stuff).
If you give the government a new power, they will abuse it, it’s just a matter of time.
Trump is basically using TikTok as a bargaining chip and a threat to other social media orgs to shift public opinion in his favor. That’s absolutely terrible, and that was started by the Biden administration banning TikTok on national security grounds. Banning TikTok opened the floodgates for politicians to coerce social media orgs in new ways, many of which happens behind closed doors (see what happened to TikTok? That could be you if you don’t bend the knee.).
My perspective is that you effectively are. Maybe you don’t want that, but the policies you seem to support will eventually become that, because the government perpetually expands the scope of whatever powers we grant it.
I understand the need for certain policy changes during wartime. When Russia started its aggressions (arguably, long before Crimea), I can understand a temporary ban on Russian propaganda, because it’s an active war. Maybe it doesn’t include fighting yet, but it does have a credible threat of devolving into that. So I support temporary restrictions while an imminent, credible threat exists or the country is currently at war.
However, banning TikTok isn’t that. Russia doesn’t control TikTok, and even if we assume China directly controls it (probably closer to reality than not), Albania is not at risk of being invaded by China, so there’s no imminent, credible threat. Likewise for the US, we’re not at risk of being invaded by China, so there’s no imminent, credible threat there. What does exist is political convenience, if you can control what social media services are allowed in your country, you can coerce those social media orgs to filter out stuff you don’t like and promote stuff you do. That’s a massive conflict of interest for the sanctity of free speech.
I don’t believe in treating the government as a black box. If what you’re saying is true, then that’s a reflection of society. You want a government that has the capability to implement surveillance and ban social networks when the situation calls for it. In the global context, there will be such situations. And you need to have a political and social system that limits such powers when they are not needed anymore.
A specific individual or a group of individuals cannot independently collaborate to implement counter intelligence policies to identify traitors who are providing location data for missile strikes and helping kill your fellow citizens who are fighting for your safety on the front-lines. The government must have deep surveillance capabilities in such a situation.
It’s the personal responsibility of every citizen to contribute to a functioning government system. If it doesn’t function well, that’s on the individuals that make up society. Blanket bans on government surveillance or control external social media is not a viable approach in our world (not just in Ukraine).
In the US context (I’ve lived there, but I am of course more knowledgeable on Eastern Europe), I would argue that continued renewal of the Patriot act (if it even was needed initially, but one can argue after 9/11 there was a period of shock and fear for Americans) is a reflection of the failures of the US political system. Specifically the lack of competitive elections beyond two parties. This is on some level the responsibility of US citizens and not a “black box” model of government.
It’s not that simple though. One could frame pre-invasion (i.e. pre Feb 2014 when they invaded Crimea) restrictions on russian social media and services as government overreach. On the other hand, one could frame it as a forward looking government initiative attempting to protect the lives of its citizens. We currently have the benefit of hindsight, so it’s easy to see which approach is correct, but that’s not the case in the moment.
As I mentioned in my OP, I don’t know much about Albanian politics. What I do know is that you don’t need an imminent threat of a physical invasion to limit the influence of much larger countries on your political environment. I do not support having local politics being subject to unaccountable (see Facebook and Rohingya genocide), callous operators; doesn’t matter if they are based in the US or China.
I am not that knowledge on China, but I do know how russia operates. Similar to what you mentioned, I think TikTok operates much closer to the VK/Odnoklassniki models used by the russians. You don’t want the CCP promoting political movements that they have bribed or see as being more beneficial to their interests. You want politics and political messaging to be accountable to the people who live in your country. I will point out that pre-invasion (2014), the russians very much used soft power from their internet services/social media/TV channels to influence politics within Ukraine. That’s unacceptable and has lead to large scale deaths, destruction and misery.
Perhaps dealing with an invasion for a decade plus made me a bit paranoid, but I do support the government being able to regulate the ability of foreign social media/services to influence local politics and spread misinformation and propaganda.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s not all black and white. There are legitimate cases (even without an imminent invasion) where you need to have a measure of control over foreign influence, be it American-style Zuckerburg enabling genocide in Mynmar or Chinese influence campaigns. I don’t see this as being supportive of a Chinese-style total censorship model.
Sure, and people like quick solutions to problems and largely don’t think about long-term consequences. And then they’re all “surprised pikachu” when that thing inevitably morphs into something they don’t like.
Sure… in wartime. Outside of wartime, it’s totally reasonable to have serious limitations on the government’s power here.
Agreed with the first part.
The second part is a bit sticky though, because even if a majority of citizens support a specific change, if their representatives don’t, their SOL. For example, in my state, a majority of the populace wanted to expand legalization of marijuana, but the legislature shot it down, even after a passed ballot initiative that should have been legally binding. The root of this problem is the two-party system, since people are willing to vote for the “lesser of two evils,” which doesn’t communicate their support for some policies from the other party.
Sure, but you need something to justify that level of interference. In the US, we have a concept of an “enemy of the state,” which is what we used to justify the TikTok ban. I think that was overreach personally (China isn’t an active threat, and TikTok is far enough removed from China to be less of an issue), but I accept the premise for that. Our “enemies of the state” is a legally defined list, which includes: China, Russia, Iran, and N. Korea, and a handful of others.
That was certainly the case for Ukraine, but I’m not so sure about Albania, as they have even less reason to consider China an “enemy” as the US, and I think that’s already shaky at best (why are we doing so much business w/ our enemy? How is an enemy one of our biggest trading partners?).
Sure, but there’s a big difference between censorship and counter-propaganda. The Albanian and US governments could instead correct misinformation instead of banning media orgs they don’t have control over.
You need to be very careful about this, because this is exactly the same strategies taken by authoritarian regimes, like Nazi Germany. Again, to be clear, I’m not calling Ukraine fascist (that’s Russian propaganda, and Russia is absolutely fascist), I’m saying this type of policy is used by fascists.
If you control the media, you control the people and can get away with anything. That’s why I’m so against government censorship. I’d much rather have Russians interfering w/ our media than have my country dictate what speech is acceptable. To quote Rage Against the Machine:
Controlling social media is controlling the present. Rip that out by the roots and put serious controls around anything that looks like it. Transparency is generally the best policy, so work with journalists to expose the propaganda for what it is instead of trying to silence it.
Again, that’s on the given members of a society. Surveillance and blocking social are not inherently (in a physical sense) good or bad. These are social tools that can be used for good (and sometimes must be used to protect the lives of your fellow citizens) or can be used for bad.
This is a bit of a hyperbolic example, but let’s say you have a CSAM-focused social network, even without an imminent danger to society it is reasonable to block such a social network if it’s hosted in another jurisdiction.
American concepts of “enemy of the state” and “imminent danger” don’t map one to one in the global context.
A country (Albania or otherwise) has the right to counteract influence for foreign nationals/entities on their political process. But that’s just one example.
There is also the FB and genocidal Myanmar and more recently FB and Ethiopia.
A media org is committed to journalism and communicating accurate information and good faith debate. These are not the priorities of Chines social networks (subject to control of the CCP) or Americans social network (subject to control of local oligarchs and criminal groups).
I think we’ve had a good discussion and it’s clear we have our own perspectives.
At this point, I am just trying to point out that there nuances to my OP and it’s not a matter of merely supporting government censorship. The world is a complex place and absolutes are not a viable approach.
Agreed, and I think the conversation has run its course.
Thanks for the discussion! I’ll certainly give it some thought.