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'm sure they can say it in a free speech zone.
Even if they do, I bet they can be hacked by chinese.
I hope they catch as much crap for this as Yahoo and Google have for their apparent misconduct on their Chinese counterparts.
On which country on the earth these are totally free actions? That's not specific to China, they just want to control it, which is fine. Every country have their own regulations to protect their own sensitivity to a matter. In US it's racism, in Europe it's mostly ethnical discrimation of genocide. In China their worries are different due to their history. There's no such a country which would let people to do some action to broke nations unity. Yes it's censorship. Yes it is annoying to some. But that's the price of living whealty. That's the price of surviving with limited resources. If anyone thinking wars, which created those worries, are due to greed of people, then those are either fools or the ones behave like that. All wars are due to survival instincts of people. You might not have problems today, but you need to think your future as well, else our bodies won't store any energy, will it?
Many countries (the UK certainly does, and perhaps the US too) have schemes where you're rewarded financially for telling the police about anyone who's up to no good.
Since the Chinese equivalent of most services are so perverted as per the governments requirements Don't be evil, why are they used at all. Not sure how MUCH safer it would be to use MSN messenger vs tencent QQ, for example, since i'm sure MS would hand any information over as soon as it was requested, but chinese language versions of most online services are out these, and at least the servers can't physically be ceased.
Those last two, "spreading rumours or disturbing the social order" are vague enough to include absolutely anything.
I look forward to slashdot.cn with moderation options -1 Endangeringnationalsecurity and -1 Godirectlytojaildonotcollect200RMB
The phrases and keywords that are considered "bad" may be different, but this is no different than the policies currently in place by the regime in Washington, DC. King George rattles on about threats to national security, activities that are unpatriotic, etc, every time someone goes against him. The only difference between the current US Government and the Chinese government in this respect is the Chinese government doesn't hide the fact that they're doing it.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Thr real genius here isn't in the addition of the button per se, but rather in putting it in front of emo kids.
"I don't want to live any more, I'm going to end it all! *clicks on own Myspace button*
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.
So? These are standard terms of service for any online service in China. The keyword filtering, likewise, is standard -- and if Myspace weren't doing it, the Great Firewall would be blocking access to the site every time the filter got tripped. So how is any of this newsworthy?
This is nothing we haven't seen before and nothing we won't be seeing again. The Chinese government will go to great lengths for its powerlust and especially to protect itself from the people, and every year the march of technology hands them more power. So what can we do about it? Making brooding, cynical posts is the usual M.O. and the generated online badwill has no doubt brough them to their knees. How can we do what little we can to end this obscenity?
Run Tor?
Join Amnesty International and buy some of their nifty hoodies?
Hold a public protest?
Boycott Chinese goods (yeah, right)?
Organize a fuck-off massive online attack and hammer on the Great Firewall? ("one of the most important projects for ensuring its political power..." indeed.)
Help me out here.
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".
You can always trust a Murdoch owned company to whore out completely and totally to anyone that asks if there's money to be made, none of that namby-pamby google-style conscience here.
> 'endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting the government,
> undermining national unity, spreading rumors or disturbing the social order'
I'm speechless. No, literally!
It's not a sustainable stable solution to the censorship, it helps China save face and claim it still has control. I suppose those who wants to share information freely already use anonymizers and encrypted traffic.
You can't detect/censor encrypted traffic, unless you ban all of the encrypted traffic.
China will open up, but by the looks of it, it'll be a slow and painful process (pun not intended).
Most of the rest of the world has it better!!!!!!!!!!!
While I agree that those topics should be openly discueed, the idea of "Tells Users to Spy on Each Other" is hardly a new thing. Every free upload website has a small button to report "inapproate" content like expilicit, violence. And in physical/real life, isn't it called community watch?
Is it really My Space if China has control over it?
... complaining about the moderators results in a modding down. I wonder why I could have thought anything different.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
"Members are told to click a button to report any 'misconduct' by other users."
Ah, right - same as Craig's List and....and...and...on & on. How is this a problem?
In someone's weak mind, maybe - in reality, no.
Do you think state secrets, and serious talk of government "subversion", are going to happen on a 14 year old's Myspace page?
This looks more like typical totalitarian despotism being exercised freely in Red China. They want that button to be there always, in front of everyone. The constant temptation to become a hero by turning someone in for anything that resembles discontent. You see, in commie states (and other totalitarian ones) the government disallows the concept of changing power. Therefore even peaceful, non-threatening attempts at voicing opinion are immediately painted as radical and similar to treason. The culture is enforced further when you become capable of being "heroic" by participating in the crackdown. In this disgusting case, they are extending the idea even to Myspace pages and probably soon to chat rooms, so that the offhand comment/joke against the government is seen in the same light, and can be reported in the same way.
In civilized, Free nations (not that the US is a shining e.g anymore) the public alerts the authorities when a serious threat to national security is perceived (bomb..etc) and the authorities investigate and act accordingly. You cannot alert the authorities when you discover somebody is "unhappy" or disrupting the "unity" by arguing against something in a civil manner. Pluralism is the goal, not enforced "unity". The only unified agreement is in the preservation of the rights that make that pluralism possible.
Yes, just about every country has laws against treason, and they are serious laws, applicable when someone really has given away state secrets (e.g. sensitive security information, the location of weapon stores, etc.). So while China saying "please let us know if anyone is guilty of treason" is reasonable in principle, the actual execution of the request makes it obvious that what they mean by "treason" is actually "anything we don't like." Do you really think that treason happens so frequently (on a Myspace page, no less!) that we need a special web-button for reporting it?
Creating an efficient, formalized, and widespread system for reporting traitors can only mean that you are considering a very large percentage of your population to be a traitor. This ceases to be about any real acts of treason--it becomes about labeling as a 'traitor' anyone who opposes the ruling status quo. In short, it is about oppression, control, and spreading fear among the people.
Being objective doesn't mean ignoring the details of each case. You cannot just take China's word for it when they say "this is only to find traitors and protect our country"... you must also look at their actions, which instead suggest they are trying to restrict the free expression of ideas in their land, and that they are trying to co-opt the populace to monitor one another.
If there are formattting tags that can be inserted into the myspace profiles/blogs, what would stop people from writing one of the forbidden words or phrases, and putting empty tags inbetween the words to fool the filter since the tags don't show up? I mean, if a forum filters the word "shit" , it is possible to type out "sh[b][/b]it"* and have the word come put uncensored, it's a matter of making it work in this situation.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Like OMG I was on the phone with Tiffanee and I told Tiffanee that I liked Brad Hoefler and then Tiffanee was all like LOL and went and said that I liked Brad on her Myspace page even though she TOTALLY knew that like I didn't want ANYBODY to know, especially not Brad, and now Brad won't talk to me and Amber and Mandy are all like making fun of me and it's just like totally embarrassing me to death and it's just ruined my WHOLE LIFE, like even more than the time my stupid parents gave me a curfew, and I can like hardly stand to go to school anymore and I think that I told Tiffanee that I liked Brad Hoefler should be a state secret so I'm like TOTALLY in favor of this.
I'm going to have to agree with the anonymous troll on this one. It's not our place to worry about the freedoms of Chinese people (unless you're posting from China). If things get bad enough, they'll have to revolt and toss out their own leaders. We can't intervene each time we disagree with how leaders are running their countries. It's the responsibility of the citizens to keep their leaders in check.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
...any instance of ungoodspeak to the Ministry of Love. So what's the problem?
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Where did you get all this bullshit?
News for merdes. Shit that matters.
Ask me about my sig.
The Execution Bus, including rumors of organ trade: Linky
So much for it being the PEOPLE'S republic of China, eh? China is so far removed from being a "republic" as you can get.
-Kinsey
When did the Republican party start running China? Sounds like their dream Patriot Act to me.
Notice the last few entries, they are "communist party", and the names of the current and former presidents. Hack... if people are not allowed to discuss Zhao Ziyang and Dalai Lama, then the communist party and its leaders should be banned from our websites.
I actually told people that this is my invention. and I encourage other websites to do so.
Good post. I like to see stuff like this even though I disagree with you.
I think that America now is a poor example of a "free" nation. Freedom does not come from your government, a right is not what you are "allowed" to do. Having a right means nobody else has a higher authority to tell you what to do. Your it, you are sovereign. I also will say that all men women and children on earth have the same rights as anyone else.. the only difference is the level of tyranny and oppression that various government enforce upon them.. or.. I guess.. that they are willing to accept without killing their leaders.
If your ruler gives you a so called freedom then that ruler has the authority to take that freedom away. Yet we understand that rights are inalienable, they are intrinsic, and government can never provide you a right. For example you do not have a right to murder in cold blood.. even if a government law was passed that supposedly gave you this right it would still be wrong to kill. You have no right to kill others no matter what government says.
The problem with unity laws and morality laws is they are intending to control your thoughts.. but you are the one that owns your mind. You own your voice, and your thoughts do not answer to any other persons command than your own.. you have a right to think what you want.. no matter how un-social or dangerous it may be.
This is what the Chinese and even American governments do not want you to know:
We are not nations.
We are not countries.
We are not societies.
We are not states.
We are not majorities.
We are not governments.
We are not even neighborhoods.
All of those words are made up, all of them are fiction created to control people.
What "we" are is individual men.. and men have NO right to control other men!
http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.swf
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
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.
..." is not a crime in, say, America? I find it hard to imagine that these things are not crimes in every country. The fact that this is enshrined in law in China means that you have no excuse for not knowing that you can get punished for it. Isn't that better than the vague and woolly 'suspicion of terror' which can send you to jail in both the US and UK without ever seeing a court, without knowing what you are accused of, with no time limit and no right to a lawyer?
And of course, "endangering national secureity,