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China's New Wave of Internet Censorship: Name Verification for Online Commenting

thediplomat.com

161–170 of 211 posts

Re: China's New Wave of Internet Censorship: Name Verification for Online Commenting

#161

What a shitty country to live in...

Unsubstantive name-calling comments, especially putting down other people's countries, will get you banned here. Please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

Re: China's New Wave of Internet Censorship: Name Verification for Online Commenting

#162
post #5

There are a dozen popular live streaming apps in China where one can simply just stream what you're doing to everyone on the site and people can just watch them for hours. You can think of it like Instagram stories or Snapchat per se. Or even Facebook live. This isn't some western media propaganda. I tried one of them very recently (I don't want to give them any undeserved marketing), they allowed me to sign up and t…

> Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations Many countries do. To watch certain youtube videos in south korea you need to provide your social security number or something like that.

South Korea passed the anti-defacement law after a number of high profile suicides were linked to online harassment. Now a lot of online services require your ssn to sign up, which kinda sucks. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_defamation_law

Re: China's New Wave of Internet Censorship: Name Verification for Online Commenting

#163
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware of how the only people in the US to ever be successfully censored from the public internet for political (as opposed to legal) reasons are far-right websites? This literally happened in the last week; domain registrars (the only gateway the public has to critical public DNS infrastructure) decided to voluntarily censor various far-right websites citing "hate speech" as their justification. There is, evi…

Right, there was nothing political at all about the supression of wikileaks and torrent sites, it was just legal proceedings...

Wikileaks is left-wing? I did not know this. The narrative, of late, has been that Assange is a fan of Trump and aided Putin's goal during the election.

Re: China's New Wave of Internet Censorship: Name Verification for Online Commenting

#164
post #121
post #5

There are a dozen popular live streaming apps in China where one can simply just stream what you're doing to everyone on the site and people can just watch them for hours. You can think of it like Instagram stories or Snapchat per se. Or even Facebook live. This isn't some western media propaganda. I tried one of them very recently (I don't want to give them any undeserved marketing), they allowed me to sign up and t…

You can't watch any 18+ movies on Amazon Prime without uploading your passport.

This may be a local thing. I've done nothing of the sort.

Re: China's New Wave of Internet Censorship: Name Verification for Online Commenting

#165
post #5

There are a dozen popular live streaming apps in China where one can simply just stream what you're doing to everyone on the site and people can just watch them for hours. You can think of it like Instagram stories or Snapchat per se. Or even Facebook live. This isn't some western media propaganda. I tried one of them very recently (I don't want to give them any undeserved marketing), they allowed me to sign up and t…

> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream

No need to imagine anything. Right after Facebook started their war on fake news, my FB acount was locked and the only way to unlock it is to provide my ID/passport to prove the name of the account is my real name.

Btw same thing happened on G+ few years ago.

Re: China's New Wave of Internet Censorship: Name Verification for Online Commenting

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a minor oversight that will probably be rectified at some point — other countries are doing it, it is already required in Northern Ireland, and in 2018 a pilot will be held introducing the requirement in a number of districts¹. People likely won't resist it too much. We've had this identification requirement imposed upon us in the Netherlands a few years ago, and while there is valid criticism on this require…

What is the objection to keeping track of who voted?

Its supposed to be a secret ballot.

Of course, most people tell their friends which way they voted, but that's their choice.

Re: China's New Wave of Internet Censorship: Name Verification for Online Commenting

#167
post #5

There are a dozen popular live streaming apps in China where one can simply just stream what you're doing to everyone on the site and people can just watch them for hours. You can think of it like Instagram stories or Snapchat per se. Or even Facebook live. This isn't some western media propaganda. I tried one of them very recently (I don't want to give them any undeserved marketing), they allowed me to sign up and t…

Few years ago I spent time on Omegle. I got to speak with Chinese guys. Their first question was often about how we liked China (maybe invested in national pride, or worried). I love most asian things so I could gladly list much many things I liked from China. Even after that happy introduction, the discussion went into "you know China is not all good" then listing a few problems. So far nothing surprising. But then…

> that's what real lack of freedom of speech is.

Thats only half of it. For the other half : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

Re: China's New Wave of Internet Censorship: Name Verification for Online Commenting

#168
post #5

There are a dozen popular live streaming apps in China where one can simply just stream what you're doing to everyone on the site and people can just watch them for hours. You can think of it like Instagram stories or Snapchat per se. Or even Facebook live. This isn't some western media propaganda. I tried one of them very recently (I don't want to give them any undeserved marketing), they allowed me to sign up and t…

Um, Facebook can arbitrarily lock out your account and demand a scan of government issued ID. It happened to a friend of mine. I think there is only a small step to the government working with Facebook to do this in the name of keeping people "safe".

Re: China's New Wave of Internet Censorship: Name Verification for Online Commenting

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations The US and EU have tons of those sort of things. Patriot Act? Mass surveillance programs? Required ID to get a mobile connection? UK's largest number of CCTVs on any place on earth? Heck, in the US they can trial you as an adult at 15 and send you to war at 17 but you need to be over 21 and show ID to drink a beer at a bar..…

I don't recall having to use my passport before posting online here in the US.

That's because opinions in the US don't have the potential to go far. If they had, they'd be illegal. In China they can tumble a whole state of 1+ billion people and its unstable-is regime.

Re: China's New Wave of Internet Censorship: Name Verification for Online Commenting

#170
post #5

There are a dozen popular live streaming apps in China where one can simply just stream what you're doing to everyone on the site and people can just watch them for hours. You can think of it like Instagram stories or Snapchat per se. Or even Facebook live. This isn't some western media propaganda. I tried one of them very recently (I don't want to give them any undeserved marketing), they allowed me to sign up and t…

> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations, while still gaining loyalty from their citizens to the point where these supporters will even defend the govt.

Many Western messengers try to obtain your phone number and phone contact list when installing the app, and some of them (Whatsapp, Telegram) require you to provide a phone number to register.

Private companies and democratic governments are no less curious than Chinese government. They also want you to save your data into their "cloud" so NSA can look at any time.

Russian major social network Vkontakte requires a phone number to register an account. Russia is also developing a legislation requiring all messenger apps to identify their users with a phone number.

And by the way (I have read it somewhere) if you are trying to access pornhub from Russia it requires you to sign in with Vkontakte (social network with real names policy) account to prove that you are adult. So even if you want just to watch video you have to identify yourself first. I wonder, what are they going to do with that information? Will they post "videos you might like" to user's wall in Vkontakte? Or will they show who of your friends likes the same genre?

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