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China Blocks WhatsApp

nytimes.com

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Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#391

Post by int_19h »

barrkel wrote: post #145
Certhas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative: Innovation happens within the context of Chinas censorship and political regime. Blocking of entrenched western competitors allows home grown solutions to spring up, and local technological know how to develop faster. Capitalism and innovation turn out to work within the context of an illiberal society just fine. Especially as China avoids the mistake of closing itself off to the rest of the world, but s…

Illiberal regimes are assumed to be kleptocratic. Historically, it's rare to get a succession of just rulers when the temptation to take is there, and there isn't a strong balance of powers. There have been just rulers for a while, but the risk of regression to the mean is ever present. We'll see how things go.

Conversely, there are plenty of democratic liberal regimes that turn up to be kleptocratic - just look at Brazil as one recent example.

It's also not clear whether kleptocracy can't be implemented in a way such that it's not a significant detriment to development. Singapore is arguably a kleptocracy, but it's a surprisingly well-managed one.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#392

Post by int_19h »

gaius wrote: post #250
Certhas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative: Innovation happens within the context of Chinas censorship and political regime. Blocking of entrenched western competitors allows home grown solutions to spring up, and local technological know how to develop faster. Capitalism and innovation turn out to work within the context of an illiberal society just fine. Especially as China avoids the mistake of closing itself off to the rest of the world, but s…

China will reach some predetermined level of technology that The Party decides they are comfortable with, then close their borders and just get on with being the Middle Kingdom in splendid isolation. That is my prediction. I don't think they feel the need to project power and remake the world the way the US and previously the UK do/did. Maybe they will disengage from the world and look spacewards.

That seems like a recipe for long-term disaster, looking at how Japan fared with its technological isolation. It's not like the rest of the world is going to stop.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#393

Post by [deleted] »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #341
jimmies wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#5 is really low. I cannot believe someone who did that is a great person. This guy's baby is just another tool huh?

Apparently he asked him for a Chinese name for the child, so it's more of an honorary thing than anything. The child would have a non-Chinese 'regular' name (Max in this case), and the traditional Chinese name could be sourced from him. People phrasing it in a scandalous-sounding 'omg he asked him to name his firstborn' way are reading into it too much.

[deleted]

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#394

Post by jimmies »

balls187 wrote: post #240
jimmies wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#5 is really low. I cannot believe someone who did that is a great person. This guy's baby is just another tool huh?

The story goes Zuckerberg asked President Xi to give his unborn baby an Honorary Chinese name. Which still seems gross, but perhaps less so, given the baby would likely have a more common American name.

Even it's the "backup" name, it's not like his wife or his wife's parents are incapable of coming up with a meaningful Chinese name for the child. It's his choice to go ask the president of China to choose it for him (and his wife - if she is like "I am not interested in choosing a Chinese name my child"?).

I can understand this on a personal level. Yeah, I'd understand, If, say, Obama was my friend, I'd want to "ask" the ideas of his for my child's English name, when he comes to my family dinner, sure...

But asking the Chairman of China publicly in a dinner just shows he does care a lot about who has power. Not a friend, not a great thinker, but a fucking president he has a chance to have dinner with the first time. And publicly with many other people. If I'm being cynical, then at least doing it his way was really quite distasteful.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#395

Post by int_19h »

taobility wrote: post #347
FabHK wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's way more powerful than WhatsApp, too (location based chats, payments, etc.). And, of course, it's not E2E encrypted; just the opposite, you can assume that it's being wiretapped/monitored. Thus, please don't install it.

I just wondering, for normal people, what kind of information you concerned to not be monitored, seriously? I knew most western take the privacy higher than anything. But for most normal people living outside of US, they really don't care. You would say they are dumb, but they care more about food, entertainment than the privacy, and liberal. To be honesty, nobody in China cared WhatsApp be blocked or not. As maybe 9…

> I just wondering, for normal people, what kind of information you concerned to not be monitored, seriously?

Political dissent, for example?

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#396

Post by int_19h »

dmix wrote: post #187
jackpirate wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Neither did South America What are you talking about? South America was colonized by the Portuguese and Spanish, which most definitely come from the western liberal tradition. It's fine to take a position against "Chinese culture", but it should be an honest one.

I'm basing that off a book I read which described how the original liberators of South America (who were mainly locals, not from the Spanish or Portuguese elite who ruled) were heavily influenced by these (mainly French and English) liberal European thinkers - which is why they wanted a revolution in the first placed. It didn't come from local culture. The Spanish did not create liberal "western" democracies when the…

The political and social culture of South America, at the time of their wars of independence, was undeniably based on European culture and values, at least among the educated classes that actively participated in all that. Their blood descent is not particularly relevant - what matters is the kind of books they grew up with, roughly speaking.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#397

Post by AmIFirstToThink »

FabHK wrote: post #166
mattmurdog wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already have an alternative it's called WeChat. Maybe other people should install that instead?

It's way more powerful than WhatsApp, too (location based chats, payments, etc.). And, of course, it's not E2E encrypted; just the opposite, you can assume that it's being wiretapped/monitored. Thus, please don't install it.

>And, of course, it's not E2E encrypted; just the opposite, you can assume that it's being wiretapped/monitored.

Whatsapp is not? Are you sure? I would assume NSA doing all it wants as well.

Whatsapp is out not because it can't let authorities audit it, but because of other economic reasons.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#398

Post by processing »

chaostheory wrote: post #359
ebola1717 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's not blocking out the sharing of ideas though. Until a few months ago, Andrew Ng worked at Baidu! They are isolating data , but hoarding data is a competitive advantage in a way that isolating knowledge isn't.

> China's not blocking out the sharing of ideas though. Until a few months ago, Andrew Ng worked at Baidu! Ok they are bottlenecking data... As I've already mentioned this is an extremely inefficient way to share data. Sharing data using physically present word of mouth is a lot more expensive and slower than sharing it instantly via an open internet connection.

Peak Hacker News

"Sharing data using physically present word of mouth is a lot more expensive and slower than sharing it instantly via an open internet connection."

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#399

Post by intrasight »

As long as China isn't breaking any WTO rules, they are free to block internet services and apps. If other countries aren't happy with this, they should change the WTO rules. If WTO rules are being broke, then clearly those rules have no teeth.

Why would China block things? Various excellent reasons are discussed in this thread, and they all boil down to political and commercial.

Are the Chinese people harmed? I would argue not. None of these "services" do anything really important nor irreplaceable. Most are just new spins on ancient tech like email and FTP, and the new versions that are blocked don't really have any differentiating features compared to what is available locally. The feature that is new is Digital Identity.

And so my final thought is that they are playing a long game with respect to digital identity - which is the long game of most of these blocked services. In Cyberspace, am I going to be Chinese or American? I aM not Chinese, but I expect that most Chinese will want to also be Chinese in Cyberspace, and so the Chinese government is fulfilling that desire.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#400

Post by AmIFirstToThink »

the_common_man wrote: post #296
gaius wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China will reach some predetermined level of technology that The Party decides they are comfortable with, then close their borders and just get on with being the Middle Kingdom in splendid isolation. That is my prediction. I don't think they feel the need to project power and remake the world the way the US and previously the UK do/did. Maybe they will disengage from the world and look spacewards.

This really is a great point. Not everyone wants to dominate mankind.

We do? What kind of racist thing is that?
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