Slashdot Mirror
New MySpace China Tells Users to Spy on Each Other
Anonymous Chinese Coward writes "MySpace has launched in China, the world's most populous nation, but this definitely is NOT the MySpace you're used to. Members are told to click a button to report any 'misconduct' by other users. MySpace's definition of 'misconduct' includes actions such as 'endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting the government, undermining national unity, spreading rumors or disturbing the social order' — according to the site's terms and conditions. In China these are all crimes which carry a hefty prison sentence. Any attempt to post content containing phrases that the Chinese government doesn't like, such as 'Taiwanese independence', the banned 'FaLun' religious movement or the Dalai Lama, produces the following message. 'Sorry, the article you want to publish may contain inappropriate content. Please delete the unsuitable content, and then try reposting it. Thank you.'"
I hope they catch as much crap for this as Yahoo and Google have for their apparent misconduct on their Chinese counterparts.
MySpace's definition of 'misconduct' includes actions such (...) or disturbing the social order'
And how is this different from writing up an essay and getting busted for misdeamnor ? SLashdot article from a few hours/day ago.
Probably the most important thing about censorship [both at Myspace and internet search engines] is to make it voluntary by making rules as vague as possible. People already know what they shouldn't discuss if they don't want to land in a jail: questionable religions, rumors involving military, other sensitive things that matter for the government. So the whole message is "Here's a new cool site; the rules are as usual".
I have to take issue with some of your statements here.
Yes, we call them totalitarian states, and an unhealthy number of them have been communist.
It seems to me that you may be painting an ideology with a broad brush. I think you should really delve deeper into the specific reasons for this. The abject failure of traditional communism was due to the governmental side of things. The ideology itself seeks to maintain a classless and stateless social organization, which is based upon common ownership of the means of production. All of the past incarnations which claimed to be communism have certainly not placed economic power in the hands of the people. By far, the ruling regimes used the idea of communism as a means to keep the populace in line; a way to make the people believe that they had some control. However, because the people had absolutely no say in their government, which was the true possessor of the means of production, it was all in actuality one great lie. Of course, correlation does not imply causation, and even moreso in the case of communism. The only forms of communism to ever really be practiced have been Stalinist "Marxism" (in Soviet Russia, ideology defines YOU! Sorry, I know that was lame.) and Maoism (in the PRC). Maoism is, for all intents and purposes, a Chinese variation of Stalinist "Marxism." Neither of these can be considered socialist by any stretch of the word.
Contrast this with Trotskyism, which is, in a nutshell, a form of democratic socialism. The February Revolution in Russia established a liberal and socialist provisional government which could be safely called Trotskyist. Lenin then led the October Revolution, establishing, in effect, a dictatorship (although he proclaimed it to be a temporary one). Stalin began his rise to power around this time and, after Lenin's death, established the totalitarian USSR. I highly recommend Trotsky's "The Revolution Betrayed," which explains this all in much detail.
As for the PRC, it is a form of totalitarian Stalinism which has in recent years started to adopt more and more capitalist tendencies.
I know that this is coming off like a fucking boring history lesson, but basically, I'm just trying to show that communism isn't inherently wrong. Instead, the ways in which it is redefined and practiced out of true context is the real problem. Of course, the majority in the United States, thanks to both Stalin's grotesque interpretation and McCarthy's snipe hunt, atomatically equate the word 'communism' with 'totalitarianism,' and condemn it without even a cursory examination. Quite a few people, though, are finally beginning to see the exploitation and extreme class disparity that come with capitalism as a bad thing, and seek out alternatives. Of the viable alternatives, I personally believe that democratic socialism is the fairest and most realistic (as did George Orwell, ironically), but to each his own.
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."