Comment by egorfine
1 month ago
I don't see any drawbacks on this. Recent protests demonstrated that:
a) protests can and will be crushed by the government forces and people will be ultimately defeated;
b) people have no means to force government to enable back freedoms;
c) control is much easier with no internet available.
Russia is on the same path by providing white-list only internet access "during Ukrainian attacks" and a bit longer every time until ultimately internet will become whitelist only.
Also as we have seen specifically in russia, there is no shortage of senior software developers and network engineers truly putting in their best work to block VPNs better and deeper.
Thus Iran's (and russia's) internet blackout may indeed become permanent.
Update: obviously in this comment I am looking at this from the standpoint of an oppressive government.
Do you have a different definition of 'drawback' than I do?
I'm speaking from the standpoint of an oppressive government. Freedom of internet access is something that they would rather never allow.
They presumably mean drawback from the government's perspective. For the average citizen it obviously sucks.
As in the total opposite meaning?
Drawbacks are that your population loses contact with progress. Your people become less skilled for the modern world. That's fine if you want a country of agrarian peasants or factory-working drones, but it cripples your country if it's in a technological arms race.
I mean, North Korea does manage to produce rockets and nuclear warheads. They aren't exporting technology, though.
> your population loses contact with progress
This is only a drawback if you think about your country's future.
Which oppressive regimes do not.
Thus it is an advantage, not a drawback.
Yes and no. Take someone like Putin. He wants to be an oppressive regime, but also he wants Russia to be militarily strong. Well, militarily strong is highly tied to technological progress these days. He can force his people into human wave attacks. And that is dangerous enough to perhaps take Ukraine. It's a different story if he actually attacks NATO, though.
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I wouldn't be so sure about this. I think people who don't give a shit about society or politics or human rights abuses and only care about advancing cool technology can participate in and drive progress.