China Says US Uses Facebook To Spread Political Unrest 274
crimeandpunishment writes "A Chinese government-backed think tank says the US and other western governments use Facebook and other social networking sites to spread political unrest. Their report says, 'We must pay attention to the potential risks and threats to state security as the popularity of social-networking sites continues to grow,' and calls for increased scrutiny of the sites."
Oh really? (Score:4, Funny)
They clearly overestimate the deterministic nature of the average social network user.
Re:Oh really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Clearly they have yet to realize that political unrest spreads itself. Facebook just makes it faster.
Re:Oh really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I might have put it in different terms, but yeah, that's about the size of it.
As I grow into an "older perspective" on life, I begin to see that much trouble occurs when people try too hard to block "the human condition." We are all people and we think and feel as people do. It doesn't matter what spot of dirt you were born on or even what culture(s) you were born into so much. In varying degrees, we all pretty much want the same things and will act in many of the same ways to get them. (with a wide variety of personal limitations) And certainly one thing all people have in common is that we want to express ourselves and I'm not even sure that's exclusive to humans as I am sure pet lovers might agree.
The purpose of government is to serve society in a way that keeps it from destroying itself. I recognize what raw human desire, greed and ambition can drive people to do -- anything. That drive needs to be regulated for a healthy society to flourish. But without that raw human desire, there can be no healthy society and certainly no healthy individuals as our hopes and dreams are not so far removed from desire, greed and ambition. There are unquestionably good reasons why we have laws against murder and against theft. We need them to keep us from destroying one another. But going too far in the direction if controlling, limiting and containing the human spirit, which is what governments like China seek to do, and you will find people literally willing to die for the chance to express their thoughts and ideas.
In the U.S., our constitution (or what's left of it) was written specifically, to prevent government from serving itself instead of society. It has managed to slow the progress of greedy and ambitious people who seek to limit people in order to enrich themselves. The rights to free speech and to bear arms weren't written on a whim and were all about limiting what the government can do, because without limitations, government (which is a smaller group of people who regulate larger groups of people) will do what humans will do without regulation imposed upon them which includes killing and stealing and other things.
For China's government to assert that Facebook causes political unrest is nothing short of China's denial of what it means to be human. Every time I see censorship, I see one mind wishing to silence another mind. It just can't work that way... and it doesn't.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
'The purpose of government is to serve society in a way that keeps it from destroying itself.'
I would rephrase that as: The purpose of government is to serve people in a way that keeps them from destroying each other; in that any social institutions should be present for the benefit of people.
Otherwise, it's just replacement of government with society as the raison d'etre for tyranny.
At the risk of being labelled flamebait. (Score:4, Informative)
Murder rate in the USA is 42.8 per 1,000,000 people (freedom of speech and right to bear arms) Murder rate in the UK 14.0 per 1,000,000 people (freedom of speech) Murder rate in Hong Kong is 5.5 per 1,000,000 people (some limits on freedom)
I'm not saying that freedom of arms and speech turn people into hate filled psycho's (certainly other countries with limited freedoms have very high murder rates) but culturally people are very different all over the world and a murder rate more than 8 times lower than the USA is not insignificant. We have no idea what the effect of radically altering someone's culture might have and like it or not, ceasing all forms of censorship in China will have a shock effect on many of the people living there. I am preferably interested to hear what people in China feel about these issues more than people in the West demanding on behalf of people in China.
Please note that I had to use the rate for Hong Kong because China was apparently so low down as to not even be on the list of 62 highest murder rates, I note also that places under Sharia law were also absent from the list
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
Please note that I cannot vouch for either the accuracy or how recent these statistics are, but then you can say that about any posted statistics.
Personally I believe in as much personal freedom as we can get, but I felt the need to provide some kind of balance to the discussion and sometimes I wonder if we really have the right to demand and impose our freedoms on other places that work in a very different way, despite what the above poster said that all humans are basically the same and want to kill steal and rape all day, I'd like to think otherwise.
I would also like to quickly address the above poster who said "In the U.S., our constitution (or what's left of it) was written specifically, to prevent government from serving itself instead of society. It has managed to slow the progress of greedy and ambitious people who seek to limit people in order to enrich themselves."
I would like to draw attention to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org] which states quite clearly "Americans have the highest income inequality in the rich world and over the past 20–30 years Americans have also experienced the greatest increase in income inequality among rich nations. The more detailed the data we can use to observe this change, the more skewed the change appears to be... the majority of large gains are indeed at the top of the distribution."
Like I said, freedoms are good, but our own implementation of them may not necessarily be the best method when considering some of the results.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
I'm with you in all respects. I know where the U.S. has been going and I hate it tremendously. The U.S. is not what it once was and some would even say it never was what we thought it was. But in either case, the state of the nation has definitely slipped further from "American Ideals and Morality" (tm) than ever and it sickens me. We will never have an ideal society, but then I see idealism as a direction, not a goal. I am a U.S. flag waver... but I am also a U.S. flag burner.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Murder rate in the USA is 42.8 per 1,000,000 people (freedom of speech and right to bear arms)
Murder rate in the UK 14.0 per 1,000,000 people (freedom of speech)
Murder rate in Hong Kong is 5.5 per 1,000,000 people (some limits on freedom)
I agree that the US isn't perfect but those statistics are kind of meaningless without context. The high murder rate isn't necessarily due to freedom of speech and right to bear arms. It may in fact go back to gang warfare and our inability to fully integrate certain aspects of our society. Obviously that's a problem but it's not due to freedoms.
I would like to draw attention to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org] which states quite clearly "Americans have the highest income inequality in the rich world and over the past 20–30 years Americans have also experienced the greatest increase in income inequality among rich nations. The more detailed the data we can use to observe this change, the more skewed the change appears to be... the majority of large gains are indeed at the top of the distribution."
Income inequality is a real concern but I think the more relevant statistic is the poverty rate. America has one of the lowest in the world. Should poverty even
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:5, Insightful)
In Asia "western governments" are used to justify bad legislation and censorship in the same way that terrorists and pedoophiles are used to justify the same in the west. There are so many handles you can use to push the sheeple where you want them to be.
Re: (Score:2)
In Asia? What a sweeping generalization. There are not many countries in Asia which has the kind of censorship China has.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, just China and North Korea and Thailand and Pakistan and...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, just China and North Korea and Thailand and Pakistan and...
Yet there is also South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, India, Israel, Kuwait and loads of other places.
It is the worlds largest continent so of course it contains some dubious countries. It would be like saying the Americas (North, South, and Central) are full of dictatorships based on the few in central America and ignoring all the rest. Making accurate generalisations about the policatal make up of an entire continent is just not possible unless you are limiting them to saying they have humans living there and not
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
They're not going to cash in treasury paper, which is still the safest in the world, without first pulling all that cash out. And yes it would be disastrous for both parties.
Re: (Score:2)
Forget chinese blogs, they wrist pro-government stuff on any blog or website that has anti-PRC comments.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
> Americans use Facebook to spread political unrest, do they?
Sure... Teabaggers and Dittoheads.
By Chinese standards, Rush Limbaugh is no less of a problem than some CIA backed troll. Just being free to speak your mind constitutes "spreading political unrest".
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Like there aren't restive jackasses on the left.
Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher the anti-vaxer or my favorites...MEChA
Re:The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:4, Interesting)
(That said, I respectfully note both parent and GP 4-digit IDs and defer to your old-timey judgement)
Re:The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually who would want to be our president? you have to be a moron to even consider it. For any given situation you have one of three tools, diplomacy, lawyers, or soldiers. if you can't fix it with those three tools then your screwwed. Every one who goes to live in the white house comes out pale withdrawn, and much grayer than when they went in. The president of teh USA get's all the blame but rarely can do anything about it.
As an example BP's oil spill. BP is a company so diplomacy won't work. he can sue them or send in the army. The army doesn't have any experience in shutting down underwater oil wells so that won't work and suing them would take 5 years anyways. Therefore Obama can only let BP work add a little pressure but in reality is helpless. Yet he gets all the blame for failure.
Re: (Score:2)
The regulations were already in place, unfortunately they were circumvented. (as far as I know)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
See if we judged politicians on them misspeaking it goes both ways.. How about you blame Obama for something hes done.. not something hes said. Cause if we are going to judge politicians on stupid shit they say, Bush, Cheney, Palin, and McCain are all gonna be on the top of the list. (albeit Biden, and other democrats will be up there too lol) Im just saying its a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Things McCain said:
"I think she's most qualified of any that has run recently for vice president, te
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Bill Maher the anti-vaxer
I swear, when I read that, I wondered why one would have a dislike for DEC computers.
Re: (Score:2)
You're not the only one.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue! --Barry Goldwater
Of course, if you see the demands of justice and liberty as opposing forces, you might still claim that Goldwater is seeking the moderate position between absolute justice and absolute liberty. But that would involve a certain amount of debasement.
Re: (Score:2)
Communism never saw religion with good eyes. It was Marx himself that said "Religion is the opiate of the people".
It was only
Re:The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
--Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right [marxists.org]
If someone is suffering from severe physical pain, the best medical solution is to diagnose and treat the underlying pain, and not simply to give them a narcotic. On the other hand, if you cannot treat the underlying condition, it would be inhumane to cut off opiates.
Re: (Score:2)
And you don't think Americans are "living in shit and working hard every day just to survive"?
And those are the lucky ones with jobs.
The only difference between Chinese and Americans is that Americans think they're free. Just because we have nice TVs doesn't mean we have it so much better than the average Ch
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The other difference is in the US, workers are sold the dream that anyone has an equal chance to make it big if they work hard enough at it, and workers are free to complain long and loud about the system , their bosses, how much the government sucks, etc.
In China, they had a revolution that was supposed to make everyone equal, but the workers are still getting screwed over and getting bugger all for their efforts, without any accompanying freedoms that US workers enjoy.
Of course in both systems, the worker
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
"The other difference is in the US, workers are sold the dream that anyone has an equal chance to make it big if they work hard enough at it, and workers are free to complain long and loud about the system , their bosses, how much the government sucks, etc."
You do have an equal chance. Hard work has to do with it, but it also takes a little bit of luck and a good idea (something that's actually worth money).
"In China, they had a revolution that was supposed to make everyone equal"
Does a society really want
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
no, I do not think that society wants to make everyone equal - which is why the idealized version of communism will always fail - everyone is most certainly not equal, and people who put in the effort to better themselves and are more productive should be better rewarded for their efforts.
I think the real problem is rampant crony-ism in both China and in Western countries, where there is a huge disparity between the pay for top level jobs versus average jobs.
The 10x figure was not completely out of my ass,
Re: (Score:2)
"The other difference is in the US, workers are sold the dream that anyone has an equal chance to make it big if they work hard enough at it, and workers are free to complain long and loud about the system , their bosses, how much the government sucks, etc."
The Chinese workers are situated in a time frame correlated to 1910, prior to the union movement. Boy do the Chi-gov have a wake-up call heading their way.
"In China, they had a revolution that was supposed to make everyone equal"
Tienanmen square proved they are not equal. Government corruption in China has had a running start for centuries, don't expect it to end anytime soon. Forced population control, forced sterilization, a one child per couple policy, just to watch that one child die in an earthquake, in a school building of inferior construction, as well as being too old to
Re:The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:5, Interesting)
Average American Income: $43,762 (US Census Bureau)
Average Chinese Income: $2,025 (WorldBank)
Average US Life Expectancy: 75 / 80 (m / f) (WHO)
Average Chinese Life Expectancy: 72 / 75 (m / f) (WHO)
Probability of dying under 5 yrs old, US: 8 per 1000 (WHO)
Probability of dying under 5 yrs old, China: 24 per 1000 (WHO)
GNI per capita, US: $47,240 (World Bank)
GNI per capita, China: $3,620 (World Bank)
Re: (Score:2)
Average American Income: $43,762 (US Census Bureau)
Average Chinese Income: $2,025 (WorldBank)
World Bank? Do you mean the IMF? The leader of "ALL" the private banking institutions? The institutions that the bought dogs of the American political system bailed out over the financial scam perpetrated on the American people?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"The only difference between Chinese and Americans is that Americans think they're free. Just because we have nice TVs doesn't mean we have it so much better than the average Chinese."
It has nothing to do with "nice TVs". We are allowed to speak out against the government without getting thrown in jail. There is more than one political party (every US citizen has a chance to vote) and we can run businesses without having to pay off the corrupt government. There is no such thing as a license to have a cer
Re: (Score:2)
Should we assume you meant half the US prison population?
Re: (Score:2)
Figures are for the number of people jailed per 100,000 population, for 2007. There is a more up to date list (7th edition) but I couldn't find a link for it that didn't require a PDF download.
We are free for this one number alone. But don't you worry, the powers that be want to "change" that too. Reuters [reuters.com]
About half the US population is sitting in jail as a result of drug related offenses - due the the war on drugs and 3 strikes policies there. It's also a big part of the reason why California is going bankrupt.
Why is it that the people most involved with drug trafficking never get caught?
These sites may open your eyes if you have the guts to do so.Site 1 [cia.gov]
Site 2 [narconews.com]
As to California's problems, do you think that this may have had something to do with it? Site 3 [nrdc.org]
Of course, as everyone know, Australia is entirely populated by criminals, which may account for the relatively low percentage of us locked up here.
As everyone "knows" America was first made up of religious radicals and status quo malcontents and they were sent west across the Atlantic ocean by
Re: (Score:2)
Direct democracy is the problem in California. It's so ridiculously easy to add a bond item to the ballot that the legislature and governor has no power to create a budget. Spending gets decided by referendum.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are 170,000 prisoners in California.
it costs $47,102 per prisoner to keep them in jail. http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/laomenus/sections/crim_justice/6_cj_inmatecost.aspx?catid=3 [ca.gov]
Total cost: $8 billion
California Budget deficit: $19 Billion
so no, just halving the number of prisoners alone would not solve the budget crisis - but some percentage of them would be paying taxes, and generally participating in the economy of the state which would further increase revenues, instead of each of them being a $47,00
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It wouldn't take all that many people to astroturf the most popular sites; maybe a few hundred, which wouldn't be that expensive at China's current wages.
The irony here is that Chinese wages are increasing, due to the chinese one child policy and their aging population; eventually it'll become far more expensive to play this sort of censorship game.
True but not necessarily a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True but not necessarily a bad thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Another point that needs to be taken into consideration is that the Chinese power structure is not all based in the national government. Just as in the US there is a constant struggle between state power and federal power, in China there is a struggle between the national government and regional governments. One method the national government has as a power lever is manipulation of the people; they are capable of fomenting unrest when they want to foment it (as during the Correfour riots [japantoday.com]. Some have speculated that the riots were aimed not at the French, but at the city governments to remind them who is in control).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
fudle lords
Not trying to be a grammar nazi here, but this sounds more like a Stooges-style comedy act than the feudal lords you obviously meant.
In fact, the US Mk II - with a difference (Score:4, Interesting)
Now to make a serious point. One of the biggest problems of the US today stems from that time in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It's backward religions. Pioneers equipped with nothing but the Bible and no educated teachers went on to invent ridiculous religions - such as Mormonism and the wilder extremes of Southern Baptists - that continue to hold the US back socially and culturally today. (The same thing happened in South Africa, where the Dutch Reformed Church arose from semi-literate Boerdom.) The backward religions, just like fundamentalist Islam and settler-friendly perversions of Judaism, are well funded to gain support via the Internet.
The Chinese actually need to use the Internet to stop the same thing happening there. The Internet can spread a wider view of the world. My guess is that the Chinese government is well aware of the argument I've outlined above, in far greater depth, and their policy is simply based around the traditional Chinese policy of using the media to spread cultural homogeneity, but with an eye to the undeveloped part of China rather than the developed part. This is far from stupid. Freedom of speech is all very well in a pluralistic Western society where you can look out of the window and see that people are lying, but much less effective for isolated agrarian communities with no standards of comparison.
Re: (Score:2)
Cultural revolution was pushed by Mao, the Chairman of PRC who had never been sidelined by the government.
If you don't think so, you don't understand Chinese history.
The obvious solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously though, they do have something of a point, the US WOULD push social networking in China if they thought it would help bring freedom of speech to China. It's not the US government pushing social unrest, it's the people themselves communicating and finding out the problems with the government. I don't think the US government pushing anything would help anything though, and might even hurt in this case. Better to let the Chinese people find their own way, as long as they don't go insane.
Re:The obvious solution (Score:5, Funny)
I don't care what they do with facebook. I just want them to friend me and join my mafia.
Re:The obvious solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who don't believe this just need to look at examples as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the various democratically elected governments in South America (and around the world) overthrown by the US in the past century to see how US foreign policy works.
Just to point out something blindingly obvious......that should be blindingly obvious to you......US foreign policy has changed a lot in the last century. It has changed a lot in the last 25 years, and it's making dramatic changes right now as we try to find our place in the post cold-war world (note the switch Bush made between isolationism to invading countries). The entire world has changed! A hundred years ago, European countries couldn't wait to jump at each other's throats.
You are incredibly naive to lump an entire century together and say, "That is US policy."
Incidentally, if the 'ruling class' is controlling foreign policy, it is the fault of the citizens for allowing them to do that.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps not the policy of the entire past century, but it certainly seems to be the same for the past couple of decades.
Re: (Score:2)
Clinton liked the world policeman idea, a
Re: (Score:3)
Your Farms Belong to Us (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No doubt the FBI, CIA and DHS log far more hours in Farmville than just regular folk. It's a conspiracy I tell ya!
I would say citation needed, but the current state of affairs speaks for itself.
Re: (Score:2)
I have never played Farmville, not do I care about Facebook, Myspace or whatever the most recent fad in social networking will be called, but can the farmers in Farmville have more than one child? Perhaps that would explain the political unrest.
By the way "political unrest" is just another way of saying "the current government want to take away some of your rights".
Radio (Score:4, Insightful)
What if the U.S. were to set up a radio station [wikipedia.org] across the border from a nation, and began broadcasting propaganda into said nation?
The Slashdot community frequently criticizes the media for making arbitrary distinctions between the Internet and non-Internet realms -- time for some self-criticism.
Re:Radio (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm just deeply unconvinced that something like Facebook, or any Facebook-esque clone, is a particularly effective medium for the US to spread political unrest in China(now, I can see a much stronger case for the US encouraging the spread of Facebook, ideally the real thing just so that we can make a buck on the side, or Facebook-esque sites within China, on the theory that they will magnify the effects of existing Chinese governmental problems).
Something like Voice of America, whether it is effective or not, is relatively easy for the government to set up. Some radio hardware in the nearest friendly or at least not hostile location, just enough native language speakers to translate the programs, and a friendly news desk to churn out the message. Getting the same effect from a social networking site is harder. Or, rather, getting a precise analog of that effect is pretty easy: just set up a VOA fan page/RSS feed/twitter whatever that people can choose to follow(and the state can probably block, in many cases). Using the social network more subtly and effectively is hard. Even the most sympathetic Chinese are going to be pissed if they are getting machine-generated spam from CIA fronts; because everyone hates machine generated spam. And it isn't bloody likely that we have anywhere near enough analysts who speak reasonably idiomatic Chinese and don't have better things to do to actually infiltrate social networks on a personal level and do message shaping.
Here is my guess: China, despite the authoritarian pretensions of its central government, has a great deal of trouble with corruption and mismanagement at the local level. When you combine that with a somewhat wild-west quasi-capitalist expansion, you get a recipe for a nearly constant stream of stories of abuses that would get all but the most dogmatically statist Chinese citizens upset. People's land basically being stolen by thugs with the connivance of local officials, blatantly illegal pollution poisoning people, fake baby formula with no actual nutritional content killing a few hundred babies by slow starvation, that sort of thing. The state doesn't generally approve of this sort of thing, often executing the perps; but it also generally does not approve of any spread of broader popular discontent about it. Some local anger is unavoidable; but censorship is frequently employed to slow the broader spread of the message until damage control and spin can be done. These are the sorts of situations where social networking tools could really make that task more difficult. Everybody is linked to their school buddies from back home, and their college buddies from wherever, and their work people from where they are now. Some nasty provincial scandal occurs back home, your highschool friend who stayed local tells you about it, you get upset and tell your college and work friends...
If that is the sense in which China believes that the US is "using Facebook to spread political unrest", they may well be right. I'm sure the Feds aren't exactly crying bitter tears over that effect, and they may even be taking more direct actions in its favor(overt and covert cooperation between strategic corporations and nation states is neither new nor exclusive to the US...). If, on the other hand, they are suggesting that facebook is full of CIA agents pretending to be popular schoolgirls or something, they are either lying or dreaming. The CIA might wish that that were so; but there just is no way that they have enough Chinese-speaking agents to have any real effect on Chinese areas of facebook, and everybody hates spam, so simply bombarding Chinese users with machine messages would be counterproductive.
Re: (Score:2)
Here is my guess: China, despite the authoritarian pretensions of its central government, has a great deal of trouble with corruption and mismanagement at the local level. When you combine that with a somewhat wild-west quasi-capitalist expansion, you get a recipe for a nearly constant stream of stories of abuses that would get all but the most dogmatically statist Chinese citizens upset.
Meh, they are probably just clearing the way for the Chinese facebook, just like they did with Google and the rest of them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You mean like The Zero Hour? [wikipedia.org]
Of course, we aren't putting POWs on our radio for the sake of demoralization.
Re: (Score:2)
But we DO use Facebook for unrest. Just like our newspapers, TV programs, and yes, VOA. When the status quo is a dictatorship, then yeah, pretty much any kind of free press or communications is going to "foment unrest". So what? The only alternative is isolationism.
Now, maybe you could make the argument that we should go back to defacto isolationism; we'll do things our way here, and you do things however you like over there. That used to be the way things were. However, if we change that, then we're abando
Re: (Score:2)
The Slashdot community frequently criticizes...
...Chinese policies and yet when I lived there last year I never had a problem getting it. YouTube, otoh, was never accessible.
Re: (Score:2)
What if the U.S. were to set up a radio station [wikipedia.org] across the border from a nation, and began broadcasting propaganda into said nation?
Set up a numbers station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station [wikipedia.org] instead. It's more fun and sporting to keep them chasing their own tails, instead of flooding them with propaganda, which they can understand and refute.
Now, what does that message mean, for whom it is for . . . ?
China? (Score:2)
or Chinese-government-backed-think-tank?
Perchance I wonder how many outrageous statements I could attribute to US government back think tanks if I tried.
F this warmongering nonsense. There are fanatical Chinese nationalists, yes. What I don't appreciate is the fact that there are warmongering US nationalists who get their 'stories' posted to slashdot.
Why not just outbid the US Gov in a tapping bid? (Score:3, Funny)
Why not just outbid the US Gov in a tapping bid? What could the market value be? Stasi and KGB would have needed a saliva bucket next to the bed for this.
Sounds like paranoia and projection to me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Given that the Chinese government pays people to do the very same thing on every Western media/blog site they come across. I seriously doubt the American government does the same. There is no need. Apparently the Chinese government can't tell the difference between real enthusiasm (even if implicit) for one's country and the enforced/coerced kind to which they are accustomed.
Really ? How ? (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are plenty of FB groups/fan-pages like "free tibet", pro falun-gong, etc (and stuff like "free the monks in burma" which is not directly related to China, but which nonetheless likely makes the chinese government nervous), and those may be what they're whining about.
It's very unclear whether such groups make any actual difference in practice, even if they have many members, but they do help to keep such issues an active subject of popular discussion, and of course the chinese government royally freak
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder how long that group would last if you actually created it. I admit I would be sorely tempted to join, just to make a couple of Chinese officials sweat a little.
I use Facebook to spread unrest among supermodels (Score:2)
All elbowing each other side for the chance to date ME! Luscious, luscious me.
I would post more about my sexy good looks are spreading unrest throughout the world, but I have to be at the gym in 26 minutes...
Governments oppose Free Speech (Score:5, Insightful)
No government really welcomes free speech. Some may claim that they do, but actions speak louder than words. The only interest that a government has in free communication is when they have a firm grip over it's contents. It just happens that the US and other western governments have measures already in place to control or obfuscate the information on the web and in the media.
They create tools such as the Fairness Doctrine [wikipedia.org], and generally flood the people with "different viewpoints" to muddy the waters. China's issue is that it has spent so much time trying to shut down the internet that it really hasn't been able to get the control that it would like. That's where this campaign comes in. It's the Chinese who are now muddying the waters. They come up with some reports that claim that the west is actively trying to hurt them. Then, when people see something online, the Chinese government can say "It's all lies made up by west. Trust us instead."
In time, and with the rise of contentless Flash pages and product ads, the web will probably stop being useful for information to any but the hardcore nerd with time and tools to push past the fluff. Where are all the RDF search engines that we were promised? With HTML5 I hear people talking a lot about video playback functionality, but I haven't heard any buzz about the semantic web. A web that gives you only pretty pictures won't help the world, and likewise won't hurt a government.
Re: (Score:2)
A web that gives you only pretty pictures won't help the world, and likewise won't hurt a government.
No? How about these pretty pictures?
(Wikileaks video of US military killing civilians)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0&has_verified=1 [youtube.com]
(Tienanmen Square)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man [wikipedia.org]
(Protests against Iranian election results) ...and that's just a start. We as geeks may have buzzwords like "semantic web" that we like to
http://mashable.com/2009/06/20/iran-youtube/ [mashable.com]
trot out, but the fact is
Re: (Score:2)
This post is so laughably wrong I almost think it's a joke, but I don't think it is. Internet != Web. The Internet was started at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), and yes, that's US military.
Re: (Score:2)
The posts above you were explicitly talking about the wider Internet. When it comes to free speech, the Web is an important part, but just one part. Famous quote: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Anything from email, to IRC, to instant messaging, to chatting in a game can be used to spread information on the Internet.
They have a track record (Score:2)
You also have "US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa
Take THIS, China (Score:5, Funny)
That's it. I am unfriending China.
Free speech: The US's most powerful weapon (Score:5, Interesting)
This goes to something I've been saying for years now. The U.S. has some pretty impressive military power, but that's not what scares the world's dictators, religious zealots, and oppressive regimes. What do they fear about us? Rock 'n' roll, short skirts, blue jeans, and *especially* cell phones, e-mail, and Facebook.
The U.S. does a lot of things poorly, including, lately, waging ground wars. But one thing we're still very very good at: coming up with new ways for the world's young people to mock and ridicule authority figures, and for adults to talk to each other freely without government interference.
The cell phone, the 18" satellite dish, and the Internet are the most terrifying weapons against autocratic states the world has ever known. Is Facebook a threat to oppressive regimes? HELL YES, and we should be proud of that.
U.S. foreign policy should recognize this fact, and use it to its advantage. Rather than planning air strikes against Iranian and North Korean nuclear sites, we should be flying over and dropping cell phones, laptops, and MP3 players loaded with Rage Against the Machine and Ani diFranco.
Re:Free speech: The US's most powerful weapon (Score:4, Funny)
Facebook spreads political unrest (Score:2)
And here I thought it was completely useless.
Farmville! (Score:2, Funny)
Somebody planted the seeds of unrest...
Re: (Score:2)
Actually Farmville is more of a danger to China.
Imagine all the office workers around the world who waste time on checking up on their farms and therefore reducing real life productivity.
and they are 100% correct (Score:2)
facebook is simply free speech
and in china, the simple act of free speech is a politicized concept. politicized by the chinese government
the chinese government has defined speech as not free, so anyone who engages in it is by that very act of speaking freely engaging in political unrest, according to the parameters established by the chinese government
and all the chinese government has done is defined their own weakness. most of the time, you speak freely, and if they don't like it, they send you to work ca [guardian.co.uk]
How? (Score:2)
Let a thousand flowers bloom? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if the Chinese gov't (or other regimes) have thought of just using Facebook to track down the networks of friends and acquaintences of dissidents, instead of banning it.
During the Cultural Revolution, they said "Let a thousand flowers bloom", meaning they let dissident and anti-regime opinions flow unrestricted, suddenly free of censorship. But instead of listening to those ideas and implementing them, after a short period of freedom they cracked down and jailed those who had raised 'bad' opinions after they had revealed themselves. The promise of free speech had been a trap. I wonder if the same sort of thing could happen with online social media?
People in the west talk about privacy violations of Facebook, but imagine if a bad gov't got its hands on all that data and data mined it...
When can I expect my cheque? (Score:2)
Honestly, I'd love to get paid by the CIA to use Facebook. Maybe then I'd start playing Farmville or some shit.
Turnabout paranoia is fair play: (Score:2)
Wow... Does this mean that the Chinese government is also using Baidu Space [baidu.com] to spread political unrest here in the US?
Maybe Gen. Jack D. Ripper was right, and they're using it to pollute our bodily fluids!
Freedom of speech on Internet (Score:2)
Of course they do (Score:2)
Just the existence of an outlet where people can voice their concerns "spreads political unrest."
If people don't know how badly the government is treating them or their neighbor there is certainly less unrest.
If people don't realize that there are others that want to make changes as well, they are more likely to keep still. Less unrest that way, too.
It unfortunately seems that part of the entire idea is to get people to talk to one another! Surely that can't be good for a restful totalitarian state, can i
COMMUNISM spreads political unrest (Score:2)
subject says it all. Quit blaming *.* for your political unrest. YOU are the common factor. Time for some self-reflection here methinks.
Right. And their point is? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As I see it, the Chinese authoritarian attitude and the Republican authoritarian attitudes differ only in degree, not in kind.
Wow, they really do hate our freedom.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That those totalitarian regimes don't all behave like North Korea in terms of enabling internet access amazes me. I guess there is a trade off involved here. If you want to compete with western economies you need something like the internet if you don't want to look like North Korea.
Obviously they think they can keep the net under control. Would be kinda nice if you could have it your way even if it was just to prove them wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
Only in China ...would they say that people speaking their mind is spreading political unrest.
Welcome! So, what color is the sky on your planet?