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John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China

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Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China

#51

Post by nnash »

amerine wrote: post #37
coliveira wrote: post #32

I don't agree with the censorship decision, but I completely get why other countries don't like Oliver's show. He likes to denounce other countries' politics from the point of view of liberal, first world policy, which may not be in the best interest of other nations. Even though he is doing comedy for the first world market, it comes off clearly as another attempt of propaganda directed at these countries. The way C…

If I squint and ignore the fact that personalities like Oliver have been doing their ideological-driven (rightly so IMO) comedy perspective bits for years I can see how how you could naively call that “propaganda”. However, the logical side of me can’t fathom how the reported events are anything remotely “propaganda”. They are legitimate things that free-press nations can discuss how they like, including laughing at…

> You can’t call things that rustle your jimmies propaganda

Didn't China do exactly this?

Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China

#52

Post by givinguflac »

tajen wrote: post #43
amerine wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I squint and ignore the fact that personalities like Oliver have been doing their ideological-driven (rightly so IMO) comedy perspective bits for years I can see how how you could naively call that “propaganda”. However, the logical side of me can’t fathom how the reported events are anything remotely “propaganda”. They are legitimate things that free-press nations can discuss how they like, including laughing at…

John Oliver is correct but the lack of publication of competing viewpoints is what defines US (Democrat) propaganda. For example I’ve seen him state that the wage gap was 25%, straight face! that’s where the alternative viewpoints are sorely lacking and, when you learn the history of achors who have only questioned the credibility of this statistic, you can clearly say: Censorship is enforced with violence in USA.

Are you trying to say that conservative media is a bastion of published opposing viewpoints? Serious question, do you have a reference for that? I’ve not found any in recent times. Not for nothing, it’s a comedy show that reports on the news. How that can be construed as propaganda is beyond me.

Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China

#53

Post by dagw »

EpicEng wrote: post #47
amerine wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I squint and ignore the fact that personalities like Oliver have been doing their ideological-driven (rightly so IMO) comedy perspective bits for years I can see how how you could naively call that “propaganda”. However, the logical side of me can’t fathom how the reported events are anything remotely “propaganda”. They are legitimate things that free-press nations can discuss how they like, including laughing at…

>You can’t call things that rustle your jimmies propaganda just like you can’t call news you don’t like fake. I don't think that's a great analogy. Oliver is biased and he has never pretended to be a journalist. He presents stories he cares about from a specific viewpoint. The definition of propaganda is: >information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political ca…

Essentially any narrative which is not 100% fact based and unbiased is technically propaganda.

So in your world is all news propaganda?

Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China

#54

Post by rotexo »

throwawayjava wrote: post #11
toyg wrote: post #7

The "ephemeralness" of the internet is still a huge, huge problem. We've only started to scratch the surface of the issue, and between censorship, "right to be forgotten" and linkrot, it's already a complete shitshow. We need a distributed and censorship-resistant conservancy system, because the Wayback Machine can only do so much (and it can trivially be censored). Unfortunately, it's not a money-making enterprise.

> We need a distributed and censorship-resistant conservancy system, because the Wayback Machine can only do so much (and it can trivially be censored). Unfortunately, it's not a money-making enterprise. Color me skeptical, but it seems like such a system would eventually need to seek out a business model and would turn into mugshotsonline.us writ large. Or "toxic yelp reviews of dubious origin" but for humans instea…

Once I got doxxed by bloggers from one end of the political spectrum who thought I was a blogger from the opposite end (we have similar names, but the doxxers put out all of my info). Even after I got my info taken down, someone archived it and the archives got passed around on Twitter, prolonging the mess. Even now all that stuff shows up if you google my name.

Should you care about what happened to me? I can’t really argue for it. But I can say that the dangers the above comment lists are real.

Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China

#55

Post by archgoon »

lavazon wrote: post #4

Is John Oliver any more important than all the other things that China has banned? Or is this just something that happens to be popular which creates outrage even when it's not nearly as bad as other things that China censors?

Most of why Oliver was banned was for highlighting those much worse things that China is doing.

Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China

#56

Post by icebraining »

mikeash wrote: post #31
Daishiman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it was an observation against authoritarianism. You do know that Orwell was, above all, anti-fascist and anti-Stalinist right?

Lots of people don’t seem to understand that it’s possible to be both socialist and anti-Stalinist.

It's even possible to be socialist and non-Marxist, and certainly anti-Bolshevik.

Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China

#57

Post by EpicEng »

dagw wrote: post #53
EpicEng wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can’t call things that rustle your jimmies propaganda just like you can’t call news you don’t like fake. I don't think that's a great analogy. Oliver is biased and he has never pretended to be a journalist. He presents stories he cares about from a specific viewpoint. The definition of propaganda is: >information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political ca…

Essentially any narrative which is not 100% fact based and unbiased is technically propaganda. So in your world is all news propaganda?

In my world, which is the same as yours, where the word "propoganda" has a definition, I consider all news which fits the definition to in fact be propaganda, yes.

Let me ask you this? Do you consider Fox News propaganda? How about MSNBC? CNN? If not, which shows specifically? I'm fairly certain the _majority_ of what those networks air falls squarely in the propaganda bucket because what they air is primarily dictated by how much money they think it will make them.

An example of news which I would not consider propaganda is PBS Newshour. In general they are pretty good. Not easy to tell though; you really have to do a lot of work on your own to be certain.

Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China

#58

Post by ctrl-j »

EpicEng wrote: post #47
amerine wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I squint and ignore the fact that personalities like Oliver have been doing their ideological-driven (rightly so IMO) comedy perspective bits for years I can see how how you could naively call that “propaganda”. However, the logical side of me can’t fathom how the reported events are anything remotely “propaganda”. They are legitimate things that free-press nations can discuss how they like, including laughing at…

>You can’t call things that rustle your jimmies propaganda just like you can’t call news you don’t like fake. I don't think that's a great analogy. Oliver is biased and he has never pretended to be a journalist. He presents stories he cares about from a specific viewpoint. The definition of propaganda is: >information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political ca…

I mean... under that definition isn't all media propaganda? At that point does it just depend on whether or not you choose to use the term in a pejorative manner?

If any biased claim can be called propaganda - then it seems the word loses it's meaning.

Perhaps the word propaganda is losing it's weight over time? Do we need a specific word for state sanctioned biased media? Or perhaps one specifically for attacks on political states or policies?

Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China

#59

Post by ggggtez »

nnash wrote: post #51
amerine wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I squint and ignore the fact that personalities like Oliver have been doing their ideological-driven (rightly so IMO) comedy perspective bits for years I can see how how you could naively call that “propaganda”. However, the logical side of me can’t fathom how the reported events are anything remotely “propaganda”. They are legitimate things that free-press nations can discuss how they like, including laughing at…

> You can’t call things that rustle your jimmies propaganda Didn't China do exactly this?

Obviously the point is that the difference between the West and China, is that here we believe that censorship by the government should be illegal. Obviously if you want to live in China, go right the heck ahead.

Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China

#60

Post by icebraining »

rmorey wrote: post #15
toyg wrote: post #7

The "ephemeralness" of the internet is still a huge, huge problem. We've only started to scratch the surface of the issue, and between censorship, "right to be forgotten" and linkrot, it's already a complete shitshow. We need a distributed and censorship-resistant conservancy system, because the Wayback Machine can only do so much (and it can trivially be censored). Unfortunately, it's not a money-making enterprise.

https://ipfs.io

I don't think IPFS is uncensorable; if you have MITM on a user (like the Chinese government does), can't you just block any requests for a certain hash?
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