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I lived there, the US is MUCH different than China. start with the face scanning, and go from there. nowhere nearly as "free" there as it is here. I can blame

I lived there, the US is MUCH different than China. start with the face scanning, and go from there. nowhere nearly as "free" there as it is here. I can blame all the presidents I want for my misfortune, and don't have to go to jail.

iforgotpassword 9y ago
How long? 6 weeks? I lived there for quite a bit longer (years). What is even your point? Chinese people can also blame any president, Mao or the CCP without going to jail. It happens all the time in everyday conversation. If you post it online it will be deleted, but you certainly don't go to jail unless you do it on a daily basis and ignore multiple warnings by government officials. Sure, technically not as free as most places on this planet, I don't even question that: just go read my initial post again. The point is that it doesnt matter to 99.999% of people. It simply never interferes with everyday life. And I must say, during my time there I rarely felt unfree or oppressed by government. Obviously I needed VPN as a foreigner to access everyday stuff, but everything else was mostly minor annoyances, normal differences in culture or law. I find it odd you mention security cameras. I consider that primarily a privacy issue, but apart from that it's a bit ironic to bring this up post-snowden. The government tracking my online movement worries me much more than cameras in public. And how everyone uploads all their photos and life to big cloud providers that don't give access to their users' data to the NSA ever /s. China definitely does all this too, but in comparison the cameras are really just the icing on the cake. The US is careful to spy on their people unnoticed. China doesn't give a fuck.
- mr_spothawk 9y ago
  for years, same. so you remember registering your new apartment with the police every time you moved. you said "security cameras", not me. I said FACE SCANNING... which is explicitly for tracking your movement in meat-space, they already track your movement in fake-space. to your point about cloud providers, yes... an existential threat to privacy. > The US is careful to spy on their people unnoticed. China doesn't give a fuck. disgusting in both cases Edit to add: there are a lot of things about China that I really enjoyed. and in some ways, more real freedom... in the absence of enforcement. I went with broken ideals, and I'm sure I left with broken ideals... but they were at least better informed, if still broken, ideals. and the food was better than anything I have had before or since.

iforgotpassword 9y ago

How long? 6 weeks? I lived there for quite a bit longer (years). What is even your point? Chinese people can also blame any president, Mao or the CCP without going to jail. It happens all the time in everyday conversation. If you post it online it will be deleted, but you certainly don't go to jail unless you do it on a daily basis and ignore multiple warnings by government officials. Sure, technically not as free as most places on this planet, I don't even question that: just go read my initial post again. The point is that it doesnt matter to 99.999% of people. It simply never interferes with everyday life. And I must say, during my time there I rarely felt unfree or oppressed by government. Obviously I needed VPN as a foreigner to access everyday stuff, but everything else was mostly minor annoyances, normal differences in culture or law. I find it odd you mention security cameras. I consider that primarily a privacy issue, but apart from that it's a bit ironic to bring this up post-snowden. The government tracking my online movement worries me much more than cameras in public. And how everyone uploads all their photos and life to big cloud providers that don't give access to their users' data to the NSA ever /s. China definitely does all this too, but in comparison the cameras are really just the icing on the cake. The US is careful to spy on their people unnoticed. China doesn't give a fuck.

mr_spothawk 9y ago
for years, same. so you remember registering your new apartment with the police every time you moved. you said "security cameras", not me. I said FACE SCANNING... which is explicitly for tracking your movement in meat-space, they already track your movement in fake-space. to your point about cloud providers, yes... an existential threat to privacy. > The US is careful to spy on their people unnoticed. China doesn't give a fuck. disgusting in both cases Edit to add: there are a lot of things about China that I really enjoyed. and in some ways, more real freedom... in the absence of enforcement. I went with broken ideals, and I'm sure I left with broken ideals... but they were at least better informed, if still broken, ideals. and the food was better than anything I have had before or since.