Beijing Wants to Rewrite the Rules of the Internet

No I didn't. If I did, I would be excusing china's behavior. But I'm not. What I am saying is that china isn't rewriting the rules, I'm saying the US and EU are rewriting the rules of the internet. Maybe china can rewrite the rules within their "intra"net, but that isn't affecting me or anyone else around the world. EU's vote tomorrow,

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/internet-luminaries-ri...

has far greater impact on the internet than anything china could do.

> Maybe the agenda is to be able to have a conversation about a topic, without the conversation getting hijacked?

But my point was on topic. I was rejecting the notion that china is rewriting the rules of the internet.

But for some odd reason, anytime someone disagrees with the clickbaiting media, a few accounts start accusing you of whataboutism or even russian botting. The "whataboutism" response has already been exposed as a standard brigading technique by political groups/media on reddit, facebook and most of social media. It's 2015/2016 that nobody uses anymore because it's been exposed as propaganda. It's shocking to see it on hacker news, but we are always late to the party I guess.

> That's because this article is about China, not about the US or Europe. What you did is exactly whataboutism.

No. The article is about the rules of the internet. The bit about china is just propaganda to distract from the EU vote tomorrow. The fact that I disagreed with the major point of the article isn't whataboutism. It's the truth. The threat to the internet isn't from china, who are pretty much confined to their own national intranet. The threat is from corporations, the media and the wealthy who want to control the internet.

You know the people supporting and voting for more censorship and control tomorrow.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/internet-luminaries-ri...

Three objectives:

1. legitimate desire to address substantial cybersecurity challenges, like defending against cyber attacks and keeping stolen personal data off the black market

2. support domestic industry, in order to wean the government off its dependence on foreign technology components for certain IT products deemed essential to economic and national security

3. expand Beijing’s power to surveil and control the dissemination of economic, social, and political information online

Replace Beijing with in #3 and all of those points sound like what Western countries are doing. There's nothing noteworthy in those three points. What's noteworthy is that #3 is becoming prevalent in countries that consider themselves 'free'.

Other things listed, such as employing people to manipulate content, is done elsewhere, but it's done by private companies rather than 'the state'. Not new, but the singular direction makes this stand out in a 1984 way. The Tanzania example is just a modernised version of the US' manifest destiny behaviour in Central America and other 'strategic' nations (cough Ukraine cough).

Where China is a leader, others are (often hypocritically) following. Where they're a follower, the leading has been done by the West.

"China’s control-driven model defies international openness, interoperability, and collaboration, the foundations of global internet governance and, ultimately, of the internet itself."

Replace China with "Facebook" or "Google" or even "Apple" or "Microsoft" and the sentence still rings true. Singularly calling China out smells like fairly blatant propaganda.

Openness, interoperability, and collaboration are utopian ideals of the Internet that were achieved when the Internet was a network of universities and scientific institutions back in the late 80's, up until "view your trolley / Checkout" was a thing. Profit is what's re-written the Rules of the Internet. Why else would it be so full of ads?

The nation states have just followed the money.

And enforce this how? You get arrested upon setting foot in the EU when failing to do so? This would only work in Germany and maybe France. The EU doesn't have its own police, they rely on states cooperating. This is why Puigdemont is free to move in the EU (except Spain and Germany where he was arrested), despite of an arrest warrant issued in Spain.

I agree the tax situation is a problem and think govenments should change the tax laws. Countries could estimate a fair tax for each multinational and tell them pay it or be blocked. Its not really the problem of the CEOs who can only really pay the tax required by law.

GDPR seems something of a success at regulating things supra-national level if not perfect.