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WeChat and the Surveillance State

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Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#111

Post by teknologist »

theseadroid wrote: post #106
komali2 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a competent Chinese Trump today in the form of xi jinping - the difference being instead of being limited to merely separating children the children of Other from their Parents and throwing them in jail, Jinping is directing the wholesale imprisonment and "reeducation" of entire religions, and occasionally just taking their organs from them. I'll take a democratically elected trump that is gone in at most 8 y…

have you talked to any Chinese people and how many of them oppose this reeducation of entire religions? I'm just curious whether that will still happen in your planned democratic China.

Could be argued that anyone who watches propaganda on Chinese TV daily isn't particularly fit to have that discussion.

It's not like in the West where people are critical of this kind of stuff. They've really excelled at developing a "hive mind" mentality with what the state media put out.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#112

Post by lone_haxx0r »

mrep wrote: post #82
jimclegg wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the west, instead, its a little bit more back and forth between tech and government. Hand over data or shut down your company is the ultimatum.

That wasn't the case when the FBI tried to get apple to unlock iphones for them [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute

Because Apple is too big. Had Apple been a smaller company, that would have been the ultimatum.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#113

Post by theseadroid »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #109
theseadroid wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but I think your first paragraph is not complete? when we talk about China () then? Generally speaking I wont get offended as long as the discussion is rational and logical. Me personally dont care much about country or patriotism. But Chinese are like any other populations, each individual can be quite different. I'm not really in the loop of what is happening now but I do think sometimes only (trade?) wars ca…

Thanks, that's what I wanted to know. And when we talk about China = all the stuff that has been going on lately, comments here are not pro Xi mostly.

Thank you for being curious. What I found offending on HN is people who are cool-headed within their own domain can be irrational and quick to conclusions when it comes to issues related to China.

We all know the project management tree swing cartoon[1]. We can almost replace the project with China within this cartoon lol.

1.http://www.zentao.pm/file.php?f=201712/f_2a1ca764ce384a33d05...

edit: I read some of your other comments and I dont think you know China as much as you imagined you know. There's news about Belgian police shot a refugee child for example. I wont based on that to say all belgian kills refugee children. So treat news from China as news if you dont mind. More extreme things happen within a population of 1.5 billion.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#114

Post by SovietScum »

jimclegg wrote: post #95
komali2 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I hadn't heard that the United States government was wholesale surveilling its population, with no oversight, with an open tap in Facebook data, and using that information to imprison people for thought crimes such as having a religion. False equivalence doesn't pass for me. The USA has surveillance issues, but it isn't the prc.

In many ways its worse, PRC doesn't arrest or extrajudicially murder people that have never visited China from what I understand. Julian Assange would be surfing in Australia with his family right now if he exposed Chinese war crimes.

Go Be Assange Jr. in PRC and see how far you get champ ;)

What a bubble you live in.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#115

Post by theseadroid »

teknologist wrote: post #111
theseadroid wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you talked to any Chinese people and how many of them oppose this reeducation of entire religions? I'm just curious whether that will still happen in your planned democratic China.

Could be argued that anyone who watches propaganda on Chinese TV daily isn't particularly fit to have that discussion. It's not like in the West where people are critical of this kind of stuff. They've really excelled at developing a "hive mind" mentality with what the state media put out.

Assuming you are not living in China, could you please go ask some Chinese around you? There are really plenty of Chinese living abroad.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#116

Post by [deleted] »

theseadroid wrote: post #115
teknologist wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be argued that anyone who watches propaganda on Chinese TV daily isn't particularly fit to have that discussion. It's not like in the West where people are critical of this kind of stuff. They've really excelled at developing a "hive mind" mentality with what the state media put out.

Assuming you are not living in China, could you please go ask some Chinese around you? There are really plenty of Chinese living abroad.

[deleted]

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#117

Post by nomnomray »

dheera wrote: post #70

I absolutely hate WeChat (not necessarily just for the reasons in the article, but many other technical reasons) but I'm forced to use it because all of my friends and my entire social life happens on it. And I live in the Bay Area. If I don't use it I would basically be locking myself up in a prison where I would never see my friends. Even the majority of my friends who work at Facebook and Google use WeChat to orga…

I love wechat.

sticker: gifs and emojis all shares the same sticker format. It has natively features for taking, editing and converting photos and videos directly into stickers. Generally, i find memes work a lot better in wechat.

reliability: voice and video calling is buttery smooth. I've taken wechat calls internationally between china, taiwan, us, canada, australia and france. The service is always great even in some rural areas.

consistency: it works on almost all phones of all price ranges. Maybe it's because lower tier phones are of chinese brands and they have closer collaboration with wechat. The point is that wechat works the same on a $100 dollar phone as it does the iphone.

convenience: this one is domestic to china. wechat has mini programs, which are basically web services that make native app obsolete. For example, there is an wechat version of airBNB and it works exactly like the native app. Wechat handles all of the authentication and transaction. There is no need to register for anything!

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#118

Post by teknologist »

vajaya wrote: post #24
educationdata wrote: post #19

What 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.

Along with Baidu and all the other sites that have had their American counterparts banned in China. Yes please.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#119

Post by ilikehurdles »

jimclegg wrote: post #92
komali2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you and understand you, but your argument is essentially nullified by the existence of Taiwan. We have proof positive that the Chinese culture is not only compatible with democracy, it flourishes beneath it.

I think its a bit premature, but do you really think China under a democratic system would be better for the world? What would Chinese populism look like when it eventually emerges given more democratic features? Are you sure we are ready for a Chinese Trump? and for the silent majority of China to dictate foreign policy? I'm from the school of "be careful what you wish for".

China is commuting mass genocide against the Uighur people, has a surveillance state beyond that of any other nation, it is clearly intending on annexing Taiwan in 5 years whether Taiwan likes it or not, massacred protestors in Tiananmen Square, has a dictator for life, and it didn’t need a democracy or populism to achieve any of that.

Yes. A democratic China would be better for the world.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#120

Post by gdy »

komali2 wrote: post #38

I used to hold a kind of naive hope that the ham fisted Party would eventually be replaced with democracy. I remember back in 2011 my friends that were placed in moderately distinguished positions were sending their kids to Canada to collect foreign dual citizenship, fully expecting the collapse of the PRC in their lifetime. But now I think the Party is too good at maintaining itself. It's augmented by technology lik…

"My last remaining hope is ... chaos"

That was evil.

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