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We Chat, They Watch

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Re: We Chat, They Watch

#281

Post by pmachinery »

wolco wrote: post #239
pmachinery wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i literally don't get why the guy brought up race They brought up race because they were replying to a racist conspiracy theory amounting to them running Hollywood and pushing their agenda. Hacker News is one of the few sites - others being Stormfront, Daily Stormer, 8chan - where that kind of shit still flies.

That opinion is more mainstream then you give it credit. It is backed up recently by the nba losses (2 billion reported) for letting a player give support to Hong kong. China has increased their power. Calling that notion racist discounts all of the different people who make up China's population. China is a country with people of many different colors, backgrounds and religions. Thinking of China as a single color i…

The NBA losing money and the Chinese government being totalitarian and thin skinned doesn't give free rein to any old racist shit, mate.

And they own media companies to push their agenda is flat out, textbook conspiracy theory racism, unless you have more evidence than something completely unrelated.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#283

Post by fiblye »

idra wrote: post #180
fiblye wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that most major domains outside of China are blocked. Chinese services aren't going to be any more lax with surveillance than WeChat and have the same registration requirements. You could maybe try registering your own server, but do you want to have the possibility of questionable messages being saved on a server that you own when dealing with Chinese authorities? Any "oops, sorry" goes out the window w…

The parent is talking about communicating with friends and family. My point is not about evading surveillance, it's about not using one of the main tools of the CCP censorship apparatus. If you're inside China and care about your safety, you would think twice about sending "questionable" messages even on the most secure channel because you're still physically vulnerable to rubber hose cryptanalysis.

And I didn't say anything about sending anything.

If anybody messages you or your family/friends receives something suspicious something and the Party suspects you're intentionally avoiding their watchful eye with a custom mail server, I think you might end up worse off. All it takes is one goofball finding a vulnerability in your system and dropping a joke image or bit of text to royally screw you.

Furthermore, while it's nice in theory to deploy your own servers and get all of your friends and family to exclusively chat through your homemade application, it's very unlikely. WeChat is basically an OS all its own these days. It's a social network, chat app, payment app, shop, and more. People are incredibly reluctant to give up convenience unless they're very motivated and technologically inclined. And for people inside of China, getting a VPN or non-Chinese messenger is quite difficult thanks to locked down app stores and most people communicating only through phones.

I don't use Facebook and won't budge on that issue. My parents won't use anything that's not Facebook. If they won't take 10 seconds to register for anything else, then they certainly won't want to deal with anything I'd try to scrap together. The end result is that I make a VOIP call to their phone about once a month and they ask me to just give up and use Facebook at some point. It's probably a similar situation with most people wanting to leave XYZ terrible messenger.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#284

Post by dntbnmpls »

xf1cf wrote: post #242
sacks2k wrote: post #83

It's not just WeChat. They own stakes in many american media companies and movie production houses. They use this influence to also change our Media and push pro-Chinese propaganda to the American public.

You can see the pro-chinese propaganda on this site alone. The number of people supporting Zoom, WHO, WeChat, etc is enough to conclude with near certainty this site as well is owned by the Chinese. Unfortunately this comment and mine will be downvoted to oblivion. But the truth is the Chinese war doctrine is to purchase land and acquire covenants. Look at Africa, Indonesia, and India. They are bought wholesale by Ch…

> You can see the pro-chinese propaganda on this site alone.

Actually, most of the propaganda here and in social media has been anti-chinese. Obnoxiously so.

> The number of people supporting Zoom, WHO, WeChat, etc is enough to conclude with near certainty this site as well is owned by the Chinese.

What? Almost everything about Zoom, WHO, WeChat, etc has been negative. Even this thread has been negative.

> What you're speaking is truth. It's a shame this site will censor you.

Don't. The obvious victimhood propaganda won't get you very far here.

> It is no coincidence so much information suppression has gone on the last 3 months...

3 months? It's been going on for many years. And I don't think it is the chinese behind it.

People like you tell us that the russians and now the chinese control propaganda in the US and yet everything I read, see or hear is anti-russian and anti-chinese. Either the russians and chinese hate themselves or they are just terrible at propaganda or you are simply wrong.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#285

Post by izacus »

drukenemo wrote: post #230
sacks2k wrote: post #83

It's not just WeChat. They own stakes in many american media companies and movie production houses. They use this influence to also change our Media and push pro-Chinese propaganda to the American public.

I’ve been suspecting this for a long time but came across few evidence for it. I’ve seen Chinese funding of Hollywood movies, but it’s always through an American fund, etc. What kind of evidence have you found? To me, the fact that Hollywood would never attack communism, is a big one. Thousands of movies about nazism, zero about the Soviet union and their crimes. Even Cuba is very underrepresented in the industry. Ye…

Um, what are you talking about? There were whole decades of Hollywood having the Reds as the default villain. Everything up to 2000s when they were replaced by middle easterners.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#286

Post by [deleted] »

88840-8855 wrote: post #273
woutr_be wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use WeChat to talk to friends in China, (I live in HK) and I noticed that last year, especially when the protests were intense, many of my posts just didn't show up. These were mostly pictures unrelated to the protests. I had the sense that anything coming out of Hong Kong was just hidden by default.

lol, this is nothing new and nothing special. There are some words that just dont go through and messages dont arrive. I lived there and tried it with friends. You literally stand next to each other, some messages arrive, some dont. For me it is not a big deal - for most Chinese it is not a big deal. Somehow most people who never touched Wechat it seems to be a big deal.

[deleted]

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#287

Post by xenihn »

shasheene wrote: post #249
hyperion2010 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As JCharante mentions, this statement was offered as a modernization of historical reaction to similar events, not a commentary on the parent comment. In that context the interpretation my statement basically turns on whether you believe the McCarthy was right or not and whether a similar person would be right or not today.

Oh, I hadn't realized your question was paraphrasing a quote made famous during the 1950s

References to McCarthyism are still very recognizable and not at all fringe...

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#288

Post by dwaltrip »

88840-8855 wrote: post #273
woutr_be wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use WeChat to talk to friends in China, (I live in HK) and I noticed that last year, especially when the protests were intense, many of my posts just didn't show up. These were mostly pictures unrelated to the protests. I had the sense that anything coming out of Hong Kong was just hidden by default.

lol, this is nothing new and nothing special. There are some words that just dont go through and messages dont arrive. I lived there and tried it with friends. You literally stand next to each other, some messages arrive, some dont. For me it is not a big deal - for most Chinese it is not a big deal. Somehow most people who never touched Wechat it seems to be a big deal.

I would consider it a grotesque violation of my freedom if some powerful organization prevented me from privately saying what I wanted to my friends and other acquaintances.

Yes, there is some of this in the U.S. due to chilling effects from mass surveillance. I find it abhorrent. However, actively filtering and blocking messages is even worse.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#289

Post by kevinchen »

yingliu4203 wrote: post #91
krzysiek wrote: post #74

Looking at the comments I think that most of commenters missed an important point. It's not just that the app is tracking users, but the messages sent by any non-Chinese user help the regime censor the content for Chinese users. In other words, if you use WeChat, and you send a photo of something that happened in Hong Kong along with some text that explains it, then you actually help Chinese authorities to censor thi…

Many Chinese-Americans have no choice when they need to communicate with family and friend living in China. No outside communication tools allowed in China.

I don’t think this is true. iMessage works in China (they can’t block all of Apple)

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#290

Post by [deleted] »

dvduval wrote: post #267

Do you think they are using AI as they observe? Is some of this AI passive? Obviously they wouldn't be able to spy on everyone, or else they would need a lot of researchers haha

[deleted]
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