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Mob Rule on China's Internet
Alien54 writes to mention an International Herald Tribune article about the growing phenomenon in China known as internet hunting; Using the web to track down individuals who have violated social more or broken the law. From the article: "In recent cases, people have scrutinized husbands suspected of cheating on their wives, fraud on Internet auction sites, the secret lives of celebrities and unsolved crimes. One case that drew a huge following involved the poisoning of a Tsinghua University student - an event that dates to 1994, but was revived by curious strangers after word spread on the Internet that the only suspect in the case had been questioned and released. Even a recent scandal involving a top Chinese computer scientist dismissed for copying an American processor design came to light in part because of Internet hunting, with scores of online commentators raising questions about the project and putting pressure on the scientist's sponsors to look into allegations about intellectual property theft."
Is this what happens when you keep people from looking at porn all day? Perhaps it represents the amount of time that intelligent people 'waste' discussing politics.\ Or has the Internet awoken community interest, and those discussions are just the first steps to a more open society.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
I can just see it... "today, a man was sentenced to death after a jury of his p33rz found that he was 'fscked up.'"
Always used in plural, not singular.
Actually, the most interesting bit in there was about the plagiarism case. Too bad they didn't provide more detail -- I hadn't heard about that angle before.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
What could possibly go wrong? Because you know, everything you read on the internet is true.
You say China... I say America. How is this different from what the NSA warrantless surveillance in the United States?
Infiltrated dot Net
Who are the real enemies of freedom? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez8inXRov7A
Where can we get one of those?
I read Usenet for the articles.
There is often discussion here about how the Chinese people are oppressed by their government and that we need to take steps to give them technology to route around censorship and to eventually topple their totalitarian government. Now, I'm getting the impression that they're a bunch of busy bodies and snitches that have exactly the government that they want.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Some of this stuff seems arbitrary and abusive, while some of it also seems legitimate. Let's just hope it does more good than harm.
China has always had a reputation for having large amounts of social pressures that have tended to lower some forms of crime. I've always wished America had more social pressures like this. In the US nobody really gives two flying fsck's if you are a criminal - sure it may look bad on an employment application but your neighbors won't care and probably won't even find out unless you are a registered sex offender or something like that.
Isn't China ruled by Communists? When did the Mob started ruling China? Why haven't America liberated China yet? Inquiring minds want to know...
Mob metality at it's worst. This type of thing goes too far where we are letting the mob dictate morality
From the article, the husband's nick is Freezing Blade (I bet his 'blade' isn't getting any warmer, hehe), the cheating student goes by Bronze Mustache (Anyone else picturing a Chinese version of most 70's porn stars?) and the wife is Quiet Moon (Too... Many... Jokes...) . Sounds like the cast of an adult anime. ;-)
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Can you, for example, please point out where the forced-labor camps in the US are?
[ home ]
Can we please link to articles that don't require some technology like javascript to display a @#%!ing text article?
... vigilantism is a bad idea.
You hear calls for vigilante activity a lot, on the net and in the real world. And it's got lots of emotional appeal. But it always turns into mob rule, with absolutely no mechanism for protecting the innocent.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Ancient Chinese secret!
QFA:"Let's use our keyboard and mouse in our hands as weapons". Obviously the repressive Communist rule won't let the common people even get their hands on real weapons.
God spoke to me.
Oh great. Now we are going to be bombarded with amazing stories about everyday stuff simply because they involve THE INTERNET! In CHINA!
Woo.
Can't we go back to the 'old people in Korea' jokes?
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Haven't people done this on SlashDot before?
Think spammers. With the name of one of them, an address, a telephone number and even maps of his location appeared, and the subject of discussion found themselves deluged with junk mail and the like. Sackfuls. Every day.
I cannot remember the guys name and maybe what happened was illegal and maybe even unethical, but I could see the point. It was too long ago to search for...
bang goes my karma... again...
Being married to a Chinese national and having just come back from China I'll weigh in with a few observations. Social obligation is considered very high, but not in a legal sense. The cultural revolution of the seventies and even the Communist party of today placed/places a high value on public self recrimination as a means to redemption. Pointing out the flaws in others has been a way of deflecting unwanted attention to ones self in China for decades. I won't go into details about the personal lives of some of my wife's friends, but based on what she tells me adultery and divorce are becoming as common in China as they are in America. Violent crime may be much lower but all other forms of crime abound.
This new internet activism is probably a reaction to the commonly held belief that social mores are going to hell in a hand basket. My wife, an agnostic like myself, wonders if there is some value in most people having Religion in order to hold the more selfish, destructive behaviors in check. It would sadden me if this is the case, but as the Chinese government lessens its control of its citizenry and with the majority having no clear religion, there has been a corresponding rise in what most consider immoral behavior, and thus the current backlash.
Now whether the new behavior is truly immoral is a separate question, and as an agnostic one I have no firm answer for.
Letter To Iran
...it seems the discussion devolves into one of indiscriminant China bashing. I say indiscriminant because it usually ends up including not only comments on the government (justified, most of the time), but also attacks on the people and culture that would get one's faced punched in if they said it to a Chinese person's face. Some of the things I have read here are as bad if not worse than what is described in the article. From an overseas Chinese student who is sick of borderline racism disguised as concern for human rights, I hope that some of the masses here never gain the power to smash China's hope of becoming a strong, democratic country.
Blogging == Flogging?
- Kal`Goblez
It[The Chinese Government] also introduced an Internet policing system whose cartoon figure mascots show up on people's screens to remind them they are being monitored.
Am I the only one who just imagined Clippy wearing a little chinese police hat?
Oh no, here comes the rage blackout again...
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
...ooooohhhh dangerous, dangerous internet......ooooohhhh nasty, persecutory chinese...
Troll Subject not even supported by the story. Slashdot is learning too much from the mass media.
How is that "mob" ruling anything? The people in the public investigated publicly known events. Then they used the usual power organized people have to pressure people who listen to them. Where's the "rule"? Where, indeed, is the "mob"?
That story is interesting mainly in the power regular people are accruing in China, a Communist tyranny that favors totalitarianism. I guess if you're a Chinese Communist powermonger, the Internet and people using its open society represent "mob rule', because tyrants see the world only in the simplest, most polarized power structures.
Maybe Alien54 and the IHT are learning more from Xin Hua, China's official propaganda publisher, and quoting the best lessons from the New York Times.
--
make install -not war
And you thought myspace stalkers were bad...
It would sadden me if this is the case, but as the Chinese government lessens its control of its citizenry and with the majority having no clear religion, there has been a corresponding rise in what most consider immoral behavior, and thus the current backlash.
If you are implying that a Judeo-Christian religion would help them I would recommend taking a hard look at the past 2,000 years of our religion. It does nothing to stop crime nor prevents society as whole from doing horrible things to other people even with the anger of god and damnation hanging over their head. In some instances it may because people do to horrible things.
Burning people at the stake... inquisitions... Hanging suspected witches for devil worship... Holy Wars... Flying planes into buildings.... Blowing your self up in a crowded market in the name of your god.
Not to say religion can bring out the best in people on occasion, but it isn't required for it do so.
However, the Chinese are in luck... From what I've heard Buddhism is gaining in popularity and that tends to be the most non-violent of all religions (well if you don't count the Sri-Lanka violence) and from what I've studied of it has the best moral frame work of all religions and is more compatible with technology and science.
And as an aside, I think Christianity is frowned upon in China mostly because it caused one of the most bloody civil wars in its history in the Taiping Rebellion where Hong Xiuquan declared he was the new messiah back in the 1850's.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
well, it isn't like Russia is so far.... /obligatory/
In republic China you cheat on wife
In Soviet Russia, Bought wife cheats on you
Sometimes I think the libertarian/anarchy majority here in Slashdot thinks that the community has no rights to dictate moral standards.
When a guy sleeps with your wife, he is not only doing real emotional harm to you, but there is a good chance you might end up raising a child that is not your own. In the United States, anywhere from 10-30% of fathers unwittingly raise children that are not their own. In other words, the mothers were sleeping around, and very often you can't tell if a child belongs to a particular father, until much later on in life if the skin color of biological father and the cuckholded father are the same.
Many community moral codes are based on common sense in keeping society functioning for the long-term, and in the absense of local democratic governments to create enforcable community standards and adjudicate them as well, then the vigilante element is inevitably going to fill that void. Though, obviously many of these Chinese vigilantes are taking some things too far in the heat of the moment, in spirit they are just trying to protect their community from the evil of selfish people acting solely in their interests. Sleeping with another man's wife is a totally selfish act which can have devastating aspects for the community as a whole. Just look at African-American America right now where 70% of the children are born out of wedlock and then correlate that statistic to the statistics of crime and other leading social ills and anyone not taking the idea that "correlation does not equal causation" to the extreme can clearly see that broken down families from having kids out of wedlock is bad for the community, and therefore evil if you postulate that evil is any selfish act which does not benefit the community as a whole.
Every time a married woman goes behind the back of a married man (or vice versa), there is a risk of bastard children being raised if a pregnancy ensues. Furthermore, should a cuckholded man be expected to raise the offspring of another man? Should he be forced to pay child support for a kid that is not his? What is a guy to do in that situation other than to leave his cheating wife (assuming you don't live in a country where stoning is permitted)?
If China was a democracy and people could count on their government to uphold "community standards" as opposed to simply "communist standards", then these sort of vigilante witch hunts would rarely materialize. The United States (my nation) right now has the opposite problem of having a Jerry Springer "Who Are You To Judge Me" type mentality that is pervasive in our country and has absolved much of the public from any sense of personal responsibility or duty to their community. This is having disastrous effects that are slowly bubbling up in terms of worse education, family and therefore community stability, as well as a common cultural identity which doesn't matter much when economic times are good, but definitely matters when economic times are bad. If the people of a nation have common cultural values of shared sacrifice like you had during the Great Depression where families stuck together and pooled their resources, then the people can get through anything, but if everyone has a "every man for himself" type mentality, well then you get the kind of behaviour you found in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.
This delusional libertarian/anarchist mindset that seems to be pervasive here on Slashdot has me wondering if some people need to get some more sunshine in their life and stop assuming that their introverted personality of avoidance realistically applies to the rest of humanity.
You say that as if we here on Slashdot have never lynched a spammer.
Speaking of which, is Ralsky still getting the junkmail he deserves, or has he moved recently?
*cough*
The Chinese government won't even let their citizens use the keyboard and mouse:
/ 06/confirmed_all_t.html
http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2005
Get your Unix fortune now!
This sounds like fun.. Anyone up for hunting Gary Niger?
tag:themobrules
Using this story, totally making the Chinese government look bad.
Kind od a Blade Runner type tale. Bounty Hunters tracking down ordinary Chinese Citizens who are trying to learn about "freedom" on the net.
The Ones marked for Death are those looking for a certain key phrase.
The phrase, of course, turns to be "Tianemen massacre"
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
Here's from my last response to an atheist thinking Religion was the solution for mores:
s .htm
.
I'm sure the last thing you want to do is sit in a cafe and read, but here's a couple more links: http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/executedoffender
(got remorse? nope. one of the final statements is from somebody who can't wait to meet his victims in heaven. word. I can actually admire that level of forgiveness but what does it do for bad people?)
W's gov't funded intensive Christianity prison program increased recidivism. ("Faith-Based Fudging" via http://www.annotatedrant.com/)
And more if you're into this whole partisan thing. .
Not sure what Christianity is supposed to do. It's not exactly rational. In the Congo: A journey into the most savage war in the world (child witches! bulletproof soldiers! religion gone wild)
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
It's patent infringement, not "intellectual property theft."
Theft connotes bereavement where there is none.
Check out my women's designer clothing store.
there is no reply here
there has never been a reply here
it has not been censored by the chinese government
the post wasn't even from a chinese... well it wouldn't have been if it had existed... which it hasn't...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Or what about the bloggers that hounded chicken hawk Bush's CBS critics, etc.
One fake document became the news, not the fact that Bush was a drunken swine
sniffing coke off the taxpayers boobies instead of getting shrapnel in his ass.
That makes them political prisoners in my book. How dare anyone smoke a flower that we don't like them to smoke? (Yet, last I checked, I could legally go down to the store and buy poison that would actually kill me if ingested. A minor point, but still. And of cousre, I can legally have my penis removed, but not smoke a flower.)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Nothing is rather a strong word, and I think demonstrably false.
Hanging suspected witches for devil worship...
Witches were executed not for devil worship, but for causing harm to others. The devil worship was a lurid sidenote.
Flying planes into buildings.... Blowing your self up in a crowded market in the name of your god.
I'm not aware of any Jews or Christians doing those things, although of course it's possible.
So is the word stop. If you read it again:
It does nothing to stop crime nor prevents society as whole from doing horrible things to other people even with the anger of god and damnation hanging over their head.
I think what the GP meant is that religions is not the ultimate cure for crime, which is proven by history. Among other ideologies, religion has its own side effects too. One of the side effect is it sometimes encourages the society to do horrible things against individuals, like witches, or other group of people, like Jewish, muslim. These tragedies happened before and they will happen again. I'm not to say any particular religion is wrong. It is human natural that happened to utilized it in doing horrible things.
Witches were executed not for devil worship, but for causing harm to others. The devil worship was a lurid sidenote.
You're right. Devil worship was just an excuse. The fundamental cause is fear, fear of being harmed by "witches". Fear is a very powerful human emotion. It easily overcomes the rational part of us. And religion at that time only just happened to provide something for the villagers to believe what they were doing was right despite the absence of hard evidence.
"Flying planes into buildings.... Blowing your self up in a crowded market in the name of your god."
I'm not aware of any Jews or Christians doing those things, although of course it's possible.
I think what the GP wants to say is not Judeo-Christian but Abrahamic religion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religion Surprisingly, Judaism, Christianity and Islam came from the same root.
BTW, the GP shouldn't be modded as flambait, but insightful.
People who dislike China tend to mention Tiananmen Square a lot, but they always forget the Tank Man is also a Chinese.
The piracy capital of the world cares about intellectual property?!?
Nick Waterman, Sr Tech Director, #include <stddisclaimer>
No, actually the Church denied the existence of witches. It was a secular crime, not a religious one. And as I mentioned, the Church denied that it was possible for a curse or hex to have any ill effect.
As we know it, communism in the last century drove itself into a deadend. Yet there're still people arguing, that the atrocities took place under communist regimes were never the intention nor doctrine of Karl Marx's idealistic theory, and that had Stalin or Lenin never take the whelm of communist movement, the whole situation could have been different. They might have a point. But that amounts to nothing. In reality, communism had released the worst part of human nature. And there is no way back to change that.
I think the best thing these tragedies brought us, if any, is ways to prevent them from happening again. Mobilizing hatred against people has been declared crime in many countries. More people are aware of fearmongering politicians' hidden agenda. However, there're still countries with no effective rule of law. Even in Western Europe and North America, people still suffer from hatred crimes and political propagandas. Situations are conceivably worse in third-world countries.
Anyway, let's hope the world is changing for the better.
People who dislike China tend to mention Tiananmen Square a lot, but they always forget the Tank Man is also a Chinese.