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Steam has been banned in China

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Re: Steam has been banned in China

#91

Post by polotics »

OtomotO wrote: post #46

"we've always been at war with eastasia" The major problem I see, is that every major power uses propaganda to their benefit, yet even highly intelligent people often don't see the propaganda of their native (or chosen) home. I see the propaganda of China, Russia as well as the one of the US and Europe. There are no white, selfless knights around. There never were. Does that mean that nothing matters, that (subjectiv…

That is one big false équivalence. The mistreatment of minorities by the CCP is not the same thing as the mistreatment of minorities by the USA. Or did I miss the news about the black lives matter forced sterilisations?

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#92

Post by manuelabeledo »

ChemSpider wrote: post #74
manuelabeledo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is indeed a country full of contradictions. I was there in 2016, and besides the usual, like Google, Netflix, Facebook or Twitter, most western sites seemed to work, just very, very slow for some reason. Also, some high end hotels did provide unfettered access to the Internet for some reason, so I guess anyone could go there and browse Facebook for the price of an expensive coffee.

That time is gone meanwhile. In late 2019 I had a very hard time getting access to my Gmail account, despite trying all the usual workarounds and staying in the best hotels in town. Even non-English news sites were blocked, sites that I could browse freely just a few years ago. Skype worked ok, but text chat only. Images never arrived.

Funnily enough, Google Fi worked just fine in late 2019.

I’m wondering if foreign SIM cards are not subjected to filtering.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#93

Post by foverzar »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #47
foverzar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really love how we all have an impression of China as a country without access to global internet, but then there are things like "Most Chinese Steam users have historically been using the global service instead". Really makes you want to visit and see how this actually works for yourself. The more I read about China, the more unbelievably contradictive it gets.

It is indeed a country full of contradictions. I was there in 2016, and besides the usual, like Google, Netflix, Facebook or Twitter, most western sites seemed to work, just very, very slow for some reason. Also, some high end hotels did provide unfettered access to the Internet for some reason, so I guess anyone could go there and browse Facebook for the price of an expensive coffee.

> It is indeed a country full of contradictions.

Over the years, I came to understand that contradictions are almost always just false assumptions.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#94

Post by andrepd »

tombh wrote: post #59
siva7 wrote: post #25

What is going on here with the comment section? Seems like it's flooded with pro ccp activists

I must offer another data point. I'm British, and often find myself in these threads criticising criticism of China. Not because I'm being paid by the CCP, but because I believe that mainstream anti-Chinese sentiment tells us more about the West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its own historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does about China itself.

What does criticism of authoritarian censorship today have to do with imperialism? Sounds just like an attempt to muddy the waters tbh

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#95

Post by andrepd »

ahelwer wrote: post #82
kmlx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its own historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does about China itself. oh come on. we criticise China because it’s whole political system, that was set up very recently btw, fights against basic rights we take for granted in the West. not because of what the romans or european empires did hundreds of years ago, but because of what China is doing right…

Those rights are available domestically in the West, yes, at least for the time being. Those same rights have never been extended to the citizens of the countries whose democratic governments were toppled or subverted by what we call the West. But hey, here in the imperial core we are quite comfortable. So this state of being must represent our ideals!

>Those same rights have never been extended to the citizens of the countries whose democratic governments were toppled or subverted by what we call the West.

Well yeah, isn't that precisely what's being criticised?

Also not all the evil in the world was created by the West.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#98

Post by rocknor »

foverzar wrote: post #88
honkdaddy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very interesting. So you think generally the news of vast human rights abuse we see coming out of China are due to the West's psychological struggles (?), and not due to actual suffering caused by the Chinese government? Do you have any Chinese heritage in your family? This reminds me of the perspective most of my half-Chinese friends had from back in college. They always felt as if it was their duty to defend…

> So you think generally the news of vast human rights abuse we see coming out of China I think that generally western news have a tendency to misrepresent countries that are culturally different. E.g. as a Russian, reading western news about Russia makes me think that journalist play a broken telephone game, misrepresenting marginal stuff as some kind of insane norm, in a completely unnuanced way, without any contex…

I agree, this rhetoric is true for western news about India as well. The BBC for example known to be awful at times, actively misrepresenting and hiding facts to suit their narrative. I guess they have to cater to their population with colonial mentality which can't bear the fact that some ex-colonies are on track to surpass them in the Asian century.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#99

Post by manuelabeledo »

foverzar wrote: post #93
manuelabeledo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is indeed a country full of contradictions. I was there in 2016, and besides the usual, like Google, Netflix, Facebook or Twitter, most western sites seemed to work, just very, very slow for some reason. Also, some high end hotels did provide unfettered access to the Internet for some reason, so I guess anyone could go there and browse Facebook for the price of an expensive coffee.

> It is indeed a country full of contradictions. Over the years, I came to understand that contradictions are almost always just false assumptions.

At least in this case, there aren’t any “false assumptions”.

For a country governed by a so called “communist” party, there are glaring inequalities. If we limit ourselves to free Internet usage, it’s clear that the system is designed so poor or uneducated people would only be able to consume government approved content, whereas elites could have access to anything.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#100

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

okasaki wrote: post #79
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll find the same with any article critical of China. The party is paying people (quite well) to defend China online. It's another kind of misinformation campaign.

Can you point me where to sign up to get paid to defend China online?

Here's a starting point: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/20/technology/ch...
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