7 ms·
The Chinese get pissed off at political statements Americans find innocuous. Europeans are angry over the dominance of American tech companies which they are un
by knzhou 7y ago
The Chinese get pissed off at political statements Americans find innocuous. Europeans are angry over the dominance of American tech companies which they are unable to control. Americans are panicked at the very idea of anybody non-Western being associated with any technology they use, as we saw with FaceApp and 5G.
This was all inevitable, and it's going to lead to siloed-off, separate internets for every region in the world. I always find it amusing and a bit sad when people condemn the Great Firewall, and then immediately turn around and demand their country get one too. Neutrality is impossible; no platform can please everybody.
- Merrill 7y agoEvery large organization has firewalled its internet protocol networks for decades. It's incomprehensible why some thought nations wouldn't do so as well.
- mlyle 7y ago> Every large organization has firewalled The primary purpose of this is to enforce security for connections. Not every large organization employs content filtering, and those that do mostly only enforce a minimal standard of what is acceptable for work.
- Merrill 7y agoNot all subnets have Internet access, HTTPS is proxied for those that do, email attachments are scanned, and there is a large list of web sites to which access is blocked, likely including social networks like twitter and facebook. Depending on your employer, they may ask you to cease posting on social media when hired since they do not want to deal with employees causing controversy.
- mlyle 7y agoClearly filtering for security and workplace appropriateness is equivalent to filtering an entire country's discourse and media. /s
- mlyle 7y agoI don't think people want a Great Firewall. I just don't want economic power being concentrated by foreign states to suppress political speech here.
- knzhou 7y agoThis is exactly my point. You, an American citizen, call it "economic power being concentrated by foreign states". But Chinese citizens call it "ordinary people boycotting offensive speech". It's the NFL kneeling protests and boycotts again, except divided by country rather than by red/blue within the US. It's annoying to have people you don't know come in and tell you your speech is offensive, and if you want that to stop, then you want siloed national internets.
- guelo 7y agoNobody, including Chinese citizens thinks this is "ordinary people boycotting offensive speech", this is government action.
- knzhou 7y agoHow do you know? I see literally zero direct evidence for this in the linked post -- only that some people in China responded. Not everybody in China is working for the government. When analogous statements are found offensive in the US, US citizens, US tech companies, and the US media can act with astonishing speed and coordination to stamp them out. That doesn't mean that the US government is directing all of it.
- ookblah 7y agoThe Chinese consulate in Houston put out a statement condemning the tweet. You have a track record of China using the heavy hand to dictate the messaging of corporations and individual citizens. No coordinated message in China goes through without the explicit or implicit consent of the government, even if it starts "from the people". It's not hard to make the connection here.
- mcphage 7y ago> I always find it amusing and a bit sad when people condemn the Great Firewall, and then immediately turn around and demand their country get one too. That's not at all what people are asking for here.
- baq 7y agoas an European i'm mildly irritated with US companies and scared shitless of what the Chinese are doing.