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No surprise that countries with the most oppressive internet surveillance and censorship also rank highly in self reported satisfaction. Chinese citizens probab

by ciguy 8y ago

No surprise that countries with the most oppressive internet surveillance and censorship also rank highly in self reported satisfaction. Chinese citizens probably got a boost to their social credit score for answering positively on this survey. I was just in Beijing and Shanghai for a few weeks and almost everyone I talked to in private admitted that they expect an economic crash in the near future. So this survey is essentially useless for countries where privacy on the internet is not expected and dissent is punished.

shanghaiaway 8y ago
Being a tourist is far from being an authority on a culture
- ciguy 8y ago
  When did I ever claim to be an authority on anything? I'm making the observation that citizens who know they're being surveilled online are unlikely to respond to this type of poll negatively, affecting the accuracy of the results. I threw an interesting personal anecdote in there as an example but at no time did I make an authority claim. So I don't know what your point is.
  - zachguo 8y ago
    He/she is trying to point out your hasty assumption that Chinese people share the same societal and cultural values as you. In reality they may not care much about surveillance and censorship at all.
    - pseudalopex 8y ago
      Whether someone likes surveillance is one question. Whether it discourages them from expressing certain opinions is another.
    - ciguy 8y ago
      When did I ever say that the Chinese cared about censorship or surveillance? I know you think you're culturally enlightened by bringing up this tired argument. You're not. Anyone who's been to China knows that the average person in China doesn't particularly care about privacy, we're not arguing that here. What I'm saying is that regardless of whether someone cars about it, it does affect their behavior.
tluyben2 8y ago
> almost everyone I talked to in private admitted that they expect an economic crash in the near future That is currently the same in every country I talked to citizens. Not a very good way of measuring. Your observations about China might very well be correct, but this is not an interesting point imho. When I speak to my friends in China they worry about the economy but they do actually believe their country is going in the right direction generally. Ofcourse my sample of the populous is limited: I speak to tech people only, but they do not care about the things you or I think they care or should care about. They are content with the way it is going.
- thatoneuser 8y ago
  There’s no way you can look at the social credit shit they have going on and say “uh yeah everything looks fine!” People in cults also say they’re doing fine...
  - mdpye 8y ago
    That's the whole point of the survey, as I read it. You can't look at it and say it's fine, but they do. That is important to understand. As a counterpoint, the US polls the lowest concern in the world for poverty and inequality. Yet there's no way in my mind you can look at inequality in the states and say "yeah, that's fine", but over 4 in 5 Americans polled said exactly that.
    - ciguy 8y ago
      Of course they say that it's fine. You would too if you could be punished by your government for saying otherwise.
      - yorwba 8y ago
        How would the US government punish someone who complains about poverty and inequality in the states?
        8y ago
bjourne 8y ago
> No surprise that countries with the most oppressive internet surveillance and censorship also rank highly in self reported satisfaction. Chinese citizens probably got a boost to their social credit score for answering positively on this survey. How would the Chinese government determine what citizens vote on in anonymous internet polls? Supposedly, Ipsos Online Panel uses https connections and encrypts them using tls. More importantly, does Chinese citizens believe what they vote on in anonymous surveys affects their credit scores?
- pergadad 8y ago
  It doesn't matter whether the government is able to do so, more important is whether citizens have a reasonable expectation that the government can and does do so.
wenc 8y ago
There are techniques to ask sensitive questions on a survey without implicating individual respondents and still obtain useful answers on the aggregate [1]. I can only imagine Ipsos, being a survey firm, would have used some of these techniques. I would be careful about generalizing from anecdata. Unless the people you talk to come from every strata in society and your sample is representative, your conclusion may be prone to sample bias. [1] https://imai.fas.harvard.edu/talk/files/PolMeth10.pdf https://imai.fas.harvard.edu/talk/files/PolMeth10.pdf
- pergadad 8y ago
  Whether there are techniques is irrelevant, whether people trust that they'll not face consequences due to their answer is much more important. You can reassure them as much as you want - who really would want to risk real-world consequences for a random survey? Alternatively there might be somewhere in the fine print how Chinese participants were invited/selected - it wouldn't be the first such data where PRC manages to manipulate the sampled group to get a positive result (see eg PISA).
  - wenc 8y ago
    > who really would want to risk real-world consequences for a random survey? Why not? We don't know the baseline behavior and expectations of the respondents. I think we differ on where our subjective Bayesian priors are situated. I'm more at the 50/50 mark in that I think the results could be biased but at the same time, there's no necessity that they must be. Whereas most people on this thread automatically assume a priori that the survey results surely are biased, because China.
- gruez 8y ago
  >I can only imagine Ipsos, being a survey firm, would have used some of these techniques. You're giving them too much credit. Unless this was explicitly mentioned in the methodology (there's a methodology section at the end, and it's not there), I'm going to assume that the questions were directly asked.
grecy 8y ago
> No surprise that countries with the most oppressive internet surveillance and censorship also rank highly in self reported satisfaction You can look at other sources, like the "Global Livability Index" [1] - it's voted on by the residents of each city, and does a great job of ranking what it's actually like to live in various countries and cities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Ranking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Ranking
stevespang 8y ago
EXACTLY.
zachguo 8y ago
One may also conclude that not all the people around the world care about the things that Westerners care about. People are generally happy if they have growing wages and access to good infrastructure.
gastlygem 8y ago
Many Chinese people will respond with positive results knowing the survey is held by a foreign agency, not because they are being oppressed, but because they get suspicious and defensive when being asked, and they don't like to see their country "lose face". Also the majority of Chinese people do think China is on the right path, especially after seeing what's happening now in the US and Europe. An average Chinese person doesn't think about current oppressive scheme as "bad", because we've had worse no more than 2 generations ago. They may even think an authoritative regime is better than your democracy. Normally they don't feel oppressed in their daily life. The well educated, and those who have the privilege, opportunity, and capability to talk to a foreigner like you, have different opinions of course.

by ciguy 8y ago

shanghaiaway 8y ago

Being a tourist is far from being an authority on a culture

ciguy 8y ago
When did I ever claim to be an authority on anything? I'm making the observation that citizens who know they're being surveilled online are unlikely to respond to this type of poll negatively, affecting the accuracy of the results. I threw an interesting personal anecdote in there as an example but at no time did I make an authority claim. So I don't know what your point is.
- zachguo 8y ago
  He/she is trying to point out your hasty assumption that Chinese people share the same societal and cultural values as you. In reality they may not care much about surveillance and censorship at all.
  - pseudalopex 8y ago
    Whether someone likes surveillance is one question. Whether it discourages them from expressing certain opinions is another.
  - ciguy 8y ago
    When did I ever say that the Chinese cared about censorship or surveillance? I know you think you're culturally enlightened by bringing up this tired argument. You're not. Anyone who's been to China knows that the average person in China doesn't particularly care about privacy, we're not arguing that here. What I'm saying is that regardless of whether someone cars about it, it does affect their behavior.

tluyben2 8y ago

> almost everyone I talked to in private admitted that they expect an economic crash in the near future That is currently the same in every country I talked to citizens. Not a very good way of measuring. Your observations about China might very well be correct, but this is not an interesting point imho. When I speak to my friends in China they worry about the economy but they do actually believe their country is going in the right direction generally. Ofcourse my sample of the populous is limited: I speak to tech people only, but they do not care about the things you or I think they care or should care about. They are content with the way it is going.

thatoneuser 8y ago
There’s no way you can look at the social credit shit they have going on and say “uh yeah everything looks fine!” People in cults also say they’re doing fine...
- mdpye 8y ago
  That's the whole point of the survey, as I read it. You can't look at it and say it's fine, but they do. That is important to understand. As a counterpoint, the US polls the lowest concern in the world for poverty and inequality. Yet there's no way in my mind you can look at inequality in the states and say "yeah, that's fine", but over 4 in 5 Americans polled said exactly that.
  - ciguy 8y ago
    Of course they say that it's fine. You would too if you could be punished by your government for saying otherwise.
    - yorwba 8y ago
      How would the US government punish someone who complains about poverty and inequality in the states?
      - 8y ago

bjourne 8y ago

> No surprise that countries with the most oppressive internet surveillance and censorship also rank highly in self reported satisfaction. Chinese citizens probably got a boost to their social credit score for answering positively on this survey. How would the Chinese government determine what citizens vote on in anonymous internet polls? Supposedly, Ipsos Online Panel uses https connections and encrypts them using tls. More importantly, does Chinese citizens believe what they vote on in anonymous surveys affects their credit scores?

pergadad 8y ago
It doesn't matter whether the government is able to do so, more important is whether citizens have a reasonable expectation that the government can and does do so.

wenc 8y ago

There are techniques to ask sensitive questions on a survey without implicating individual respondents and still obtain useful answers on the aggregate [1]. I can only imagine Ipsos, being a survey firm, would have used some of these techniques. I would be careful about generalizing from anecdata. Unless the people you talk to come from every strata in society and your sample is representative, your conclusion may be prone to sample bias. [1] https://imai.fas.harvard.edu/talk/files/PolMeth10.pdf https://imai.fas.harvard.edu/talk/files/PolMeth10.pdf

pergadad 8y ago
Whether there are techniques is irrelevant, whether people trust that they'll not face consequences due to their answer is much more important. You can reassure them as much as you want - who really would want to risk real-world consequences for a random survey? Alternatively there might be somewhere in the fine print how Chinese participants were invited/selected - it wouldn't be the first such data where PRC manages to manipulate the sampled group to get a positive result (see eg PISA).
- wenc 8y ago
  > who really would want to risk real-world consequences for a random survey? Why not? We don't know the baseline behavior and expectations of the respondents. I think we differ on where our subjective Bayesian priors are situated. I'm more at the 50/50 mark in that I think the results could be biased but at the same time, there's no necessity that they must be. Whereas most people on this thread automatically assume a priori that the survey results surely are biased, because China.
gruez 8y ago
>I can only imagine Ipsos, being a survey firm, would have used some of these techniques. You're giving them too much credit. Unless this was explicitly mentioned in the methodology (there's a methodology section at the end, and it's not there), I'm going to assume that the questions were directly asked.

grecy 8y ago

> No surprise that countries with the most oppressive internet surveillance and censorship also rank highly in self reported satisfaction You can look at other sources, like the "Global Livability Index" [1] - it's voted on by the residents of each city, and does a great job of ranking what it's actually like to live in various countries and cities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Ranking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Ranking

stevespang 8y ago

EXACTLY.

zachguo 8y ago

One may also conclude that not all the people around the world care about the things that Westerners care about. People are generally happy if they have growing wages and access to good infrastructure.

gastlygem 8y ago

Many Chinese people will respond with positive results knowing the survey is held by a foreign agency, not because they are being oppressed, but because they get suspicious and defensive when being asked, and they don't like to see their country "lose face". Also the majority of Chinese people do think China is on the right path, especially after seeing what's happening now in the US and Europe. An average Chinese person doesn't think about current oppressive scheme as "bad", because we've had worse no more than 2 generations ago. They may even think an authoritative regime is better than your democracy. Normally they don't feel oppressed in their daily life. The well educated, and those who have the privilege, opportunity, and capability to talk to a foreigner like you, have different opinions of course.