The conversations are amazing

  • @Korne127@lemmy.world
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    146 months ago

    China propaganda machine goes brrrr

    The way people really suddenly think oh yeah China is just a good country like a European democracy where you can live well is flabbergasting. Of course a dictatorship with massive censorship and suppression of minorities has mostly positive comments.

    And of course, many people that aren’t part of a harassed minority or politically active against the rulers aren’t saying horrible stuff against them (which wouldn’t be seen anyway).

  • @spencerwi@lemm.ee
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    616 months ago

    I mean, an app that’s named after the Little Red Book and which has strict moderation rules (no “Winnie the Pooh” refs, sorry) has comments that claim all the bad things you’ve heard about China are just American propaganda. What a surprise.

    I see a lot of folks going “wow, stupid Americans really believed social credit scores were real”, and meanwhile I see a detailed Wikipedia article describing the implementation of the Social Credit System by China’s Central Government.

    Can someone cite me a source more credible than random internet comments? Otherwise, I’ma just take this as propaganda itself.

    • Cowbee [he/they]
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      366 months ago

      To be clear, it is overwhelmingly Westerners that wish to depict a Chinese man as a yellow bear. You can talk about Pooh, just not in the way westerners tend to want to.

      As for the Social Credit system, the version reported in western media is false and exaggerated. There is a credit system, but it’s largely for businesses and other social entities, not some Orwellian big brother system.

      • @disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        To be clear, it is overwhelmingly Westerners that wish to depict a Chinese man as a yellow bear.

        Really? Because all sources that I can find trace the origin to Xi’s visit to the Philippines back in 2017.

        http://hongkongfp.com/2018/11/20/filipinos-flood-social-media-winnie-pooh-memes-xi-jinping-visits-manila/

        https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2018/11/21/2003704655

        https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/11/21/1870392/winning-pooh-images-flood-social-media-xi-jinping-arrives

          • @disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            I missed that. Thanks. So does that meme from the west outweigh Xi’s entire Philippino welcoming and barrage of memes, prompting the banning of the word Pooh in Chinese media, justify your claim that it’s overwhelmingly Westerners?

            • Cowbee [he/they]
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              86 months ago

              “Pooh” is not banned in China. Taking down racist attacks against Xi happend prior to the visit to the Phillipines, read your own articles. Some users used it in the Phillipines to protest Xi because the racist caricatures were taken down, which was a western thing.

                • Cowbee [he/they]
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                  126 months ago

                  I didn’t evade anything, you’ve been fundamentally wrong about reality several times. Secondly, it wasn’t “the nation of the Philippines,” it was some users, and the fact that the yellow bear caricature is overwhelmingly western does not mean non-western users don’t exist.

                  You’re going to massive lengths to defend depicting a chinese man as a yellow bear.

          • The blocking of Winnie the Pooh might seem like a bizarre move by the Chinese authorities but it is part of a struggle to restrict clever bloggers from getting around their country’s censorship.

            First paragraph from your source. China blocks it to prevent bloggers in China from making the comparison (kinda hard for them to block it on Facebook as China does not have control there). That’s also where this meme started.

            I’m also fairly certain that Pooh having yellow fur is mostly just coincidental (it’d be a bit surprising if Chinese citizens created a racist meme against another Chinese man). The offensiveness of the meme is much more related to Pooh being quite dim and just general fatshaming, not racism. That’s not to say you can’t use the meme in a racist way, just that the origins seemingly aren’t racist.

            • Cowbee [he/they]
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              16 months ago

              I’m aware that it’s China that takes down the racist caricatures. The meme started more innocently, with Pooh being Xi and Tigger being Obama. This turned into western users overwhelmingly sticking with Xi as Pooh. The origins and what stuck are different entirely in intent and character.

              • But as far as I know China isn’t taking down Obama-Tigger comparisons. So Chinese netizens are also sticking with the Xi-Pooh comparison (otherwise China wouldn’t bother taking it down anymore), which doesn’t seem to match with what you’re describing as likely intent, nor with who is making the comparisons.

                You seem pretty convinced it’s mostly racist westerners using the meme, but do you have anything other than a gut feeling to back this up? Because the actions of the Chinese government seem to suggest it’s mostly a domestic problem to them. And for those Chinese users it seems to have taken off as a way to avoid the censors (which is now ineffective, and has morphed into a point of principle).

            • @ZeroHora@lemmy.ml
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              106 months ago

              In my understanding the racist part of the original meme is the Obama been Tigger(one letter away from the N word)

              • Hmm, could be. Although the meme did take off way more with Xi than it ever did with Obama. And other comparisons were made with Eeyore and Piglet, which iirc were mostly due to facial expressions and choice of clothing (it was a shorter lady wearing pink I believe).

                But I hadn’t thought of that connection yet. I figured it was mostly physical resemblance (posture and size).

      • @spencerwi@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Did you read your own link, or just grab the headline from a google search and call it “good enough?”

        It’s true that, building on earlier initiatives, China’s State Council published a road map in 2014 to establish a far-reaching “social credit” system by 2020. The concept of social credit (shehui xinyong) is not defined in the increasing array of national documents governing the system, but its essence is compliance with legally prescribed social and economic obligations and performing contractual commitments. Composed of a patchwork of diverse information collection and publicity systems established by various state authorities at different levels of government, the system’s main goal is to improve governance and market order in a country still beset by rampant fraud and counterfeiting.

        Under the system, government agencies compile and share across departments, regions, and sectors, and with the public, data on compliance with specified industry or sectoral laws, regulations, and agreements by individuals, companies, social organizations, government departments, and the judiciary. Serious offenders may be placed on blacklists published on an integrated national platform called Credit China and subjected to a range of government-imposed inconveniences and exclusions. These are often enforced by multiple agencies pursuant to joint punishment agreements covering such sectors as taxation, the environment, transportation, e-commerce, food safety, and foreign economic cooperation, as well as failing to carry out court judgments.

        These punishments are intended to incentivize legal and regulatory compliance under the often-repeated slogan of “whoever violates the rules somewhere shall be restricted everywhere.” Conversely, “red lists” of the trustworthy are also published and accessed nationally through Credit China.

        • Cowbee [he/they]
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          316 months ago

          Yes, I have. Have you read beyond that point? The West distorts the scope and nature of the credit system to ludicrous degrees, nobody claims that there’s no such thing.

          • @uranibaba@lemmy.world
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            106 months ago

            It’s besides the point how it is talked about. The Second screenshot literally says “Social credit. We don’t have this at all” and your link very much proves that they do. Therefore propaganda in my eyes.

            • Cowbee [he/they]
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              6 months ago

              They very much have a credit score that is not anywhere comparable to the Orwellian depiction in western media, and furthermore the credit system is largely for businesses, not individuals. The western depiction simply does not exist.

              • @uranibaba@lemmy.world
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                -16 months ago

                The western depiction simply does not exist.

                I can and will not argue this point since I lack the proper knowledge on the subject.

                We all agree on the fact that a system exists.
                From the post:

                “Social credit. We don’t have this at all” is a lie. Again, I am not saying anything about how to system works or how it is preceived. I am saying that it exists and the post claimed it does not, nothing else.

                That makes it propaganda to me.

                TL;DR:

                1. The post claims that something that exists does not. This is a fact.
                2. I believe this to be propaganda in some form. This is an opinion.
                • Cowbee [he/they]
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                  106 months ago

                  It’s overwhelmingly clear that you need to do more legwork to prove that that user genuinely thinks there is no credit score, and is not directly responding to the Orwellian version. This is clearly taking a dogmatic reading of one sentence to come up with the absurd claim that Chinese citizens believe that publicly stated policy doesn’t actually exist.

          • @spencerwi@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            I read the whole article, as it went on to describe more of what has been reported as having a “social credit score”, and gave more details about how it’s administered.

            Basically, the headline is “no, it’s not at all what you’ve heard”, and then the article goes on to describe exactly what has been reported in the US. I’m not sure your point about “there’s no credit score that is administered by the Chinese government with a mechanism for blacklisting you and restricting you everywhere” is well-supported by an article that describes a credit score that is administered by the Chinese government that operates blacklists that are enforced under the slogan “whoever violates the rules somewhere shall be restricted everywhere.”

            If that’s not actually how it works, then you need to provide a credible source that proves that’s not how it works. Providing a source that reports that yes, that’s exactly how it works doesn’t serve your argument. And “well but the West is totally lying, maaan” isn’t proof; it’s an unverified claim by a random internet commenter.

        • REgon [they/them]
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          106 months ago

          This “being obtuse and belligerent” thing that all you dumbasses do is honestly sad. What’s sadder is that it’s not only encouraged and rewarded in your echo chambers.
          The western forum is a sad state of affairs really. Just chock full of the most obvious and base level rhetorical parlor tricks. Wish you worms at least had to do basic work, but you do a debate club when you’re 8 and you never move on. To quote the president: SAD

      • @Bronzebeard@lemm.ee
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        -136 months ago

        Dummy, those jokes started in China. It’s not about the color of the character, either. Way to miss the entire joke.

            • @gubblebumbum@lemm.ee
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              -76 months ago

              wasnt the whole thing literally started by chinese people? were all those weibo users cia assets or people with internalized racism?

              • REgon [they/them]
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                6 months ago
                1. And are you Chinese?

                2. I’m happy you’ve got a Chinese friend that tells you it’s okay to be racist.

                3. The fact that you’re unwilling to acknowledge the fact that this redditor shibboleth got popular amongst a bunch of white people has nothing to do with them finding yet another socially acceptable way to be racist is telling a lot we already knew about you.

                4. If a reactionary org of black people (I dunno of one but I’m sure there’s some church or something) had satirically depicted Obama as curious George, do you think you could get away with calling him a monkey without being (rightfully) called a racist?

              • FunkyStuff [he/him]
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                176 months ago

                Black people started using the n word among themselves casually, doesn’t mean other people can just copy it and shield themselves from accusations of racism by saying Black people were doing it first.

                • @gubblebumbum@lemm.ee
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                  -46 months ago

                  so comparing xi to pooh is the same as calling a black person the n word? i wonder if chinese or asian people hold the same opinion

    • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]
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      936 months ago

      For real imagine living in a country where a faceless entity logs all of your financial activity without your consent and distills that information to summarize a person’s character into a numerical score used to lock people out of securing housing or finding work, dystopian nightmare

      • @spencerwi@lemm.ee
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        If I have bad credit in the US, I don’t get locked out of riding the bus. From the “no no it’s totally not an Orwellian big brother system” article someone linked above trying to claim it’s all BS:

        These are often enforced by multiple agencies pursuant to joint punishment agreements covering such sectors as taxation, the environment, transportation, e-commerce, food safety, and foreign economic cooperation, as well as failing to carry out court judgments.

        These punishments are intended to incentivize legal and regulatory compliance under the often-repeated slogan of “whoever violates the rules somewhere shall be restricted everywhere.”

        There’s also no credit-score check in the US for job applications, so no, it doesn’t “lock people out of finding work.”

        • Cowbee [he/they]
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          496 months ago

          Read beyond that point. The West distorts the scope and nature of the credit system to ludicrous degrees, nobody claims that there’s no such thing.

          • @spencerwi@lemm.ee
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            As I responded to you elsewhere, I did read beyond that point. Are you sure that you did?

            I read the whole article, as it went on to describe more of what has been reported as having a “social credit score”, and gave more details about how it’s administered.

            Basically, the headline is “no, it’s not at all what you’ve heard”, and then the article goes on to describe exactly what has been reported in the US. I’m not sure your point about “there’s no credit score that is administered by the Chinese government with a mechanism for blacklisting you and restricting you everywhere” is well-supported by an article that describes a credit score that is administered by the Chinese government that operates blacklists that are enforced under the slogan “whoever violates the rules somewhere shall be restricted everywhere.”

            If that’s not actually how it works, then you need to provide a credible source that proves that’s not how it works. Providing a source that reports that yes, that’s exactly how it works doesn’t serve your argument. And “well but the West is totally lying, maaan” isn’t proof; it’s an unverified claim by a random internet commenter.

              • @spencerwi@lemm.ee
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                -46 months ago

                “I can find someone saying something way more insane than reality” != “social credit score doesn’t exist.”

                Just admit you’re wrong, dude. Winnie the Pooh doesn’t personally love you that much.

            • REgon [they/them]
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              96 months ago

              So which part of this do you think is the part that addresses the clear and salient arguments you’re arguing against?

            • CloutAtlas [he/him]
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              336 months ago

              I literally live in China. The scores apply to businessmen and not the average citizen. China isn’t North Sentinel Island, you can literally come here.

        • @ubergeek@lemmy.today
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          6 months ago

          If I have bad credit in the US, I don’t get locked out of riding the bus

          You might!

          I know a lot of areas are switching to digital-only bus fares, and those, of course, require a bank card or credit card…

          Guess what can lock you out of getting those, and thereby, riding on the bus?

          There’s also no credit-score check in the US for job applications, so no, it doesn’t “lock people out of finding work.”

          Do you live in the US? Lots of employers run credit checks as a part of their normal background checking. I’ve see people fired for bad credit scores.

        • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]
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          376 months ago

          Use your critical thinking skills, imagine a bus in a city of 10 million people during rush hour at a busy stop – do you honestly think they’re checking everyone’s credit score before they get on? This shit is fake you have been duped

          And how exactly would an individual be subject to oversight in matters like “taxation, the environment, transportation, e-commerce, food safety, and foreign economic cooperation, as well as failing to carry out court judgments”? I know we have citizens united but corporations are not people lol

          • Schadrach
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            -16 months ago

            I know we have citizens united but corporations are not people lol

            Citizens United didn’t make corporations people. Corporate personhood had been a thing for a very long time, largely about whether or not forming a business means you lose legal rights operating under it (Does a business entity have freedom of speech? What does freedom of the press even mean in an 18th century context if it doesn’t apply to a business [aka a newspaper]?) and whether or not regular old laws prohibiting a person from doing a thing can be applied to businesses.

          • @intelisense@lemm.ee
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            -46 months ago

            Why would such a feature need facial recognition? Just use the ID on the travel pass and done - cheaper, faster, and harder to fake if done properly.

            • CloutAtlas [he/him]
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              236 months ago

              The bus and metro passes are literally transferrable because they’re just a token not tied to any ID. Also they accept cash, and you can buy passes at a kiosk.

              I have personally even purchased a metro ticket for another person because we were going somewhere together and they left theirs at home. Within the last 2 weeks.

              You have been lied to. There are no WMDs in Iraq, MSG isn’t toxic, and Napoleon wasn’t short either, if you just blatantly swallow everything you see.

          • @spencerwi@lemm.ee
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            Use your critical thinking skills, imagine a bus in a city of 10 million people during rush hour at a busy stop – do you honestly think they’re checking everyone’s credit score before they get on? This shit is fake you have been duped

            Again, citation needed. “There’s literally no way an internet-connected society that already requires payment to board a bus, usually via something like tap-to-pay, could ever possibly check your ID against a list of IDs before you get on the bus” is not convincing. Evidence is convincing, and I’ve seen none so far. I’ve only seen an article reporting that it actually happens.

            The quote you’re saying is ridiculous is from the article provided describing how the social credit system actually works in real life. If you can give me a credible source that demonstrates this isn’t happening (instead of just your own lack of imagination to conceptualize tech that is already broadly implemented worldwide) then maybe that’d be more convincing than “I can’t personally imagine how that would work, so it’s impossible!”

            • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]
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              6 months ago

              A still from some random persons shitty travel blog taken 6 months ago of her getting on the bus in China. What do you think that box is for, cookies for the driver?

              https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C0Ie9HYWejc

              Feel free to watch for yourself, this is around minute 23. It took me 30 seconds to find this

              By the way exchanges like this is why many people on left instances are outright hostile to liberals, making outlandish claims while being too fucking lazy to do even the bare minimum of independent research, racism to discount the voices of the people who are actually fucking from there saying ‘no this is bullshit’

              Like who are you going to believe a regurgitation of a state department talking point or a website full of normal ass Chinese people

              I know the answer bc like all liberals you are racist and intellectually lazy

            • CloutAtlas [he/him]
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              I live in China. You put ¥2 into the slot and you get on. You can be wearing a fully balaclava, a face mask, or nothing. No-ones running ID on you to make sure your magical score is high enough before you are allowed to get on. You can get a transit token so you can tap on if you’re cashless. They’re sold without ID checks, foreigners can get them without speaking a word of Mandarin.

              You have been lied to and now you’re repeating those lies on the internet without even getting paid.

        • Dessalines
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          596 months ago

          If you have bad credit in the US, it prevents you from getting housing, or even renting an apartment.

          As people posted to you several times, china’s credit score exists to keep tabs on companies, and prevent excesses and corruption. Basic regulatory things that the US used to do in a few decades ago, but is now considered “authoritarian”.

          • @eldavi@lemmy.ml
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            356 months ago

            If you have bad credit in the US, it prevents you from getting housing, or even renting an apartment.

            it also prevents you from getting a job nowadays and more and more employers are insisting on it.

            • @PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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              36 months ago

              It’s kinda weird honestly, capitalists should like when the worker is in debt because then the worker would be more desperate to get a job and agree on worse conditions. not to mention entire system is set up to put workers into debts and thus prevent them from organising and instead forcing them to work more for less.

          • 小莱卡
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            446 months ago

            And prevents from getting a car, the main mode of transport in the US. Talking about being able to ride a bus in the US is comical.

            • Schadrach
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              86 months ago

              Talking about being able to ride a bus in the US is comical.

              Depends where you live. It’s much more doable in the densest urban areas than it is somewhere rural. I have a friend who lives in Boston for example and he doesn’t have a car, at all. Because Boston’s mass transit is good enough for his routine needs. I can’t do that here, however.

        • Michael
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          There’s also no credit-score check in the US for job applications, so no, it doesn’t “lock people out of finding work.”

          Employers may use credit report information to verify an applicant’s identity and to look for signs of excessive debt or past financial mismanagement. Source: https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/why-employers-check-your-credit-report-and-what-they-see/


          Employers discriminate very openly against applicants for a variety of reasons. Nepotism is one such way, AI filtering is an emergent way - there are plenty of other practices.

          Good luck getting a job if you were ever convicted of a crime, no matter how innocuous, or even had a police report filed against you (for certain jobs with clearances) - with no convictions, evidence, or arrest. Even being arrested with charges dropped can disqualify you effectively.

          And you better believe if you actually got arrested, every local newspaper has doxxed you - with full name, mug shot, even potentially your employment history and rough home address. All it takes is a name to get somebody’s address because people search websites exist to compile all of the wonderful publicly available information.

        • REgon [they/them]
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          256 months ago

          Here, drew a picture of you
          i-love-not-thinking
          Imagine having the internet at your disposal, being able to immediately investigate your own assumptions, but instead you choose to just state blatantly wrong things and then get mad when you’re called out for it.

          Consider wether digging a hole and then staying in it would be right for you. Consult your doctor

    • @disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I have some sources on the child and slave labor, if that helps.

      https://worldwithoutgenocide.org/genocides-and-conflicts/genocide-of-the-uyghurs-in-western-china/china-tibet-and-the-uyghurs

      https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/02/01/china-carmakers-implicated-uyghur-forced-labor

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/nz0g306v8c/china-tainted-cotton

      This last one is ‘Western propaganda’ but is very helpful in identifying the types of products to avoid. It’s near impossible in the US, unless you make your own textiles/clothes or only buy second-hand.

      https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods-print

      • Dessalines
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        316 months ago

        Your first link is a few paragraphs with no sources whatsoever.

        The second one sources Human Rights Watch, who got bodied even on reddit the last time they tried to spread this line. They pretty much source only from Zenz (a far-right anti-semitic christian evangelical who thinks birth conrtrol is genocide).

        The third link has Zenz again as its main source.

        Its so exhausting to have to debunk the same recycled sources over and over, so here’s a megathread:

        https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#whats-going-on-with-the-uyghurs

        • @Dop@lemmy.world
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          176 months ago

          I appreciate a someone making the effort to debunk but your megathread is absolute garbage, I checked a couple links, got redirected toward twitter and quora threads, so ty but don’t spread misinformation.

          • Dessalines
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            66 months ago

            I need to check a lot of those links and archive them, because predictably a lot of the ones posted to US run websites like twitter get removed for going against the US-zenz narrative.

            Also does the fact that these ppl use twitter or quora automatically mean they’re misinforming people?

        • @disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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          So all of the nations with a free and open internet are pushing propaganda, and we should just take the firewalled nation of oppressively regulated speech at their word?

          crazy

          • Cowbee [he/they]
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            186 months ago

            No nation has “free and open internet” in reality. Some are just more open about their biases while others try to obfuscate how they censor.

            • @jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              -166 months ago

              dunno what your talking about ive never been blocked by government mandate only corporate mandates, and I can just vpn around those.

                • @jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  uh obviously? do you not understand the distinction between corporate and government mandates? I can explain it if you need me to because its kind of critical to this whole conversation. and if you do understand the difference, then wtf is your point.

                • @Limonene@lemmy.world
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                  36 months ago

                  I’ve been to China. VPN access requires jumping through insane hoops and disguising your traffic as different traffic. Tor is blocked. Most commercial VPNs are IP blocked. HTTPS proxy or HTTP proxy over SSH tunnel gets blocked very quickly due to traffic analysis.

                • @jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  true! of course your hand waving why it was banned and the options they were given. tiktok could have divested from chinese control in the US region they chose not to. in no way has the US government censored information from individuals as a result of that bill. they censured the business operating procedures. two very different and distinct issues when it comes to access to content.

                  In no way have americans been prevented from accessing the information within tiktok. compare and contrast that with say trying to find tiananmen square information in china.

                  in fact i’ll help everyone out, here is the ruling

              • Cowbee [he/they]
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                156 months ago

                Sure, and in the US companies like Google heavily distort search algorithms to make it so that the vast majority of people see only what’s already approved.

                • @disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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                  -66 months ago

                  So you don’t like that your point was disproven and are now comparing corporate manipulation of their own services to governmental control of the entire internet?

                  Get real.

          • Dessalines
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            No nation should allow the US surveillance arms like Facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube and reddit to operate within their borders. These are US controlled entities that serve to push pro-US foreign policy, and hoover up all global communications.

            For example, the most popular social media platform in India, is facebook. The US controls the main communication platform of a country with a population much larger than its own.

            Countries should realize what a dangerous threat it is to have US companies control your social media.

            • @disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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              There is a difference between a corporation manipulating their own service and a government controlling the entire internet for the nation.

              No one is forcing you to use US corporate social media. Everyone needs internet access.

              • @coolusername@lemmy.ml
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                6 months ago

                dude, the CIA controls everything. Probably since at least the 60’s. Use your brain. Why do you think the most far right and “far left” media agree on the SAME THINGS when it comes to US foreign policy? US media is JUST as free as Chinese media, which is not at all. Read about the twitter leaks. Feds just emailed them to take shit down and they did it.

              • @sakodak@lemmy.world
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                196 months ago

                US corporations are the US government. They outright own it. US media is state media with extra steps.

                • @disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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                  -46 months ago

                  You don’t need to use social media to access the internet.

                  How many times must I write the difference between corporate controlled platforms and governmentally controlled internet?

              • Dessalines
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                216 months ago

                There is a difference between a corporation manipulating their own service and a government controlling the entire internet for the nation.

                There really isn’t a fundamental difference here. US capitalists run the country, control its media, and stand above it’s political system. It’s military/defense apparatus, and police function as their hired goons.

          • @triplenadir@lemmygrad.ml
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            136 months ago

            lol “free and open internet” have you not been reading the news the last two decades, or especially the last year? USA has its own set of “great firewalls”, the latest one built against tiktok

        • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]
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          376 months ago

          Umm no it isn’t sweaty, it clearly says the source is [organisation founded by Adrian zenz] and [organisation that funds Adrian zenz]

      • @ubergeek@lemmy.today
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        06 months ago

        It’s too bad the people of China aren’t allowed to edit Wikipedia, and correct the facts, because of their oppressive state.

      • Dessalines
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        286 months ago

        More and more I see them just sending either a duckduckgo search, or the first few links from that search, which is of course always from anglo-supremacist news sources.

    • @driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
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      6 months ago

      Edit: the removed comment said that the social credit score existed based on this Wikimedia article.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System

      In the Wikipedia article itself:

      There has been a widespread misconception that China operates a nationwide and unitary social credit “score” based on individuals’ behavior, leading to punishments if the score is too low. Media reports in the West have sometimes exaggerated or inaccurately described this concept.[7][8][9] In 2019, the central government voiced dissatisfaction with pilot cities experimenting with social credit scores. It issued guidelines clarifying that citizens could not be punished for having low scores, and that punishments should only be limited to legally defined crimes and civil infractions. As a result, pilot cities either discontinued their point-based systems or restricted them to voluntary participation with no major consequences for having low scores.[7][10] According to a February 2022 report by the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), a social credit “score” is a myth as there is “no score that dictates citizen’s place in society”.[7]

    • CloutAtlas [he/him]
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      216 months ago

      When they reference Xi negatively they use Palpatine or some literary villain as a comparison. Using a yellow bear beloved by most of the world seems counter productive. Imagine if people compared Hitler to Charlie Chaplain due to likeness and not, say, Satan.

      • BeamBrain [he/him]
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        6 months ago

        The invisible white supremacy at the center of liberalism: “You can’t believe what those people say about their country; they’re inherently untrustworthy. Only the word of white people is credible.”

      • @coolusername@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        *feds. and the criteria for a credible source for them as they need to be western-aligned media. it’s a complete joke.

  • AItoothbrush
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    86 months ago

    I realized why i fucking hate tankies. They use the same debate tactics as alt-rights but its not even a clear divide as technically theyre on your side.

  • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost
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    356 months ago

    This is exactly what governments around the world are afraid of. Every government wants us to blindly accept that every citizen of the nation is profoundly evil and must be obedient to its government.

    Russia wants its citizens to believe every single lie about itself and other nations. That everyone in Ukraine is a bloodthirsty Nazi, and Russia is liberating Crimea.

    America wants its citizens to believe every single lie about itself and other nations. Every brown person is a terrorist waiting for its Manchurian candidate call sign to do a second 9/11, and that the economy is the greatest in the world.

    No nation tells the entire truth, from lying from omission via national security, to straight up war time propaganda, to funding and owning news networks. From Radio Free Europe to Sputnik, a government will lie to your face and tell you its an unabridged raw truth.

    The only way we could actually learn the “truth” (if there is such a one when anyone could be as brainwashed as their government wants them to be) is by directly talking to the citizens of each nation. The internet is a great equalizer, the only limit is language and translation. That’s why governments censor the internet, or even shut it down when it gets too much for a government to manage.

    We all have more in common with the random citizens of China, Russia, Germany, Japan, South Korea, America, Mexico, Canada, Uganda, South Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Ukraine, Brazil… We have more in common with being human and being subjugated and redistricted in doing what makes us happy and free.

    And the government and rich of each of those nations and beyond have more in common each other than to the citizens they try to control like dogs. They all disagree on why they do it, but the end result is the same. Status quo, monopoly on violence kept in place with whoever is at the top. The set dressing and costumes change, but the stage play goes on.

    You and I have more in common than with the president or prime minister or dictator we are under. The only thing we share with the top 1% and our governments is the lanauge we share and the citizenship. I have friends around the world, and I have more in common with random geeks in Japan and China, than the leadership of my nation.

    The governments want you to think that you have nothing to share and love with another human being outside the lines drawn in the sand by people out of touch with the people inside those lines.

  • Steal Wool
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    166 months ago

    我爱小红书!I love rednote! So many cool people and I’m brushing up on my mandarin 😎

  • Few things blew my mind even though I’ve been a big fan of Chinese economic and political policy for a while

    They actually really like Soviet Culture, the marching soldiers and flags etc. Soviet rock like Kino and the like is very popular!

    They’re casually Marxist, its not something they have to fight to learn about so socialism is a casual existence for them. I figured the youth would be “too cool or hip” but doesn’t seem to be the case

    They’re very similar as gamers, they really like shooters like battlefield and cs go. I assume their MMOs are different but I’m asking about that

    It truly is a massive cultural exchange the likes of which have never been seen before. I’m trying to find out if they grew up on the same games, Morrowind Deus Ex Thief Ultima Online D&D etc

  • Jo Miran
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    1346 months ago

    Circle jerking about China is as ridiculous as circle jerking about the US. We’ve been here before with US vs USSR, but this time everyone has a megaphone and an IQ that can be measured with a ruler.

    • @psud@aussie.zone
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      46 months ago

      Social credit scores were a thing. People were punished for low scores. It only happened in a few cities and it was described as a pilot.

      Obviously the pilot got a lot of bad press in and outside China and it is no longer happening

    • 小莱卡
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      6 months ago

      does it surprise you when a non neglible amount of americans believe the earth is flat? or that vaccines have nanomachines to control your brain? 😂

    • @nialv7@lemmy.world
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      But… social credit literally is real… There are government legislations on this. It is not a conspiracy theory.

      On the other hand Western media definitely has exaggerated and demonized it a lot. The social credit is basically your credit score, but it is more expansive and uses information some might see as encroaching on their personal privacy and freedoms.

      • stebo
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        56 months ago

        wdym by “basically your credit score”?

    • @coolusername@lemmy.ml
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      -166 months ago

      And they believe Uyghur genocide too. They’re fucking brainwashed. They completely lack critical thinking capabilities.

    • Mister Neon
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      636 months ago

      American here, yes. To be fair I don’t think about China a lot.

        • @ShareMySims@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 months ago

          This right here.

          And the point is that an average American barely knows how those work, or exactly what information the government and or private financial and other companies collect about them (it’s a lot) or how much it impacts their daily lives (deeply), in the same way the average Chinese person barely knows just how much surveillance their government is doing on them (it’s a lot) or how much it impacts their daily lives (deeply).

          This post is such tankie bullshit.

          Pretending like only one government does (internal and external) propaganda, or only one government is oppressing and lying to its own people (not to mention people in other countries), or that the average person in any country know, or is willing to admit to themselves, never mind others, and especially never mind people from a country you’ve been propagandised against from birth, the flaws of their own government is not only laughable, and hypocritical, but also massively counterproductive.

          • @BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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            146 months ago

            the average Chinese person barely knows just how much surveillance their government is doing on them (it’s a lot) or how much it impacts their daily lives (deeply).

            Unlike you, of course. You, the enlightened Westerner, the true free thinker, know so much more than those orientals.

          • Cowbee [he/they]
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            146 months ago

            There’s a big difference between the commonly reported western idea of a social credit system, and the actual credit system that exists in China. Chiefly, it is primarily for businesses, not citizens. You’re making an error in attempting to equate the scope.

            • sunzu2
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              -86 months ago

              Chinaman regime good, daddy Sam regime bad🤡

              It’s a fucking large state, their entire MO is control of population to rule them for personal gains. How naive is anyone to still LARP “my daddy good, my daddy strong, your daddy bad” bullshit.

              Adult fuxking people jfc

              • Cowbee [he/they]
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                146 months ago

                First, don’t use that term to describe Chinese people, that has racist connotations.

                As for your claim that the entire MO of the PRC’s government is “control for personal gain,” can you elaborate?

                • sunzu2
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                  -56 months ago

                  First, don’t use that term to describe Chinese people, that has racist connotations.

                  That’s a you a problem dear;)

                  Communist party of China and their state controled oligarchs have gotten wealthy. Now there is a large working class that doesn’t get much benefit from the regime and the growth model is stalled ie the same parasitic set up we see across all regimes currently.

        • @theneverfox@pawb.social
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          56 months ago

          So I’m not crazy? I could’ve sworn I looked into it, and it was basically just a credit score where you also get dinged for police interaction or living with someone who committed a crime

          • sunzu2
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            06 months ago

            “Criminal record”

            Not sure how this shit works in China but it is all about the same at the end of the day.

  • @caboose2006@lemm.ee
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    1616 months ago

    Eh, there’s truth and lies on both sides. Coming from someone that lived in china for 4 years and was able to engage with Chinese primary news sources. But basic healthcare in china is faster and cheaper, but then again I went to get a wart removed and they prescribed me acorn paste that accelerated the growth of the wart. So win some lose some.

  • @Pollux@leminal.space
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    236 months ago

    They really need to add a translation feature though. It’s getting a bit annoying running everything through a translate app, for both english and chinese speakers I imagine.

    • @wurzelgummidge@lemmy.ml
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      206 months ago

      There are a heck of a lot more Chinese people that speak English than there are English speakers that can speak Chinese

      • @psud@aussie.zone
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        16 months ago

        Most of the Chinese speakers seem to be the youth

        Source: I live near their timezone, and used to spend time on chat roulette and Chinese students wanted to practice their English there

    • Cowbee [he/they]
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      486 months ago

      Perhaps it will get added, but it’s important to note that this is a Chinese app for Chinese users, the English influx was an accident.

      Still, China’s overall geopolitical strategy is to trade and be friendly with literally anyone who will do the same, so I imagine a translation feature may come.

  • @KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    286 months ago

    The social score thing isn’t really propaganda as much as it is idiots believing whatever they read. It started from what was essentially thinly veiled racism, and became “true” because people kept hearing it.

  • Platypus
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    6 months ago

    Wow, the content on the Chinese controlled platform matches the Chinese narrative? Shocking.