Facebook/Twitter have been used to manipulate politics in many countries. China does not want WeChat to be used in a similar way. Somehow here in the US/West everyone gets the real news?
WeChat and the Surveillance State
21–30 of 275 posts
Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State
#22Says the news report from the west's surveillance state...
Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State
#23I'm glad this article was written. I think the general public is unaware of how China operates, and through education we can better protect our own civil liberties (and better understand why the China is the way that it is).
I do wonder how long it's going to be before we see WhatsApp and the surveillance state articles.
Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State
#24What is more scary is that there are many Chinese Americans using WeChat to connect with family members. There is no doubt some of them work in the U.S. government or other sensitive companies or agencies. By tracking their location alone, the Chinese government can obtain huge amount of data.
should we ban wechat? probably yes. it's a quintessential threat to privacy, freedom, and democracy practice.
but are we able to? not at all. All big corporates and even some in government are on their side. China is where money is to make and ruling is to learn.
Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State
#25basically Chinese government doesn't want its citizens to talk anything cultural, political, spiritual, religious, etc. If you wanna talk fashion, food, travel, music, and the likes, that's absolutely fine. and it seems Chinese people are perfectly content with it. I heard that wechat is transparent to Chinese authority. Last year, a dozens of college students who are Marxist activists and advocate for workers' right…
Well worker rights is a fantasy in the west too.
Google and facebook track our every moves and the NSA can watch over our every move. The scary thing is few journalist are left to talk about it over here.
Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State
#26This is indeed very scary especially now it requires facial recognition part... to sign up for WeChat, you need to have a valid phone number; to use WeChat pay, you got to provide real-name and official ID, bank account, etc. From the WeChat social network, relationships are easily identified. The mere existence of such tool is destine to be misused, regardless who made it. This is what real power looks like.
There is practically no difference in these requirements versus what Facebook is requiring. Try to create a Facebook account and they will soon flag your account to require a photo for facial recognition. You can't signup for Facebook without a valid mobile number. And if Facebook does not like the photo you provide for facial recognition, they want a government ID.
Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State
#27We saw this coming years ago. It’s chilling to see it implemented and modeled so clearly and a tool of efficiency and oppression. It’s verry ccp
Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State
#28No, it’s an article by and for anyone with western values. You know, the values that resulted in 99% of the innovations in this world.
Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State
#29basically Chinese government doesn't want its citizens to talk anything cultural, political, spiritual, religious, etc. If you wanna talk fashion, food, travel, music, and the likes, that's absolutely fine. and it seems Chinese people are perfectly content with it. I heard that wechat is transparent to Chinese authority. Last year, a dozens of college students who are Marxist activists and advocate for workers' right…
Well worker rights is a fantasy in the west too. Google and facebook track our every moves and the NSA can watch over our every move. The scary thing is few journalist are left to talk about it over here.
Where is over here? In all the Western countries I'm familiar with, journalists are free to say bad things about Google and Facebook and the NSA, and it happens with some regularity.
Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State
#30I'm glad this article was written. I think the general public is unaware of how China operates, and through education we can better protect our own civil liberties (and better understand why the China is the way that it is).
I do wonder how long it's going to be before we see WhatsApp and the surveillance state articles.
I dunno. We're not anywhere near the level of China (here in the USA).
To achieve that, we'd need
1. The fourth estate to become a government agency (functionally)
2. Facebook to have government agents on-site that employees have to follow the orders of
3. The existence of a "department of cultural well-being" with total authority to regulate art, media, news, etc
4. Laws on the books outlawing esoteric orwellian concepts like "distributing harmful rumors" or "disrupting the cultural well-being of the United States."
Certainly any one of those steps would have me in front of the capital with a big bottle of water and a picket sign, ready to settle in for the long one.
China is very far removed from us.