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WeChat and the Surveillance State

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Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#191

Post by avocado4 »

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…

> there's a few bad cities but it's a big place and 99% of it is fine

http://maps.who.int/airpollution/

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#192

Post by sho »

lame88 wrote: post #173
sho wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

No I would not like that automatic fine. In theory okay, but in reality it's foolish to separate enforcement from what is being enforced. Moxie explained this well. In short, good luck changing that law. https://moxie.org/blog/we-should-all-have-something-to-hide/

I totally agree with the article you linked? Bad, overreaching laws, discretionally enforced, are a very bad thing and open the door to huge abuses of power?

You sound like you think you're arguing with me but I agree!

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#193

Post by dheera »

baby wrote: post #171
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…

TBF. This is because you only hang out with asian people. I live in the bay too and I don't know many people using wechat :|

Mostly, not only, but in any case I'm not disputing that. I'm just expressing that despite the fact that I use WeChat a lot, and need to use WeChat a lot, I still don't actually like the thing. I just like my friends enough that I will grudgingly use WeChat because "everyone" (in my circle) does.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#194

Post by dheera »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #188
dheera wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've already deprecated SMS as a form of communication with me, and auto-trash all SMS with an appropriate deprecation warning returned to sender telling them to e-mail me instead. So an SMS/WeChat gateway wouldn't help (it doesn't exist anyway). But that aside it's less about it being app. It's more that: - It's a walled garden that is difficult to build plugins upon. About 10 years ago with QQ/ICQ/AIM/MSN/Gtalk/Zep…

From what you've written, it sounds like: - you are comfortable writing code - you want to interact with WeChat friends on >2 devices (not just phone+web, phone+desktop or phone+tablet) - you would like a synchronised history of your WeChat interactions You could probably build something close (but not the same) as what you need using https://github.com/Chatie/wechaty It's made for writing bots, but you could use it…

Thanks, I heard about this library from someone else too! I should probably carve out some time to try to actually do this.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#195

Post by _hardwaregeek »

sho wrote: post #187
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many native Chinese do you know who drink tap water? Almost all I know either drink bottled water or only hot, boiled tap water. As for pollution, only 84 out of 338 cities reached the national standard for air quality [1]. That's not exactly "a few bad cities". The government has been working on improving it, but they still have a long way to go. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_in_China#Air_polluti..…

> Almost all I know either drink bottled water or only hot, boiled tap water 100% of them drink boiled tap water. But isn't this proving my point? Not like it's poisoned with heavy metals? As for pollution, of course they have a long way to go, but the dystopian picture you paint is hardly fair. It's not perfect but you make it sound like Blade Runner 2049. It's not. I live in Bangkok right now and it is WAY worse th…

> 100% of them drink boiled tap water. But isn't this proving my point? Not like it's poisoned with heavy metals?

Clearly not 100%. Not a huge fan of these random percentages haha. And we don't know if the tap water isn't poisoned with heavy metals. The effects aren't immediate so it's not like locals would necessarily notice. There's at least one source that claims they are indeed poisoned with heavy metals [0]

> As for pollution, of course they have a long way to go, but the dystopian picture you paint is hardly fair. It's not perfect but you make it sound like Blade Runner 2049. It's not. I live in Bangkok right now and it is WAY worse than Shenzhen or Shanghai. But I never hear Thailand invoked in one of these "pollution hell" threads.

I dunno man, Shanghai on a bad day is pretty comparable to Blade Runner. When I go to China, I get a headache, my mouth tastes metallic and I definitely have a reduced lung capacity. Also, I was actually impressed by Bangkok's lack of pollution. Maybe I caught it at a lucky time, but the air was very refreshing compared to Wenzhou. Even right now, the air forecast is decent [1] compared to Wenzhou [2] or Shanghai [3].

China is definitely not the worst place to live, but it's dramatically different from most western countries. In most western countries, you can talk about Winnie the Pooh without getting banned, while enjoying a nice refreshing glass of tap water :D.

[0] https://www.purelivingchina.com/blog/what-pollutants-are-chi... [1] https://aqicn.org/city/bangkok/ [2] https://aqicn.org/city/wenzhou/ [3] https://aqicn.org/city/shanghai/

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#196

Post by gcb0 »

theseadroid wrote: post #74
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…

Maybe there's a third option aside from continue the state quo or convert fully into a democracy? Maybe the party can evolve into something that's more and more benevolent to the people it governs? As a Chinese who emigrated because of the many social problems of China, I'm not sure switching to democracy right now will be beneficial for regular Chinese. You've all heard stories about how bad mannered Chinese tourist…

I sense from your post that you confuse democracy with capitalism.

Also Brazil and Russia are not democratic (right now). Neither have a democratically elected leader.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#197

Post by codedokode »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #182
whatshisface wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cashless is also not desired by Americans, many of whom like cash. Stores are fine with taking it (no transaction fees after all), there are zero privacy concerns, and counterfeiting is not really a problem.

Cash doesn't have direct transaction costs, but: - it needs to be manually reconciled at the start/end of each shift - staff can steal it - robbers can steal it - it takes time to count out change (and to ensure you have enough small bills and coins) - it takes time to deposit it at the bank - it costs money to deposit it at the bank (even if Walmart is ok accepting cash for an iPad, I'm guessing Apple requires Walma…

Yes, cash can be stolen, but cards are much more dangerous to your privacy: bank knows where you go and what you buy, it can sell this information to anyone (of course, with hashing your phone number with military-grade algorithm to protect your personal data), shops know who you are and can exchange information about your purchases along with model of your face taken by the camera at the register, MAC address of your phone's WiFi module and car plate number (of course hashed with military-grade algorithm to protect your privacy).

Also, in some countries it is very easy to lock person's bank account even without a trial, for example if person is suspected in financing terrorist or extremist organisation.

Also new cards have RFID chip in it and it can be used for example to get information about people going through the doors.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#198

Post by whatshisface »

baby wrote: post #183
whatshisface wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if every store accepted both cash and cards?

I'd be fine with this as long as you don't have to pay a fee if you're not paying cash (which is often a thing for small shops). Unfortunately this is not the world we're living in :) it's often both cash and cards OR just cash. Berlin is a really good example of that, you always need cash on you which tricks the many tourists who come from countries were cash is not really a thing anymore.

The credit card companies make the merchant pay a fee for using credit cards - so it's not the shop's fault. That's another reason why cash is alive in America.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#199

Post by kpennell »

baby wrote: post #171
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…

TBF. This is because you only hang out with asian people. I live in the bay too and I don't know many people using wechat :|

lol, yeah. i've never even heard of someone in the bay having it.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#200

Post by ephemeralism »

magpi3 wrote: post #165
AnthonyWnC wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 eyes, Prism, ATT fiber tapping, windows NSA key etc.. And how do you manage to conveniently forget about Snowden revelation?

Still not even close. The U.S. has a constitution that gives its citizens legal recourse when they feel the government has gone too far and gives them some basic rights. The U.S. has elections to hold leaders accountable. China has none of these things. I admit the U.S. govt probably envies the system China is putting in place and would love to emulate it, but the system of checks and balances built into the American…

How does elections hold leaders accountable?
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