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China Blocks WhatsApp

nytimes.com

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Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#381

Post by taobility »

pishpash wrote: post #365
taobility wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wondering, for normal people, what kind of information you concerned to not be monitored, seriously? I knew most western take the privacy higher than anything. But for most normal people living outside of US, they really don't care. You would say they are dumb, but they care more about food, entertainment than the privacy, and liberal. To be honesty, nobody in China cared WhatsApp be blocked or not. As maybe 9…

Then why block it?

Because it's not under control, which against Chinese government's philosophy.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#383

Post by dreamfactored »

chaostheory wrote: post #331
dreamfactored wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. These are foreign-owned infrastructure platforms and China is protective about its markets. Foreigners can't set up businesses of any kind, let alone infrastructure. 2. You seem to assume the bulk of innovation is going to be happening outside China and that blocking consumer access to Western platforms would somehow inhibit a flow of information to China. I'd disagree on both counts. The Chinese government is act…

1. My question was rhetorical. It was in response to someone saying that apps outside of China are unimportant and small. 2. No single country has a monopoly on innovation. Consequently the sharing of ideas from different locations and cultures is really important for moving forward. You miss out on this benefit when you consciously work to block it. Historically, the last time China was this arrogant about isolation…

Any effective government will rightly 'isolate' itself from this kind of pollution - http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogatio...

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#384

Post by pishpash »

627467 wrote: post #94
chaostheory wrote: post #40

What the long-term effects will be: China's ruling class further cement their power at the cost of China's innovation and future growth. Interesting and useful things are made when people able share and consume information. e.g. Jack Ma's US visit exposed him to Yahoo. Ma Huateng was clearly inspired by his exposure to ICQ. The list goes on. The same thing happens in the West but it happens a lot more often since the…

This is not a new situation. I grew up in a more liberal part of China and always thought their political situation was their bottleneck for economic, cultural and human development. The state of the world right now shows how I was wrong. And as you mentioned, tightening of control by different governments around the world seems to indicate that we have found a common trend and its not the liberal one...

There will be a bottleneck. It took hundreds of years of sea ban for Ming China to fall behind in the Age of Sail; it might take a few decades for a closed society to euthanize itself in a digital age built on free exchange and open discourse.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#385

Post by kuschku »

e12e wrote: post #376
pducks32 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just don’t worry about China.

It's kind of funny that people worry about users on Safari, and [here] you suggest "ignore 18% of the world's total population".

In fact, it makes more sense to develop an app for the Chinese market than to develop one for iOS based on pure userbase numbers (obviously, for many companies that only operate in the US, this doesn’t make sense, but if you’re, say, an open source project, it might)

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#386

Post by usaar333 »

Joking_Phantom wrote: post #89

WeChat is the replacement for WhatsApp, fully compliant with Chinese censorship controls. What's mildly disturbing is that many Chinese Americans, both American citizens and not, living in the US use WeChat. They use it because of their cultural and social ties with China. Chinese tourists as well have had increasingly better integration inside the US as well, which would only serve to spread the usage of WeChat to a…

Why would WeChat treat a foreigner any different than a Chinese citizen? Do US companies not turn over foreigner's data stored in US servers to US authorities if they receive a warrant?

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#387

Post by e12e »

Joking_Phantom wrote: post #343
the_common_man wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's all perspective. What's greatly disturbing is that people in US giving all their data to corporations to mine and monetize... Everyone using gmail and this ends up with _my_ data (as a non-gmail user) being mined. US startups have also turned pretty much every website into a wormhole for tracking users/visitors. Atleast, in china, there is none of this advertising BS.

I won't dispute this - the private sector is composed of people just as the government is, and their attachment of sensitive data to vulnerable identifying information is just as abhorrent and many times more dangerous than anything the federal government could ever do. In my mind, the novel problem here is that the Chinese government can use such information in order to socially police people that nominally aren't u…

You've heard of this enemy of the state called "Snowden", right? 5 eyes? The US coalition dropping helpline missiles based on cellphone meta data (obtained from private corporations)?

Or simply border control agents asking for social media credentials, partly based on knowing you have an account?

I'm not saying I would enjoy being spied on by the Chinese government in particular... But it's not as if the "Western Internet" is free.

Finally, I think it is rather naive to think that the controlling interests behind global corporations are somehow so much more benevolent and disinterested in maintaining power, than governments are.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#388

Post by usaar333 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #362
mads wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in China for many years and you are right. Most Chinese people reaction will be "Meh.." and they will move on with their life and just use a VPN if they really really need WhatsApp. A lot of western people are now probably frantic to get the WeChat addresses of the Chinese people they only had on WhatsApp, so they can ensure their production line or development people are on track. We need them more than they…

I lived in China for 9 years and could never find a working VPN that would last more than a month. So I just didn't bother using anything outside of work. It was ironic that I worked for Microsoft, would use Bing at home, and used Google at work because...I could. > We need them more than they need us. That is the problem. Disagree. They still want our business, they will find ways to make it through the disruption.…

Did you ever use Shadowsocks in lieu of a VPN? AFAIK, it suffers no traffic disruption (worked great for me when I connected to either my own US-based house or an AWS server in Japan)

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#389

Post by KGIII »

chaostheory wrote: post #207
KGIII wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article has some very different numbers. Also, it may be a small percentage but the total number of individuals is huge. There's a lot of Chinese people, after all. Anyhow, link: https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class/ As for the numbers in that link, I'm not sure of the validity. I see lots of different numbers quoted at different sites. I have to wonder if it is accurate. A couple even put their upper…

According to your article (unless I misread it) the lower class is 68% of the population. While it has greatly improved, there's still a huge gap

Right, 32% vs. 18-20%. Which, in hard numbers, is quite a few individuals. Your post said 18-20%, so I figured I'd give you the current estimates for more accuracy. The estimates for upper-class were but 2%.

Probably important: There is some disparity in numbers. A few claimed higher, a couple had lower. Neither was significantly higher or lower, so I went with that one. Interestingly, a frequently listed number was 50% middle class by 2030.

My guess is that the numbers aren't accurately reported, which explains the variations.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#390

Post by hellbanner »

Lot of posts about the economic effects of this. From my armchair this looks to be political more than economic. China wants to be in control of how their citizens communicate.

They don't trust Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg or any of the US government. Letting their citizens chat on an encrypted channel made by a foreign "superpower" seems disingenuous.

It's not as if Americans are going to boycott Chinese goods, so I don't see any direct loss for China here.

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