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Is it me or is this an extremely clumsy way of doing censorship? Why not do this at network or server-side level? Why not use some kind of hash (ala Apple'e pr
by throwaway4good 5y ago
Is it me or is this an extremely clumsy way of doing censorship?
Why not do this at network or server-side level? Why not use some kind of hash (ala Apple'e proposed child pornography hunter)?
In this design, everyone would have to have this plain text configuration file ... also other brands (Oppo, Huawei etc.) would have to have it. What if it needs an update? Suppose the hui muslims starts causing trouble ... Or if people starts using slang or deliberate misspelling ...
- ignoramous 5y agoI guess it comes down to, why bother when the simplest solution works? Make no mistake: As and when they get caught out doing such things, the sophistication of their implementation is bound to increase, in response to it. Money is no object for state-actors and mega-corps.
- rsj_hn 5y agoIt may not be a state actor. I am the last person to defend the CCP, but as the chinese phones are made by companies that have lots of reason to fear the government, this may be proactive censorship added by the vendor to avoid getting in trouble, and it might even have been accidentally left in foreign models. We don't know the full story yet.
- GauntletWizard 5y agoThere's really no difference between the state providing a blacklist, and the state inspiring enough terror that blacklists are compiled. Actually, there is - the latter is far scarier.
- lolthishuman 5y agoThis is interesting, and it seems like the same coin of censorship but the other side. Censoring or fear or censorship already changes behavior. We have the more apparent China example and more covert USA example but both modify behavior through fear. Yeesh.
- munk-a 5y agoI think the distinction between being compelled by the sword and compelled by fear of the sword is pretty meaningless here. Unless these companies are independently deciding to push this out due to some internal zealous managers that reject the general CCP platform I think it's pretty safe to lay the blame at the feed of the party. There's also all sorts of pretty reasonable whataboutism to be thrown about here but it's wrong either way.
- PeterisP 5y agoThis has some smell of a compliance issue. I.e. the company gets ordered to block stuff; the order states "this shall be blocked" and provides a list, and then the company does the simplest/cheapest way to comply which is literally checking for whatever was required by the order.
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago> ...and then the company does the simplest/cheapest way to comply which is literally checking for whatever was required by the order. An ironic form of chabuduo. https://www.chinaexpatsociety.com/culture/the-chabuduo-mindset https://www.chinaexpatsociety.com/culture/the-chabuduo-minds...
- jonny_eh 5y agoand then forgets to remove it from other markets.
- PontifexMinimus 5y ago> the sophistication of their implementation is bound to increase You're right about this, including with backdoors. Electronics from China must be treated as treacherous computing devices that obey the orders of the Chinese Communist Party. If the West was sensible, we simply wouldn't buy any electronics from them.
- paul7986 5y agoOr manufacturer any product from there...why does the world continue to be stupid on China and pump up their economy by having the majority of their goods manufactured there? Its going to continue to bite us and everyone in the butt.
- PontifexMinimus 5y ago> why does the world continue to be stupid on China and pump up their economy by having the majority of their goods manufactured there? Because big companies make lots of profits from it, I imagine. > Its going to continue to bite us and everyone in the butt. Yes, unless we change our ways.
- fmajid 5y agoBecause the supply chain for electronics manufacturing, and many other classes of products, is hard to replicate. Large multinational corporations would love to shift production to Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia or India, where labor is now cheaper than China, but there are logistics obstacles. Apple now manufactures some phones in India, but mostly older models.
- chrischen 5y agoMaybe it's a "privacy preserving" censorship mechanism.
- cheriot 5y agoCensorship in depth. local, network, and content host
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago> Why not do this at network or server-side level? China doesn’t control the network/servers in Lithuania and other countries. Doing it client-side gives them the power to extend their reach.
- slumpt_ 5y agoThis is really evil shit.
- ohmyzee 5y agoIt almost looks like they wanted to get caught.
- afroboy 5y agoThey are too powerful to give a damn, they looked at USA and their allies and how they overcome any evil thing they do just by being the strongest country and they said why we can't do the same?
- salawat 5y agoWould people stop calling attention to the fact censorship systems are inherently broken/trivially circumventable? Last thing we need is to trigger someone into making a better mousetrap.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwaway4good 5y agoAnd why does the code snippets seemingly refer to an advertising api?
- simonklitj 5y agoI’m assuming that’s an effort to mask the true intent.
- throwaway4good 5y agoOr the intent is something other than what the report assumes?
- throwaway4good 5y agoJust to be clear; the (incomplete) code snippets in the report have been through a code mangler. The only names readable are of the api that is actually used.
- sandworm101 5y agoAnother word for ad is promotion. These sites promote certain groups. The censor believes they profit from this activity. It is not unreasonable for such a censor to understand them as illegal ads.
- est 5y ago> Is it me or is this an extremely clumsy way of doing censorship? yeah it's literally called MiAdBlacklistConfig, to stop certain ads from displaying in the browser. So it's developed by the AD department. What do you think.
- throwaway4good 5y agoYeah. It looks more like some sort of advertisement blacklist and not the broad censorship mechanism it is being interpreted as. Could really be interesting to see the full list of words.