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Surprise, Chinese websites enforce political censorship within China? I am not sure what is news here. Are we going to pretend the NSA doesn’t integrate with PR

Surprise, Chinese websites enforce political censorship within China? I am not sure what is news here. Are we going to pretend the NSA doesn’t integrate with PRISM to make lists of its own? Because they are beholden to the government, corporate control over the public square has us all fucked. Today people cheer Big Tech’s ability to censor distasteful politics from the public square. Tomorrow, when “content moderation” makes civil disobedience impossible to publicize, we will lament the lack of decentralized social media. In other words, centralized social media cements moves towards authoritarianism, but makes it very difficult to move back in the other direction, especially if attempted via the most tried and true methods in history. The revolution won’t be televised. You won’t find it on Twitter or Douyin either. So why did anyone expect anything different? Unless the people can take back control of the public square from the corporations, democracy will crack. Edit: consider responding with something coherent rather than downvoting and moving on

Dig1t 6y ago
The whataboutism WRT to the NSA detracts from the importance of the issue. > I am not sure what is news here. In fact, the Chinese government goes to great lengths to downplay and hide the extent of their censorship efforts, and it might actually be a surprise to some people. It is worthwhile discussing ALL forms of censorship, whether it be by the NSA, Beijing, or corporations. The only way we can deal with these issues is by discussing them at length and raising awareness.
- xvector 6y ago
  I agree. I added a bit describing how whining about government censorship is pointless so long as we support centralized social media, which is the real problem here. It is hypocritical for HN to cheer on censorship by Twitter and Big Tech while upvoting this article. The fundamental problem here, underlying both Chinese and American censorship/surveillance, is that we have willingly handed control of the public square over to an entity beholden to one that does not have our best interests in mind. So long as we let the public square rest in the hands of these entities, democracy will slowly slip from our hands, one ban and censor at a time. You can’t blame China or ByteDance or Twitter or the NSA for this sort of thing. The natural state of governments and corporations is vying for more power and wealth at all costs, democracy be damned. The blame rests on us, the people, for trusting corporations with our speech.

Dig1t 6y ago

The whataboutism WRT to the NSA detracts from the importance of the issue. > I am not sure what is news here. In fact, the Chinese government goes to great lengths to downplay and hide the extent of their censorship efforts, and it might actually be a surprise to some people. It is worthwhile discussing ALL forms of censorship, whether it be by the NSA, Beijing, or corporations. The only way we can deal with these issues is by discussing them at length and raising awareness.

xvector 6y ago
I agree. I added a bit describing how whining about government censorship is pointless so long as we support centralized social media, which is the real problem here. It is hypocritical for HN to cheer on censorship by Twitter and Big Tech while upvoting this article. The fundamental problem here, underlying both Chinese and American censorship/surveillance, is that we have willingly handed control of the public square over to an entity beholden to one that does not have our best interests in mind. So long as we let the public square rest in the hands of these entities, democracy will slowly slip from our hands, one ban and censor at a time. You can’t blame China or ByteDance or Twitter or the NSA for this sort of thing. The natural state of governments and corporations is vying for more power and wealth at all costs, democracy be damned. The blame rests on us, the people, for trusting corporations with our speech.