Of War and Bits and Pieces
The Information Ecologist 61
What is this? The Information Ecologist (About page) will try to explore the dynamics of the Information Ecosystem (mainly) from the perspective of Technology Policy in India (but not always). It will look at topics and themes such as misinformation, disinformation, performative politics, professional incentives, speech and more.
Welcome to The Information Ecologist 61
Yes, I’ve addressed this image in the new about page.
In this edition:
I debated whether this edition should focus on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. I am not well-versed with the region's complex history and present-day politics. Things are evolving so quickly that a paragraph may be outdated by the time I finish it. Forget about when this edition reaches your inbox (RIP the podcast we recorded on Friday, for Tuesday AM). But, it is also too significant a development to not write about. Note that this is ‘significance’ is not based purely on own judgement but comes from the number of people/entities taking some sort of stance or even action. So, I will try to frame some fragmented thoughts (bits and pieces of them) around some of the precedents we may be (inadvertently) setting, and their implications.
Deplatforming or Unplatforming
Ukraine’s appeals
Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov’s (until now, sparingly used) Twitter account (<300 tweets at the time of this writing) has made appeals to various technology companies to act against Russia by stopping services, providing information, etc.
I’m pasting an extract from my work-in-progress mega note about internet governance and/or information ecosystem governance-related aspects of this situation [SochMuch].
26/2
Google: Google Market and Google Pay (tweet)
Netflix: Block Russian Federation and remove Russian content (tweet).
YouTube: Block Russian channels like Russia 24, TASS, RIA Novosti (tweet)
Facebook / Instagram: Block access for citizens of Russian Federation (tweet). Goal not to block information sources, but to engage 'youth, proactive and smart people'
Information about cryptocurrency wallets of Russian and Belarusian politicians. (tweet)
Elon Musk: starlink (tweet)
Volunteers for an 'IT ARMY' (tweet)
27/2
Viber, Paypal: Block services in Russia, calls on 'young and thinking Russians to wake up' (tweet)
Visa, Mastercard: Block services on all cards within Russia. (tweet)
Crypto-currency exhanges: block addresses of Russian users. "crucial to freeze not only the addresses linked to Russian and Belarusian politicians, but also to sabotage ordinary users" (tweet)
Mark Zuckerberg: Ban access to FB / Insta in Russia (tweet)
28/2
01/03
02/03
Game-streaming companies: Garena, Twitch, Steam to prevent Russia-based users from participating in esports events (tweet).
Epic Games, Nintendo, Rockstar Games, Konami, Bethesda, etc. to 'halt' games in Russia. (tweet)
Riot games, EA, Ubisoft: Close offices in Russia (tweet)
Xbox, Playstation: Leave the Russian market. (tweet)
Oracle, SAP: Stop products, services, software updates in Russia (tweet).
2 key steps highlighted (tweet)
Mastercard + Visa exits
Blocking App Store and Play Store
03/03
IBM: Arbor services to protect russian web resources (tweet)
04/03
Governors of California (tweet), Washington (tweet): Seemingly based on New York state's executive order asking state agencies / authorities to "review and divest public funds from Russia" (link to executive order), but goes beyond in asking for companies located in the respective jurisdictions to cease providing services in Russia.
05/03
Figma: "Do not let russia’s aggressor use modern technology and craft propagandistic websites and applications." (tweet)
06/03
Amazon + Jeff Bezos: Suspect AWS in Russia (tweet)
Microsoft + Bill Gates + Satya Nadella: Block access to Azure, Skype and Github (tweet)
Maxmind: Stop providing services to Russian state-owned companies, prevent downloads to geo-intelligence databases and/or deliberately corrupt them so they are of limited/no utility in Russia. (tweet)
Another set of significant appeals were made through letters to ICANN and RIPE NCC to [Pastebin, via Internet Governance Project]:
Revoke, permanently or temporarily, the domains “.ru”, “.рф” and “.su”. This list is not exhaustive and may also include other domains issued in the Russian Federation.
Contribute to the revoking for SSL certificates for the abovementioned domains.
Shut down DNS root servers situated in the Russian Federation
(to RIPE NCC) Withdraw the right to use all IPv4 and IPv6 addresses by all Russian members of RIPE NCC (LIRs - Local Internet Registries), and to block the DNS root servers that it is operating.
The European Union, for its part, called for an EU-wide ban on Russian state media and announced that it was building tools the block their disinformation in Europe [Politico.EU].
We’ll get to some responses in a bit, but it is worth noting that these appeals cover large swathes of the internet stack from social media platforms, web services, IP intelligence services, CRM services to Internet Registries. And if you look at the dates, there is something of a pattern here. The appeals start at the user-facing end of the stack and then extend to the more infrastructural parts of it. Now, Ukraine is well within its right to make the appeals it thinks will protect its interests. How other countries, private corporations and people, in general, respond will set some precedents.
Company Responses
Again, since this is a developing space, I will not try to put down a comprehensive list, but the following resources should give you a sense (note that this is mainly for technology companies):
A long thread by Anna Rogers (see other threads on the account too)
RestofWorld’s compilation (which does not look like it has been updated for a few days).
Techmeme filtered for Russia and Ukraine (utility may drop as the news cycle shifts).
Social media platforms started off with limiting ads/monetisation capabilities, more labelling/fact-checking - and, in response to the EU’s calls, restricted Russian state media in Europe. However, there were questions around whether it was legally allowed to do so.
And evelyn douek is right when she says that there seems to be no normative framework.
In this instance, social media platforms may have done what many wanted, and a number of interests aligned. But that doesn’t take away from the reality that these actions were arbitrary (note, I am not arguing at this stage whether they were necessary or not).
And as Mike Masnick points out - it won’t always be this way. Because precedent is wielded by whoever thinks they can take advantage of it.
Or, if you assume that bad-faith actors will do certain things anyway (which is not an unreasonable assumption, to be fair), then also consider that they will use said precedent as a pretext or justification or weave it into their whataboutery. As Ben Thompson noted [Stratechery (potential paywall)]:
Given this, Facebook being available in Russia seems like a net win, and, by the way, I would question exactly what effect banning Russian state media in the E.U. will actually have on this conflict; it seems clear that Russia is losing the battle of public opinion to a degree that no number of pro-Russia articles could undo. It doesn’t matter either way in the short term, but I do worry about the long-term: if Facebook is clearly following the government’s lead in the E.U., it is going to be difficult to see how the company stands up to other governments in the future, even if their requests are more problematic to the readers of this newsletter.
Note that not all technology companies acted in response to direct appeals from Ukraine or demands/pressure from EU countries. Many acted of their own accord to stop operations, sales, software updates, close offices, etc., in Russia.
Hammers and Splinters
One aspect common to Ukraine’s appeals and actions that were taken by various technology companies is that they move in the direction of effectively deplatforming Russia and Russia-based users. And while I can’t speak to the complete nature of support/opposition for the war against Ukraine among large sections of the Russian population and whether that should serve as justification for attempts to ‘cease the means of communication’ - one has to wonder about the long term ramifications of such actions.
Mahsa Alimardani speaks from the Iranian experience.
Also, see this thread by Konstantinos Komaitis about non-philosophical-the-internet must-be-open reasons why the idea behind the appeals to ICANN was not good:
The unintended consequences of such actions are, in the short term, leaving domestic populations at the risk of greater control, exposure to lower quality information and propaganda, resulting in further isolation. And in the medium-long term, further splintering (perhaps even accelerating) of the internet as many sovereign states will want to avoid being in a similar situation. And this may not stay limited to the realm of the internet but extend to any ‘foreign’ firms.
Some take solace in the fact that the internet, as we know it today, does not understand international boundaries. I would caution here that it does not mean it never will. Here’s an extract from a conversation between Cloudflare’s CEO Mathew Prince and Ben Thompson [Stratechery (paywall)]
Right. But given the nature of the internet, isn’t that the whole problem? Because, anyone in Germany can go to any website outside of Germany.
MP: That’s the way it used to be, I’m not sure that’s going to be the way it’s going to be in the future. Because, there’s a lot of atoms under all these bits and there’s an ISP somewhere, or there’s a network provider somewhere that’s controlling how that flows and so I think that, that we have to follow the law in all the places that are around the world and then we have to hold governments responsible to the rule of law, which is transparency, consistency, accountability. And so, it’s not okay to just say something disappears from the internet, but it is okay to say due to German law it disappeared from the internet. And if you don’t like it, here’s who you complain to, or here’s who you kick out of office so you do whatever you do. And if we can hold that, we can let every country have their own rules inside of that, I think that’s what keeps us from slipping to the lowest common denominator
India subplots
I am not going into the question of India’s strategic autonomy or its voting decisions at the United Nations. I’ll leave that to people more knowledgeable than me. What I do want to look at here, are some easily missed subplots.
But before we get there, let’s look at the Russian Government’s response (over the last 5-6 days):
It has throttled and ultimately blocked the likes of Facebook and Twitter. There are also question marks over whether it will try to disconnect (unplatform?) itself from the internet. As per Oleg Shakirov, that does not appear to be the plan as of now (stress on the as of now).
It has updated its criminal code to add a possible 15-year prison term for spreading ‘fake news’ [Reuters].
Lawmakers passed amendments to the criminal code making the spread of "fake" information an offence punishable with fines or jail terms. They also imposed fines for public calls for sanctions against Russia.
"If the fakes lead to serious consequences then imprisonment of up to 15 years threatens," the lower house of parliament, known as the Duma in Russian, said in a statement.
In response to these changes, TikTok restricted live streams and new videos in Russia [BBC] and news outlets such as BBC, CNN, Bloomberg have suspended reporting from the country [Hindustan Times].
You’ll recall from 54: Committee Reports that I was heavily critical of certain aspects of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology reports:
There were suggestions to explore “banning of selective services, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.” in Report 1, and “develop some legal provisions to counter as big a challenge as fake news” in Report 2. Russia’s own anti-disinformation law, when passed in 2019, included a provision for a 15-day prison term in case of repeated offences [The Moscow Times].
The Russian Government’s responses tell us that once you have a hammer… Basically, be careful which hammer you give to whom. And if you’re about to accuse me of being biased - I said pretty much the same thing about the EUs unspecified plans for ‘anti-disinformation’ tools.
The second India subplot is the presence of seemingly India-associated accounts in Twitter trends such as ‘IStandWithRussia’ and ‘IStandwithPutin’. See this thread by @NovelSci and these threads by (1,2) by @MarcOwenJones.
Hard to tell whether there is a strategic aspect to this or just a case of an enterprising ‘digital marketing firm’ receiving assignments due to economic sanctions on Russia (this is wild speculation on my part).
The third India subplot concerns a Twitter feature that found mention in a court in India (See 60:FIR-ing line 4). Specifically, the behaviour that Twitter relies on user-reported country locations to make determinations about geo-restricted content. More pressure for this feature (which people in India sometimes use to determine which posts have been restricted by opaque blocking orders) in a recent TechCrunch article that attempted to make the case that Twitter’s block on Russian state media accounts was off to a shaky start and used the ‘narrowest possible definition’ to apply the restriction. So narrow, that it was mentioned 3 times <sigh>.
Somewhat related: See this thread by M.B. Petersen on the effectiveness of bans.
