Access to information feels to me like a human right. Blocking that by any means (legal blockade, price unrealistic high) feels like an infringement on a Human Right.
I know this isn’t the way the world works yet, but a Human can dream.
If access to information is a human right, as opposed to access to slop, then the best avenue to upholding it this decade is to block most of the internet.
It's beneficial, both practically and spiritually, to society if people can learn about the world around them. That is difficult using the internet we have now due to commercial slop, state-sponsored slop, populist slop, and AI slop.
Idealistically, I agree with access to information. But how do you square that (and I don’t have a solution) with the proliferation of misinformation used to manipulate the population or the access to dangerous information such as building bombs and bio weapons?
Who decides what is misinformation? The state? The ministry of truth? That is the problem with this sort of wishful thinking.
> used to manipulate the population
The media industry manipulates opinions via TV channels and newspapers and has done so for the last 50 years. Heck, some states have their own TV channels like the BBC, France Info (France) , SVT (Sweden) which is completely ironic since the state funds them and there is no way to know how neutral these are.
> dangerous information
Dangerous information is a misnomer. You could print out how to build an atom bomb and give the step-by-step instructions for free in entire neighborhoods and no one will be able to build it because you need the right expertise and the materials to create one.
Same with bio-weapons unless you think you can develop these in your kitchen after work?
Secondly, we are back to the same problem. Who decides what is "dangerous information" and how far would you be willing to go to contain it? Censor social media? Censor private messages? What about emails? Textbooks? Listening devices in all homes? Cameras that you can't turn off in your toilet in case you pass information to someone else while taking a crap?
I find your argument to be in extreme bad faith. Instead of steel manning the argument, you are repeatedly straw manning it.
Certainly you can understand that deliberately lying about, for example, areas where the science is overwhelming such as vaccines or climate change, is misinformation. I explicitly said I don’t have a solution, your introduction of a “ministry of truth”, “wishful thinking”, censorship and surveillance are your own fabrications, not part of my argument.
That knowledge is already available and generally people don’t build bombs or bioweapons. Otherwise they could still go to university and learn all that if they so wish
Misinformation is unfortunately also available. And contrary to "information to build bombs and bioweapons", it's doing actual harm. To societies, economies and above all, to individuals.
Societies don’t have the right to decide what is and isn’t false information and prevent people from accessing or spreading it. (They think they do, and that’s a problem.)
Fighting misinformation has to happen through establishing and maintaining trust, and providing trusted counters to misinformation. Establishing trust requires alignment with the people you want to trust you.
Interference (as opposed to participation) in the free flow of information and the process by which truth is determined is a great evil.
Ok but what about "being directly interfered with by foreign actors"?
This is what's happening right now in Spain. Foreign interference (Ceuta, Dept. Of Homeland evidence...), followed up by foreign social media manipulation campaigns.
Currently, it looks like these campaigns will replace the current government.
Is it a threat to democracy if citizens gather facts from foreign actors when their domestic government attempts to suppress those facts? On a general level, not speaking to this situation in particular. Just curious.
It is available, and searching for it is a good way to end up on a list. It is hilarious how you gave “go to university” as an option, as if all universities were accessible to anyone and taught classes on this.
I also couldn’t help but notice you completely glossed over the much more important point of misinformation for manipulation.
I don’t get the hate for passkeys. It feels like a state sponsored attack at a reasonable (not perfect) tech.
Locked out of device? You should use a password manager which you can still log into again on a new device.
Want to log into a service on a device you don’t own? Log into by scanning a QR code with your passkey (windows offers this standard when you keep a passkey on a different device for example).
Storing identification data (like a scanned passport) is not necessary. The question is “did you check the customer identity?” And if the answer is Yes, then you can mark it as such. You don’t need to store these scans at all.
Actually you do have to store those, as proof (but MUST be destroyed after 10 years). This is very typical in AML (Anti Money Laundering) laws.
Good thing there's, at least EU wide, EUDI (EU Digital Identity Wallet) around the corner which legally allows using cryptographic proofs instead of just storing as much data as possible of the user.
This addresses exactly this issue of having to disclose this amount of information solely as proof.
Very interesting tale. I’ve had to leave a tech job that simply pestered everyone until they left. It’s cheaper for them tat way but it sucked for all of uw.
Also: rent cost money, keeping track of stuff cost time and money. By all means keep it if you need it, but on some scale you can afford to re buy the new cable that you threw out from the savings of not dealing with clutter.
There was already a durable population of Hispanic and indigenous communities, a marked increase in Russian expatriates under Tsarist era Russian-American company would have had a very hard time gaining any numbers.
As it was, "a combination of heavy coastal fog and rampant rodents yielded just 13 tonnes of wheat annually between 1826 and 1833" so sending more people would simply have increased the risk of them all starving.
The effort of expansion into California was primarily to try and rescue the fur traders in Russian held Alaska, and just about the only reason those efforts had any success was through illicit trade with the Spanish, who at the time claimed California as well.
Small scale made each group mutually supportive, but a drastic increase in numbers from Russia would have changed that balance and the Spanish were more than capable of simply denying the Russians any support, which would have doomed the majority of any such increase.
They also didn't send them because they were not really capable of sailing a significant number of people from populous regions of Russia, the very long nautical distance and losses from a long voyage balances the massive losses for overland travel to the pacific coast and then still needing a long naval voyage. Sure it is not that far to Alaska, but there is a reason they make 'Scary Fishing' shows about modern boats in those waters, and safer, more southerly routes are against prevailing winds across the wide Pacific.
So, they might have tried to send more, but the three to five months on foot or by horse from St Petersburg to Yakutsk, and then another thousand miles to Okhotsk which is frozen for half of the year, then sail to Sitka where there is already no food, and on to California with a ghost ship, maybe delivering 4 people for every 500 you start with, having taken close to Two Full Years. The Russian-American company was already losing 10k horses a year on that route for the minimal trade that did exist.
So, 'if Russia had tried' would probably have cost the Empire half or more of it's entire horse supply and not meaningfully changed the population at Ft Ross, maybe from less than two hundred persons max, to less than a five hundred persons in pretty miserable shape.
Was there no outgroup in Russia at the time that would have leapt at the chance to emigrate if the Tsar proclaimed religious and/or cultural freedom in California for any émigrés who self-deported there?
The agrarian population was primarily 'serf' class, fully owned and directed to farm according to the aristocracy and wholly without any means of self support for the two years long journey. Had the Tsar proclaimed 'Freedom' to any jumping at the opportunity there was no Russian merchant fleet to transport them, nor money to hire passage from another nation's ships.
There would have been no food supply to provision them for the long overland trek, nor horses to hire in sufficient quantity to make the trip - Horses actually are not great for long range long duration travel, they require significant down time to feed and rest or they die, and this is why during the expansion into 'the West' of the US stagecoach stops and towns were built at increments reasonable to provide a place to change teams of horses. Over the long haul, bullocck/oxen or cattle are more durable. They require less care in feeding and can travel while they eat but they are not nearly as fast, and over trip of this distance you run out of food for the people quite quickly if they do not have the skills required to hunt game while on the move. The serf class had been kept from having any such skill, and all of the game was technically reserved for the aristocracy as 'sport'. So, no, they couldn't have eaten wild boar and caribou on the way east across Siberia. At least not at any scale.
The concept of 'a road' for Okhosk is laughable - more like a trail across bogs and tundra, through forests full of wild animals (bears and wolves who really like to eat horses) and with sub zero temperatures. when it's warm enough to not loose a foot to frost bite while hiking, the ground is so wet you can sink to your waist in it.
The 'outgroups' wishing to be out of Tsarist Russia at the time would have been middle-wealth aristocracy with the means to travel, and a growing disaffection with the mismanagement of the national resources' under the growing centrism of the Empire. The agrarian populations had swelled, the three crop rotation scheme had caused a dramatic reduction in per capita grain and food production, and the revenues above subsistence for aristocratic farms was dramatically falling. Those aristocratic land and serf owning families which were not directly in the Tsars circle, and other such outgroups had a path out: Europe in Vienna, Paris, and Prussia and from there into the American Midwest.
Several cities in the Minnesota region have significant populations founded through that movement path, including the last Polish and Tsarist connected aristocratic households such as the three sisters from the Polish-Lithuanian House of Czartoryski who helped build St Mary's hospital in Duluth. (side note: there was no Poland on the maps from 1795 to 1918 - so during those years they would have been seen as 'Russian' emigres even though proudly aware of their own Polish and Lithuanian heritage)
Depends on whether the Russians in this alternate timeline discovered gold any sooner or at the same time as our history did, since the discovery promoted huge numbers of USA-originating immigration that drowned out the other cultures in the area. The later it gets put off, the more time the Russian colony has to strengthen.
The timeline is very close, and this area was heavily contested, with Mexico, Russia, and the US vying for the area. After all, Fort Ross is right next to Sutter's Mill - exactly where gold was discovered.
So, in 1841 Sutter bought Fort Ross - and failed to pay until 1849, a year after the USA officially took California from Mexico. And by incredible coincidence - a year after gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill. The existence of gold was likely already known for some time. It's simply too perfect.
Also, the Americans used their favorite weapon against the colony - sanctions! Prior to Sutter's arrival, Fort Ross could trade with Mexicans and the local Indians. Sutter forbade this - America would not trade with anyone involved with Fort Ross. The more things change the more they stay the same :)
People used to recognize the Spanish influence on California. It influenced architecture, and people understood the context of things like Zorro (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorro). But that's now basically gone, beyond students being sent on school trips historic Spanish missions.
I know this isn’t the way the world works yet, but a Human can dream.
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