271–280 of 305 posts
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Cisco's been accused of have assisted China in identifing members of Falun Gong. The first news story I came a across searching (it seems fairly unbiased): https://m.sfgate.com/technology/dotcommentary/article/Cisco-...
In China.
I am not the kind of person to swing the morality flag pretty much ever, but if you don’t see what’s wrong with this, then I don’t know what else to say.
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Your problem is that you're seeing this issue as black and white, which never does good.
Hundreds of millions of people are "negatively affected" by their government and a concerned human being appealed to compassion. Realists can acknowledge that countries and companies will negotiate according to their own self-interest. Google is right in sustaining that it's up to Chinese citizens to uphold said government to standards (whatever they will be): it's a technology company that wanted an access to the Ch…
They are kind of like Rorschach who refused to compromised in the last pages of Watchmen, even though it was the right thing to do (in my opinion).
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Western social media companies are increasingly censorial, following Chinese censorship in spirit not structure. If you're ignorant about how trivial it is to access vpn and outside info in China then I'm not sure to say. The firewall and grey legislation around vpns is calibrated that low information audience gravitates towards party line while those seeking information has access. Usage not brand awareness. The num…
> Western social media companies are increasingly censorial, following Chinese censorship in spirit not structure. The structure is what matters. Kings and despots throughout history have frequently ruled fairly and justly. Out of all the decisions they made in that role, they probably made many more fair ones than unjust ones. But their making the right call in any particular case is not a reason they should have ha…
This is actually crux of the issue for me. People are losing their minds over alt-right operating openly and undermining western institutions without applying the parallel to China. China is not a woke place. Chinese nationalism is legitimate problem - widespread calls for retaliatory killings after Uighers terrorist attacks, extreme dissatisfaction with foreign/white privileged of expats, out of control anti-HK/Taiwan/Korean/Japanese sentiment during diplomatic spats - all this is suppressed for civic order and development, and occasionally, very judiciously weaponized. Social media in the last few years have demonstrated that a broadly unfiltered public commons is not conducive to social order. See the shitshow that is Indian MSM nd increasingly runaway Hindu nationalism for the alternative. It's not that I don't value western liberal values, I just don't think China is ready for it now. Escaping middle income trap is more pressing than liberalization in the mid term. Also consider that the Chinese demographic pyramid is dangerously composed of angry, unmarried men. We're all familiar with that demographic right? So yes, the current system is fine in my opinion.
Brief touch on other points: I'm not inclined to give western corporate posturing brownie points until they actually deliver, which by and large China has. Doesn't matter if a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice. Well one cat's not catching mice.
>Chinese people to be able to read Liu Xiaobo's take on June 4th, on Charter 08, on 996.
Again, any Chinese person can read this via VPN that takes 10 minutes to setup, by and large the people who are interested does. There's something to be said about the greater Chinese cultural apathy towards politics deliberately engineered by the CPC, but to insinuate that a curious person in the mainland can't be just as informed as someone in the west is false. Personally, I'm more worried about misinformed Americans with enfranchisement and the ability to select loony presidential candidates that upends world order every 4 years than a revisionist Chinese state that has every geopolitical interest to continue the current world order, albeit with a more influential role.
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In China.
Ah, it happened in China, so that makes it totally cool and justified. I am not the kind of person to swing the morality flag pretty much ever, but if you don’t see what’s wrong with this, then I don’t know what else to say.
As for the moral flag, I think in context of Sino-US topics, that ship has sailed long ago. It's more useful to contextualize these decisions in a geopolitical / great powers competition lense. Having Google in China is good soft power opportunity for the US. Chinese people are eager for a baidu alternative. I'm not going to pretend that more engagement with China is going to lead to liberalization in the short-term, but I do think it goes a long way towards preventing future hostilities. And I think google being incentivized to operate in China and becoming proficient in bridging the Chinese-open web is a net good.
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So a couple things (From the US perspective): 1. Copyright, trademarks, and patents are a pretty weak argument for "censorship" IMO. But I guess I see where you're coming from. There are also many "fair-use" exceptions for these that make it less "censorship" and more "preventing profit on other people's ideas". 2. "US outright ban any casual religious reference because it offend some believers, resulting modifying s…
> Can you give an example? This seems to go directly against first amendment rights. Like I said, many manga/anime/games were modified to remove any casual use of religious symbol when released in US. These days, major products don't contain these beforehand if it's famous enough to expect US release.
Most likely, the publishers themselves removed it to avoid controversy and sell more anime.
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> 2. "US outright ban any casual religious reference because it offend some believers, resulting modifying some manga/anime/game" -- Can you give an example? This seems to go directly against first amendment rights. I also would love to see some example and an not aware of cases were stuff was changed due to laws. There is self-censorship, as e.g. the Spice and Wolf anime trying very hard not to use christian symbols…
Its rare the US government order the censorship. The problem is publisher self-censorship it because it may disturb some religious people.
Also, it's not "rare" that the US censors mention of religion. It is completely unheard of in our modern history.
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Both US and EU exercise censorship in the name of: + copyrights + trademarks + patents(really bogus patents) + religion(these days, US outright ban any casual religious reference because it offend some believers, resulting modifying some manga/anime/game) + national security + ex-political party symbol(swastika, but they can't tell the difference between nazi symbol and Buddism symbol which is widely used in Japanese…
The right to be forgotten is a bigger censorship blow against democracy than outright banning individual websites. Politicans can selectively remove results about themselves so that constituents can never find them in search, while giving the appearance that nothing is wrong because other articles show in results.
https://www.alphr.com/computing/1000120/public-figures-cant-...
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I'd be happy to see any country challenge any other country's information restrictions in the international trade system, but I think your examples about the U.S. are partly mistaken. > + religion(these days, US outright ban any casual religious reference because it offend some believers, resulting modifying some manga/anime/game) Religious sensitivities run high in the U.S., but criticizing or mocking (or advocating…
Mocking the religion is not a problem, The problem is casual reference of religion with no political intention. Like in fictional manga/anime/game where the character with supernatural power has attack power which when invoked, bright Christian cross or Buddism manzi appears or in-fiction religion(Totally not Christianity) use Christian cross as a symbol.
But I can assure you it's not illegal and the government has no power to ban media for using religious symbols this way.
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No, it's probably not what the user wants in that moment, but it's what they should see . And under some circumstances, it may quite literally be the most helpful result. If someone searches for Tiananmen Square, what they really need is a hint that it's time to switch to a VPN.
This comes down to the difference in underlying values of different cultures. Forcing what you think people should want onto others when it's not what they really want isn't effective, even despite your relative moral justifications. There are ways to accomplish notifying the user of censorship which isn't shoving it in their face. Users simply won't use Google if it's beating them with a stick to remind them that we…