61–70 of 211 posts
They are even censoring academic's access to western papers. It's barbaric and should not be excused even in passing.
I'm frightened by how a seemingly pragmatic government has been able to spiral into dogmatic, protectionists policies so rapidly. I suppose that I mistook the recent decades of economic development as evidence of true ideological reform taking place. Now I feel naive for expecting more from the government that imprisoned the father of their ubiquitous high speed rail system. The Eastern desire to require "harmonious…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's right-wingers, it'll be terrorism and "think of the children". If it's left-wingers, it'll be hate speech and "think of the women/minorities". Same outcome, of course.
I've yet to see any proposals from the latter camp whereas I've seen dozens of pieces of legislation successfully passed and attempt to pass from the former.
There is, evidently, a fairly powerful and far-reaching population of left-leaning people who believe and are willing to act on the idea that the internet should be politically controlled. I've never heard of this being done successfully against, say, a communist website.
Leaving aside subjective judgments if doing this is right/wrong, good/in-line with the Chinese culture or whatever else. If you view the societal/political cohesion/consensus as a process of behavioral survival of the fittest (eg. requiring a certain flexibility to adapt) then taking away the flexibility that anonymous online communication affords your citizens might not be so good when/if it becomes time for the sys…
You make some very interesting points on flexibility and the ability to adapt. I also wonder how China is able to keep adapting to circumstances and survive if the voice of people is not heard. But then I realize China has a different system to allow that to happen. In modern China, the only way for politicians to go up the ladder of leadership is to slowly rise from the bottom. In this sense, they were once a normal…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. It wouldn't surprise me if a Western government (probably the UK's) considers introducing legislation to require exactly this in the not-too-distant future, most likely under the guise of preventing the spread of extremist propaganda. If they do, companies like Facebook and YouTube will face a choice between acceding to the new regula…
I would be pretty surprised. Not everyone in the UK has ID, and since the NIC scheme failure, it's less likely than ever to happen. ID isn't even required to vote at the moment...
People likely won't resist it too much. We've had this identification requirement imposed upon us in the Netherlands a few years ago, and while there is valid criticism on this requirement, it passed. So to vote now you need to bring a valid ID. If the British government wants to do this with a minimum of fuss, they'll do what our government did and make the driver's licence a valid identity card. That way the majority of adults will already have their ID on them as a matter of habit (and won't complain).
Of course mentioning that it is needed to prevent Muslim voters from committing voting fraud (see¹…) will help push the bill trough.
1: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/27/voters-will-have-...
What a shitty country to live in...
If you were living in China, hearing the Chinese media's propaganda about the west instead of the western media's propaganda about China, you'd probably be saying the same thing about the west instead of about China.
Here is a clue: a westerner will have even more of a negative impression of china if they restrict themselves to Chinese media only (like chinadaily, globaltimes, CCTV 9). So is Chinese media biased against china????
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You make some very interesting points on flexibility and the ability to adapt. I also wonder how China is able to keep adapting to circumstances and survive if the voice of people is not heard. But then I realize China has a different system to allow that to happen. In modern China, the only way for politicians to go up the ladder of leadership is to slowly rise from the bottom. In this sense, they were once a normal…
You are excluding princelings like Xi Jinping, who only started from the bottom in theory, but have a lot of family connections to help them rise quickly. In fact, as time goes on, princelings are becoming more dominant in Chinese politics and even the economy (many companies and industries are controlled by red families).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. It wouldn't surprise me if a Western government (probably the UK's) considers introducing legislation to require exactly this in the not-too-distant future, most likely under the guise of preventing the spread of extremist propaganda. If they do, companies like Facebook and YouTube will face a choice between acceding to the new regula…
If it comes to having the same legislation in the UK, it'd likely ban decentralized web as well, perhaps requiring submitting your ID upon connecting to Internet every single time.
Especially with the way we are moving. Most people today are happy to use sso with services like facebook or google. Most people also have their real identify tied to their core profile they use to sign on to other services. The abstraction between the internet and the cloud is becoming more blurry to a internetizen that is technologically ignorant.
There are a dozen popular live streaming apps in China where one can simply just stream what you're doing to everyone on the site and people can just watch them for hours. You can think of it like Instagram stories or Snapchat per se. Or even Facebook live. This isn't some western media propaganda. I tried one of them very recently (I don't want to give them any undeserved marketing), they allowed me to sign up and t…
> Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations Many countries do. To watch certain youtube videos in south korea you need to provide your social security number or something like that.