• blobjim [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    It's absolutely insane how many countries just allowed western tech companies into their countries via the internet. Facebook is so popular around the world too. You'd think they would take digital sovereignty more seriously, especially in countries like Russia and China. Google Chrome phones home to Google for a dozen different services. Firefox does quite a bit too. But they're essentially allowing these western companies to surveil their populations, which is of course what the whole intent of the internet was and is what it's used for by the US government. These countries should at least have a fork of Firefox with most of the services turned off. Like can't they just have some local companies develop a version of Firefox?

    It's also just an extremely unfair playing field considering these western companies and organizations are the ones that develop the standards that they then implement in their browsers that web developers then use. It just drives me crazy that non-aligned countries don't get together to develop another set of standards where western companies don't have such a leg up.

    At least in a lot of countries web browsers may be less useful just because of bandwidth and such. China's WeChat is supposedly extremely widely used in China and has its own ecosystem.

    • SoyViking [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I think the recent westoid sanctions tantrum is going to send the message of the importance of digital sovereignty to the rest of the world. The tech world is going to be multipolar as well.