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Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"

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Re: Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"

#161

Post by dang »

drb91 wrote: post #132
jjjensen90 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both you and pmontra above are completely misreading thaumasiotes's comments in a knee-jerk reaction. They were simply paraphrasing the intent of the quote from Trajan... If you have an issue with it, bring it up with Trajan.

So we can discuss men but not women on this forum?

Could you please review the guidelines and stop posting comments that clearly break them? They include: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"

#162

Post by edejong »

Gatsky wrote: post #146
edejong wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All if these ‘utopian‘ concepts have been successfully implemented in the past by governments and social organizations. The only naive part of my narrative is if we expect the change to come from the social networks. We need to step outside of that sphere and influence via other channels such as work, sports, spiritual life, books and the public sphere.

I think the best example to consider is the tobacco industry. Smoking is by any measure a scourge on society. Untold numbers of people have suffered and died because of it. Healthcare systems haemorrhage money they don’t have treating conditions that basically don’t exist without smoking. The tobacco industry pulled every trick in the book to maintain their own interests. Society spends even more money on public mess…

Funny, I argued similarly 11 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19665221

We do ourselves harm because we do not understand the power of the interactions we are part of. Children should be protected. Adults should know better.

Re: Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"

#163

Post by aristophenes »

HNthrow22 wrote: post #49
dev_dull wrote: post #34

The extremely strong freedom of speech laws we have in the US is definitely something we got right. Reading things like this make me really grateful about those protections.

except at the moment we're dealing with highly organized paid misinformation campaigns and widespread propaganda under the guise of free speech. This will not be popular on Hn but in my opinion holding users and platforms responsible for the messages they distribute to millions is the inevitable evolution and future of social media, society has demonstrated the inability to responsibly handle anonymous unchecked mass…

Bear with my perhaps unusual opinion. If we want to preserve our freedom, every generation needs to have it threatened to realize its importance, and learn to fight to protect it. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants".

If the current generation needs to undergo a propaganda war, it will either fail or rise above like the generations before. And then we will be protected from that particular attack, like our national immunity has grown stronger from a particular type of sickness. If we try to avoid the problem we at best are just weakening ourselves for the next attack, at worst we give up our freedoms in the cause of maintaining them.

Fight it out, good ideas kill bad ideas. Live free or die.

Re: Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"

#164

Post by _iyig »

dang wrote: post #155
_iyig wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know what the comment to which you’ve replied said originally, but it’s true that China pays thousands of people to astroturf comments on the Internet. This fact has been established by the international press and also by the Chinese government. Furthermore, people in China aren’t stupid, and many are aware of this phenomenon as it is quite prevalent on the domestic Chinese Internet (Weibo, WeChat, etc). Are…

Everyone knows that's a real phenomenon. The issue I was addressing was people's tendency, unfortunately very common, to conflate every Chinese commenter, indeed anyone advocating a Chinese perspective, with CCP astroturfers. That's a serious problem on HN. (I don't think it was colanderman's intention to do this and I'm sure that's why he edited his comment after I replied to it.) The temptation is strong, when enco…

Perhaps my initial word choice evoked the wrong assumptions. Allow me me rephrase.

I’ve related a dismaying image because the reality is dismaying. One group of (mostly awful and hateful) Internet users “wards off” another by copy-pasting what are to them, for all intents and purposes, magical runes. Scribe them down and the others disappear, banished by some arcane and unseen force. The crazy thing is that these runes may actually work, because the targeted users live under a system of censorship and surveillance unprecedented in its scope, scale, and level of detail.

That’s nuts. It’s utterly fascinating. It’s (the block-text posting) not behavior to be emulated anywhere on HN. It is absolutely dismaying. And as a story, it’s also completely on-topic and within site guidelines.

Re: Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"

#165

Post by colanderman »

_iyig wrote: post #164
dang wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone knows that's a real phenomenon. The issue I was addressing was people's tendency, unfortunately very common, to conflate every Chinese commenter, indeed anyone advocating a Chinese perspective, with CCP astroturfers. That's a serious problem on HN. (I don't think it was colanderman's intention to do this and I'm sure that's why he edited his comment after I replied to it.) The temptation is strong, when enco…

Perhaps my initial word choice evoked the wrong assumptions. Allow me me rephrase. I’ve related a dismaying image because the reality is dismaying. One group of (mostly awful and hateful) Internet users “wards off” another by copy-pasting what are to them, for all intents and purposes, magical runes. Scribe them down and the others disappear, banished by some arcane and unseen force. The crazy thing is that these run…

For context, the comment I edited out was a joke on the "magical runes" aspect. But, thinking it in poor taste to use the Chinese people in general as the butt of the joke, I framed it specifically about astroturfers. In context (and, given that said "runes" don't recognize such a distinction), the joke did (unintentionally) read as an implication that all Chinese are astroturfers, as dang rightfully indicated; hence my redaction.

Re: Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"

#166

Post by PavlovsCat »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #63

> YOU are of opinion it would be proper to establish a company of firemen in Nicomedia, [similar] to what has been practised in several other cities. But it is to be remembered that societies of this sort have greatly disturbed the peace of the province in general, and of those cities in particular. Whatever name we give them, and for whatever purposes them may be founded, they will not fail to form themselves into f…

"How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression"

https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-Censorship-China-...

Re: Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"

#167

Post by PavlovsCat »

dev_dull wrote: post #34

The extremely strong freedom of speech laws we have in the US is definitely something we got right. Reading things like this make me really grateful about those protections.

The laws are useless when the spirit upholding them evaporates.

http://www.hoteliermiddleeast.com/33151-marriott-employee-fi...

> Jones told the WSJ he wasn’t aware of any instructions on dealing with China. He also said he didn’t fully understand what the issue was about.

> “This job was all I had,” Jones also said. “I’m at the age now where I don’t have many opportunities.”

Re: Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"

#168

Post by dang »

_iyig wrote: post #164
dang wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone knows that's a real phenomenon. The issue I was addressing was people's tendency, unfortunately very common, to conflate every Chinese commenter, indeed anyone advocating a Chinese perspective, with CCP astroturfers. That's a serious problem on HN. (I don't think it was colanderman's intention to do this and I'm sure that's why he edited his comment after I replied to it.) The temptation is strong, when enco…

Perhaps my initial word choice evoked the wrong assumptions. Allow me me rephrase. I’ve related a dismaying image because the reality is dismaying. One group of (mostly awful and hateful) Internet users “wards off” another by copy-pasting what are to them, for all intents and purposes, magical runes. Scribe them down and the others disappear, banished by some arcane and unseen force. The crazy thing is that these run…

Yes, I agree.

Re: Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"

#169

Post by im3w1l »

antepodius wrote: post #149
im3w1l wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My rule of thumb is that people who get banned for saying "out there" stuff are controlled opposition and people who get banned for saying common sense and obvious stuff are real opposition.

What's common sense and what's out there depends on the reader.

That's by design. By keeping it vague it becomes more broadly applicable.

Re: Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"

#170

Post by mensetmanusman »

saagarjha wrote: post #46
mensetmanusman wrote: post #41

We are biased on HN to consider technological solutions to an ideological problem: there are powerful people who benefit from sowing distrust. Ideally, the Chinese leadership wants each citizen afraid of their neighbors. This is easier to do in a society when large family ties are much weaker (due to one child policy).

From my experience, China and most of Asia has very strong family ties as a core tenet of their culture.

Yes, very strong small family ties.
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