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We Chat, They Watch

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Re: We Chat, They Watch

#451

Post by Larrikin »

brabel wrote: post #371
defnotashton2 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh that's interesting because the lack of regulation and proper enforcement of said regulation of wet meat markets is what caused this in the first place.

Not if you believe the US government, which says that it actually came from a lab in China.

This is the issue with an authoritarian government that kills dissenters.

It's very likely that it originated naturally from a bat or other animal and made it's way into the wet market. But the government denying denying early on, the doctor blowing the whistle early on that is now dead, and the shut down of research coming out of China into the origins means that information about the virus can never be taken one hundred percent seriously.

Trump and his administration lie constantly about his response, but there are journalists and people he has fired (as opposed to have killed, disappeared, thrown out.a window, etc) that can put together evidence about what is going on with the virus and other issues in the US.

I absolutely have no faith in the Chinese government ever letting any information out that one of their labs was the cause of the globe pandemic if they were.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#452

Post by derefr »

kazagistar wrote: post #445
101404 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy and rule of law usually start to have an advantage over authoritarianism when you surpass an annual GDP per capita of about 5000 USD. So, on the long term, I am optimistic that India will catch up. Especially now that the USA is moving away from China as "work bench". I hope we here in Europe will follow that policy, too. It just makes much more sense to support an emerging democracy than to support a facis…

Have you not been following the news where India just elected a facist leadership and had numerous deadly race riots supported by their government? Try checking your ideology with reality sometimes.

There is a difference, I would think, between a country going through a "bad period" of preferring totalitarianism, usually in response to pressures of economic and social inequality (e.g. Germany in the early 1900s; several middle-eastern and central-american countries today); and a country whose populace maintain deeply-held beliefs that have caused them to maintain a totalitarian leadership style over decades/centuries with no sign of changing (China.)

Though, I mean, part of that difference is that the rest of the world feels uncomfortable with sudden shifts like India's, and so usually gets together to trade-sanction the problem away so that things will go back to the way they were (which might cause the country to lash out, at which point it becomes a World War); while, on the other hand, the international community is so used to "the way things are" with countries like China, that they don't do anything.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#453

Post by frockington1 »

wolco wrote: post #193
MattGaiser wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook at least tells you, but yes, this is concerning.

I just visited that site. The concerning thing is the site isn't spam and offers a political view with photos/videos of real moments that may reflect poorly on joe . To censor that is crossing the line into censoring valid political speech.

And every time the censor sites like this, it just increases the size of Trumps war drum. You'd think after 2016, they'd stop the suppression route but it seems the efforts are just increasing. Makes it really hard to support anyone

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#454

Post by cosmojg »

intopieces wrote: post #444
einpoklum wrote: post #415

Chinese state surveillance and state censorship is terrible. But - US', and int'l corporations' mass surveillance, and censorship, is way up there in the "degree of evil". Please encourage your tech-savvy friends to use safer applications, like Signal for messaging - not WhatsApp; and FOSS alternatives to Zoom, e.g.: https://fosspost.org/alternative-software/end-users/zoom-alt... no less importantly - try to ween the…

What's the problem with Apple mail?

Not OP, but my guess is they don't like it because it's opaque and the developer's incentives are drifting with Apple's move to services. Oh, and they probably don't like the fact that Apple still actively collaborates with the NSA.

Open source software makes it easy to sidestep these kinds of issues.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#455

Post by richard_mcp »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #98

It’s worth noting that Facebook Messenger also intercepts and filters messages. For example, it’s impossible to send a message containing the link “joebiden.info”. On the mobile app, it will simply say “failed to send.” On desktop, it will tell you the link violates its “community standards” and cannot be shared.

Facebook Messenger also used to check if you were sending an image uploaded by one of your friends. If Alice uploaded a photo, but didn't share it with Bob, you wouldn't be able to send that photo to Bob. It would also check if a shared photo was embedded in another, like a screenshot.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#456

Post by SkyBelow »

arcticbull wrote: post #188
cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away That doesn't enter the equation for what I would imagine is 99.99% of users. It's the erosion of privacy in the name of a) "Safety" and b) convenience The average person of the world has shown that they will trade virtually anything for the perception of convenience, or "safety". Look at the most recent gun ban in Canada for an obvious example…

Yes, the ban may not be perfect, but as a Canadian, I can say unequivocally: I don't need perfect to be the enemy of good. There's no reason to possess these weapons any more than there's a reason to possess nuclear warheads. The next bill can ban more, fix the bugs, etc, but the flag has been planted: there's no room for those weapons in Canada. A huge number of people have wanted to ban weapons like these since Eco…

>There's no reason to possess these weapons any more than there's a reason to possess nuclear warheads.

I've yet to see any valid reasons to possess drugs or alcohol. With guns, there is at least the justification of self defense.

>and pray the crime away.

Is that not what is being done with all crimes (drunk driving, but also many assaults) associated with alcohol?

There are two ways government can work. You can either have it where you have to justify to the government why you should have something, or you can have it where the government can justify why you should not have something. The former is far worse. The latter only works if the logic used is consistent, else it is really the former in disguise.

People always seem to want the former when it comes to guns, but the latter when it comes to things they personally like which have been associated with government restrictions. Why is the double standard held so openly?

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#457

Post by GuiA »

throwawaylolx wrote: post #362
arminiusreturns wrote: post #260

I worked for a company that tried to require wechat. I refused. Never got any flak, but missed a lot of comms from the first gen Chinese immigrants in the company. I posit they use WeChat more than just to censor/spy in wechat, but rather more as an one of a set of apps that can be used to side-channel leak data about the phone/user. (Israel is also the other giant player in this arena). I don't understand any tech-s…

> (Israel is also the other giant player in this arena) Mind elaborating on this?

Do some research on the NSO Group.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#458

Post by SkyBelow »

kccqzy wrote: post #141
TechBro8615 wrote: post #98

It’s worth noting that Facebook Messenger also intercepts and filters messages. For example, it’s impossible to send a message containing the link “joebiden.info”. On the mobile app, it will simply say “failed to send.” On desktop, it will tell you the link violates its “community standards” and cannot be shared.

The differences are: (1) with Facebook it's a private company doing the censoring and there's no issue with that, no First Amendment issues at all, unlike WeChat where the censoring is heavily linked to the government; (2) Facebook at least tells you when a message can't be sent but WeChat fails silently.

>with Facebook it's a private company doing the censoring and there's no issue with that, no First Amendment issues at all, unlike WeChat where the censoring is heavily linked to the government;

Why does this not apply to other situations such as who I hire?

Also, is not Facebook used by parts of the US government? If Facebook prevents me from sending that link to any government representative then does that not constitute the government (by choosing to use Facebook as a communication channel) censoring my speech? It would be similar to the case of Trump blocking individuals on Twitter. Imagine if government offices swapped to some religious based chat forum as their official means of communication where messages from all people not of a certain religion (as determined by the sight) are filtered.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#459

Post by SkyBelow »

yeetman21 wrote: post #408
kart23 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? Are we really at the point where we can defend censorship of a website that doesn't have any illegal content, no links to illegal content, and the purpose of which is not to do anything illegal, but whose only purpose make ones political opinions known. On Facebook messenger, one of the biggest messaging apps in the world. This is honestly disgusting, and I think they are going to face backlash for it.

they're a private company and can do whatever they want

Except they generally can't. See limits on who they can hire and what speech they can engage in. So we already limit the powers of companies to protect the rights of people even though we could have just told the people work/shop/go somewhere else. Why doesn't that logic also extend to speech?

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#460

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Terr_ wrote: post #442
vinay427 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that all of this material (movies and TV, news articles, reports) is still available. I don't see how this adapted quote is at all applicable. The whole point of the 1984 scenario was that people couldn't talk about the preceding period and no evidence supporting its existence could be found.

I'll go a step further: Not only is the evidence and history of US-Taliban relations all still there, but the accused-1984 people weren't even denying the history exists. They were, at worst, just glossing over it. Let's suppose that there are five tiers on the spectrum of "good" to "1984": Acknowledge the history; Omit it; Contradict it, Erase it, Punish dissenters. Prior to 2016 most US politicians never went past…

> Prior to 2016 most US politicians never went past Omit.

Bush 2.0 did a good job of making the media toe the line by shutting out any dissenters. This was the beginning of the neo-con manipulation game.

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