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jmdbjk · 2 years

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My last nerve...

The chatter about no one supporting Jimin’s OST is false. The song is breaking records left and right, SOMEONE is supporting it.

I saw a ton of promotion and positivity happening on Twitter by Army. If you saw a lot of negativity, then you are following the wrong accounts. Can’t help you there. That’s on you.

The song was not a BigHit product therefore not their responsibility to promote. The entertainment company that produces the television show promoted it. Maybe not like all you suddenly expert public relations and marketing people on social media think it should have been, but they promoted it. The song is not the property of Jimin or Sungwoon. YamYam Entertainment were the executive producers. That means they hired PDogg, Jimin and Sungwoon for the song. Their main interest is promoting their television series. The song was part of that.

Be mad at Spotify but also be realistic. That app is not very organized. Never has been, so no surprise they were not timely in updating Jimin’s profile, not to mention the confusion to begin with because there are multiple artist accounts called “Jimin”. Was it done on purpose in order to diminish the song’s success? I highly doubt that, this is a billion dollar organization, why would they spend energy on trying to sabatoge one artist’s song? For what reason? Regardless, I don’t care for Spotify, it certainly isn’t the be-all, end-all of streaming services, but I suppose I only feel that way because I use Apple Music.

I understand the importance of song ranking and artist following numbers. The song is doing well, Jimin is doing well. But I understand fans want him to be #1 and his song to smash all records that can’t ever be broken again. I get it!

However, the story that came to light regarding the unpaid insurance incident definitely was timed to mar the songs release. I tend to ignore sources that are non-official when it comes to serious news.

But K-media sure is something else…this is how it’s gonna be huh? This is just me talking but if this group of 7 humans is generating over $5 BILLION USD to Korea’s gross domestic product I would think y’all would report better about them but that’s just me.

Unfortunately, Twitter played right into it and engaged wholeheartedly. They will never learn that in order to diffuse those sorts of things, you should ignore. They just added fuel to the fire they wanted to put out. And this is why this story is appearing on entertainment news outlets like Billboard News. Y’all made it a big deal. It’s a shame.

And anons here saying words that are not fully informed are just helping a topic stay alive even though it appears to have been resolved as well as perpetuating false information:

1. It’s been resolved (months ago). I already said that.

2. BigHit is aware of the situation, have taken responsibility and I am 100% certain people got fired and others got hired, security protocols have been re-evaluated, so there’s really nothing more to add to the discourse. Talking about just keeps it at the top of everyone’s mind.

3. If it’s a security or legal issue it sure as hell is none of our business. Stay out of it.

4. Whoever was the “whistleblower” did so in order to mar Jimin’s OST release. It all played out exactly as they planned because people thrive on drama and negativity.

And ya know another thing about that? Drama Llamas sometimes don’t even realize they are being a drama llama. They think the entire world is just like them. Because the box they live in is very tiny with high high walls that they can’t see over.

Learn to keep your mouth shut. I know it’s a challenge for some of you but really you should try harder to be a good human. People chattering about matters that SHOULD BE PRIVATE with all the gatekeeping and screaming about respecting their privacy...STOP TALKING OUT BOTH SIDES OF YOUR FUCKIN MOUTH.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the outrage. We all love Jimin and want to protect him. We worry about him when we hear this kind of bullshit going on. But to trash his company, his friends, the other BTS members and even Jimin and Sungwoon because you don’t think they’ve done enough to promote the song or protect Jimin in general is wrong. Evil people will succeed in being evil as long as they can figure out a way. THAT’S WHY IT’S IMPORTANT FOR US TO BE GOOD HUMANS!

Just me posting this is whole rant is wrong but you guys plucked my last nerve on it.

Keep being mad and outraged if you want to but you aren’t helping Jimin or anyone else by doing that. You are just making yourself wallow in negativity and bringing down everyone else.

We have a lot of good fun things to look forward to. Let’s just move on already.

#y'all gone make me lose my mind up in here #stop the insanity #foolishness on twitter #anons be anonning

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kwantified · 4 years

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nct dream on social media!

excluding weibo, messenger apps, and dating apps

note: this is purely my personal opinion. kinda inspired by my irls :)

mark

he loves to share what he does when he can

on instagram he’s the kinda guy who isn’t really... there

busy boy finding out about news a whole week late

when he posts stories it’s usually like... super vague pictures of music or lyrics he’s working on

probably one or two basic shots of food

AND ESPECIALLY

shares what he’s listening to on spotify I Kid You Not

if mark lee posts a story it’s probably going to be what he’s listening to on spotify

he’s more active on twitter because uh

memes

mostly quoted retweets tbh

his replies are always just “HAHAHAHAHA” or “LMAOOOO” and some goofy one-liner

has mutuals on stan twt because he likes to steal the memes

it’s honestly like ????

tweets mostly in english but korean is always there

you would find him laughing his ass off and why? because one of his mutuals tweeted something off of punhub

“can you perform under pressure?”

“no, but i can perform bohemian rhapsody”

“doctor, it hurts when i do this”

“then don’t do that”

I SWEAR TO GOD THIS DUDE HAS THE FUNNIEST TL

not only because of punhub trust me

he’s mostly on local twt just on about netflix shows and music because he doesn’t have enough to time rlly branch out into one community other than his own

has tried uploading his works on soundcloud but just feels more comfortable uploading covers and stuff on youtube

he’d accidentally get in everyone’s recommended because hey here’s a talented man on the guitar who’s goofy and cute

BUT ANYWAYS

overall since he’s a very busy person he’s not too active, but social media kind of gives him a little laugh every once in a while so that’s great

renjun

say it with me, instagram

the prettiest golden hour selfies

your resident pretty boy

says he Doesn’t Care About Fashion but then posts a body shot of his fit smh

can’t complain because he’s mad fine let’s be real here

he has an account for every single social media out there but isn’t always active on every account

i swear to god he;s made a linkedin account

the way he’s probably made a mf foursquare account…

he’s just such an all-around sociable guy he just has mutuals everywhere

i mean the entertainment industry is all about connections so

go get it reonjeon!

makes an appearance in everyone’s social media like he’s EVERYWHERE

jaemin’s instagram? check. jisung’s tiktok? check! chenle’s twitter? check. he’s in everyone’s mentions fr

his stories are always reposts of other posts and of the stories he’s tagged in

work socmed! he makes his career look so comfy and homey from his posts and stories

was one of those guys who used to be super active on snapchat but gave up after insta stories became a thing

mans stalks more people than you think… he’s just a sly dude

not in a creepy way ofc he just gets pretty lost within the internet

you could actually play any trending tiktok audio and you’d hear him sing along every word in the background… what has this mf been doin??? uhm???

sends posts he thinks are funny to ig and twt gcs

mostly to jisung because he’s the only one who actually leaves SOME sort of reaction whether it be double tapping the text or going ㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎ

likes to visit pinterest every once in a while because it’s like a nice eye cleanse

it’s also good outfit and food inspiration in the cases that he feels like creating something non career related

in general he just likes looking for new ideas and sometimes pinterest is just a great outlet for a visual layout like that

renjun and jisung, THESE TWO

they scour the internet together

goin wild with the crack videos with jisung

jeno

this dude is nowhere

like. he has thousands of followers on instagram and for WHAT

twitter page: empty

snapchat: gave up after insta stories

insta stories: DOESN’T EVEN POST SO WHAT’S THE POINT

but he’s like almost always actively liking everything on your timeline

like... every post on your feed is “liked by jeno and xx others”

WHERE IS THIS DUDE

texting him becomes a game through all the different dm platforms online

like will he open his twitter dms today or will he only answer if you furiously facetime him

some days it’s katalk and somedays he just chooses to ignore you

PURPOSELY SO YOU HAVE TO CALL HIM

anyways when he does post on instagram it’s usually just his surroundings and daily activities

or his cats

yeah

does a lot of things with his friends so you’ll probably find him tagged in the dreamies’ stories

but not anywhere else for some reason

he’s more active on twitter!

he kind of feels more relaxed on twitter since it isn’t based on images

tweets out of context things

like a random “fml” out of nowhere and you’re like okay i guess

pretty vague too

doesn’t really make an effort to make any mutuals because it’s kind of like a vent place for him

stays on private

friends only so... about 30 followers and that’s it

people who follow his Instagram don’t really know his twt so it relieves him a bit

food videos on youtube

not mukbangs but like

very nice cooking videos

like have y’all heard of Nino’s Kitchen

he loves that shit BET

the greatest mix between dry sarcasm, humorous attacks and beautiful food

mans just likes real life interactions i guess

haechan

youtube addict!

gamer haechan

he could spend DAYS on youtube and just forget about time and space altogether

just finds the best rabbit holes to go into from music to snails to gaming to fancams

also on tiktok but his tiktok is on instagram ya feel

finds it stupid but so, so entertaining

loves watching those makeup and art tiktoks because they’re so well done

humor tiktoks on his explore page

number one edit fanatic

mans loves watching edits on instagram and how they’re so well made like

he’s truly one to appreciate art

his stories are uploaded on the weirdest times of day

want a video of him serenading the camera at two in the morning? sign yourself up

twitter is lowkey his diary

he just tweets whatever is happening all day errday

sometimes he completely forgets about the existence of twitter altogether so there are days where he’s on twitter every second but there are weeks where it’s just CRICKETS

loves to listen to other people’s playlists

open to new vibes (but no hateful vibes!)

still does snapchat streaks... hm

and who might he be talking to?

his snapchat streaks are always the same shot of the window or some scenery from his apartment

the kind of guy who snaps you until goddamn 4am

make room for online boyfriend hyuck

goes on twitch for the fun of it when he’s too busy to play

finds it real satisfying to just see the streamers engage with the audience while being real good at what they do

either way he’s just always on youtube but when he isn’t he’s usually just consuming content instead of uploading content

but when he does post anything it’s like quality!!

jaemin

unlike jeno, this man is EVERYWHERE

and when i mean everywhere i mean he’s also on letterboxd (!!!) and soundcloud

maybe this is just an excuse for me to force the jaemin film and photography student agenda

this man has customised every part of every profile on social media

except for linkedin

folks, his instagram is just pictures of everyone else but him

even on soundcloud his self-written songs are sung by other members in nct

his insta stories are the only place you can actually hear his voice

insta stories are just food and friends

and by friends i mean wtf moments at the dream dorm

memes all over twitter

steals memes pretty regularly

like he’d always like the tweets before stealing and those tweets would always end up in your tl so whenever he uses those memes in your convos it’s just like

aHa i see

posts “mood” tweets

mostly replies to other people rather than making his own tweets

loves to do deep dives on youtube because he always discovers the cutest music

also gets the best inspiration from youtube

has a few favourite youtubers and genuinely appreciates their content

again, inspiration

watches lots of movies but doesn’t really leave any reviews so he just gives a few stars (or none) on letterboxd

the kind of guy who’s glued to his phone

i don’t blame him

his phone is full of content

still on snapchat apparently

but he’s the kind of dude that just sends streaks every day and updates his snapchat story like never

his streaks... lmao

usually goes for a black screen with a plain “s” or just a random shot of his bedsheets

but if he considers you a close friend he might get distracted and send you a bunch of videos of him playing with filters

he really does think they’re quite the fascination

maybe he’s just bored lol social media is pretty expansive

chenle

he’s like jeno but gives less fucks

so... instagram and twitter are equally chaotic

such a mood

just makes you go WHAT IS THIS DUDE UP TO

this dude is usually just Chillin

and he gets bored so he just brain farts into twitter

whenever there’s a basketball game he’s watching he’ll fill your entire timeline with out of context reactions

also kind of a random out of context dude who posts things at the weirdest times of the day/night

doesn’t give enough fucks to go on private

gets a lot of followers on twt solely because so many people find his life so fascinating like hm...

what might zhong chenle be doing at this time of day

on instagram it’s kind of a different story because uh he might have to think twice about whether or not he wants a certain picture on his feed

but then again, no fucks

so he’s like meh okay sure i’ll post it

pics of food and places he’s been to and laid back selfies and #tbt type beat

NOT WAYV’S TURN BACK TIME I MEAN THROWBACK THURSDAY

but he does a lot of promo for nct and wayv

get that bag boy!

chenle on instagram is like hyuck on twitter: he can go weeks being completely inactive but one day he suddenly remembers the existence of instagram and posts five pictures in a day

all with either no caption or like the vaguest “ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ” or “哈哈哈哈”

if y’all have seen his weibo then y’all would know his twt would be filled with “哈哈哈哈哈”

mentions everyone (especially jisung) in each and every single one of his insta stories

replies to random comments

eternal chenle menpa how bout that

goes on wattpad and ao3 for the fun of it

actually kind of enjoys some of the work on wattpad... his fav trope is enemies to lovers

that one mutual that casually likes all your tweets

he would literally spam like all your pictures/tweets as soon as you guys become mutuals and it’s sweet

comments on everything

always dragged in jisung’s tiktok antics

knows all the tiktok dances by heart even though it looks like he’s so unbothered

thinks tiktok is cringey but HIGHKEY gets into it

jisung

now this dude is on tiktok but he doesn’t really fetch for clout

he likes doing short freestyles

the challenges are cool too and he’s had a few mutuals on tiktok so that’s nice

but this dude screams TWITTER and YOUTUBE

watches shit like vox and jubilee because it’s so interesting to him

has been through a vsauce phase but eventually got bored because they didn’t upload a lot

youtube is there for his deep dives and curiosities

also is subscribed to a lot of youtubers so his recommended page is super diverse

comments on videos with the most candid thoughts

youtube has been a big part of him honestly especially as a child who didn’t really get a formal education

he’s just kind of learning from the internet

doesn’t bother with instagram because... he can post pictures on twt too...

eventually gets instagram anyways so

the pictures/videos jisung sends on lysn bubble are literally his insta feed

but on twitter he’s just kind of vibin

says he goes on twt 5 times a day so there we go

likes those generational tweets and tiktoks that go like

“kids born after 2005 will never understand this”

his retweets bruv

he just retweets funny one liner replies from viral tweets

also keeps up with the news (ehem this was the boy on the political section of daily korean news let’s hear it)

rather than just korea he’s pretty interested in international news too so he’s a pretty outspoken guy

doesn’t really do a lot of tweeting himself though since he just kind of goes “헐” or “대박” or “ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ”

him and renjun are youtube buddies just because. yes.

usually spirals into crack compilations

like renjun, he’s also seen pretty often in other members’ mentions

ESPECIALLY CHENLE THIS DUDE WONT SHUT UP ABOUT JISUNG

but he honestly really likes being mentioned and being active online because he’s spent most of his life either practicing or online so

feels like home huh

kinda gen z spirit there lmao

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mylesudland · 5 years

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Aaron Sorkin is bored

I’m on the treadmill at the gym and CNN is on and Aaron Sorkin is talking to Fareed Zakaria. I’m not listening but I see the chyron is something about Sorkin’s take on the 2020 election. Fine.

And though I could sort of guess at it because no one thinks Aaron Sorkin isn’t going to step in it when he’s asked to assess the State of Play on a cable news show, he did quite a bit better.

At the same time Sorkin is doing this interview I’m listening to a podcast that has both Bill Simmons’ takes on the NFL and later features an interview with Aaron Sorkin. The Sorkin bit begins with the two of them immediately launching into another complaint about young people. It was more or less the appetizer for Sorkin’s more public political take.

“See, I really worry about creativity going forward in America” Simmons says, before going through the menu of boredom-slayers available to young people now. “Boredom, I think, is like the greatest thing you can have sometimes creatively.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Sorkin says. “And there are too many...easy boredom killers. I’m the parent of a teenager, so I’ve raised a daughter entirely in the digital world. And it’s changing our kids.” Simmons says he doesn’t want the conversation to be just two old guys complaining about things, though Sorkin assures him -- “But we’re right.”

My question is: what, exactly, do these guys think the digital world is?

The digital world is the most boring place imaginable. It’s a stream of images that show celebrities and your friends having a great time with their friends that are not you. It’s a real-time news feed exposing every injustice happening in the world and how you are being institutionally neutered so that there’s nothing you can do about it. Even though you’re still allowed to vote. For now. The digital world sticks Donald Trump on your screen every four seconds to remind you the reality TV host is in fact the President of the United States. The digital world provides cover for any person with any idea to say their idea is right.

The digital world’s primary feature is the internet, a global meeting place we are required to visit -- for school, for work, to talk to our families, to more or less prove that we are alive today -- which is run by authoritarians that choose to amplify voices claiming everything is too liberal. It is hard to think of something worse than the internet and the only reason we’re there is because we are bored.

Like a bag of chips that contains no nutritional value but simulates the feeling of being full, the internet provides users with an endless stream of content that will pass the time on the clock and approximate the feeling of not being alone. But the reason we’re driven to the internet is because we are all, in fact, very much alone.

Writing in The Baffler, Kate Wagner explores how internet is not just in a constant state of change, but a constant state of destruction.

“Considering the average website is less than ten years old, that old warning from your parents that says to ‘be careful what you post online because it’ll be there forever’ is like the story your dad told you about chocolate milk coming from brown cows, a well-meant farce,” Wagner writes. “On the contrary, librarians and archivists have implored us for years to be wary of the impermanence of digital media; when a website, especially one that invites mass participation, goes offline or executes a huge dump of its data and resources, it’s as if a smallish Library of Alexandria has been burned to the ground... Ignored is the scope and species of the lost material, or what it might have meant to the scant few who are left to salvage the digital wreck.”

The internet’s modern insult isn’t just that you have to exist online to prove you exist irl -- Has a friend ever told you they’re seeing someone but then said they couldn’t find them on Google? The immediate assumption is that this person is a serial killer. -- it’s that your online presence requires you fulfill an ever-higher burden of proof. It requires more profiles to update and more passwords to change. As Wagner notes, “roughly 90 percent of time spent on our phones is devoted to apps—not the web.” And every app is its own private hellscape.

There’s Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, an email address, an AppleID (which brings you to iMessage and the App Store), a Spotify account (linked to Facebook, of course), a Netflix login, an Amazon account, Slack, Venmo, Uber, Lyft, three newspaper subscriptions, and we’re on the first of three iPhone homescreens. All of your information has either been stolen or is going to be stolen from these accounts.

The internet we know now is also merely an iteration. The internet exists for small slivers of time, not just in the grand scheme of all human life but in the context of any one human’s life. The internet that I grew up with, which is similar to the internet Wagner grew up with, is an internet my children will not know. No one knows it even now, all they can do is remember it.

One day I will be an old grumpy man like Aaron Sorkin. Hopefully I will not be asked to opine on the state of the Democratic party on television. But in Sorkin’s displeasure with the modern moment I think most young people see a part of themselves that for now can be approached with a bit of detached irony.

The part of themselves that has seen a young cousin spend four hours at Christmas texting on Snapchat without looking up and wondered why their aunt and uncle would give an 11 year old a cell phone because I didn’t get my first phone until 14. And that phone didn’t even have texting. I also shared it with my brothers. Kids these days, amirite Aaron Sorkin?

And I think our (alright fine, MY) discomfit with Sorkin’s commentaries is less about what he actually said -- which, on its face, is not that interesting: it will be said again, is being said right now, has been said from time immemorial -- than that he exposes how we’ve gotten it completely backwards.

The digital world so bemoaned by Sorkin is literally meaningless. The internet is not a boredom killer, it is boredom. The connected life we all live now is not the cause of a collective feeling of loss we carry with us everywhere. It is the symptom.

#aaron sorkin #boredom

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vinayv224 · 4 years

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Why did Iran shut off the internet for the entire country?

Iran imposed a nationwide internet outage after citizens flooded the streets to protest the government’s hike in oil prices. At least five people were killed in the demonstrations, which show no sign of subsiding. | ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images

After protesters railed against increased fuel prices, connectivity fell to just 5 percent. The Reset podcast investigates.

Iran’s government announced on November 15, 2019, that it had plans to increase the price of fuel by at least 50 percent. The next day, Iranians took to the streets in protest. And the Iranian government reacted to its citizens organizing by shutting down the internet for the whole country.

The shutdown persisted for five days with practically every Iranian citizen lacking internet access or wireless data service. Finally, on the fifth day, Iran began restoring access in Tehran as well as in a number of provinces.

How is it even possible to shut down the internet for an entire country?

Lily Hay Newman, a senior security reporter at Wired magazine, explains on this episode of the Reset podcast that in order to get the internet to go down in the first place, the government had to get around a number of fail-safes.

“With this Iranian shutdown, which is so far beyond anything the government had done before, they likely grappled with these protective mechanisms. They would take down a portion of the network and then the network would automatically reroute around that dead portion to keep providing service. And then they would have to kind of do a whack-a-mole type situation to get it all under control.”

The “whack-a-mole situation,” as Newman describes to host Arielle Duhaime-Ross, “involves the government coordinating with internet service providers, telecoms, and infrastructure providers to actually make all of this happen.”

What this means for Iranians is that their government didn’t face a lot of resistance when it asked private companies to turn off internet access for their paying customers.

Alp Toker, the executive director of Netblocks, an NGO that monitors the governance of the internet, tells Duhaime-Ross quite frankly that he’s never seen such a “complex shutdown” before.

“We’ve been tracking a lot of shutdowns, and they are done for a lot of different reasons around the world. We always try to take the governments on good faith [and] see what they’ve done, whether there might be a justification. But, to be honest, in each case, it’s caused more harm than [good]. If it’s a protest or even a riot, switching off the Internet makes people more angry.”

Another alarming fact is that Iran might further isolate its citizens from the rest of the world through its own intranet, which the government has been developing in order to give the regime more control over what content and services people can access in the country.

According to Toker, a sovereign internet — like the one Russia was planning on building — leads to parallel internets and the loss of global connectivity.

But Newman argues that there might be an unintended benefit to the oppressive government’s total blackout. “Perhaps it could fuel even more people in the streets, going outside and saying, ‘The only way I can get information is to go talk to my neighbors [and] going to a protest.’”

Listen to the entire conversation here. Below, we’ve also shared a lightly edited transcript of Toker’s conversation with Duhaime-Ross.

This episode of the Reset podcast was published on November 21, 2019. Events may have changed.

Listen and subscribe to Reset on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Spotify.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

So the internet’s out in Iran. And that means reporting on what’s going on within the country is a lot harder.

It’s actually in these moments that I personally realize how screwed journalists around the world would be without the web.

But there are some people out there who devote themselves to keeping track of these kinds of shutdowns — and they are a little bit more accustomed to navigating these communication obstacles and interpreting them.

One of those people is Alp Toker, the executive director of Netblocks, an NGO that monitors the governance of the internet. He’s based in London, and I asked him if he’s seen an internet shutdown like this before.

Alp Toker

Well, in short, we haven’t.

It’s been extraordinary. It’s been a complex shutdown. It’s had many facets to it. It’s also impacted a lot of people at a time of crisis in various ways. It’s just unique.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

This shutdown was actually sort of gradual. The government initially just slowed down the internet for tons of people and then actually spent 24 hours just systematically trying to shut down the internet. What does that tell us about how the government is viewing these protests? Because this was a response to the protests.

Alp Toker

Well, it stands to reason that the authorities are worried, given how extreme this measure is. It’s not something that Iran does. This is about severing connectivity at the core.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

Is there a link between the intranet project Iran is reportedly working on and the protests?

Please note: This is a developing situation, so I want to be clear here that while other news organizations have reported on what Alp is about to say, it’s still really hard to know exactly what’s going on in Iran.

Alp Toker

So researchers knew that some kind of national intranet was coming. But there was no clear timeline. Would it be next year or a decade from now? And what wasn’t expected was that we might start seeing signs of the intranet during an internet shutdown that’s targeting protests.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

Are we actually seeing signs of it being booted up now?

Alp Toker

All indications are that this system has been booted up. And that’s what we see from the data, from the reports, from all sources. What’s happened is: first this shutdown, but then you’ve got this network coming back online. But without the rest of the world there. So you’ve got a parallel intranet being formed in front of our eyes, where the people want to reach out but they can’t.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

This feels like big news, that Iran’s intranet is essentially its mode of communication. What we think of as the internet is essentially changing completely. That’s what you’re telling me?

Alp Toker

Right. Because now you’ve got to ask, which is a real internet? What if you have one of these or two of these? Is it the one inside Iran? Is it the one outside? What if Russia also does the same thing? Russia’s had some plans to [create] a sovereign internet and then you start developing parallel internets and you lose this global connectivity, this achievement of humanity, which has brought good but has also brought some perhaps less desirable things to the world. But that’s something we’ve all taken for granted until now. It looks like that’s changing.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

Do you think the government planned things this way? Was this premeditated?

Alp Toker

It’s difficult to believe that this could be orchestrated. These protests were organic. They were caused by a specific trigger as the fuel prices rose.

A very cynical look at it might say that there was some planning. But honestly, it looks like the internet was cut. And then there was the realization that this is not good for the economy, this is not good for the situation of the country.

And [separately] there was this intranet that was being developed and it looks like that might have been switched ahead of schedule and might have enabled at scale.

So it remains to be seen how and why this is happening now. But it’s happened.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

Has this happened before in a country? Is there a country that has this kind of an intranet in operation and countrywide?

Alp Toker

The only similar high-profile country that has a system like this is North Korea.

Not much is known about the network that North Korea operates, but it doesn’t have many users. It’s specifically for those privileged [few] who can access this kind of network. And it isn’t connected to the global internet. Because it’s so isolated, it’s difficult to say how similar it is to what’s happening now.

But you can look at Russia, which has been making plans for it but hasn’t activated this kind of system on a national scale.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

Have other countries in other parts of the world been affected by a government-controlled internet shutdown and communications blackout like this before?

Alp Toker

A recent case is Iraq that has been cut off. First they switch off social media, then they switch off the internet completely.

And the human rights organizations are still stumped as to how many people have lost their lives. It’s created an information black hole that’s going to take years and there may not be an answer for. So that’s just one example.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

Is there ever an instance where shutting down the internet is acceptable?

Back in April when Sri Lanka suffered some terrorist attacks, the government decided to shut down its internet to stop the spread of misinformation. And actually the country got a lot of praise for that.

So is it ever okay to do this kind of thing and shut down the internet?

Alp Toker

We’ve been tracking a lot of extended shutdowns, and they are done for a lot of different reasons around the world. We always try to take the governments on good faith to begin with. We try to see what they’ve done, whether there might be a justification. But to be honest, in each case, it’s caused more harm than any problem it’s aimed to solve. If it’s a protest or even a riot, switching off the internet makes people more angry.

Let’s look at the situation in Sri Lanka. There you have these devastating terror attacks. Massive loss of life. And in the aftermath, there are disputes, groups that are blaming each other. And authorities introduce a blackout. They say it will prevent these attacks. They say it will stop these attacks. The problem is there is no evidence at all that it actually stops these attacks, because at the end of the day, people still know where to go if they want to attack a group of the minority. The problem is, it just stops the reporting. So nobody knows that it’s happening. And the problem is when you need it, when that press is really there when people are dying, then you’ve already lost the only recourse you have.

Before we set up Netblocks, there were efforts to track internet shutdowns by hand or using various data sources. But a lot of this was missing — the information about how long it has lasted, what kind of disruption it’s been.

The truth is, we don’t know. We read stories, we read claims in archives that there was an internet cut. But that could have affected one city. It could have affected one street. And because the data wasn’t there. And that is lost to history.

Because you think if a country is shut down, the whole country, the world would know. But by its nature, there’s no way to record it. You don’t know if your neighbor’s offline. You don’t know if the next city is offline. You’re just out of information.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

This is actually the situation of if there’s a tree that falls in the forest and no one’s around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Alp Toker

Absolutely. This is the technical implementation of the falling tree in the woods.

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corneliusreignallen · 4 years

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Why did Iran shut off the internet for the entire country?