Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are widely used in Saudi Arabia, with nearly 30 percent of Arab region Twitter users from Saudi. Twitter has become an important platform for expressing dissent.
However, liberal citizens, and more recently conservatives, have been arrested and sometimes given punishments, such as prison time and fines, for criticizing the government on social media.
The government has been reported to have a hand in utilizing bots and human “trolls” in order to minimize the work of its critics on Twitter. Saudi was also accused of infiltrating Twitter through a Saudi employee that joined the company in 2013 but was put on leave two years later after the potential plot was brought to the attention of Twitter.
Yeah, I think I will stick with self-improvement for now. It seems to me that almost everything too public will have great risks. Hopefully, a more traditional EA could be able to make EA more visible within the community. Thanks for the help.
Sounds good, best of luck with that! Writing posts on the EA forum or LessWrong on things you find interesting and partaking in the conversation can be a good way of getting up to speed and getting comfortable with ongoing research efforts.
I imagine that there should be ways to minimize the risks by remaining anonymous, using a VPN and avoiding any “controversial” topics, though I agree that one should be extremely careful with this.
I just want to point out that this seems very, very difficult to me, and I would not recommend trusting “being safe” unless you really have no other choice.
I know of multiple very smart people who have tried to stay anonymous, got caught, and bad things happened. (For instance, read many books on “top hackers”)
Far from me the idea that anyone do anything dangerous. But EA in itself doesn’t seem really controversial or dangerous to talk about. In fact, EA Dubai has a public Facebook group and UAE laws aren’t that different from Saudi laws. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1728710337347189/
On a meta level, it would be nice if there was some more general advice on this. Even though EA outreach to authoritarian countries is generally viewed as a bad idea (see here), we cannot help that at least some people in these countries will learn about EA and will want to communicate and contribute in some way.
FYI it looks like the Saudi government probably monitors Facebook & Twitter:
Yeah, I think I will stick with self-improvement for now. It seems to me that almost everything too public will have great risks. Hopefully, a more traditional EA could be able to make EA more visible within the community. Thanks for the help.
Sounds good, best of luck with that! Writing posts on the EA forum or LessWrong on things you find interesting and partaking in the conversation can be a good way of getting up to speed and getting comfortable with ongoing research efforts.
I imagine that there should be ways to minimize the risks by remaining anonymous, using a VPN and avoiding any “controversial” topics, though I agree that one should be extremely careful with this.
I just want to point out that this seems very, very difficult to me, and I would not recommend trusting “being safe” unless you really have no other choice.
I know of multiple very smart people who have tried to stay anonymous, got caught, and bad things happened. (For instance, read many books on “top hackers”)
Far from me the idea that anyone do anything dangerous. But EA in itself doesn’t seem really controversial or dangerous to talk about. In fact, EA Dubai has a public Facebook group and UAE laws aren’t that different from Saudi laws. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1728710337347189/
And here is a EA Middle East group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1076904819058029/
On a meta level, it would be nice if there was some more general advice on this. Even though EA outreach to authoritarian countries is generally viewed as a bad idea (see here), we cannot help that at least some people in these countries will learn about EA and will want to communicate and contribute in some way.
I agree.