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

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

#61
post #45
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.

They admitted to banning bots, which is what they did. If someone doesn't like the fact that bots inflated propaganda that they happened to believe in doesn't make it censorship.

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

#62
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be mistaken. China's Constitution matches exactly with daily life in China. Of course there's a way to challenge unconstitutional actions, through the Communist Party member dispute process where you can escalate to each level of political officers in the township you live in. If you go high enough, you might get personal attention from the regional or even provincial governors, who also have to make sure th…

I do not understand this comment. Is it sarcasm? Or do you use some unusually restrictive definitions of "freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration"? China has literally just banned the word 'disagree'. https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/02/27/china-drowns-critics-l...

It's sarcasm. Note the last element in the list.

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

#63
post #59
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can do it without any cognitive dissonance by either classifying certain persons as non-citizens (hence not granted those rights) or by raising some unclear limit to these rights (so those who break national unity, "harmony" or some such aren't covered). An example outside of China: Venezuela's Maduro, paying attention to international sensibilities, now classifies opposition to him and his government as "hate s…

like censorship doesn't happen in the usa. remember all that media coverage sanders got when he was packing stadiums while Clinton could barely fill a highschool auditorium? me neither. how many mass shootings china had last year? oh wait how about all those bombs dropped daily in the middle east? ah ooos sorry, america again. USA USA USA

That’s not censorship. Censorship is when the government restricts speech. The government doesn’t control American news media.

With that said I have no disagreement about the hypocrisy of USA bombing foreign countries.

As for shooting, how would we know if this happened in China since the government does control the media there. They could suppress anything they reflected negatively.

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

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is not a rule of law country, so whatever it’s constitution actually says isn’t very important legally speaking. Even this two-term was just a speed bump to be repealed quickly if convenient by a rubber stamp congress.

The US is just one branch of government away from the same fate.

Right, FDR pulled it off.

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

#67
post #40
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 is already happening. In France some website are already censored and send you to a website of the Interior affairs Minister. Some are also "shadow-banned" (the default DNS of the ISP return nothing), like the pirate bay (but I think it depends on your ISP).

Would you have examples of the first case?
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