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Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes

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151–160 of 216 posts

Re: Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes

#151
post #39

She speaks the truth often, but I never really got how she portrays herself. Not a huge fan... regardless, she should be able to say whatever she wants and use the platform she built.

a year ago she posted a video about her origin story that may give some insights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9vW_MpXTfs

This video is incredible. I learned so much from it. Imagine having to pretend you're a boy until you go away to secondary boarding school.

Re: Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes

#152
post #138
post #136

I always take this individual with a grain of salt. I originally supported her as that she was an enthusiast and talking about making things. However, she has a strong tendency to dramatize things and it's very easy to get caught up in her net. Context: She started raking a maker site (I think it was instructables) about quietly dropping Chinese character support. She went a huge tirade that it was racism and it was…

Here's the thread: https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/132928236969037005... She called it Sinophobic, not racist, which seems fair. In the most charitable light, instructables was apathetic about their Chinese users. I can't imagine how bad their engineering org would have to be for this to be an unintentional change. I'm guessing you're one of deleted replies so we'll never know for sure, but from the tone of…

I mean, looking at those tweets myself, i wouldn't bat an eye at the receiver paraphrasing either one of them years later as racism or mansplaining, respectfully; sounds accurate to me (I guess, with their watered down meanings, since we get so much exposure to people trying to throw those words around at the drop of a hat)? Although, i can only see her side of dialogues.

Regarding that exchange in isolation, I certainly offer my criticisms. Fwiw, I otherwise appreciate (heck, am a fan of, even) her approach to what she does and her participation in public discussions to offer her perspectives (notwithstanding all the commentary about state-imposed censorship on her public conduct up to this point); i just hadn't seen any exchanges like that before.

Re: Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes

#153
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I got my wings clipped and they weren't gentle about it" "I can leave but Kaidi can't" "In fact, one of the latest turns is the Beijing LGBT Center's closure by the Chinese government in May of this year. " And many other useful bits of information in the article. Censorship is when you send a message from jail and someone elides stuff they don't want you to talk about. It doesn't involve goons visiting you, travel…

You are wrong. Having a gun pointed at you isn't nonviolent just because the trigger wasn't pulled. Threatening someone to make them censor themselves is a means of censorship.

I said 'it goes beyond censorship', that means that censorship is a part of it but that it goes well beyond that point.

Here is the dictionary definition: "the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security."

If we follow your logic then killing someone or jailing or intimidating them is just censorship. But the bar for what is censorship is much lower than that. So if the bar for censorship is met by just targeting the media (for instance: youtube, to tell them to pull the account and not to let her back in) then that would be censorship and it wouldn't require threats of harm or restrictions on movement. That's active and possibly violent intimidation. Xi's government gets a free pass from the West because (1) we like the goodies and (2) he's not as bad as some of his predecessors. But meanwhile he's a thug and his government is acting in very thuggish ways to achieve their goals and the casualness with which censorship escalates into other forms of abuse is telling. And that's why we have different names for those other abuses. Those abuses are not there in the service of censorship, censorship is just one of the elements from a palette of abuses that a state can visit on a person.

More telling is how apparently a fragment of the HN audience insists they see nothing more than the control of information. Trust me on this: if your internet connection is severed and/or your online writings are officially erased that's bad enough, having goons come to your house, threaten you and threaten your significant other that's another level altogether.

Censorship doesn't require guns, does not require goons and in general doesn't have a prerequisite of violence. But threats of harm, or being sent to a 'reeducation camp' (I hate that term) especially in a country where people tend to just disappear aim to influence not just your writings and your media expression but your general behavior and serve to cow an individual completely, apparently successful. So censorship is only a sub-goal, and a minor one at that. This is all about behavior and coercion, hence the travel restrictions and targeting of groups of individuals.

Re: Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it?

yes. do you believe the ussr perpetrated anything on the magnitude of the holocaust?

The USSR perpetuated the Great Purge and the Holodomor, which together killed approximately 5M people (estimates vary). This is a matter of historical fact, not just belief.

Re: Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I being paranoid in thinking that Musk’s exposure in China & disdain for the LGBTQ community could lead him to lower the reach of tweets related to this issue?

Her account is fine. She has to stop tweeting. You guys need to get a grip. As if the Chinese government needs Musks help.

I was thinking tweets about her or CCP oppression in general, not necessarily from her. There is plenty of proof out there showing that Musk has his fingers on the scales. Citations can be provided upon request.

Re: Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes

#156

She speaks the truth often, but I never really got how she portrays herself. Not a huge fan... regardless, she should be able to say whatever she wants and use the platform she built.

It honestly shouldn’t matter in 2023.

[flagged]

Re: Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes

#157
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I being paranoid in thinking that Musk’s exposure in China & disdain for the LGBTQ community could lead him to lower the reach of tweets related to this issue?

No. At this point Twitter (I refuse to call it "X" and I will die on this hill) is little more than Elon's personal agitprop and trolling platform, and he would absolutely be petty enough to pull something like that.

Xitter works, since you can pronounce the X as "sh"

Re: Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes

#158

People are assuming this is about gender, but it may well be about COVID. Wu refused to go along with China's huge policy shift, from trying hard to contain COVID to giving up. She still takes precautions and has been plugging for UV sterilizers and HEPA filters. The government of China has been hassling people who still want to control COVID spread. It's like "return to office" enforced by the cops. She had a previo…

> Wu refused to go along with China's huge policy shift

She was also heavily attacked by people in the West as she also refused to go along with the Wests 'masks don't matter policy'

She created Google Docs early on with evidence masks would work contravening the Western governments and the 'trust the science' crowd.

Lets not pretend it's just China here, it maybe offtopic to this incident, but at the time you could see it was wearing her down.

Re: Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes

#159
While I feel sympathy for her having to deal with this tough and unfair situation, this isn't really surprising. Circumventing the great firewall to maintain presence on outside social media is not actually allowed. Just because enforcement isn't consistent doesn't give her a free pass to violate this policy.

And this notion of being high profile in western media conferring any kind of protection is just nonsense. CCP policy is total information control and they don't care one bit if anyone is offended by the concept or the actions they take to enforce it.

Re: Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes

#160
post #138
post #136

I always take this individual with a grain of salt. I originally supported her as that she was an enthusiast and talking about making things. However, she has a strong tendency to dramatize things and it's very easy to get caught up in her net. Context: She started raking a maker site (I think it was instructables) about quietly dropping Chinese character support. She went a huge tirade that it was racism and it was…

Here's the thread: https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/132928236969037005... She called it Sinophobic, not racist, which seems fair. In the most charitable light, instructables was apathetic about their Chinese users. I can't imagine how bad their engineering org would have to be for this to be an unintentional change. I'm guessing you're one of deleted replies so we'll never know for sure, but from the tone of…

The quoted tweet is still available on archive.org at http://web.archive.org/web/20201119112006/https://twitter.co... and reads:

>Welcome to tech. It's less likely malice and more likely you have a pretty dumb product owner that "doesn't see business value". And there you have agile....

I agree with you - the tone is quite disrespectful, especially starting off a message to a tech expert with "Welcome to tech."

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