Look, I'm glad you're being suspicious of Western narratives on China, but Chinese internet companies have been perfectly open about being censored for years.
wuyong posted:When you search for a blocked term on Weibo, you receive a message saying that the search results cannot be shown because of relevant laws and regulations. The site is perfectly upfront about this. The "N" thing isn't just wild speculation, either, it is indeed an expression used in Chinese. Here's a question on Baidu Zhidao, with several other discussions listed below: https://zhidao.baidu.com/question/50196123.html
Look, I'm glad you're being suspicious of Western narratives on China, but Chinese internet companies have been perfectly open about being censored for years.
doy i just explained it.
wuyong posted:When you search for a blocked term on Weibo, you receive a message saying that the search results cannot be shown because of relevant laws and regulations. The site is perfectly upfront about this. The "N" thing isn't just wild speculation, either, it is indeed an expression used in Chinese. Here's a question on Baidu Zhidao, with several other discussions listed below: https://zhidao.baidu.com/question/50196123.html
Look, I'm glad you're being suspicious of Western narratives on China, but Chinese internet companies have been perfectly open about being censored for years.
https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/811rvn/the_wests_claims_about_recent_chinese_censorship/
But really the entire premise is absurd, where a temporary result on one website (which may or may not be true and has already changed in the propaganda narrative) is used to divine secret meanings and market it to liberal fantasies about the global importance of George Orwell.
If you don't trust me, find someone else who can read Chinese and ask them what the screenshots in that post show.
i'd rather die than have freedom of speech
So for that I regret posting that thread. But it's still reactionary to "debunk" things against imperialism, there are plenty of actual reactionaries for that and today's post-truth is not a choice but a given condition of capitalism's speed today. Instead of getting closer to the truth you're supporting the ideology of the status quo which is immune to debunking while discouraging those liberals who've never had to think about ideology before and still think empirically from going further. That entire systems of Marxism have been constructed out of bourgeois ideology shows how dangerous that is.
wuyong posted:When you search for a blocked term on Weibo, you receive a message saying that the search results cannot be shown because of relevant laws and regulations. The site is perfectly upfront about this. The "N" thing isn't just wild speculation, either, it is indeed an expression used in Chinese. Here's a question on Baidu Zhidao, with several other discussions listed below: https://zhidao.baidu.com/question/50196123.html
Look, I'm glad you're being suspicious of Western narratives on China, but Chinese internet companies have been perfectly open about being censored for years.
there are so many assumptions and leaps of logic here. weibo error 20021 refers to "illegal content", you assume this means the content is blocked by law, but "illegal" usually does not mean this in the context of software errors. as far as i can tell the error code does relate to blocked content, including content censored because it is politically sensitive, but also other kinds of undesirable content like spam. the same error code is shown to people trying to use an account that has been temporarily blocked. so when i see a screenshot like this:
how can i assume the reason the error code is being shown? is the account in question temporarily blocked for being a suspected spam/bot account? then no matter what they try and post/search for, they will receive this error. this is why 'crowdsourced' reports about internet censorship are extremely unreliable.
in the case of 'N', it has been assumed by the authors of the report that it and the other terms have been deliberately blocked for all users at system level, and that they have been blocked for reasons of political censorship. given those assumptions, Professor Oriental Understander Sponsored By USA Information Service jumps on his blog and speculates that 'N' is blocked because it is being used to complain about Xi removing term limits. cue a million western numpties cracking wise about Xi Jipig Glorious Leader of Chia. it is an extremely gross load of nonsense.
everyone knows that China selectively censors the internet and i am not arguing that no terms are blocked on weibo ever, the point of western propaganda about such censorship is to try to cast it in a ridiculous light and make the Chinese 'regime' look absurd and fragile (and make the west look sensible and virtuous by comparison). that is why these reports emanate from western academic sources funded by both public and private western organisations explicitly devoted to pro-western propaganda. nobody with more than a passing interest in these matters should ever take such reports at face value
Yes, we should make the case that western academia is funded to make imperialist propaganda based on racist, orientalist tropes. There is plenty of material with which to do it within this story alone. But when you speculate about something that anyone can verify for themselves - without consulting Wikipedia or any other western authority, but directly from the website in question - I don't see how that does anything but weaken our credibility.
If I am really just playing into the hands of the enemy by saying all of this, I am truly sorry. I just do not think you are accomplishing anything by clinging to the most easily countered parts of the argument.
wuyong posted:You can go to Weibo Search (https://s.weibo.com/) without an account and try out terms for yourself. Some queries (like 移民 and 终身制) will, by default, display posts from big verified accounts, but you can produce the error message by clicking on the "文章" tab. The error message reads 根据相关法律法规和政策，“习”搜索结果未予显示, which explicitly says the results are not shown because of pertinent laws, statues, and policies. Nothing about computer errors, invalid queries, blocked users, or spam bots.
You know more about weibo than I do, so thanks. I was going on the error code in the screenshots posted earlier and as far as I could tell my interpretation was correct (there are other weibo error codes which also use 'illegal' in the software error sense). Anyway, despite the fact that I wasted a lot of effort talking about the error message, the point stands that the data in these reports is suspect, and it is being given orientalist and absurd interpretations by out-and-out propaganda agents.
I regret wading into this conversation anyway. I still dont believe 'N' was ever blocked by law but even if it was, the reaction of a communist upon hearing about a communist country's internet censorship efforts should fall somewhere on a scale ranging from "who cares lol" to "Good."
my dad is li gang
gay_swimmer posted:chinese internet memes are amazing
my dad is li gang
i thought it was cool that xi jinping is winnie the pooh
Ufuk_Surekli posted:guys i just typed "Theresa May" into the cracker search engine "google" and it turns out the vicious occidental despot is trying to even censor mention of her own name, please alert the press and send money to my totally legitimate NGO to save the oppressed british
see now this is an infinitely better critique. thank u~
https://www.ft.com/content/54555bf2-1b99-11e8-aaca-4574d7dabfb6
The unusual manner in which the amendment was announced on Sunday afternoon has invited speculation that the party is facing internal resistance from Mr Xi’s detractors, who may have deliberately flagged up the measure in an effort to subvert it.
It was first revealed in a terse dispatch by the official Xinhua news agency, sparking a fevered reaction both domestically and internationally. But China Central Television’s Sunday evening news suggested that the party had never intended to highlight what it knew would be a controversial decision. The amendment was mentioned only in passing in the context of a much longer CCTV report about the many other routine constitutional changes recommended by the party’s Central Committee. It received a similarly muted treatment in Monday’s edition of the party’s flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily.
there is online censorship happening but it's not like officials aren't paying attention to what people are talking about. netizen response is factored into basically every decision the government makes. it's possible, even likely, that the national commission of the npc changes the amendment to make the term limit three instead of open-ended.
Edited by Guyovich ()
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/state-department-determines-north-korea-used-chemical-weapons
Experts say the Feb. 13, 2017, death of Kim Jong Nam at Kuala Lumpur airport is the only confirmed North Korean use of chemical weapon agents. North Korean defectors have charged that such chemicals have been used against prisoners and disabled people inside the authoritarian nation.
North Korea is believed to have provided chemical defensive equipment and technology to Syria and Libya in the past, and an upcoming report by a United Nations panel that monitors sanctions against the North says that in August 2016 the North transferred special resistance valves and thermometers known for use in chemical weapons programs in Syria. North Korean technicians continue to operate at chemical weapons and missile facilities in the war-ravaged Mid-east nation, according to details of the report obtained by The Associated Press.
rolaids posted:Guarantee he's gonna get passed over for the Nobel for like, fucking Bana Al Abed or Justin Trudeau
My money's on they'll give it to Kissinger again
kornfan posted:I listen to a lot of Arirang Radio, an English-language station based out of RoK (a description which alone tells you everything you need to know) and it’s really embarrassing and weird to hear Korean-from-Korea commentators tow the US line for hours a day. I realize this is no great contribution to the discussion but it’s a real downer y’all!!!!!
one of RoK's major exports to the West is the sort of story that explains that no one knows DPRK has fully weaponized pulse lasers because Kim Jong Un has hidden them inside the country's infants. If you read some story on CNN about Kim's top general dying in a government-ordered pit fight against a gorilla, it probably showed up first in an anonymously-sourced RoK news segment.
cars posted:
and that usually comes from some fascist in China’s blog afaict
edit: someday I’ll figure out the ‘zzone’s quote function but not today