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We Chat, They Watch

citizenlab.ca

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Re: We Chat, They Watch

#351

Post by cocoggu »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #340
OwlsParlay wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that VPNs are not hard to get and are silently tolerated. Obviously, using them to then do something illegal like plan your own protests might get you in trouble, but using it to access YouTube or chat to someone overseas via WhatsApp is allowed.

They were tolerated at first but not as much any more. https://www.pcmag.com/news/china-starts-issuing-145-fines-fo...

It's not as obvious as before, and they try to show their big arms to discourage most of the people, but there is always a way. I live in China since almost 8 years and I've seen so many articles with big titles like "VPN are going to be totally blocked next month". Every time I'm scared, but every time not a lot change (hopefully, otherwise I would just leave).

On big CCP reunions (next one at the end of may), they somehow block most of the VPN for several days, so they have the capacity to do it. But it never last so long, I feel they use it a bit like a pressure cooker, to release pressure when people are getting upset.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#352

Post by pknerd »

All our chats, regardless of the app or country, are monitored by authorities. Not sure what is the purpose of singling out WeChat only.

Can anyone enlighten me?

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#353

Post by cirosantilli »

bgee wrote: post #254
fiblye wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that most major domains outside of China are blocked. Chinese services aren't going to be any more lax with surveillance than WeChat and have the same registration requirements. You could maybe try registering your own server, but do you want to have the possibility of questionable messages being saved on a server that you own when dealing with Chinese authorities? Any "oops, sorry" goes out the window w…

Disclaimer: mainland Chinese here. > most major domains outside of China are blocked I don't think this is true; GFW works in a disallow-list fashion and domains have to be explicitly blocked (which is why people do keyword attacks[0]). [0]: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship

Certainly the block is manually controlled.

But I believe that GitHub is not blocked yet just because it is not "major" enough because it is used almost exclusively only by programmers.

If non-programmers started to use it more, I believe it will get banned.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#354

Post by TomMckenny »

FpUser wrote: post #202
TomMckenny wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absurd to compare the US to China because: 1: It's not the topic 2: it's a blatant falacy 3: it distracts from the main point adding unneeded emotionalism and 4: Even with it's current slide toward Eastern European style strongman state, it's not remotely as bad to it's people.

I did not say anything about treatment of it's own people. I was talking about propaganda.

Perhaps the propaganda efforts are comparable but I submit that it is a topic separate form Chinese censorship that extends well outside China.

Likewise, in a discussion of US propaganda, to bring up Chinese censorship as a rebuttal would be a strangely off topic distraction.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#355

Post by roenxi »

woutr_be wrote: post #343
balola wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Look, I've spoken to this to my friends in China about this before, and I can understand that to them it's okay, they've seen their lives improve over the past 10 years. And I understand why they feel that way, they've never known anything else. But anyone coming from the Western world, and agreeing with what their government is doing in terms of censorship, that I can't understand.

China has a long cultural history of being relatively more wealthy than everyone else. But in absolute terms though they've just had a huge amount of technological progress dropped on them. Something like 3+ generations in of progress in Europe compressed into a fraction of a generation in China. And they look like they are regaining their traditional place as a world leading power.

India will eventually show them eventually up as having an inferior political model but on balance I can see how an evidence-based person would conclude that China's government is working well, on the basis that it presided over the fastest leap forward in living standards in human history. I'd still rather live in Europe, India or America though.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#356

Post by theelous3 »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #326
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a B2B service (“B2SB”?) - not targeting people/consumers - so it’s reasonable to assume they have a real phone number.

Which mobile carriers do you support, if not Google Fi (which is mine)? Or only landlines (which barely exist at my day job)?

My last position was for a b2b voip telephony replacement type of deal. It would be trivial to load up on real geographic numbers from anywhere in the world and automate it all for bots.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#357

Post by TomMckenny »

softwarejosh wrote: post #192
TomMckenny wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absurd to compare the US to China because: 1: It's not the topic 2: it's a blatant falacy 3: it distracts from the main point adding unneeded emotionalism and 4: Even with it's current slide toward Eastern European style strongman state, it's not remotely as bad to it's people.

directly but they sure fucked up covid compared to a lost of east asian countries.

yeah, dictatorships and leaders with and autocratic mentality like to downplay disasters. An obviously harmful policy.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#360

Post by vinay427 »

draugadrotten wrote: post #316
izacus wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

America was at war with the talibans: America had always been at war with the talibans. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound-tracks, photographs--all had to be rectified at lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that the chiefs of the Department intended that within…

Except that all of this material (movies and TV, news articles, reports) is still available. I don't see how this adapted quote is at all applicable.

The whole point of the 1984 scenario was that people couldn't talk about the preceding period and no evidence supporting its existence could be found.

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