Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Chat, They Watch

citizenlab.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 555 posts

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#271

Post by imajoo »

JSavageOne wrote: post #177
kccqzy wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The differences are: (1) with Facebook it's a private company doing the censoring and there's no issue with that, no First Amendment issues at all, unlike WeChat where the censoring is heavily linked to the government; (2) Facebook at least tells you when a message can't be sent but WeChat fails silently.

> it's a private company doing the censoring and there's no issue with that That's certainly not a universally agreed upon perspective. Just because you're a private company doesn't mean you can do anything you want (eg. discrimination), hence the existence of regulations.

I think one major issue with FB's stance is they say they are not a publisher but rather a platform.. of course, they do tend to use whatever is convenient to them sometimes.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-...

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#272

Post by mads »

xf1cf wrote: post #242
sacks2k wrote: post #83

It's not just WeChat. They own stakes in many american media companies and movie production houses. They use this influence to also change our Media and push pro-Chinese propaganda to the American public.

You can see the pro-chinese propaganda on this site alone. The number of people supporting Zoom, WHO, WeChat, etc is enough to conclude with near certainty this site as well is owned by the Chinese. Unfortunately this comment and mine will be downvoted to oblivion. But the truth is the Chinese war doctrine is to purchase land and acquire covenants. Look at Africa, Indonesia, and India. They are bought wholesale by Ch…

It is no coincidence, when Chinese companies decide to invest in western culture (and subsequently decide you cannot flash certain flags, show certain teddy bears or express your opinion on whether you think a city should be free or not), buy a hotel near a naval base or push cheap network equipment.

The doctrine is commonly known as 3 warfares and was drawn up by officers in the Chinese military in the beginning of the 90'ies. The success of the officers behind the strategy have since moved on to become high ranking military officials, which should give you an idea about how their work was received within the Chinese government.

Looking for classic cold war patterns is not going work with China.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#273

Post by 88840-8855 »

woutr_be wrote: post #137
krzysiek wrote: post #74

Looking at the comments I think that most of commenters missed an important point. It's not just that the app is tracking users, but the messages sent by any non-Chinese user help the regime censor the content for Chinese users. In other words, if you use WeChat, and you send a photo of something that happened in Hong Kong along with some text that explains it, then you actually help Chinese authorities to censor thi…

I use WeChat to talk to friends in China, (I live in HK) and I noticed that last year, especially when the protests were intense, many of my posts just didn't show up. These were mostly pictures unrelated to the protests. I had the sense that anything coming out of Hong Kong was just hidden by default.

lol, this is nothing new and nothing special. There are some words that just dont go through and messages dont arrive. I lived there and tried it with friends. You literally stand next to each other, some messages arrive, some dont.

For me it is not a big deal - for most Chinese it is not a big deal. Somehow most people who never touched Wechat it seems to be a big deal.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#274

Post by woutr_be »

88840-8855 wrote: post #273
woutr_be wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use WeChat to talk to friends in China, (I live in HK) and I noticed that last year, especially when the protests were intense, many of my posts just didn't show up. These were mostly pictures unrelated to the protests. I had the sense that anything coming out of Hong Kong was just hidden by default.

lol, this is nothing new and nothing special. There are some words that just dont go through and messages dont arrive. I lived there and tried it with friends. You literally stand next to each other, some messages arrive, some dont. For me it is not a big deal - for most Chinese it is not a big deal. Somehow most people who never touched Wechat it seems to be a big deal.

You don't think censorship is a big deal? That's exactly the reason why their government gets away with it, because people see it as no big deal.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#275

Post by 88840-8855 »

sacks2k wrote: post #83

It's not just WeChat. They own stakes in many american media companies and movie production houses. They use this influence to also change our Media and push pro-Chinese propaganda to the American public.

Propaganda is propaganda. It does not surprise me and it is very obvious - even more obvious then the "USA SO HERO" and "WESTERN STUFF IS SO COOL" propaganda in movies.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#276

Post by justwalt »

pmachinery wrote: post #220
softwarejosh wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah i literally dont get why the guy brought up race, they should be bringing up shit like video game companies making their black characters white to sell to china. or how about the basic example of blizzards fumbling of the pro hong kong competition winner last year

> i literally don't get why the guy brought up race They brought up race because they were replying to a racist conspiracy theory amounting to them running Hollywood and pushing their agenda. Hacker News is one of the few sites - others being Stormfront, Daily Stormer, 8chan - where that kind of shit still flies.

I don’t think it’s fair to call it a racist position. I read it as them saying that the Chinese government is doing these things, not that the Chinese people are doing these things.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#277

Post by Kiro »

kccqzy wrote: post #141
TechBro8615 wrote: post #98

It’s worth noting that Facebook Messenger also intercepts and filters messages. For example, it’s impossible to send a message containing the link “joebiden.info”. On the mobile app, it will simply say “failed to send.” On desktop, it will tell you the link violates its “community standards” and cannot be shared.

The differences are: (1) with Facebook it's a private company doing the censoring and there's no issue with that, no First Amendment issues at all, unlike WeChat where the censoring is heavily linked to the government; (2) Facebook at least tells you when a message can't be sent but WeChat fails silently.

"First Amendment" means nothing outside the US and certainly has nothing to do with WeChat. Why are people using esoteric and convoluted American terms for things that have universal equivalents?

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#278

Post by not_exactly__ »

88840-8855 wrote: post #273
woutr_be wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use WeChat to talk to friends in China, (I live in HK) and I noticed that last year, especially when the protests were intense, many of my posts just didn't show up. These were mostly pictures unrelated to the protests. I had the sense that anything coming out of Hong Kong was just hidden by default.

lol, this is nothing new and nothing special. There are some words that just dont go through and messages dont arrive. I lived there and tried it with friends. You literally stand next to each other, some messages arrive, some dont. For me it is not a big deal - for most Chinese it is not a big deal. Somehow most people who never touched Wechat it seems to be a big deal.

Yeah I agree that most in China don’t think much of it (or often don’t even realize censorship is happening on their exchanges). But it’s still tragic. And I’m happy to see Silicon Valley come to its sense regarding WeChat. A few years back, VC’s were tripping over each other to sing the praises of WeChat and how much better it made China with its mobile payment and mini apps.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#279

Post by hardmaru »

dvduval wrote: post #267

Do you think they are using AI as they observe? Is some of this AI passive? Obviously they wouldn't be able to spy on everyone, or else they would need a lot of researchers haha

From the article, it looks like they have observed that the chat data is used for cross referencing image hashes to text, but extending it to incorporate and leverage representations learned via ML algorithms (supervised, or self-supervised) should be quite straightforward.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#280

Post by __m »

Thowaway1841005 wrote: post #221

Why don’t democratic countries keep WeChat off the App stores or completely block its network? A company proposing a means of communication that would subtly or not so subtly twist the communications towards authoritarianism should not stand. Why would Some Country let Tencent silently block targeted messages between two of its citizens? Blocking WeChat altogether of course warrants discussion because some people nee…

The same democratic countries that employ or tolerate mass surveillance by the nsa? Either people don’t care enough or they don’t have the power to change it.
Post reply on HN