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We Chat, They Watch

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Re: We Chat, They Watch

#291

Post by balola »

woutr_be wrote: post #274
88840-8855 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If what the gov is doing (ostensibly) makes them rich, e.g. they can afford cars and condo prices double every few years, them yes, the majority of people doesn't care.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#292

Post by dEnigma »

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.

I don't have to use WeChat to know that it would be a huge deal for me if messages were censored. Not only does this conflict with my sense of privacy and freedom, but it would also be annoying apart from the censorship aspect, simply because some of my messages won't get through. That's the main purpose of a messaging app. If my friends don't receive my messages just because I happen to mention something that seems connected to HK protests or the Tiananmen Square Massacre due to some word or number matching, that would mean the failure of WeChat as a messaging app.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#293

Post by cyphar »

wolco wrote: post #207
cyphar wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not endorsing, nor turning a blind eye to China's government. I was responding to a comment which was only critising China, while arguing that the US has all of these protections and thus was effectively endorsing the US government (to the point of saying that they prefer US government surveillance). I on the other hand, do not endorse the vast majority of the US government's actions, hence the criticism. It's a…

Why can the governor general replace a prime minister who has a majority? Why did the citizens reward and vote in the party who pulled those election tricks. Why would you blame the US but not bother to change the laws? This can happen again.

> Why can the governor general replace a prime minister who has a majority?

It's one of their constitutional rights. Their purpose is to act as a surrogate for the Head of State (currently Queen Elizabeth II) and the role was designed to mirror the process of the UK's Head of State -- the Queen picks her ministers and in theory doesn't need to choose the leader of the party with the largest number of seats.

Do I think it's a system that should be changed? Yes, but this is complicated by the need for a mechanism for double-dissolution (which cannot be automatic because it could then just be gamed to re-trigger elections).

> Why did the citizens reward and vote in the party who pulled those election tricks.

As is usual, propaganda. The laundered $24m wouldn't have been used to buy toilet paper.

> Why would you blame the US but not bother to change the laws? This can happen again.

Given that the US triggered and orchestrated the constitutional crisis in order to further their own foreign policy (which was confirmed by President Jimmy Carter to have been the case when he vowed that the US wouldn't do it again), I think it's entirely fair to blame the US.

In order to change the role of Governor-General you'd need a constitutional amendment. To say that it's effectively impossible to get a constitutional amendment passed in Australia is an understatement (only 8 amendments have been passed, out of 44 attempts in the past ~120 years -- and most of those were passed soon after Federation). One of those failed amendments was to switch Australia to a republic model which would've replaced the Head of State and Governor-General with a President -- but the overall set of rights given to the President would've been the same.

It should also be noted the inclusion of double-dissolution in our Constitution was somewhat controversial at the conventions during drafting, but was eventually agreed to be vital if the Senate was to have the powers it currently has. So we would need some mechanism to avoid deadlocks, and the lack of obvious alternative solutions to this problem results in most proposals just keeping the existing system but changing how the Head of State and Governor-General are elected.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#294

Post by balola »

dwaltrip wrote: post #288
88840-8855 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would consider it a grotesque violation of my freedom if some powerful organization prevented me from privately saying what I wanted to my friends and other acquaintances. Yes, there is some of this in the U.S. due to chilling effects from mass surveillance. I find it abhorrent. However, actively filtering and blocking messages is even worse.

This coronavirus has made the people believe the gov is the best on the planet, since every other country is struggling with their freedom and rights, or as they are being told.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#295

Post by jdc »

hardmaru wrote: post #279
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.

They probably use something like NarusInsight, which according to Wikipedia, can do real-time semantic analysis.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#296

Post by rorykoehler »

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.

I never have this issue with other messaging apps and if I did I would use a different app. Ignoring the censorship part and taking this poor quality at face value its like saying its no big deal your car brakes don't always work.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#297

Post by rorykoehler »

balola wrote: post #291
woutr_be wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If what the gov is doing (ostensibly) makes them rich, e.g. they can afford cars and condo prices double every few years, them yes, the majority of people doesn't care.

You can have those things without the oppression. Correlation doesn't equal causation.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#298

Post by dwaltrip »

balola wrote: post #294
dwaltrip wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would consider it a grotesque violation of my freedom if some powerful organization prevented me from privately saying what I wanted to my friends and other acquaintances. Yes, there is some of this in the U.S. due to chilling effects from mass surveillance. I find it abhorrent. However, actively filtering and blocking messages is even worse.

This coronavirus has made the people believe the gov is the best on the planet, since every other country is struggling with their freedom and rights, or as they are being told.

Hmmm. I think most people believe coronavirus is very dangerous to their families and communities.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#299

Post by Markoff »

Can someone from Google please explain why is this literal spyware allowed in Play Store?

And why ISPs don't block such obvious widely spread spyware?

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#300

Post by mrcodedude »

pmachinery wrote: post #270
mrcodedude wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a racist conspiracy that China is using its financial leverage to influence creative decisions by American-based companies? Why do you think the last few Transformer movies were made?

Go on then, explain how the last few Transformer movies were about pushing pro-Chinese propaganda.

That's not what I said.

China is using its position to propagate and censor media both domestically and globally.

Not liking the actions of a government doesn't mean you're racist against that population.

https://screenrant.com/movies-changed-for-china/

> Decisions to cast Tilda Swinton as a 'celtic' incarnation of the Ancient One, typically a Tibetan character, alongside the choice to move Stephen Strange's place of spiritual enlightenment and training from Tibet to Nepal, have created significant controversy online from those who argue that Marvel Studios is whitewashing Strange's backstory to better appeal to the Chinese government.

Propaganda doesn't have to look like a commercial from a tourism board.

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