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China Makes Chat Group Administrators Criminally Liable for Unlawful Messages

229 points by Sami_Lehtinen 9y ago

sebastianconcpt 9y ago
Comrades don't need to indoctinate when is way easier for them to just censor by making illegal everything they don't like. Didn't Maduro in Venezuela told its minions a month ago to prosecute twitter users who expressed dissent? He even inspired them to put them 30 years in jail. What we are seeing here is the instantiation of that strategy in internet messages. That doesn't mean that it is not their normal for every other aspect in society. Remember this the next time that The Economist, Time magazine or New York Times tries to talk about "the wonders" of communism.
- yarg 9y ago
  The Communist Party does not practice communism - it never has. They are no more communists than the DPRK is democratic. Communism was co-opted very early on and became just another form of authoritarianism.
  - tosser350 9y ago
    "X is not true socialism/communism" has become the new godwin's law. Whenever the failure of a socialist/communist government is discussed inevitably is wasn't TRUE socialism/communism
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Yes, this can't be stressed or repeated enough! The Soviet Communist Party was/is rather like Scientology. At the noob level, in the Pioneers (a lot like US Boy Scouts) it was all about ideals/ideology and honor. At some point, you realized that members got nice perks. More money. Access to stores that carried better food and stuff. And eventually, as you got into higher-level leadership, you started to get that it was all bullshit.
    - oculusthrift 9y ago
      did you ever stop to wonder why every communist state ends up the same? is it possible they misunderstand human motivations and psychology and will always devolve to authoritarianism?
      - yarg 9y ago
        I think that a fundamental aspect of that we are yet as individuals within our societies to understand the implications of Nash equilibria (and other significant economic theories). In any functional communistic society I think that it would need to be taught from a young age in order to provide the populace with a near inate understanding of just how damaging selfish individual motivations can be (when applied on a global scale).
      - quotemstr 9y ago
        It's because utopian projects are at odds with human nature. Attempts to force human nature to conform to the ideals of utopians in power leads to tyranny and misery. We should bear this experience in mind when looking at our own utopian projects. It's easy to mock China's defiance of human nature, but it's much harder to look in the mirror ask whether we've gone too far in our own pursuits of "justice".
        etplayer 9y ago
        >It's because utopian projects are at odds with human nature This asks the question - what isn't at odds with human nature? Why do you think that utopian projects are necessarily at odds with human nature? Marx and Engels were sociologists, and in fact many modern sociologists are Marxists too. That doesn't mean they're right, but it's some indication that the "human nature" argument needs looking into. And it has been looked into. Erich Fromm, a member of the Frankfurt School, wrote a book called Escape From Freedom in which he details the investigation of the human condition and attempts to identify what human nature is and to what extent it is malleable. The idea that "human nature" is suited to our current mode of production is as he notes a little fallacy stretching back to Freud's time. The nature of humans is at least in part influenced by their environment. The mode of production we currently see (capitalism) is part of our environment. Are not changed men the product of changed circumstances? Perhaps Marx himself would agree with both you and I here: "The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice." — Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach, III" To "human nature" I say firmly: human society.
  - ferongr 9y ago
    No true Scotsman?
    - ue_ 9y ago
      No, NTS applies to cases in which an additional qualifier is added to an object after a claim made by someone in order to disqualify that object from being a Scotsman. In this case, it is not the case - Communists of many stripes, even the some who follow Marxism-Leninism have been critical of the CPC and DPRK. Even the Maoists themselves disavow Chinese Communism after Deng's reforms. Left-communists have always been critical even during the Soviet Union's time. Socialist George Orwell was critical of the Soviet regime. Anarcho-Communist Kropotkin was critical of the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks were critical of the Bolsheviks, etc. The list goes on. In short, a great many Communists have not supported the Soviet CP nor the Chinese state, from their inception all the way to now. I've yet to see any evidence of an NTS fallacy.
  - meric 9y ago
    The land distribution and collectivisation I think we're communistic - you're right it's very early on. I think the Khmer Rouge were communistic too - everyone became a farmer. The city people can't farm properly and died.
    - etplayer 9y ago
      That said, there are modern Communist projects which rely not at all on agrarian population; they believe that education should be tailored to fit the current mode of production; for a view on this, you may be interested in Paul W. Cockshott's Towards a New Socialism in which he elaborates what a society might look like under lower-stage Communism and what methods can be used to get there, and how an economy might be organised. Communism is nothing about farming or peasantry - this was largely a Leninist invention to apply to the feudal society of pre-revolutionary Russia, and strengthened by Mao Tse-tung in the Chinese revolution. Marx, to my knowledge, had no support for the idea, nor did his contemporaries or predecessors.
      - alphaalpha101 9y ago
        And of course it makes sense in context. ('It' being changing an agrarian capitalist society to an agrarian communist society - clearly the natural progression.)
- ue_ 9y ago
  >Remember this the next time that The Economist, Time magazine or New York Times tries to talk about "the wonders" of communism. Could it be that, if they talk in favour of it, they have a different idea of Communism to you? Modern Communist academics do, we must investigate the ontology of Communism; a good read on this is from Badiou, The Communist Hypothesis. Most modern academic Communists believe that we must search for what happened, how to prevent it and how to move past it, to say nothing of the various splinters and brothers in the Communist family tree - anarchism, Communailsm, democratic Socialism, etc. If you do reading on Communist literature since about 1950 you'll see they have occupied themselves with this investigation, the very one you are accusing them of ignoring.
- saryant 9y ago
  Since when has The Economist ever been pro-communist? They don't even like Piketty.
nickthemagicman 9y ago
Jesus that's so repressive. And I'm sure the laws are pretty subjective as well or at least not something the average chat admin is fully up to speed with. Essentially the outcome of this will be to kill chats or send it underground to tor or something.
- marian0_ 9y ago
  In Spain, you as a website admin can be found liable for unlawful messages left by your users too. So it's not like this is unexpectedly repressive for me. A verdict that shows so: http://www.asesoriayempresas.es/jurisprudencia/JURIDICO/195962/sentencia-ts-128-2013-sala-1-de-26-de-febrero-derecho-al-honor-comentarios-ofensivos-insertos http://www.asesoriayempresas.es/jurisprudencia/JURIDICO/1959...
  - nawitus 9y ago
    Also true for Finland.
    - tobijkl 9y ago
      Also true for Germany.
      - Cyph0n 9y ago
        Also true for basically every Gulf country, but slightly more repressive.
  - bsder 9y ago
    I presume that "unlawful" is a bit more circumscribed in Spain than in China. Taking the article's example, would you be liable for ranting about a drunk driving checkpoint being a shakedown?
  - notgood 9y ago
    Not really, it says: "Conocimiento efectivo por la demandada del contenido de los comentarios alojados por terceras personas en su web. Remisión de fax en el que se advierte de la existencia de estas comunicaciones lesivas al honor del demandante: Al rehusar este fax la demandada incumple su deber de diligencia." Which translates: "Effective knowledge by the plaintiff of the stored messages by third-parties on his website. Fax receiving in which [the admin] was informed of the lascivious messages to the plaintiff. By refusing the FAX the defendant breaches his duty of diligence" So this case was about sexual comments against a specific person for which the owner of the site refused to delete such comments; so little to nothing to do with censoring messages against the state.
protomyth 9y ago
A man from Jieshou county of Anhui province was frustrated by traffic police, who had established a late night checkpoint for drunk driving. In a chat room that he created, he wrote: “Are they nuts? Checking in the rain? [They are] a bunch of assholes who just want money.” As the insulting comments created negative social impact within his circle, the man was detained for five days for picking a quarrel. At this point, it would seem the cost of running a chat room would be a bit too high if that's the punishment for "negative social impact" for the writer. I would expect the owner to be just as on the hook.
omarforgotpwd 9y ago
These laws are starting to appear now because for the first time AI and machine learning are making censorship at this scale economically feasible.
- swsieber 9y ago
  * making attempts of censorship at this scale successful. There will be false positives and negatives. Lots. But, this is a really good insight . Why play whack a mole when you have a mole recognition guided bazooka. No more moles.
  - ethnic_throw 9y ago
    > There will be false positives and negatives. Lots. And as usual, the people who appear to be targetted with the laws (the four digital horsemen) will figure out simple workarounds, so the laws really only harm honest people.
- roceasta 9y ago
  Yes, feasible, but what makes large-scale censorship so apparently desirable, or at least so widely desired? The first obvious thought is that there are repressive governments around the world who wish to keep power. And this is true. But it can't be the whole explanation since plenty of relatively free western democracies and businesses are enthusiastically embracing censorship, laws about 'hate speech', and so on. My guess is that a clue lies in the censorship going on much closer to home, in our own minds. Thoughts which contradict our ideas about who we are and what we should do are suppressed all the time. They fail to reach the light of consciousness. In other words, like the individual mind, it seems the hive mind must eventually develop an ego.
  - MarkPNeyer 9y ago
    I have noticed that any pattern i see in the large world, I also find reflected in my own mind. When i've found myself unhappy about some aspect of the broader world beyond my control, i've often been able to find the same pattern reflected in my own mindset, locally. Matrioshka dolls: http://markneyer.com/wp/?p=1078 http://markneyer.com/wp/?p=1078
brd 9y ago
The regulations also demand that all chat room users in mainland China verify their real identity... Effective 8 October, the following types of content will be prohibited in chat groups on China-based messaging platforms: 1. Sensitive political content 2. Rumors 3... Holy shit. What is this going to do to the Chinese tech scene? The liability being created here is crazy to consider. Lets all hope these practices aren't looked at as successful by other governments, I'd hate to see other countries following suit.
- revelation 9y ago
  It just means they can jail or shutdown who they want. Of course they could and have done that before, so really there is no change. Law isn't what paper says, but what the ruling party decides.
  - chaostheory 9y ago
    It's also who your friends and family are in the CCP.
  - adventured 9y ago
    > Of course they could and have done that before, so really there is no change. It's almost never about acquiring new power, they don't need that. It's about enforcing policy through a more specific enlightenment (ie don't do this, this isn't acceptable, etc). In other words, it's encouragement to aggressively keep with the line they've drawn. The party goals are dramatically easier to achieve/uphold if they have lots of lower level hands willingly helping.
  - wallace_f 9y ago
    >Law isn't what paper says, but what the ruling party decides. Isn't this up for debate? On one hand, in SK a Samsung chief and heir and also former President are facing long prison sentences (some of the protests leading up to this were argued to be the largest peaceful protests in history, ever).* On the other, in the US a convicted paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, never spent a day in jail. He is a billionaire and very close friend of Bill Clinton's. I am interested in historically how well the rule of law in the US has or has not applied equally to all citizens? *I personally found it really strange this has gotten so little attention in Western media.
notgood 9y ago
There is fair amount of really smart people inside China (in tech scene and otherwise) that probably want out [of the country] but don't know a clear path for doing so, I think efforts should be made to that clear path; to work on companies outside China [where they don't fear for their life if someone made a anti-government comment on their site]. Due to censorship by the national dictatorship such online effort must be done using randomly generated domains (known by word of mouth), hard to censor texts (eg. text inside images that use weird fonts; as intro inside pirated comics/movies/videogames, private messages inside Alibaba and other platform that the Government won't shot down)
- toronson 9y ago
  There are also a fair amount of really smart people outside of China (in tech scene and otherwise) that want in [to the country]. Almost half the people I've met are trying to go to China to start one thing or another. I would say over a quarter of my Chinese American friends have moved to China to start a company, while an even larger portion fly back and forth quite often.
EGreg 9y ago
Makes me so happy to live in what is probably the country with the most freedom of speech. The USA may be behind other countries in some things but not freedom of speech! If you live in a country with such draconian (and increasing) measures, there is only one thing to do: Use encryption. If only a few people use it, then they are targeted. If merely 10% of people use an encrypted protocol, it may be blocked. But if EVERYONE uses it, it will be computationally infeasible to decrypt everyone's messages. And banning eg TLS or SSH would be very hard to do. In addition to this, DECENTRALIZE ALL THE THINGS. When there is no single server, there is nothing to shut down. There is no central owner to intimidate. People will have to go back to the bad old days of "tattle tales" and KGB spies among the regular people. And seriously, if democracy works at all in these countries, all lawful means must be taken to defend what is left of freedom of speech. Who are these people who are actually making these laws, anyway? Every time they break them, it should be publicized.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  Laughing at a confirmation hearing is not protected speech. Though the article says what happened after she laughed is why she got convicted. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/us/code-pink-sessions-laughter-trial.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/us/code-pink-sessions-lau... I think even in the UK parliament the opposition makes fun of and laughs at each other without fear of prosecution.
  - CrystalLangUser 9y ago
    It's not about laughing, it's about being disorderly. Has little to do with "free speech", stop click baiting.
    - alphaalpha101 9y ago
      It has everything to do with free speech. It wasn't about being 'disorderly', it was about laughing at a confirmation hearing being considered disorderly.
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
evolighting 9y ago
BUT，WE Chinese live a way far more free. There are laws but we don't care, we live as we wish and we don't need other's permission. However when it come to a group, or a company, you are right, there are laws just right for you.
- cooper12 9y ago
  How typical on HN for a Chinese perspective to be downvoted to the bottom of the thread while everyone else flagellates themselves for how "free" the USA is.
thewhitetulip 9y ago
India beat China in this. Since more than 1yr Whatsapp admins are responsible for posts in their groups.
- indemnity 9y ago
  Congratulations, I guess?
- adrenalinelol 9y ago
  "beat"? Is there a competition to become the most Orwellian state before the other?
  - swimfar 9y ago
    You're reading too much into how he phrased it. He just means that it happened in India first.
  - thewhitetulip 9y ago
    Of course there is. Here, in India, most people are blind fans of the PM and anything he does is acceptable. that includes the AG stating in the Supreme Court that "Indian citizens have no right to privacy and they are the property of the government of India" and the "bhakts" as they are called still are able to justify that!!
- odiroot 9y ago
  Whatsapp just doesn't work in China for a few months now. Problem solved.
Chiba-City 9y ago
Their bottom up innovation will come to a screeching halt. They will export more young utility focused entrepreneurs fed up and not wanting in to that domineering state whacking their friends. We had a different colonial trajectory, but our own McCarthy era had disastrous cascading outcomes. "Rights to be forgotten" is another peculiar notion popular in some TV propaganda driven Western countries loving makeovers. Keep on rocking in the free world while it lasts.
- smegel 9y ago
  Don't underestimate the nationalism of young Chinese. And I very much doubt the CP is going to go after administrators who on-the-whole moderate with a pro-Beijing slant because they took 5 minutes too many to delete a comment. Making assumptions that all young people hate the CP and would betray their country to the west at first opportunity sounds like one of those classic mistakes the West makes when it projects it's own sensibilities onto the world.
  - prklmn 9y ago
    Most outsiders probably do not realize the impact of 24/7 propaganda in every media channel there is. That's what OP is overlooking, and that's ultimately what this action is ultimately about...
    - toronson 9y ago
      Seriously, most outsiders can't even see the propaganda in their own media. How do you expect them to see it in other countries? Chinese propaganda at the moment is really amateurish. Just wait until they learn from the best [1]. 1. Noam Chomsky - Manufacturing Consent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU
    - sametmax 9y ago
      Just like we underestimate our propaganda. When you are inside the soap bubble, it's very hard to realize how much our brain have been washed.
tushar-r 9y ago
Ah yes. India has this law as well. I am part of a whatsapp group from my old school. They decided to make all members administrators. Nice solution except that the person who implemented it is the one who sends most of the crackpot controversial messages. Planning to leave the group, especially since I dont really interact on it.
ttflee 9y ago
Rule of law v.s. rule by law
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Mithaldu 9y ago
I wonder what chat room means in this case. Does anyone in china use IRC?
- Accacin 9y ago
  I'm guessing WeChat groups.
zebraflask 9y ago
How many people live in China? Most news from China on this subject make me think of that Simpson's meme, you know the one: Old Man Yells at Cloud.
vit05 9y ago
And there was some news that Chinese would start trading crypto coins on telegram and other chat messengers. I believe that will be really hard now, too much risk.
ringaroundthetx 9y ago
expect some more WTFs over the next month, but then their congress will be all cushioned in again and none of this will matter
ihateneckbeards 9y ago
Be in western country Join a large WeChat group Offer to sell some drugs or talk about corruption of the party in the group Basically send any group manager to prison... Just from your couch!
mm4 9y ago
and all it takes to be in this thought prison is to be unlucky to be pushed out of your mothers vagina on that particular plot of land. even if you don't want to have anything with the gov that essentially owns you...
- studentik 9y ago
  Wouldn't it be possible to fix with educating mothers and fathers to choose birth rate wisely?

229 points by Sami_Lehtinen 9y ago

Comrades don't need to indoctinate when is way easier for them to just censor by making illegal everything they don't like. Didn't Maduro in Venezuela told its minions a month ago to prosecute twitter users who expressed dissent? He even inspired them to put them 30 years in jail. What we are seeing here is the instantiation of that strategy in internet messages. That doesn't mean that it is not their normal for every other aspect in society. Remember this the next time that The Economist, Time magazine or New York Times tries to talk about "the wonders" of communism.

yarg 9y ago
The Communist Party does not practice communism - it never has. They are no more communists than the DPRK is democratic. Communism was co-opted very early on and became just another form of authoritarianism.
- tosser350 9y ago
  "X is not true socialism/communism" has become the new godwin's law. Whenever the failure of a socialist/communist government is discussed inevitably is wasn't TRUE socialism/communism
- mirimir 9y ago
  Yes, this can't be stressed or repeated enough! The Soviet Communist Party was/is rather like Scientology. At the noob level, in the Pioneers (a lot like US Boy Scouts) it was all about ideals/ideology and honor. At some point, you realized that members got nice perks. More money. Access to stores that carried better food and stuff. And eventually, as you got into higher-level leadership, you started to get that it was all bullshit.
  - oculusthrift 9y ago
    did you ever stop to wonder why every communist state ends up the same? is it possible they misunderstand human motivations and psychology and will always devolve to authoritarianism?
    - yarg 9y ago
      I think that a fundamental aspect of that we are yet as individuals within our societies to understand the implications of Nash equilibria (and other significant economic theories). In any functional communistic society I think that it would need to be taught from a young age in order to provide the populace with a near inate understanding of just how damaging selfish individual motivations can be (when applied on a global scale).
    - quotemstr 9y ago
      It's because utopian projects are at odds with human nature. Attempts to force human nature to conform to the ideals of utopians in power leads to tyranny and misery. We should bear this experience in mind when looking at our own utopian projects. It's easy to mock China's defiance of human nature, but it's much harder to look in the mirror ask whether we've gone too far in our own pursuits of "justice".
      - etplayer 9y ago
        >It's because utopian projects are at odds with human nature This asks the question - what isn't at odds with human nature? Why do you think that utopian projects are necessarily at odds with human nature? Marx and Engels were sociologists, and in fact many modern sociologists are Marxists too. That doesn't mean they're right, but it's some indication that the "human nature" argument needs looking into. And it has been looked into. Erich Fromm, a member of the Frankfurt School, wrote a book called Escape From Freedom in which he details the investigation of the human condition and attempts to identify what human nature is and to what extent it is malleable. The idea that "human nature" is suited to our current mode of production is as he notes a little fallacy stretching back to Freud's time. The nature of humans is at least in part influenced by their environment. The mode of production we currently see (capitalism) is part of our environment. Are not changed men the product of changed circumstances? Perhaps Marx himself would agree with both you and I here: "The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice." — Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach, III" To "human nature" I say firmly: human society.
- ferongr 9y ago
  No true Scotsman?
  - ue_ 9y ago
    No, NTS applies to cases in which an additional qualifier is added to an object after a claim made by someone in order to disqualify that object from being a Scotsman. In this case, it is not the case - Communists of many stripes, even the some who follow Marxism-Leninism have been critical of the CPC and DPRK. Even the Maoists themselves disavow Chinese Communism after Deng's reforms. Left-communists have always been critical even during the Soviet Union's time. Socialist George Orwell was critical of the Soviet regime. Anarcho-Communist Kropotkin was critical of the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks were critical of the Bolsheviks, etc. The list goes on. In short, a great many Communists have not supported the Soviet CP nor the Chinese state, from their inception all the way to now. I've yet to see any evidence of an NTS fallacy.
- meric 9y ago
  The land distribution and collectivisation I think we're communistic - you're right it's very early on. I think the Khmer Rouge were communistic too - everyone became a farmer. The city people can't farm properly and died.
  - etplayer 9y ago
    That said, there are modern Communist projects which rely not at all on agrarian population; they believe that education should be tailored to fit the current mode of production; for a view on this, you may be interested in Paul W. Cockshott's Towards a New Socialism in which he elaborates what a society might look like under lower-stage Communism and what methods can be used to get there, and how an economy might be organised. Communism is nothing about farming or peasantry - this was largely a Leninist invention to apply to the feudal society of pre-revolutionary Russia, and strengthened by Mao Tse-tung in the Chinese revolution. Marx, to my knowledge, had no support for the idea, nor did his contemporaries or predecessors.
    - alphaalpha101 9y ago
      And of course it makes sense in context. ('It' being changing an agrarian capitalist society to an agrarian communist society - clearly the natural progression.)
ue_ 9y ago
>Remember this the next time that The Economist, Time magazine or New York Times tries to talk about "the wonders" of communism. Could it be that, if they talk in favour of it, they have a different idea of Communism to you? Modern Communist academics do, we must investigate the ontology of Communism; a good read on this is from Badiou, The Communist Hypothesis. Most modern academic Communists believe that we must search for what happened, how to prevent it and how to move past it, to say nothing of the various splinters and brothers in the Communist family tree - anarchism, Communailsm, democratic Socialism, etc. If you do reading on Communist literature since about 1950 you'll see they have occupied themselves with this investigation, the very one you are accusing them of ignoring.
saryant 9y ago
Since when has The Economist ever been pro-communist? They don't even like Piketty.

nickthemagicman 9y ago

Jesus that's so repressive. And I'm sure the laws are pretty subjective as well or at least not something the average chat admin is fully up to speed with. Essentially the outcome of this will be to kill chats or send it underground to tor or something.

marian0_ 9y ago
In Spain, you as a website admin can be found liable for unlawful messages left by your users too. So it's not like this is unexpectedly repressive for me. A verdict that shows so: http://www.asesoriayempresas.es/jurisprudencia/JURIDICO/195962/sentencia-ts-128-2013-sala-1-de-26-de-febrero-derecho-al-honor-comentarios-ofensivos-insertos http://www.asesoriayempresas.es/jurisprudencia/JURIDICO/1959...
- nawitus 9y ago
  Also true for Finland.
  - tobijkl 9y ago
    Also true for Germany.
    - Cyph0n 9y ago
      Also true for basically every Gulf country, but slightly more repressive.
- bsder 9y ago
  I presume that "unlawful" is a bit more circumscribed in Spain than in China. Taking the article's example, would you be liable for ranting about a drunk driving checkpoint being a shakedown?
- notgood 9y ago
  Not really, it says: "Conocimiento efectivo por la demandada del contenido de los comentarios alojados por terceras personas en su web. Remisión de fax en el que se advierte de la existencia de estas comunicaciones lesivas al honor del demandante: Al rehusar este fax la demandada incumple su deber de diligencia." Which translates: "Effective knowledge by the plaintiff of the stored messages by third-parties on his website. Fax receiving in which [the admin] was informed of the lascivious messages to the plaintiff. By refusing the FAX the defendant breaches his duty of diligence" So this case was about sexual comments against a specific person for which the owner of the site refused to delete such comments; so little to nothing to do with censoring messages against the state.

protomyth 9y ago

A man from Jieshou county of Anhui province was frustrated by traffic police, who had established a late night checkpoint for drunk driving. In a chat room that he created, he wrote: “Are they nuts? Checking in the rain? [They are] a bunch of assholes who just want money.” As the insulting comments created negative social impact within his circle, the man was detained for five days for picking a quarrel. At this point, it would seem the cost of running a chat room would be a bit too high if that's the punishment for "negative social impact" for the writer. I would expect the owner to be just as on the hook.

omarforgotpwd 9y ago

These laws are starting to appear now because for the first time AI and machine learning are making censorship at this scale economically feasible.

swsieber 9y ago
* making attempts of censorship at this scale successful. There will be false positives and negatives. Lots. But, this is a really good insight . Why play whack a mole when you have a mole recognition guided bazooka. No more moles.
- ethnic_throw 9y ago
  > There will be false positives and negatives. Lots. And as usual, the people who appear to be targetted with the laws (the four digital horsemen) will figure out simple workarounds, so the laws really only harm honest people.
roceasta 9y ago
Yes, feasible, but what makes large-scale censorship so apparently desirable, or at least so widely desired? The first obvious thought is that there are repressive governments around the world who wish to keep power. And this is true. But it can't be the whole explanation since plenty of relatively free western democracies and businesses are enthusiastically embracing censorship, laws about 'hate speech', and so on. My guess is that a clue lies in the censorship going on much closer to home, in our own minds. Thoughts which contradict our ideas about who we are and what we should do are suppressed all the time. They fail to reach the light of consciousness. In other words, like the individual mind, it seems the hive mind must eventually develop an ego.
- MarkPNeyer 9y ago
  I have noticed that any pattern i see in the large world, I also find reflected in my own mind. When i've found myself unhappy about some aspect of the broader world beyond my control, i've often been able to find the same pattern reflected in my own mindset, locally. Matrioshka dolls: http://markneyer.com/wp/?p=1078 http://markneyer.com/wp/?p=1078

brd 9y ago

The regulations also demand that all chat room users in mainland China verify their real identity... Effective 8 October, the following types of content will be prohibited in chat groups on China-based messaging platforms: 1. Sensitive political content 2. Rumors 3... Holy shit. What is this going to do to the Chinese tech scene? The liability being created here is crazy to consider. Lets all hope these practices aren't looked at as successful by other governments, I'd hate to see other countries following suit.

revelation 9y ago
It just means they can jail or shutdown who they want. Of course they could and have done that before, so really there is no change. Law isn't what paper says, but what the ruling party decides.
- chaostheory 9y ago
  It's also who your friends and family are in the CCP.
- adventured 9y ago
  > Of course they could and have done that before, so really there is no change. It's almost never about acquiring new power, they don't need that. It's about enforcing policy through a more specific enlightenment (ie don't do this, this isn't acceptable, etc). In other words, it's encouragement to aggressively keep with the line they've drawn. The party goals are dramatically easier to achieve/uphold if they have lots of lower level hands willingly helping.
- wallace_f 9y ago
  >Law isn't what paper says, but what the ruling party decides. Isn't this up for debate? On one hand, in SK a Samsung chief and heir and also former President are facing long prison sentences (some of the protests leading up to this were argued to be the largest peaceful protests in history, ever).* On the other, in the US a convicted paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, never spent a day in jail. He is a billionaire and very close friend of Bill Clinton's. I am interested in historically how well the rule of law in the US has or has not applied equally to all citizens? *I personally found it really strange this has gotten so little attention in Western media.

notgood 9y ago

There is fair amount of really smart people inside China (in tech scene and otherwise) that probably want out [of the country] but don't know a clear path for doing so, I think efforts should be made to that clear path; to work on companies outside China [where they don't fear for their life if someone made a anti-government comment on their site]. Due to censorship by the national dictatorship such online effort must be done using randomly generated domains (known by word of mouth), hard to censor texts (eg. text inside images that use weird fonts; as intro inside pirated comics/movies/videogames, private messages inside Alibaba and other platform that the Government won't shot down)

toronson 9y ago
There are also a fair amount of really smart people outside of China (in tech scene and otherwise) that want in [to the country]. Almost half the people I've met are trying to go to China to start one thing or another. I would say over a quarter of my Chinese American friends have moved to China to start a company, while an even larger portion fly back and forth quite often.

EGreg 9y ago

Makes me so happy to live in what is probably the country with the most freedom of speech. The USA may be behind other countries in some things but not freedom of speech! If you live in a country with such draconian (and increasing) measures, there is only one thing to do: Use encryption. If only a few people use it, then they are targeted. If merely 10% of people use an encrypted protocol, it may be blocked. But if EVERYONE uses it, it will be computationally infeasible to decrypt everyone's messages. And banning eg TLS or SSH would be very hard to do. In addition to this, DECENTRALIZE ALL THE THINGS. When there is no single server, there is nothing to shut down. There is no central owner to intimidate. People will have to go back to the bad old days of "tattle tales" and KGB spies among the regular people. And seriously, if democracy works at all in these countries, all lawful means must be taken to defend what is left of freedom of speech. Who are these people who are actually making these laws, anyway? Every time they break them, it should be publicized.

stevenwoo 9y ago
Laughing at a confirmation hearing is not protected speech. Though the article says what happened after she laughed is why she got convicted. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/us/code-pink-sessions-laughter-trial.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/us/code-pink-sessions-lau... I think even in the UK parliament the opposition makes fun of and laughs at each other without fear of prosecution.
- CrystalLangUser 9y ago
  It's not about laughing, it's about being disorderly. Has little to do with "free speech", stop click baiting.
  - alphaalpha101 9y ago
    It has everything to do with free speech. It wasn't about being 'disorderly', it was about laughing at a confirmation hearing being considered disorderly.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago

evolighting 9y ago

BUT，WE Chinese live a way far more free. There are laws but we don't care, we live as we wish and we don't need other's permission. However when it come to a group, or a company, you are right, there are laws just right for you.

cooper12 9y ago
How typical on HN for a Chinese perspective to be downvoted to the bottom of the thread while everyone else flagellates themselves for how "free" the USA is.

thewhitetulip 9y ago

India beat China in this. Since more than 1yr Whatsapp admins are responsible for posts in their groups.

indemnity 9y ago
Congratulations, I guess?
adrenalinelol 9y ago
"beat"? Is there a competition to become the most Orwellian state before the other?
- swimfar 9y ago
  You're reading too much into how he phrased it. He just means that it happened in India first.
- thewhitetulip 9y ago
  Of course there is. Here, in India, most people are blind fans of the PM and anything he does is acceptable. that includes the AG stating in the Supreme Court that "Indian citizens have no right to privacy and they are the property of the government of India" and the "bhakts" as they are called still are able to justify that!!
odiroot 9y ago
Whatsapp just doesn't work in China for a few months now. Problem solved.

Chiba-City 9y ago

Their bottom up innovation will come to a screeching halt. They will export more young utility focused entrepreneurs fed up and not wanting in to that domineering state whacking their friends. We had a different colonial trajectory, but our own McCarthy era had disastrous cascading outcomes. "Rights to be forgotten" is another peculiar notion popular in some TV propaganda driven Western countries loving makeovers. Keep on rocking in the free world while it lasts.

smegel 9y ago
Don't underestimate the nationalism of young Chinese. And I very much doubt the CP is going to go after administrators who on-the-whole moderate with a pro-Beijing slant because they took 5 minutes too many to delete a comment. Making assumptions that all young people hate the CP and would betray their country to the west at first opportunity sounds like one of those classic mistakes the West makes when it projects it's own sensibilities onto the world.
- prklmn 9y ago
  Most outsiders probably do not realize the impact of 24/7 propaganda in every media channel there is. That's what OP is overlooking, and that's ultimately what this action is ultimately about...
  - toronson 9y ago
    Seriously, most outsiders can't even see the propaganda in their own media. How do you expect them to see it in other countries? Chinese propaganda at the moment is really amateurish. Just wait until they learn from the best [1]. 1. Noam Chomsky - Manufacturing Consent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU
  - sametmax 9y ago
    Just like we underestimate our propaganda. When you are inside the soap bubble, it's very hard to realize how much our brain have been washed.

tushar-r 9y ago

Ah yes. India has this law as well. I am part of a whatsapp group from my old school. They decided to make all members administrators. Nice solution except that the person who implemented it is the one who sends most of the crackpot controversial messages. Planning to leave the group, especially since I dont really interact on it.

ttflee 9y ago

Rule of law v.s. rule by law

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Mithaldu 9y ago

I wonder what chat room means in this case. Does anyone in china use IRC?

Accacin 9y ago
I'm guessing WeChat groups.

zebraflask 9y ago

How many people live in China? Most news from China on this subject make me think of that Simpson's meme, you know the one: Old Man Yells at Cloud.

vit05 9y ago

And there was some news that Chinese would start trading crypto coins on telegram and other chat messengers. I believe that will be really hard now, too much risk.

ringaroundthetx 9y ago

expect some more WTFs over the next month, but then their congress will be all cushioned in again and none of this will matter

ihateneckbeards 9y ago

Be in western country Join a large WeChat group Offer to sell some drugs or talk about corruption of the party in the group Basically send any group manager to prison... Just from your couch!

mm4 9y ago

and all it takes to be in this thought prison is to be unlucky to be pushed out of your mothers vagina on that particular plot of land. even if you don't want to have anything with the gov that essentially owns you...

studentik 9y ago
Wouldn't it be possible to fix with educating mothers and fathers to choose birth rate wisely?