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Facebook Blocks Chinese Billionaire Who Tells Tales of Corruption
- chj 9y agoIf Guo's breaking law, then let him be sued, and actually he's doing these things to try to get sued. Guo is backed up with a legal team, and is hoping to expose more in court. It's disappointing to see FB taking side with the most powerful government (ironically, which is already blocking its service) during this historical event.
- HashThis 9y agoWe need facebook to respond to this. Does he include someone's email or phone number? Or is simply referring to people's names a problem. If it is only referring to people's names to get banned, then that is horrible of facebook to do.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- CodeWriter23 9y agoI can’t confirm for you how I know this but I know merely mentioning someone’s name and associating their name with something that can be construed as harassment, combined with use of the Report button is enough to trigger Facebook Jail for the poster/commenter.
- bm1362 9y agoI was at SoundCloud briefly and an interview with this guy was posted on Ming Jing radio. We were DDOS’ed and eventually had to take his profile offline as well due to the volume of requests. At the same time, I remember Googling his name and found his FB and Twitter accounts were disabled too. I brought up the optics of blocking him in a MingJing slack channel but at the time there wasn’t another way to mitigate the traffic. I imagine this is due to the same pressure. Maybe not, though. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/world/asia/guo-wengui-chinese-billionaire-twitter.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/world/asia/guo-wengui-... https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/04/21/wanted-billionaire-guo-wengui-beijing-pressured-us-broadcaster-voa-cut-interview/ https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/04/21/wanted-billionaire-guo...
- codegladiator 9y agoAlso: http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/facebook-fascism-man-posts-kamal-ka-phool-hamari-bhool-gets-blocked-for-30-days/story-mxVtCEYoabUX3lW1ihxc3N.html http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/facebook-fascism-ma... TLDR: social networking site blocked his account for 30 days after he posted ‘Kamal ka phool hamari bhool’ (Our mistake, the lotus) with a photo on his page. (lotus is the political symbol of the current government in power, BJP)
- eklavya 9y agoDoesn't match my experience. I have been seeing a flood of anti BJP posts on social media and nobody's getting banned. It's like the opposition is just waking up to the social media outreach reality :P (a welcome change perhaps).
- thewhitetulip 9y agoDo you post publicly or privately? This is happening increasingly for public posts
- asdfologist 9y agoDoes FB have any incentive to bend to the will of the Chinese government? They're already banned in China.
- micaksica 9y agoFacebook has been making a lot of overtures to appease the Chinese government as of late. This is likely just another one. FB knows damn well you don't break into China without playing Chinese ball and they seem A-OK with doing so in the name of connecting the world. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/technology/facebook-government-regulations.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/technology/facebook-gover... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/facebook-china-shanghai-office.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/facebook-china... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/technology/facebook-china-moments-colorful-balloons.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/technology/facebook-china...
- ithinkinstereo 9y agoAs with India, FB sees China as huge potential market and has been shamelessly courting the PRC government for years now. Zuck even asked President Xi to name his child on a state visit to the USA a couple of years ago (naming children is a big deal in Chinese culture and Xi - who was visibly surprised by the request - politely declined).
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoI posted before, but Zuck isn't Chinese and he isn't exactly a social butterfly in the USA either. This was probably just some awkward smalltalk, where Zuck was looking for suggestions for the kid's Chinese name (they definitely didn't ask him to pick out the kid's actual English name). Not weird if you don't understand hypersensitive Chinese culture.
- LeoNatan25 9y agoIt's pathetic is what it is. I've read he's also studying Chinese. It's really really pathetic, and if such tactics influence the Chinese administration—and we know that they do from Hollywood sucking up to China in recent years in the most abhorrent of ways—Chinese administration is pathetic as well.
- bilbo0s 9y agoI guess I'd like to know how accusations of criminal conduct are normally handled by facebook? Suppose a user starts posting, all over facebook, posts that accuse a certain male of sex crimes, or... say... pedophilia. Further, this person names this male explicitly. Suppose further, the male has not been charged with any such crime. (Indeed, for all the users in his social circle know, he may not even be a suspect. He could even be completely innocent.) What is the normal course of action that facebook would take in such cases? Are the posts taken down? Is the poster warned? Does nothing at all usually happen? (That is, can a user normally make accusations of sex crimes or pedophilia without restraint?) What, exactly, happens in most cases of posts containing accusations of some form of CLEARLY criminal activity? It seems to me that whatever happens in the proverbial "girl claims a guy is a rapist to their social circle" case, should probably happen here. I think their policy should be consistent, to the extent that is possible.
- rtpg 9y agoThough you're not explicit, I bet everyone reads this as "Facebook doesn't handle false rape claims equally", though you've provided no evidence of this. Instead just relying on "internet tropes" and people will end up filling in the blanks. Not to mention that the article itself says that someone's PII was posted (presumably without consent). I don't know what it was, but it could easily have been some person's phone numbers with a call to action to harass them. That sort of stuff _does_ get taken down by Facebook. Sometimes things get out of hand, but it's usually one "report content" click away from getting removed. Maybe you honestly don't know FB's policies here, but posting this sort of comment basically reads as an accusation.
- tudorconstantin 9y agoThis is not a very smart positioning for fb. They decided to play an active role in this dispute and take the side of the oppressing state. We don't know the whole story, the chinese billionaire could also have a hidden agenda and try to get rid of political adversaries by inventing corruption stories and spreading fake news. So taking his side wouldn't have been wise either. Facebook should've thought "not my circus, not my monkey" and ignore all of this, letting them solve their issues using the legal system. Why would anyone use facebook now to communicate anything more than some cheap stories and cute cat photos?
- usaphp 9y ago> Why would anyone use facebook now to communicate anything more than some cheap stories and cute cat photos? Did anyone ever use Facebook for more serious stuff anyway?
- rqs 9y agoPretending to be happy in front of friends? That's some serious stuff for a lots of people. LOL
- hutattedonmyarm 9y agoThere are plenty of (mainly) bars/restaurants in my area with their facebook page as only online presence. Some have a Twitter and/or Instagram account too, but you get the point
- paulie_a 9y agoSadly yes. A lot of people communicate exclusively through FB. I have been recently confronted several times recently for not noticing a post. It's weird
- opportune 9y agoYou know how when you go to a website, even one you'd never share, you'll get a prompt to like/share the page or its contents on Facebook? Every time that Facebook widget gets loaded, Facebook receives information about your browser/operating system/etc. that it uses to create a fingerprint that it checks against your previous history. You'll also get a cookie (which you essentially have to opt-out of) to better help Facebook track your browsing without needing the fingerprint. So many websites put up that little like button that Facebook's reach extends well beyond what users upload directly to their website. Facebook's strength is that is can combine your demographic data with your network AND your internet habits. Facebook, in countries where it's not blocked, will even build profiles on people that have not signed up for facebook directly, for example if your friend uploads a photo of the two of you with your name. And Facebook advertises to these people as well. So I think whatever isn't "more serious" that you do on Facebook is probably more serious than you think. You either need to be hyper vigilant about JS/cookies or you need to not use the internet at all to be able to divorce your profile and all of its information from the rest of the information Facebook has from you browsing the web.
- rdtsc 9y agoI was kind of joking, but kind of not, when I said a few weeks back that eventually Google, Facebook and Twitter would start selling Silencing as a Service (SaaS). Whoever pays more gets to control the manufacture of consent -- all of the sudden those who like different brands, political candidates, who don't believe the correct things will simply get their accounts deactivated.
- tsunamifury 9y agoWhy would they sell it? That undermines the fundamentals of the product.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoBecause they actually can deliver on this, there are plenty of would-be buyers, and there's little regular folks can do about it. They know people won't stop using their services, because they're too critical in day-to-day lives.
- smsm42 9y agoFor Facebook, the users are not consumers, but the raw material. The advertisers are the consumers. Of course, Facebook won't want to lose the eyeballs, but the way most people use FB would almost not changed, maybe very slightly - so within a small margin, nobody would leave.
- smsm42 9y agoI'm pretty sure they already kinda started, only, like top-level credit cards, it's invite-only and not advertised, but done only for "special friends" on "special occasions". People with don't believe correct things have been losing accounts on Twitter and Facebook for quite some time already.
- wallace_f 9y agoYep. And the slippery slope argument is valid. Democracy is better served by strengthening voices of the people, rather than consolidating it in the hands corporate-governmemt elites in the name of fake news.
- tehwebguy 9y agoI never forgot about when Yahoo! helped China throw dissidents in prison. Won't forget this either.
- hud8 9y agoHow do you armchair Chinese experts know this guy isn't the Chinese version of Donald Trump who is being silenced before he does more damage. To me it just feels like the technocrat class of China that is a big part of the govt does what the technocrat class in the US is incapable off. Everyone is a hypocrite here. Not just FB.
- specialp 9y agoWell the American version of Donald Trump is not silenced as silencing people is not the American way. In short it doesn't matter who he is or what he does, we don't like big internet companies silencing people to appease censoring governments.
- coldtea 9y ago>as silencing people is not the American way. Except when it matters -- e.g. if they're whistleblowers, activists, people like Manning, Gary Webb, or heck, MLK, and so on -- all the way to McCarthy-ism and Hoover.
- eradicatethots 9y agoYou’re saying this like there is consensus that the President should’ve been silenced and disallowed from running... seems pretty ridiculous
- Canada 9y agoI learned of this man recently from several different Chinese people in China. All are quite interested in listening to what he has to say. Personally I have no idea how much, if any, of what he says is true, but even if he's lying that's not an acceptable reason to silence him. It is also quite a coincidence that efforts to block him have increased right before the big show in Beijing this month.
- yhylord 9y agoThis user registered earlier today and has only posted this. Must be tired after using your broken English just for getting your 50 cents.
- thewhitetulip 9y agoFacebook is becoming a censoring platform each day Just a few weeks ago they blocked a mutual friend if mine who posted anti govt stuff And they blocked a guy who shared a photo of a bill on which "Kamal ka ful hanari bhul" was printed (Lotus flower, our mistake as in electing BJP was our mistake) The guy who shared the oic was banned for 30 days
- Y_Y 9y agoA mutual friend? Of you and who else?
- thewhitetulip 9y agoWhat soet of question is this?
- netsharc 9y agoFucking amazing, huh... "Web 2.0" was supposed to be the democratisation of the web, that any user (not just big corps) can publish anything and be seen, but it seems to have morphed to a few bulletin boards controlled by corporations, where only mainstream opinions are welcome, and the rest gets taken down and the poster muted... To use the cliched Matrix quote, "What good is a phone call... if you're unable to speak?".
- pdimitar 9y ago> Facebook said the content on both pages had included someone else’s personal identifiable information, which violates its terms of service. Oh yeah, and in the meantime, if you forget to flick a switch -- which unsurprisingly is ON by default and is hard to find -- everybody and their dog can tag you in photos, even if it's not you. Which would either be slander or personal identification without your consent; pick one. They have no problem with that though.
- mcv 9y agoYeah, definitely sounds hypocritical from Facebook. I can imagine they were under pressure from China to block him and needed a good excuse.
- imaginenore 9y agoIsnt't Facebook already blocked in China?
- dawhizkid 9y agoThey are of course salivating at the possibility of (re)entering China. Anything to get on the good side of the Chinese gov't is very important if that's what they want.
- arghwhat 9y agoIf that switch sets the ability to tag you, then one could argue that the position of the switch indicates your consent. Of course, it should have been opt-in, not opt-out.
- Sacho 9y agoI looked through the settings and I couldn't find this switch. There doesn't appear to be any way to stop people from tagging you in photos. All you seem to have control over is your own timeline - whether people can add to it, and who can see stuff from it.
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- l5870uoo9y 9y agoFacebook's efforts will be in vain, because letting Facebook penetrate China — the way it has Europe — is a fundamental (geopolitical) security risk no matter how many concessions Facebook gives.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]