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China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

washingtonpost.com

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Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#91

Post by hamstergene »

chrischen wrote: post #77
hamstergene wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're locked in a kitchen, even though there is more than one choice of food are you free to decide what to eat? What if you was born there and don't really know all variety options you could have? Centralized propaganda makes "freedom of choice" very controversial topic. Especially when its source has all the power to censor and prosecute.

This article by Google's design ethicist shows how even in a free market world we end up with false freedoms. For example, if Facebook suggests posts from your friends, how do you know you have control of who you become friends with and interact with? How does Netflix's suggestions influence what movies you know about. He shows that even in our free world we're still influenced by propaganda that makes us have a fals…

You're offering me a classic tu quoque response, aka "Guy A is deep in shit but guy B's boot has shit on it too therefore they're both in shit so A's problem with shit is kinda normal".

Yes, freedom always has restrictions, everywhere. But it does not always smell so suspicious. Facebook making some choices for you and Facebook being blocked completely for making it too easy to read unapproved opinions are very different levels of the problem.

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#92

Post by studentrob »

narrator wrote: post #27

There would not be a hundred billion dollar ad industry if propaganda didn't work. We wouldn't run multi-million dollar presidential campaigns if propaganda didn't work. The whole field of social psychology and public relations would be a useless exercise if propaganda didn't work. This is the fundamental problem with democracy: people are easily influenced. The antecedents of the current Chinese communist party, the…

> This is the fundamental problem with democracy: people are easily influenced

That's not a problem with democracy. It's how people learn. We learn something and form an opinion about it.

The problem comes when only certain media sources are allowed. In that case, it's harder for people to discuss alternate viewpoints

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#93

Post by Flimm »

SFJulie wrote: post #89

You can censor by scarcity (China) or censor by overabundance of trivia (Western). When Kardashian out weigth cultural news, PR of corps outweigth economical analysis, half baked tutorial replaces consistent tutorial, unproven science replaces science : you drown signal in noise. How many Western citizens have read that the middle eastern wars are mainly about the top 4 weapon dealers (UK, USA, Fr, Russia) bribing lo…

The Chinese government does censor by overabundance of trivia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party . Do you have evidence that Western governments are doing similar things?

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#94

Post by optforfon »

comex wrote: post #11

So what about Tor and obfsproxy? Does it actually (still) work? If so, why don't more people use it?; if not, why not? I can't easily find up-to-date information about this through Google - which I find odd, since China is such an important use case for Tor that I would expect them to maintain some sort of status page. Maybe the information is more readily available in Chinese...

b/c you're kinda missing the point of the firewall

First all 99% of the Chinese internet content is hosted domestically - so unless a Chinese person is fluent in english it's harder to access foreign information, and they have their own cat videos anyways

The goal really is to have no institutions that rival the government for organizing people and disseminating information. You can always get around the firewall, and news sites are actually accessible - even sometimes facebook will work from China. The system isn't perfect, but the authorities are happy if at the end of the day people don't have twitter/facebook/G+ accounts, they don't visit foreign sites regularly b/c they've been made unreliable, and they end up in domestic forums where things can be monitored and contained.

When authorities see the Arab Spring Twitter revolution they're probably thinking "yeaaahhh... that's exactly what we want to avoid. No foreign social media please"

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#97

Post by studentrob »

The metric saying 1/3 of the world faces heavy internet censorship seems large until you remember 1/5 of the world lives in China

China is one of two countries that doesn't have access to Facebook and Twitter. The other is Iran.

I'm not in love with FB or Twitter, but for tracking censorship, they are a useful measurement.

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#98

Post by notbingo »

bad_user wrote: post #67

Of course it does. I wouldn't bet that it will last though. I often tell people how I was born under communism and that what happened before 1989 in Romania and maybe in other Easter European countries makes the 1984 novel seem unrealistic and boring. We had far worst forms of censorship and propaganda, paranoia about being caught with doublethink by nosy neighbors was at al times high, yet everything looked normal,…

What about North Korea? Why does it last there? Why don't they revolt? But actually, a more relevant question would be, why haven't they already? How much suffering can they take? I'm Romanian too. The censorship, oppression, and whatever other bad thing you might want to refer to, will last as long as the powers that be want it to last. When our "revolution" happened, people didn't even know what to think of it when they heard the news and really many thought it was a joke, and that's because they could not believe it was possible. There was no buildup that "took more than 40 years", a lot of people were satisfied with their lives, the ones that were not were quieted, and the rest were ignorant and didn't really care just like people now under pretty much any regime around the world. Hell, some older people that I have met even say they liked it better back then. Real population driven revolutions can't really happen anymore, if they ever could.

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#99

Post by ajdlinux »

zhte415 wrote: post #85
thaumasiotes wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a much bigger thing (Golden Shield) that involves submitting photocopies of IDs to get a mobile phone SIM I can assure you this is not current Chinese policy.

>> a much bigger thing (Golden Shield) that involves submitting photocopies of IDs to get a mobile phone SIM > I can assure you this is not current Chinese policy. It is the law: to get a SIM card, must submit ID card scan or passport scan.

Last time I was in China (late 2014) I had to provide a photocopy of my Australian passport to obtain a China Mobile SIM. Maybe it's changed since then, but I certainly can't imagine them being any more liberal than Australia, where you are required to submit a driver's licence number or a similar level of identity verification in order to activate a prepaid SIM.

That said, I can't imagine it being too hard to bribe someone to get a SIM not linked to an ID if you really wanted...

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#100

Post by studentrob »

This article fails to define what "works" means

Does censorship give China a better economy? Does it make people more happy? Safe?

Does censorship eradicate certain ideas? Does it prevent people from communicating domestically or internationally?

There's no data in the article that suggests any of this is true.

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