311–320 of 555 posts
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.
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.
Honestly curious: knowing what everyone knows, why would any person who is not of Chinese origin, use WeChat? What's the use case?
This is common knowledge. You can't send a picture of winnie the pooh without it being scanned first and deleted over the wire before being received. People don't use WeChat to organise dissent against the government or for any kind of malicious or illegal activity. The intention is for well meaning folk to communicate and do business online.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outside of China, we're pretty lucky that we can just register for random sites like HN with nothing more than a username and password and start talking. Every Chinese site I've ever used requires phone number or ID verification. Most of them only allow Chinese-registered phones, meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully v…
> Every Chinese site I've ever used requires phone number or ID verification Frankly, this happens a lot in the West these days, too. Take OKCupid, for instance. And the third-party doctrine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been suspecting this for a long time but came across few evidence for it. I’ve seen Chinese funding of Hollywood movies, but it’s always through an American fund, etc. What kind of evidence have you found? To me, the fact that Hollywood would never attack communism, is a big one. Thousands of movies about nazism, zero about the Soviet union and their crimes. Even Cuba is very underrepresented in the industry. Ye…
Um, what are you talking about? There were whole decades of Hollywood having the Reds as the default villain. Everything up to 2000s when they were replaced by middle easterners.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many Chinese-Americans have no choice when they need to communicate with family and friend living in China. No outside communication tools allowed in China.
I don’t think this is true. iMessage works in China (they can’t block all of Apple)
Honestly curious: knowing what everyone knows, why would any person who is not of Chinese origin, use WeChat? What's the use case?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We will give our freedoms away in name of preventing toxicity and hate speech. Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away
There's not a single social network that has begun to require phone verification because of the risk of "toxicity or hate speech". It's all to fight spam and to better track user activity (and, if we're being charitable to them, perhaps to stymie deliberate propaganda/fake news).
I think that _is_ being very charitable. Way too much in fact.
The thing with Chinese censorship is that people living under it either don't care about it or are fully aware of it. It's very much in the open.
On the other hand, Facebook/Instagram, Microsoft, Google, etc all start requiring your phone number for verification or some other valid reason, reeling and locking you in, and before you know it not only one entity but any entity willing to pay for your data has access to it.
We should of course be outraged at both approaches.
Also, is removing fake news/propaganda not censorship solely because it's not the government doing it? Because if that's the case, Facebook and Google only really started removing fake news _because_ governments started to apply pressure on them.
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.
That's interesting. What else is blocked/censored on Facebook Messenger or in WhatsApp? Don't use FM myself.