China's President Xi says internet control key to stability

[Coombs]

That son of a bitch!

Looks over at twitter trolls, tumblr, Facebook fake news propagation, and all the other cesspools online.

...

The mother fucker got a point.

[Puupi]

He isn't wrong.

Free and open internet is probably the biggest destabilizer in the world right now.

The freedom of information and exchange of opinions (+ internet being the biggest propaganda outlet) does come at a price.

[Aggrophobic]

Dictators will say that. The guy is a danger and should be removed.

[Linkedblade]

unfortunately he is very correct.

The internet has done irreversible damage to our society and culture. Our children are stupid and more reckless, attention spans have dwindled, and it has become a platform for crime, exploitation and scams to thrive on.

Good job China. I'm glad you see reason.

Replace the weird internet with any innovative media or toy since the dawn of time and you will have an equally valid statement.

[Mormolyce]

Oppressive regimes seek to control the discussion in order to retain power. Exactly what Putin's been working so hard at.

What's funny is the bolded parts in the OP could have been spoken by any of the leftist anti-free speech progressives from the West. "In the interests of diversity and multiculturalism and maintaining stability amongst the masses you can't say this and you can't post that!". Maybe Antifa should spend some time in China, to see what they are fighting for, to see what they want the West to become.

Posts in a thread about China's internet policy, still somehow makes it about Antifa.

Why don't you go marry Antifa, if you love it so much?

[Mormolyce]

Thing is though, if antifa are successful in their aims, torto and his ilk will be a thing of the past. Poor little torto is no doubt shitting himself.

Almost enough to make me wish they existed.

[Kokolums]

Nobody knows what they are doing.

[Deleted]

They say 50% of China's 1.3 billion citizens have internet access.

That's a LOT, in Europe it's far lower than 50%.

[Puupi]

That's a LOT, in Europe it's far lower than 50%.

Any other numbers you want to pull out of your ass?

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statist...nd_individuals

"In 2016, 85 % of European households had access to the internet from home. This share has been gradually increasing since 2007, when only 55 % of households had access to the internet "

[The Stormbringer]

lol voted, i dont much voting went on when that happened.

They claimed it did.

[Torto]

Posts in a thread about China's internet policy, still somehow makes it about Antifa.

Why don't you go marry Antifa, if you love it so much?

lol that was mature. You're still boring tho...

[Strawberry]

I'm of two minds on this. As an ideal, a free exchange of ideas sounds good, but recent events may cast a shadow on that ideal. Our "free" exchanges have become a battleground, where companies and governments may be increasingly acting to channel those discussions towards fixed targets. In the US we are currently looking for a way to deal with these trends as Zuckerberg testifies before Congress. The points this article quotes are in line with such concerns:



Nobody cares if you shout "fire" in the middle of a forest. If you do the same in a largely empty public space, the damage will probably be limited. If, however, you want to yell "fire" in a crowded theater, you've crossed the line for protected speech. China, with a population that gets reported somewhere between 1.3 to 1.6 billion (there are disputes about the extent of the unregistered population), is the equivalent of a crowded theater. New York is populous, so is London, and Beijing is larger than the two combined. There aren't just a lot of people here, there are a lot of people in close quarters.

I would love for my students to be able to access things like lectures on Youtube more easily ("Teacher, you're old fashioned, we can all get that.") but I'm less keen on groups like Eastern Lightning using the Internet to farm members. The potential for harm is probably much greater here, but consider this fairly current thread as an example of how the free exchange of ideas can go wrong: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...Mosque-Shooter Eastern Lightning has been estimated to have a membership in the millions despite existing laws. If you have an interest in history, look back at the Taiping Rebellion and consider the similarities. Are these simply nice people being maligned by the government? Perhaps, but the Zhaoyuan McDonald's murder makes me think otherwise. That's just one example of the struggle over the Internet here.

In the long run, I think that these articles are right to question changes, but they also seem to fail to take into account the Chinese themselves. Chinese have relatives abroad, they travel abroad, they also have friends and family that work abroad and may have taken up residency overseas. Their kids go overseas to study, they often have extensive training from foreign teachers here in China, and there are a growing number of foreign tourists, employees, and students here. I think that the access Chinese have to outside influences tends to get underestimated.

I hear what you're trying to say, but robbing people of their freedom of choice is fundamentally wrong.
It's like putting everyone in a huge jail and telling them what they can or can not do.
If Chinese people rebell against the government thanks to no internet regulation, then that government is shit and should be replaced. Robbing people of their basic rights doesn't make it better. China has it so wrong and I hope for this very reason that they do not grow stronger than the rest of the world.
With this type of regulation, a government becomes oppresive. And no leader should lead for life. Xi should be replaced with someone younger and modern.

I'm following closely the latest North Korea news. What is very interested to me is that they opened more to the west, South Korea and the US instead of China. They had a somewhat close connection to China, and could've stayed the way they are, but they changed. I wonder why.
I think this change is a lot more imporant in the longer run than people think. Maybe things are about to change big time in E/NE Asia in the next 2-10 years.

[Deleted]

stability seems to mean the plundering of assets by the few at the expense of the many (and the planet) globally. Fuck stability.

[shadowmouse]

but robbing people of their freedom of choice is fundamentally wrong.

I'd assert that's an illusion from the very start and colored by your language choice. You desire a certain outcome, so you have used the word "rob" without building a preliminary case that it is robbery rather than an expression of choice.

The freedom of choice you mention is at best an illusion. When examined closely, you'll find limits on your choices abound. I want to crank my music up, I get told to turn it down and may face legal penalties if I do not. I would like to board an airplane without having my genitals groped by people who haven't even offered to buy me a drink, but if I don't comply I may face legal penalties. Maybe I want to see what happens if I yell fire in a crowded theater, people have changed their behavior over the years and safety has improved, the result might merely be chaos suitable to uploading as a video prank -- but it seems I would still face legal penalties if I embark on this experiment. I used to drive safely on the Autobahn without a fixed speed limit, why can't I choose to do that tomorrow in some other country? I can probably fill this out beyond the wall o'text point and still have material left, but I think you get the point.

You have used the word "rob" without building a preliminary case that it is robbery rather than an expression of choice. Imagine that bungee posts mentioning Youtube is blocked by the Great Firewall. You know what happens? Someone will wonder why I'm still living in the dark ages and haven't discovered VPNs. As I mentioned in my first post, my students find it quaint that I don't use one. If I choose to use a less effective firewall or antivirus program because I don't want to pay a fee, why is that not robbing me of my choice to browse safely? If it isn't robbery, if it is a choice I make as a consumer, why isn't using a VPN subject to the same standard?

That person who is getting paid to grope my genitals but who is far less cute than #87 at the spa would seem to rob me of my choice in who does the groping and how my genitals get fondled. Does it though? I could choose the relative inconvenience of traveling by train, but or automobile instead. Similarly, I don't really like the direction many things have gone in the US. It is my choice, I don't live there and hundreds of my former students now do not live here. Again, that was a choice.

Probably wherever governments exist there will come a time when the people of that political unit say some version of "there ought to be a law against that". For some, that comes as part of an expectation that government should protect the health and safety of the people. Others will have their own ideas about such things. That difference does not automatically make a rule robbery or oppression, particularly when legal process has been observed.

No leader should lead for life? Care to support that instead of just making another blanket statement? I hear that Queen Elizabeth has been ruling for a few years and neither she nor her eventual successor face term limits. Wasn't it Queen Beatrix who chose to step down from her throne recently? Was that because of term limits?

As for the assertion that somehow a younger leader would be better, you're just being ageist. Take that up with the US, there's a country with a leader that has been speculated to have possible issues related to aging. Why did I call your comment ageist? Genetics and upbringing may contribute to intelligence, education may give knowledge, but experience is won with the passage of years. To call for "younger" without making a case for how that would be better than experience just plays on a prejudice.

Now, I'm going to go out and oppress youth. I will pass through a security check at the subway, where my genitals will not be groped. As part of my oppression I may tell my students to put their phones down and pay attention. This displays my senility, my oppressive instincts, and of course plays right into restricting their choice to access the Internet instead of hanging on my every word. I, of course, am also being repressed through the expectation that I should earn an income and pay for goods and services.

Or, perhaps I am making the choice not hail a car or ride the bus. I may be choosing to teach instead of going to Cambodia to sit on a beach and drink beer while ogling beach bunnies. I could even be preparing another new crop of students to study overseas and perhaps make their own choices for where and how to live. Maybe it just depends on how one looks at those matters.

[Independent voter]

Banned internet meme in China. The ban of this image was pretty much at the same time that President Xi declared himself President for Life.

Chinese people thought he looked like Winni the Pooh.



If the government catches you posting this meme you go to jail.

[Deleted]

Not referring to authoritarian control - anyone who things preventing paedophilia is authoritarian have a screw loose.

I'm referring to sensible rational control.



Australia is a good example of common sense control - they don't allow mixing of sex and violence in video games.

Yes let's censor entertainment and art. That's a solid plan. I find something distasteful even when it does no harm so it shouldn't be allowed. /s.

Want to prevent peadophilla on the internet, simple teach your children how to be safe in the internet.

[Katie N]

I hear what you're trying to say, but robbing people of their freedom of choice is fundamentally wrong.
It's like putting everyone in a huge jail and telling them what they can or can not do.
If Chinese people rebell against the government thanks to no internet regulation, then that government is shit and should be replaced. Robbing people of their basic rights doesn't make it better. China has it so wrong and I hope for this very reason that they do not grow stronger than the rest of the world.
With this type of regulation, a government becomes oppresive. And no leader should lead for life. Xi should be replaced with someone younger and modern.

I'm following closely the latest North Korea news. What is very interested to me is that they opened more to the west, South Korea and the US instead of China. They had a somewhat close connection to China, and could've stayed the way they are, but they changed. I wonder why.
I think this change is a lot more imporant in the longer run than people think. Maybe things are about to change big time in E/NE Asia in the next 2-10 years.

I don't think it is favorable to have every country be a carbon copy of western countries because people from western world think countries should be ruled the way they think.

[Macaquerie]

I don't think it is favorable to have every country be a carbon copy of western countries because people from western world think countries should be ruled the way they think.

The thing is, China already is copying all the worst aspects of Western culture - greed, militarism, the careless disregard for the environment, but somehow managed to skip over all the good bits.

[Natta Lmo]

he is right, if people spread lies or recruit people to extremist groups it is a threat to a stable society

- - - Updated - - -

The main risk is that of many overly oppressive, crappy governments: People that get out of this environment and experience what it's like without the oppression may return and alert their friends and family. Not as efficiently, of course, but we were able to get the word out before such things were invented.

They can respond by gripping tighter and tighter with that iron fist, but that only breeds more and more disapproval of the government.

It's the social control mechanism that they're pushing with the "good citizen credit" that's truly terrifying, as that could potentially accomplish all the control with far less of the societal unrest as the people more or less control each other's deviant behavior. But even that requires people like the system. If the unrest becomes targeted at the system, people will gleefully circumvent it and help others to do so as well. Or perhaps hack it to artificially alter each other's scores. Even that "ace in the hole" idea has the potential to fail.

lol... do u think chinese people dont know the world? there are a lot of chinese tourists who visit my country every year and other countries... many chinese who have moved to other countries too

[Machismo]

President Xi also happens to be an authoritarian dictator... so he may not be the most ideal role model. It's an attempt to silence speech, privacy, and expression. Yeah, no thanks.