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WeChat and the Surveillance State

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Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#151

Post by AlexCoventry »

pishpash wrote: post #132
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #105

I was explaining what it's like to live in China to someone and it's like explaining a dystopian cyberpunk novel, but with a level of surrealism and just plain absurdity. A Gibson novel filtered through some Philip K. Dick. You have a gigantic surveillance state with unprecedented reach and control...banning people from referencing a cartoon bear. You have a society with an extremely sophisticated cashless economy——b…

I can also explain America like an absurd dystopia: druggies shooting up on the street while highly compensated techies scoot around their shit, windows getting broken on cars every week while plastic straws are banned. It's called the complexities of the world.

That sounds like San Francisco. I don't recognize Boston in that.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#152

Post by neuralzen »

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #105

I was explaining what it's like to live in China to someone and it's like explaining a dystopian cyberpunk novel, but with a level of surrealism and just plain absurdity. A Gibson novel filtered through some Philip K. Dick. You have a gigantic surveillance state with unprecedented reach and control...banning people from referencing a cartoon bear. You have a society with an extremely sophisticated cashless economy——b…

I met a guy who said he lived in Shenzhen a while, and said that J-walking would get you an automatic deduction from your wechat pay account, assuming you were in front of a camera.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#154

Post by depr »

idlewords wrote: post #66
colordrops wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-ti... https://theintercept.com/2014/09/04/former-l-times-reporter-... http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cia-and-the-media-50-facts... 2. https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/facebook-advocates-go... http://fortune.com/2018/05/17/facebook-atlantic-co…

Please use your words next time, not a random dump of links you found compelling.

The links are fine, they lead to words.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#155

Post by sho »

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #105

I was explaining what it's like to live in China to someone and it's like explaining a dystopian cyberpunk novel, but with a level of surrealism and just plain absurdity. A Gibson novel filtered through some Philip K. Dick. You have a gigantic surveillance state with unprecedented reach and control...banning people from referencing a cartoon bear. You have a society with an extremely sophisticated cashless economy——b…

Oh come on. Pollution is highly localised. Yeah, there's a few bad cities but it's a big place and 99% of it is fine. And no clean water, really? That will be news to the billion plus inhabitants who haven't realised they're dead yet from lack of clean water, sixth sense style.

Nit picking aside - that surveillance state is maybe 5 years ahead of the west. I'm continually amazed that western governments have allowed strongly encrypted private communications to become a thing, even an expectation - this is totally unprecedented and a radical upset to the balance of power between the state and its citizens. I expect it's only a matter of time before strong end to end encryption is totally banned in the west, too.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#156

Post by tuxxy »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #151
pishpash wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can also explain America like an absurd dystopia: druggies shooting up on the street while highly compensated techies scoot around their shit, windows getting broken on cars every week while plastic straws are banned. It's called the complexities of the world.

That sounds like San Francisco. I don't recognize Boston in that.

It's hilarious to me how many people from San Francisco think America revolves around their overpriced 47 square mile peninsula.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#157

Post by ngcc_hk »

nomnomray wrote: post #117
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…

A Slave loves his/her/its master. Blessed and behold, you are totally owned.

A totally connected world is hell on earth. Just in case you do not know.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#158

Post by tuxxy »

joyjoyjoy wrote: post #145

Yes. China. I love WeChat I must say. Much better than WhatsApp. Yes, Tiananmen Square. Westerners in China call it "The day when nothing happened". But I also heard different views from Western Politicians that were deeply involved with the Chinese system. The amazing thing is that the students were actually allowed to protest for a long time. The guy in the video is just an asshole. He is harassing normal Chinese p…

What is this weird notion of "respecting sensitive issues"?

Is that just a polite way of saying, "I don't discuss human and civil rights violations." Why should I respect a person's desire to not hear about their own government's crimes?

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#159

Post by sho »

neuralzen wrote: post #152
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #105

I was explaining what it's like to live in China to someone and it's like explaining a dystopian cyberpunk novel, but with a level of surrealism and just plain absurdity. A Gibson novel filtered through some Philip K. Dick. You have a gigantic surveillance state with unprecedented reach and control...banning people from referencing a cartoon bear. You have a society with an extremely sophisticated cashless economy——b…

I met a guy who said he lived in Shenzhen a while, and said that J-walking would get you an automatic deduction from your wechat pay account, assuming you were in front of a camera.

Let me turn that around for you. Would you like it if people who turned or changed lanes without indicating were reliably and automatically fined? Because I sure would.

The law is the law. If it's a good law, then its efficient, universal, automatic enforcement should be a good thing. If not - then it's the law that needs to be changed. You're complaining about the enforcement - but what you actually don't like is the law itself.

Hell, maybe efficient and automatic enforcement will force us to confront bad laws, rather than relying on discretion at the enforcement stage to water them down tolerably. Better they not be on the books at all.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#160

Post by fromthestart »

sho wrote: post #155
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #105

I was explaining what it's like to live in China to someone and it's like explaining a dystopian cyberpunk novel, but with a level of surrealism and just plain absurdity. A Gibson novel filtered through some Philip K. Dick. You have a gigantic surveillance state with unprecedented reach and control...banning people from referencing a cartoon bear. You have a society with an extremely sophisticated cashless economy——b…

Oh come on. Pollution is highly localised. Yeah, there's a few bad cities but it's a big place and 99% of it is fine. And no clean water, really? That will be news to the billion plus inhabitants who haven't realised they're dead yet from lack of clean water, sixth sense style. Nit picking aside - that surveillance state is maybe 5 years ahead of the west. I'm continually amazed that western governments have allowed…

>That will be news to the billion plus inhabitants who haven't realised they're dead yet from lack of clean water, sixth sense style

People in places like Flint aren't dead either.

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