China’s firewall plays a crucial role in shaping the country’s digital landscape, preventing foreign intervention, and maintaining national security. While often criticized in the West, the firewall provides China with the ability to control information flow, shield its population from foreign influence, and protect domestic media.

  • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
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    3 months ago

    People when talking about EU banning US social media and fostering domestically-based networks: hell yeah 😎😎😎

    When China does it: evil commies! Brainwashed! Chinese people are too stupid to see they’re being manipulated!

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Oh shit this blew up, lol. Haven’t seen the video, but protectionism is necessary if you want to develop your own industry and not have it undermined by a country that has hegemonic control over said industry, so control on the internet is a good thing. Same with not allowing said hostile foreign actors to sow dissent unrestricted.

  • jaxxed@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    I see non-Chinese criticism of the Chinese controlled internet centered more around control of domestic information than I do about preventing the foreign garbage. We hear a lot about Chinese netizens having ing to use coded language to discuss topics like criticism of leadership, or concern about social issues, or their contributions as will be removed.

    Western internet is full of crap, and manipulation, but you won’t get censored for criticising the Government… I guess unless you are an American criticizing Israel (which is a newer thing, really.)

    • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      but you won’t get censored for criticising the Government…

      You absolutely will. The fact that the censership will be carried through the proxy of a private media conglomerate doesn’t change the end result.

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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      3 months ago

      but you won’t get censored for criticising the Government… I guess unless you are an American criticizing Israel

      Or if you are a British journalist speaking out against genocide, in which case you get arrested on terrorism charges

      Or if you are in Germany and hold a conference discussing said genocide, in which case the police raids you and shuts you down

      Or if you are a European journalist documenting an inconvenient truth from the “wrong side”, in which case you get your bank account seized and face criminal charges and are banned from entering the EU

      Or if you are in the Baltics celebrating Europe’s victory over the Nazis and singing songs the government doesn’t like, in which case you get arrested, fined and possibly jailed

      Freedom of speech in the West amounts to you being free to shout into the void, and only so long as it doesn’t change anything or threaten the ruling establishment and its political agenda. As long as your speech is entirely ineffectual and can be ignored by those in power then you can scream as loud as you want. As soon as your speech is a real threat to the agenda of the ruling class you are quickly shut down and made an example of with extreme prejudice.

      You are functionally not allowed to challenge the official government position in the West either. In European countries the government outright bans candidates from standing in elections if they are anti-EU or anti-NATO, and you are threatened with fines or even jail time for disagreeing with the official narrative on Ukraine conflict. On certain issues, namely those that actually matter, there is only one accepted position, and deviation results in you being branded a terrorist, traitor, Hamas sympathizer, Russian agent, etc.

      The West is just as if not more authoritarian than China. China is just more honest about their censorship.

      • jaxxed@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        Your German example is legit, but you are completely dismissing their cultural guilt related to WWII; there are signs of them shifting. Your Balics example show possible Goverent overreach, but you are completely dismissing the existential threat of Russia.

        You are also trying to be subtle in shifting to mainstream media, when the thread was about internet control and social media.

        You are playing very loose with context. There are reasons to distrust all the Governments, which is why an uncensored internet is of value.

        • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          So you’re just Motte and Bailying from “the West doesn’t censer criticism” to “our censership is justified! How can you expect Germany not to suppress critism of genocide, don’t you know that they did the holocaust?”

          which is why an uncensored internet is of value.

          Great, tell me when you find one

        • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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          3 months ago

          Your German example is legit, but you are completely dismissing their cultural guilt related to WWII; there are signs of them shifting.

          They have no guilt, else they would not be supporting another genocide or giving money and weapons to help Nazis kill Russians again. Their pretense of feeling guilt is purely performative and self-aggrandizing. The only signs are of them getting worse, more self-righteous, more racist, more authoritarian toward any dissenters, more detached from reality.

          but you are completely dismissing the existential threat of Russia.

          Is their deranged paranoia supposed to justify their revisionist history portraying SS butchers as the good guys and the liberators of the death camps as the bad guys?

          You are also trying to be subtle in shifting to mainstream media

          Where have i mentioned mainstream media? And why are you shifting the goalposts? The topic was freedom of speech, regardless on which media. And social media has replaced mainstream media for most people nowadays anyway.

          when the thread was about internet control and social media

          Yes, social media is being censored and controlled across Europe and the broader West. Let’s not even mention how often Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter have banned anti-imperialist channels, deleted pro-Palestinian or pro-Russian content. The governments themselves are legally persecuting social media based news outlets, forcing them to shut down

          Both in Britain and in Germany you can get arrested and prosecuted for social media posts. There have been plenty such cases.

          In Germany you get sued and even arrested for simply insulting politicians on social media. It is enough to simply call a politician stupid (what else can you call someone who doesn’t know what doing a 360° turn means?) and you can get charged and taken to court. One particularly ghoulish politician has levied over 2000 defamation charges at people for insulting her.

          • ReakDuck@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            Help Nazis kill Russians? Wtf… I thought you would mentiom Israel as those are literal Nazis but Ukraine literally got hit with huge Propaganda since 2014 and just got attacked by Russia.

            Why the fuck should a country being attacked also be the offender and Nazi?

            Did Russians flee from their countries because they got attacked by Ukraine? No, they left because the countries leader arrests you or puts you on the battlefield without caring if you are disabled, as disabled people got this letter too (but I believe they corrected that issue). Ukraine people also don’t nearly look like Nazis when I see them in my country and their stories also dont allign with the Russian Propaganda. I mean, with both Russians and Ukraines I can talk face to face and see real opinion.

            In WWII, Nazis did attack other countries and started to tell their everyone they got attacked first… oh, wait… didnt Putin do that? Holy shot just do your own non-biased research without being an instant love fanboy of any authoritarian country. (China is still somewhat cool)

            • m532@lemmygrad.ml
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              3 months ago

              Did Russians flee from their countries because they got attacked by Ukraine?

              Yes those who speak russian in ukraine (many in eastern ukraine) had to flee

              Ukraine people also don’t nearly look like Nazis when I see them in my country

              Those are ones that had to flee from the nazis probably

              didnt Putin do that?

              No, nuland did that

              • ReakDuck@lemmy.ml
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                3 months ago

                Damn, you really are not interested in really understanding the first message. I meant Russians from Russia. Seems like you doge topics that speek against your fandom.

                You’re such a troll lol

                • m532@lemmygrad.ml
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                  3 months ago

                  You got me, I guess. Of course I understand liberalspeak, even if I hate it.

                  I wish they wouldn’t talk in that weaselly liar way, its mentally taxing to constantly have to interpret their cowardly attempts at hiding their inner white supremacist into english.

              • ReakDuck@lemmy.ml
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                3 months ago

                I tried to follow the sources but even the sources just lack so many things to be trustworthy at all.

        • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          Your Balics example show possible Goverent overreach, but you are completely dismissing the existential threat of Russia.

          This is you abandoning your own values the moment someone in authority tells you there’s an implacable horde of scary foreigners who we can’t beat without taking away your rights.

    • mathemachristian [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Western internet is full of crap, and manipulation, but you won’t get censored for criticising the Government… I guess unless you are an American criticizing Israel (which is a newer thing, really.)

      Isn’t that why feddit.org only allows criticism of the occupation regime of west palestine if you precede it with “Israel has a right to defend itself”? At least they claim they fear governmental retribution

      • jaxxed@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        Not sure who you would blame for feddit blocking that ME topic, but you can criticize anything else that you want now.

        • mathemachristian [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          “That ME topic” is a full-blown genocide and fuck you for trying to hide it behind some nicer sounding phrase.

          I am blaming the g*rman government for their draconian crackdown on anti-genocide propaganda but also the mods for giving in a priori! Like nothing had even happened and they’re already self-censoring. So I don’t know why you’re saying “Aside from that bit of genocidal censorship, you can talk about anything else”, because that censorhip of genocide is not going to be the end.

          Also “you can criticise anything else” is wrong, because if you’re critical of their lack of evidence for what they claim to be an “Uyghur genocide” you get pretty much insta-banned. But thats not due to the government rather than the feddit mods marinating themselves in NED propaganda and not interacting with anything outside their information bubble.

    • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml
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      3 months ago

      you won’t get censored for criticising the Government… I guess unless you are an American criticizing Israel (which is a newer thing, really.)

      This is a pretty big “you won’t get censored… unless you do.”

      And if we’re inputting government censorship onto modding decisions by major social media – which we absolutely should, as those companies are ran by a revolving door of politicos, all the owners openly play high-level politics, and the threat of regulation is ever-present – there’s all sorts of criticism of the U.S. government and its approved narratives that will get comments removed or accounts banned.

      • jaxxed@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        Lots of politics but you won’t get pulled for calling Donnie a moron, nor for calling Joe a demented crank. Try seriously criticizing the CCP on Weibo.

        • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml
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          3 months ago

          Calling someone a moron is not seriously criticizing them. It’s impotent shouting, which is why it’s tolerated.

          And if we’re going to get into the finer points of what domestic criticism is or isn’t tolerated in China, we’ll need some evidence.

        • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          calling Donnie a moron, nor for calling Joe a demented crank.

          “Serious critism”

          The US government banned tiktok for the explicit purpose of censoring information about the holocaust they’re committing in Gaza

  • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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    3 months ago

    No thanks I dont need the government controlling the information i consume.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.mlM
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      3 months ago

      The US corporate-survellance state already does. If you’re living in New Zealand, according to here, your country’s entire social media infrastructure is US owned and controlled.

      • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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        3 months ago

        This is completely different. Even though there are big US websites we’re still free to travel to any site on the web. Thats not the case in China.

    • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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      3 months ago

      if you’re from new zealand you should beg for a policy like this so new zealand could develop its own privately owned social media, instead of relying on American tech oligarchs. it makes absolutely no sense for someone outside of the US, which has its social media market completely dominated by US tech companies, to complain about this.

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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      3 months ago

      The US government already does that. It controls US based social media. If you don’t live in the US you should want your government to control the social media you use because at least that way you can have a say in that control via the (nominally) democratic control you exert over your own government. Either way someone controls it. By not having digital sovereignty your country is just handing the control over your information space to a foreign government which can then use it to shape your opinions and views to their advantage instead of yours.