China Launches Hotline To Report Online Comments That 'Distort' History or 'Deny' Its Cultural Excellence (variety.com) 124
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: China's internet regulator has launched a hotline for citizens to report online comments that defame the ruling Communist Party and its approved description of history ahead of the Party's upcoming 100th anniversary. The new hotline will enable internet users to stop the spread of "mistaken opinions" and create a "good public opinion atmosphere" to pave the way for the July 1 occasion, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said in a notice. People can also send in tip-offs via the CAC's website and app.
"For a while now, some people with ulterior motiveshave spread historically nihilistic false statements online, maliciously distorting, slandering and denying Party, national and military history in an attempt to confuse people's thinking," the notice said. "We hope that most internet users will play an active role in supervising societyand enthusiastically report harmful information." "Historically nihilistic" information, in official rhetoric, is content that incites doubt about the Party's account of the past.
It will accept four types of content complaints: distortions of history, attacks on the Party's "leadership, guiding ideology, principles or policies," the defamation of heroes and martyrs, and "denials of the excellence of traditional Chinese culture, revolutionary culture and advanced socialist culture." The CAC notice did not explain what punishments would be in store for violators. China already frequently detains and jails people for online speech deemed politically inappropriate.
"For a while now, some people with ulterior motiveshave spread historically nihilistic false statements online, maliciously distorting, slandering and denying Party, national and military history in an attempt to confuse people's thinking," the notice said. "We hope that most internet users will play an active role in supervising societyand enthusiastically report harmful information." "Historically nihilistic" information, in official rhetoric, is content that incites doubt about the Party's account of the past.
It will accept four types of content complaints: distortions of history, attacks on the Party's "leadership, guiding ideology, principles or policies," the defamation of heroes and martyrs, and "denials of the excellence of traditional Chinese culture, revolutionary culture and advanced socialist culture." The CAC notice did not explain what punishments would be in store for violators. China already frequently detains and jails people for online speech deemed politically inappropriate.
Helping citizens with crimestop (Score:2)
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"Biden administration announces a hotline, in association with Social Media giants to enable citizens to report...."
Re:Helping citizens with crimestop (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes. EXACTLY LIKE THAT.
Biden is Trump is Biden is Trump is . . .
Re:Helping citizens with crimestop (Score:4, Interesting)
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'While media attention during President Biden’s first days in
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it is hard to tell if astroturfers are downvoting, or if they have already influenced enough useful idiots to keep their memes rolling
I for one, hope it is astroturfers, because I want to believe that /.'ers have better critical thinking skills
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Who or what is "GP"? Doesn't seem to match any of the posters? Perhaps "Good Poster" in a relative sense?
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Jimtheowl was the GP referenced in your post here. If you and I exchanged a couple posts back and forth from here without substantially changing topic we might continue to refer to Jimtheowl as the "GP" even though we are technically further levels deeper in comment hierarchy, logical context reveals our
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Okay, makes sense, though I confess that I probably don't pay enough attention to "common convention", especially not on Slashdot where there are so many noisy idiots and angry trolls running around. As I've noted a number of times over the years, the main reason I like Slashdot is for the feel of the editor. I used to like Slashdot for the Funny comments, but actually witty and humorous comments have become much too sparse in recent years.
By the way, your [shaitand's] ad hominem attack suggests you might b
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My intention was to highlight that your unfamiliarity with an old and common convention was incongruent with the UID number on your account.
"I am pretty sure that we do agree that jimtheowl's reply [Now the G4P, if I counted correctly] should be modded up."
We do not. Perhaps a
Trolls aren't simply angry but people who are deliberately inciting discord for their own amusement. The term refers to a specific c
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Good. I encourage you to ignore anything I write, and I will endeavor to reciprocate. Might be difficult, since you're "identity" is so unmemorable.
But I still resent how many seconds of my time you wasted with your vacuous trolling.
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Give him time. He's taking notes from China, of course.
Re:Helping citizens with crimestop (Score:4, Interesting)
The difference is that Trump's grievances (both real and imagined) that led to those hotlines were with institutions (governments and corporations). The current Cancel Culture sweeping the nation targets private individuals firstmost and foremost, which is much closer in concept to what China is doing here.
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So it's a continuation of cancel culture from the 80s [urbigenous.net] when people were trying to silence music [societyofrock.com]?
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You forgot Washington [senate.gov].
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Re:Helping citizens with crimestop (Score:5, Informative)
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-1913/chinese-rev
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Not how the Chinese see it.
Hey, any country can have a couple of bad centuries.
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A young upstart who murdered his national daddy trying to paint a country as being ancient, invincible, having stood the test of time is pretty common in oppressive regimes. It is a very useful form of psychological warfa
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That obviously isn't how everyone else thinks. Have you ever heard of the "Mandate of Heaven"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
However, judging from the content and tone of your two recent replies directed at me, I think it safe to conclude that rational discussion is not possible. First you would have to understand that other opinions exist and might even be valid. Therefore I ask you to ignore my comments in the future, and I promise to reciprocate, at least as long as I can remember and recognize your i
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False equivalency. Everyone's position is not equally sound.
"First you would have to understand that other opinions exist and might even be valid."
The burden is on others to establish the presence and validity of their other opinions. It is not for me to assume their validity. The "Mandate of Heaven" concept does not establish a continued political state and also represents circular logic.
He who says not most likely knows naught.
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NAK
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Re: Helping citizens with crimestop (Score:2)
This is no different than the disgusting german laws that imprison you if you dare to doubt the holocaust.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
So yeah, China is far closer than you think.
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The "fact checkers" use the subjective umbrella of 'implication' to deliver subjective opinion spin rather than 'facts.'
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Not really. Western social media seems more concerned with Combating Misinformation.
The problem is that stifles all debate. If you think something is wrong and set out to change other's minds then at the beginning what you present is always considered "misinformation" until people realize that its not. 100 years ago claiming that blacks were of equal intelligence to whites would have been deemed "misinformation". The whole fight to legalize weed would have been deemed "misinformation" but anyone in power back when "Reefer Madness" was produced. Claiming that bloodletting caused way more
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Reminds me of Trump's various hotlines for reporting bias on social media, anti-bias training programmes and the like.
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Citations?
Meanwhile, this [senate.gov]...
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Ah yes, information that I disagree with is therefor false.
But NewsMax said something I agree with. So I'll go with them.
look out for the snitch at the non state church (Score:2)
look out for the snitch at
The non state church
Tiananmen Square
Olympics 2022
and more
Just call them 'independent fact checkers' (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's not call them snitches. They're just doing a service of independently fact checking to make sure that everyone knows that we've always been at war with Eastasia.
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the fundamental difference is between FB/Twitter/... bannig the post from their own private forum, albeit publicly accessible one, and the Chinese party banning the poster from living outside prison.
Re:Just call them 'independent fact checkers' (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just call them 'independent fact checkers' (Score:4, Insightful)
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Twitter and Facebook aren't saying "I don't want anyone else to listen to what you have to say"? Amazon isn't saying "I don't want anyone else to listen to what your users have to say"?
I think we can see who is gaslighting who here.
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You do realize that we are just now arguing where on the spectrum of the same phenomenon these things are? Essentially, your point is to be understood as "SJWs are not yet jailing people, so it is entirely different".
Even if they are on the same spectrum, a point I don’t necessarily agree with, they are separated by a vast distance. FB/Twitter are private companies and will act in what they perceive as their own best interests. Anyone is free to leave, go to another service or start their own; that efforts to start a competing service fail due to lack of interest is a commercial problem. People are still free to express a different viewpoint. China is not allowing dissent from the official party line, and punis
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Even if they are on the same spectrum, a point I don't necessarily agree with, they are separated by a vast distance.
Reasonable people can agree to disagree on this. My position is that distance is minuscule, it is intent that matters and actualization of that intent is dependent on available power. I believe that these SJWs would be jailing people if they had power comparable to CCP. More so, even CCP rarely jails dissidents. Instead, they make people's life difficult - like making it harder to get a job or start your own business. Sounds familiar?
FB/Twitter are private companies and will act in what they perceive as their own best interests.
I disagree that these companies are acting in their own best fiscal intere
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Reasonable people can agree to disagree on this. My position is that distance is minuscule, it is intent that matters and actualization of that intent is dependent on available power. I believe that these SJWs would be jailing people if they had power comparable to CCP. More so, even CCP rarely jails dissidents. Instead, they make people's life difficult - like making it harder to get a job or start your own business. Sounds familiar?
Yeah CCP never jails people, except all those they're keeping in re-education camps. Exactly the same as n@zis and racists getting fired.
I disagree that these companies are acting in their own best fiscal interest. Instead, I see this as exerting raw political power on behalf of a few powerful insiders. In doing so, they are not acting as a corporation but as a power center for a few powerful insiders. A more accurate framing of this issue is to decide if it is desirable to allow few unelected and unaccountable technocrats dictating the terms of acceptable discourse in our society. To demonstrate this point, imagine if social media emerged somewhere in Texas instead of California and anti-gun, pro-immigration, and pro-choice views were banned from social media as "problematic".
Ok, are you ready to repeal the 1st amendment then and have the government determine what is allowed and what isn't allowed on social media? When the democrats have the majority?
This "free to start their own" is entirely false narrative. These competitors did not fail due to lack of commercial interest, they fail due to anti-competitive collusion of existing players. For example Gab was banned from hosting, accepting payments, individuals in leadership positions even had their own personal credit cards canceled. They had to resort to Pirate Bay-like tactics to stay online. So no, don't give me this "You could always build your own Internet if you don't like conservative views getting banned on Twitter" line. Likewise, Parler had their AWS hosting yanked in days in breach of service contract that mandated 30 day termination notice.
Don't worry, Frank is going to save the right-wing social media now.
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Not when FB/Twitter/etc are artificial government created and protected monopoly entities which are largely funded by tax dollars (in the form of breaks and credits) and special protections under law.
And no, it has little to do with who is in prison and everything to do with shaping public perception and opinion, which in turns allows you to manipulate consent of the governed, rulings by juries, and support f
Re: Just call them 'independent fact checkers' (Score:1)
The lesser of two evils is still evil.
Tiananmen Square (Score:2)
Communism is evil, the CCP are murderers. (Score:5, Informative)
The Party defames itself by existing. Communism is dictatorship.
Feel free to report this to that Pooh-looking, shit-eating monster Xi.
Re:Communism is evil, the CCP are murderers. (Score:5, Funny)
Just reported you! Hope you enjoy your stay in the re-education camp.
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Just reported you! Hope you enjoy your stay in the re-education camp.
Sorry. Am quarantined, can’t go to camp this year and be around people. Be sure to send me a postcard.
Let he who is without stones cast the first sin (Score:2)
Kind of funny, though the story isn't.
Unfortunately, considering the state of the educational system in America, I'm not sure about casting stones. Yeah, a few of the universities are top notch. Ditto a few of the high schools. But most of the lower public schools are indoctrination centers that could be compared to "re-education" camps. Similar to incarceration and with a heavy focus on building "disciplined" and "passive" habits for future wage slaves. And based on some of the resulting characters I've me
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You forgot that China infected the whole world with COVID because of their desire to save face and act like there was no outbreak in the beginning.
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Joe Biden p
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Re:+1 virtue signal (Score:4, Insightful)
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Wouldn't it be fun... (Score:4, Insightful)
...if every time they went on-line, thousands of people made it a matter of pride to mention Tiananmen Square, the genocide against the Uyghurs, attempts to push Tibetans out of their country by flooding it with squatters and/or China's attempt to create a totalitarian surveillance state that would make Big Brother blush?
Sometimes the best data pool is a poisoned data pool.
I, for one, welcome our new... (Score:3)
Uyghur-genociding, protester-murdering, religion-oppressing, melamine-poisoning, Panopticon-deploying culturally excellent overlords!
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Please don't, they may decide to take over Slashdot...
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Oh, damn...I wish I'd thought of that!
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...if every time they went on-line, thousands of people made it a matter of pride to mention Tiananmen Square, the genocide against the Uyghurs, attempts to push Tibetans out of their country by flooding it with squatters and/or China's attempt to create a totalitarian surveillance state that would make Big Brother blush?
Sometimes the best data pool is a poisoned data pool.
That's an exercise in game theory aka the prisoners' dilemma. In other words, it won't happen.
Coming soon to America (Score:2, Insightful)
America's current cancel culture is a first step down a slippery slope to what China is doing.
Has already been effective in the Free World (Score:3, Interesting)
After France passed a law in 1990 making Holocaust denial a crime, Faurisson was repeatedly prosecuted and fined for his writings [france24.com].
A Berlin court has sentenced serial Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck to six months in jail for denying the Nazis' extermination of Jews [dw.com].
Mahler was jailed in 2009 after being handed a 10-year sentence for repeated incitement to racial hatred and for Holocaust denial [dw.com] — which is a crime in Germany.
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"Do as I say, not as I did."
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No
Not even remotely ...
That very fact that you can see this and comment on it proves otherwise
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GP says, "America's current cancel culture ..."
You turn that into "people who have been criticized by the so-called 'cancel culture' movement were on the side, and supported by, the government. So how is the government using the full force of its power to punish citizens ..."
See what you did there? You redefined the terms used by the GP to a point so far out of context that it's now just a dummy stuffed with straw.
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Sounds like America (Score:1, Troll)
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If there really is a "cancel culture", how come see seem to hear so much about it?
sounds like Hitler Youth to me? (Score:4, Interesting)
Germany did this in WW2, kids were encouraged to enroll in the "Hitler Youth" program. Had to be terrifying for the parents, basically your kids could rat you out for anything you did that wasn't PC, or flat out make something up if they were mad at you for punishing them for something or not letting them do/have something. Must have been an absolute nightmare for the parents! The kids could basically do whatever they wanted, the parents lost every shred of control and discipline.
GREAT for the state, HORRIBLE for the people.
Though in the last weeks of the war, Hitler Youth were called on for the final defense of Germany, and a lot of those kids were given guns and grenades to go die. It was sad from start to finish.
Re:sounds like Hitler Youth to me? (Score:4, Interesting)
And obviously that was only 80 years ago.
What's dizzyingly complex about the world today is that we have almost every period in history represented... right now, somewhere on the planet: warlords, authoritarian empires, modern individualism, sensitive egalitarian inclusiveness, and a small percentage of a few others...
And technology is an enabler FOR ALL OF THEM.
I'd like to think that there's a sweet spot between extreme authoritarian social order, and greedy globalisation where corporations run the world through the UN, but that might be too precarious a balance -- we may need to leap to a new kind of culture altogether, where most humans are genuinely... intelligent and compassionate.
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where most humans are genuinely... intelligent and compassionate.
+1 Funny.
Can we flood it with reports of propaganda? (Score:2)
already have that for traffic? (Score:2)
I've seen quite a few dashcam videos on youtube where someone comes out of nowhere, cuts in front of you, and brake checks / drives slow, etc, all to egg you on to speed around them to get away from them, then a week or two later you get a ticket with a pic from that driver's cel phone for speeding or illegal lane change etc. The reporter gets PAID for reporting you. So, naturally, they drive around all day driving dangerously to get others to break traffic laws.
Incentivizing law enforcement ALWAYS leads
Inspiration (Score:1)
Oh, I see the Chinese are drawing inspiration from the US Democratic Party.
hypocrisy (Score:3)
Interesting doublespeak from the country known to deny events (Tiananmen Square) to put up a hotline to report people doing what the government already does.
Sad though, since a lot of people would report someone for "spreading false rumors" about Tiananmen Square when the false rumors were actually the truth. Just helps the Chinese govt track down the truthers for detention and punishment.
But I suppose suppression of information in a digital age is a big job, and enlisting the people to suppress the people will probably end up being a pretty effective tactic. If nothing else, it scales well.
Fuck the CCP (Score:2, Troll)
Fuck the
China
Censorship &
Propaganda
Censoring and ignoring history doesn't make it go away no matter how many times you try.
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Only children censor. Adults discuss and even laugh at "taboo" subjects because they are not insecure.
Didn't know 1984 was translated into Mandarin (Score:1)
"Rat out your neighbor!"
Seriously, I feel sorry for the average Chinese citizen. They're truly living in a dystopia.
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:-) "If you see something, say something"®
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The media is a proxy ... (Score:2)
acting on behalf of the government. Once could even consider CNN and such as propaganda arms of the DNC. The Atlantic Monthly had an article describing China's use of the software Google wrote for them which created their "Social Credit System". We are almost at that condition here in America.
https://www.theatlantic.com/in... [theatlantic.com]
The social websites in this country have been in a long campaign to silence opinions that differ from the narrative they allow. If your opinion promotes the Constitution and th
Authoritarians never come up with anything new (Score:2)
Trump, Xi, and all the others, always the same boring old lies, claims and methods. These people are not only evil, they are _boring_.
Why does this make me think of Fox News? (Score:1)
The Party slandered themselves (Score:2)
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How about I cut your arms and legs off and throw you you off the pier? You will definitely be fucked then!