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It 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 govern
by rsj_hn 5y ago
It 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.