871–880 of 1001 posts
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Am I crazy or was there a comment in this thread calling out the moderators of HN and their own censorship? Did it disappear as well?
I don't remember exactly, but originally my comment wasn't top-level. Did the mods do that, or is that automatic with high karma comments or something?
From the actual Google Support question, this was posted on 11/10/19. Why are we only now just noticing? Was it previously confined to China and has now just rolled out globally?
Viral noticing is fed by widespread predispositions, which change over time like fashion. There is a critical mass of people paying attention to censorship in general, and recently a critical mass of people attentive to the evils of the CCP. Also, seems to have been at least since 2012 https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-keywords-...
https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-keywords-...
You're misrepresenting that link. It's not a list of things that Google censors, but a list of things that Google wanted people to know are blocked by the Great Firewall (i.e. Google calling attention to censorship, not censoring themselves).
I think a more fundamental problem is a single private company having a near-monopoly on various public communication channels, and having financial interests in various global dictatorships. The Founding Fathers could not have predicted this. Google's "We're a private company" get-out-jail-free card cannot continue to apply.
Try commenting 共匪 on any youtube video, the comment will be deleted after ~15 seconds
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Thought experiment: Google controls 90% of the search market, the 10% (or 1%, whatever) they don't serve being made up of people who are oppressed in some way by the 90%, deliberately or otherwise. Google censors information relating to that 10% for everyone else. They don't care enough to switch. Centralization is an issue _a priori_. It's giving power to a single entity that we have no reason to trust will act in e…
And who gets to decide what is "best interests"? Google Search is a consumer focused product, if they don't serve up the stuff that the users want - they loose viewers. No viewers - no revenue. Their bottom line depends on giving each person the best search results possible. Pretending that they'll just decide to cut off even 1% of users is insane.
If they can make 2% more by selling out half their users and giving them inferior results to serve the interests of somebody or something willing to pay Google money to screw over the users, they will do that without an instant of hesitation, in the absence of oversight. They are in an absence of oversight.
You are wildly in error to believe that people magically can tell they're not being harmed. People absolutely have no idea whether they are being 'given the best' anything possible, much less something like search results (or information in general).
It is highly profitable to screw over mass audiences for one's own benefit and there's largely no mechanism to prevent this… again, in the absence of oversight.
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Actually it's super-easy; barely an inconvenience. Most Western customers really do not care. Like, really-really. The default attitude is "Well, China has its rules and the Western nations have theirs. They can get along." Leaks between rulesets are relatively rare in the sea of regular day-to-day operations. And honestly, I don't think the CCP's goals are as far different from the goals of, say, the US government's…
I think that attitude of customers is changing as we speak. Before, sure, it was easy to ignore the ramblings of how the CCP was upset at something and a western company just gives into them. Now, anti-CCP sentiment is growing. I think western people are starting to realize how different we actually are. The CCP will be blamed for the pandemic (which is mostly correct), and you will see a massive decoupling here in t…
I don’t think one logically follows at all. The more I study it, the more I think the US and China are vastly more similar than anyone likes to think about.
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It's an insult but also a historical fact. KMT was listed a observer party in COMINTERN and Chiang Kai Shek himself was nominated as president of COMINTERN China branch. So in a sense KMT was the real Communist deal and CCP was a copycat version. COMINTERN even ordered CCP to join force with KMT to form "united front", Mao himself was forced to join KMT. And it turned out to be a bloodshed purge by the KMT. Afterward…
Wasn't it was an enemy-of-my-enemy alliance that occurred in the context of the Japanese invasion, and both sides were planning on picking up their civil war where they left off, after the Japanese had been removed?
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If you want to edit wikipedia, you need to know and play their game. Politically charged topics on wikipedia need multiple reliable sources. I can’t find any sources, that would pass as reputable on wikipedia, on this guy. Maybe if there was a script from Senate from Rand Paul, who spoke his name publicly, that could be used. New York Post is the only kind-of-reputable source I can find, I don’t think that’s enough f…
People who authored pages about him get banned, a couple got life bans. This is almost certainly censorship, not some extensive source verification. There also seems to be a media blackout on the topic.
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Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now? Who determines that "pretty clear difference?" Isn't the point of being against censorship is that nothing is above the interests of public scrutiny? Partial censorship seems fundamentally contradictory in terms of the underlying moral justification.
Deleting spam is universally agreed upon as OK censorship. I think it's viewed as OK because everyone can see that many conversation forums can't even work if they're flooded with spam. And to head off the "no, deleting spam is clearly distinct from censorship," imagine you write a book, so we're dealing purely with ideas. Obviously, for anyone to read it, you have to promote it. If you post it in too many places or…
Look at all the flagged comments in this thread and all over the site. HN is the most influential technology forum on the internet, the government should really get involved in preventing the kind of mass censorship that goes on this forum. I am being entirely sarcastic.