China banned letter N from internet after people used it to attack Xi Jinping

Post by paradite » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

random_name123 wrote: post #37

donquichotte wrote: post #2

It is funny, just yesterday I read Victor Mair's reasoning why "n" might have been banned [1]: "This is probably out of fear on the part of the government that "N" = "n terms in office", where possibly n > 2; as in "liánrèn n jiè 连任n届" ("n successive terms in office"), which would be forbidden anyway because of the liánrèn 连任 ("continue in office") part." I don't know any Mandarin or Cantonese, but this seems like a…

I'm pretty sure they're banning the letter N because it was the 14th "proclamation" in the recent posting about constitutional changes by Xinhua news. They tried to bury it under a set of 20~ changes and disguise the wording. First, 14 was banned on weibo. Then, N was banned as people quickly jumped to the 14th letter of the English alphabet. Weibo also has a history of doing stuff like this, Tiananmen Square is some…

Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

tuxracer wrote: post #20

mabbo wrote: post #13

The really scary part of that article is the screenshot of Weibo with every message censored automatically with "content is illegal". If you think this sort of thing could never happen in the west, I think you're underestimating how quickly it could happen. The constitutions and bills of rights of any country are not laws of nature that can't be broken- they're words on paper that governments or populist movements ca…

> they're words on paper that governments or populist movements can easily ignore For example, China's constitution also contains "Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration." However various words and phrases to even mention Article 35 itself are banned in some chat apps, etc... in China even though the…

Post by tibarun » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 3:17 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #13

The really scary part of that article is the screenshot of Weibo with every message censored automatically with "content is illegal". If you think this sort of thing could never happen in the west, I think you're underestimating how quickly it could happen. The constitutions and bills of rights of any country are not laws of nature that can't be broken- they're words on paper that governments or populist movements ca…

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 3:35 PM UTC

tibarun wrote: post #45

mabbo wrote: post #13

The really scary part of that article is the screenshot of Weibo with every message censored automatically with "content is illegal". If you think this sort of thing could never happen in the west, I think you're underestimating how quickly it could happen. The constitutions and bills of rights of any country are not laws of nature that can't be broken- they're words on paper that governments or populist movements ca…

It already happened several times. Twitter admitted to hiding tweets with hash tags like #wikileaks; #podestaemails... So I guess the USA isn't all that different, if you dismiss the propaganda. You just don't have the universal healthcare and you get to spend 10 times more on the military and NSA snooping.

Post by arnaud12 » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

FrozenTuna wrote: post #46

arnaud12 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously comparing freedom of speech in France and China?

Is there something seriously wrong with that? The whole argument people here are trying to make is how quickly freedom of speech can erode. In that context, it is absolutely apples to apples when you compare freedom of speech in US, France, Germany, China, wherever.