12 ms·

This feels like affirmation of the Chinese Communist Party method of censorship unfortunately. I wouldn't be surprised to see more countries take this anecdata

by edrxty 5y ago

This feels like affirmation of the Chinese Communist Party method of censorship unfortunately. I wouldn't be surprised to see more countries take this anecdata and run with it.

anovikov 5y ago
Well, in China, everyone who desires uses normal internet through steno/obfuscation. We just don't know about it because their external IPs are of course, outside China. One guy i know ran a marketing study for his idea of a new obfuscation tool for Chinese and found out there was no (paying) market - they all figured it a long time ago for free.
- goblin89 5y ago
  The result of successful propaganda and tech protectionism is that not that many regular people in China, apart from the “techies”, even desire to access the outside Internet. And, of course, paying for any related service or product means leaving an identifying trace, which is a recipe to being noticed—you don’t want your social karma to tank because you decided to access information not approved by the party.
  - anovikov 5y ago
    How relevant are "regular people", in any society? They are just noise anyway.
jollybean 5y ago
The CCP policy should be considered 'Thought Control' where censorship is just one control vector. It's not enough to get rid of things they don't want you exposed to, it's that societal norms for what is considered normative and taboo have to be strictly controlled. Some mention (as a commenter below) the fact 'Anyone can access outside withe a VPN! - but to some extent this is not the issue. It's probably just fine if a small portion of educated people can access Wikipedia. What matters is hard control of the critical mass of citizens. Admittedly, China would have to shut down specific access in the case of Twitter mobs etc. - they won't allow that 'easily with a VPN' etc.. If the average Chinese remains 'pragmatically loyal to the state' then it's a win. I think the most powerful part of that strategy is to infuse and conflate the CCP with 'China' itself and with ethnic Han Superiority itself as a defacto subtext. You can really influence people a lot if you can control most of what they see daily. If the 'Daily Propaganda' is good, i.e. doesn't look totally hypocritical even in the face of facts, then it will work. Of course it happens in America and other places to greater and lesser extent, but China has taken it to the next level. I fear that Cuba will not only take China's cue, but literally invite them in to help - and that this will spread.

by edrxty 5y ago

This feels like affirmation of the Chinese Communist Party method of censorship unfortunately. I wouldn't be surprised to see more countries take this anecdata and run with it.

anovikov 5y ago

Well, in China, everyone who desires uses normal internet through steno/obfuscation. We just don't know about it because their external IPs are of course, outside China. One guy i know ran a marketing study for his idea of a new obfuscation tool for Chinese and found out there was no (paying) market - they all figured it a long time ago for free.

goblin89 5y ago
The result of successful propaganda and tech protectionism is that not that many regular people in China, apart from the “techies”, even desire to access the outside Internet. And, of course, paying for any related service or product means leaving an identifying trace, which is a recipe to being noticed—you don’t want your social karma to tank because you decided to access information not approved by the party.
- anovikov 5y ago
  How relevant are "regular people", in any society? They are just noise anyway.

jollybean 5y ago

The CCP policy should be considered 'Thought Control' where censorship is just one control vector. It's not enough to get rid of things they don't want you exposed to, it's that societal norms for what is considered normative and taboo have to be strictly controlled. Some mention (as a commenter below) the fact 'Anyone can access outside withe a VPN! - but to some extent this is not the issue. It's probably just fine if a small portion of educated people can access Wikipedia. What matters is hard control of the critical mass of citizens. Admittedly, China would have to shut down specific access in the case of Twitter mobs etc. - they won't allow that 'easily with a VPN' etc.. If the average Chinese remains 'pragmatically loyal to the state' then it's a win. I think the most powerful part of that strategy is to infuse and conflate the CCP with 'China' itself and with ethnic Han Superiority itself as a defacto subtext. You can really influence people a lot if you can control most of what they see daily. If the 'Daily Propaganda' is good, i.e. doesn't look totally hypocritical even in the face of facts, then it will work. Of course it happens in America and other places to greater and lesser extent, but China has taken it to the next level. I fear that Cuba will not only take China's cue, but literally invite them in to help - and that this will spread.