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.
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*
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.
Whilst I agree with you partly, I think the reason people are aghast at these kinds of news reports is because suppressing debate, perpetuating fear and generating an 'us and them' culture prevents China from advancing to become a liberal society (liberal as in beer.. or something).
Oppression doesn't have to be the price of surviving with limited resources. Part of the reason China remains poor and in many respects a 3rd world nation is precisely because it has a stupid system of government. It is an oligarchy, it remains a totalitarian state. I'm not saying China has to be a 'Democracy' like, for example, Canada, but anywhere in the world you find the absence of a meritocracy, you have this problem. The US is no shining example anymore of promotion on the basis of merit, either.
On the other hand, anyone who wants to point the finger at China had better sweep in front of their own door first. Everyone's liberties are being eroded at this time, and we all must fight the fight on our own turf.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
I'd like to think every single one except China. But since I can't say that with 100% confidence, let's just say: The vast majority.
Bullshit! Nobody in US has ever been jailed for being a racist. Why do you think Ku Klux Klan still exists?`And whatever you mean by "ethnical discrimation of genocide", I can't even start to guess, as it makes no sense at all.
Such as being an oppressive communist state, with only a farcical political facade that tries to imitate representative democracy.
Make up your mind. Are they wealthy, or are they surviving on limited resources?
I fail to see what you are getting at here
Now, I really fail to see any meaning at all. Please consider therapy.
Try putting that in terms of GDP per person.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Being a public nuisance is punishable (though usually just a misdemeanor) in most western countries. While "disturbing unity" is usually only claimed by communist countries and militaries (not limited to communist militaries) other countries usually just use different terms to the same effect and if you do anything the police doesn't want you to do there's a good chance that they can take you in at least for a few days.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Hugeass countries always have more GDP than small ones. Size matters, Liechtenstein has a GDP of 1.7G$ while Ethiopia has 69G$ yet noone would call Liechtenstein poorer than Ethiopia. Same for comparisons between the US and Europe, each European country is much smaller than the US and as such doesn't rank nearly as high but combined they are CAPTAIN PLANET, errr, a freaking huge economy.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I'd like to think every single one except China. But since I can't say that with 100% confidence, let's just say: The vast majority.
Don't forget that there's more to the world than the west and I'd wager by numbers the unfree (military dictatorship, monarchy, theocracy, one party "democracy", etc) outnumber the free.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Interesting. The parent is modded 'insightful.' Perhaps this is some strange new meaning of the word, of which I was previously unaware.
No, contrary to your belief, many countries do have banned religions. Many countries do watch seperatist movements sufficiently carefully that speech about them is (whether because of censorship or self-censorship) far from free. Many countries do have charismatic figues whose presence they do not tolerate and whose influence they seek to diminish. Even if you see Europe and America through rose-tinted glasses, surely you aware of the more politically intense parts of Africa, Asia, South America? Or perhaps you are unaware that there are even reasons for concern about Zimbabwe, Myanmar, and parts of the Arab world? (Where do you get your news?)
I admit I am not an American, and I may not have all the details of American history right, but I have the distinct impression that being, for example, a black supremicist has not, over the years, been condicive to one's personal freedom. And today, even white racists keep quiet about it. No, I agree, it does not normally get one jailed; but it certainly get one fired. And in (otherwise very calm and pleasant) parts of Europe, yes, public holocaust denial will get you locked up.
You may argue that there is a difference of degree, or a difference in emphasis; and I will agree with you. I am not apologising for China. But the person you are replying to is entirely right: China is not, as you would like to believe, unique merely in controlling speech.
Now as to Chinese history. Perhaps you are unaware that China has a history. Rather more of it than the USA. Go look it up. The person you are responding to is again right: China does indeed have a history of thousands of years of attempting to maintain coherence of a huge and disparate empire through rigid control. This has at times been startlingly successful; at other times undeniably catastrophic. The current no-longer-communist regime is just the last of many. Chinese history and chinese attitudes are indeed different from American ones.
Finally, you seem to have an objection to the juxtaposition of the phrases, 'living wealthy' and 'with limited resources.' How quaintly American. Wealth is caused by waste, is it? That attitude is not one that will see you among the leaders of the world for very long, and thankfully it is not one that the entire rest of the world shares. Wealth can arise from managing what you do have, wisely; or from waste and theft. Civilisation lies in choosing the former path. 'Living wealthy' with limited resources is not merely consistent, it is a laudable goal towards whch we should all strive.
None of this is to defend the original post; but your attack on it is impressively off-target. Certainly not everyone's English is as good as yours. Thankfully, however, many people are better informed and more charitable.
Well, the silver lining is that Chinese users will be able to report really crappy MySpace page designs to the Graphic Design Police.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Right, but the point was that the GP believed you could prosecuted in the US for simply making a racist remark or generally promoting their murder. You can't unless it's really specific, to the point where you're inciting a particular incident of violence. We know other nations have laws that restrict (or arguably discard) freedom of expression, but despite what /. seems to think the US is one of the only nations that truly still protects that right. Comparing US limits on expression (those which infringe on the liberty of others) to China's (those which conflict with popular opinion or government interest) really trivializes the plight of all of those people who have been arrested, tortured, or killed under China's oppressive government. It's also counter-productive to any effort to try and improve the situation in nation's where expression is unduly limited when people will so quickly draw comparisons between that nation and the US and only really prove that they don't understand the gravity or reality of the issues they speak of.
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."
That's ok, I see what you are trying to say, although it doesn't really invalidate the statement you refer to at all. In reality, every group in history that has tried claimed a communist state has instead established a totalitarian dystopia very much in line with Orwell's fiction. It is not by accident that Russia AND China AND Cuba AND North Korea and every other commie state you can think of happened to evolve into the nightmare you shy away from.
Why are you blaming Stalin? What happened was only natural. The genius behind Orwell's 1984 was that he showed how all the claims of common ownership of resources cannot be realized without a pyramidal scheme of control, freedom is achieved through slavery, and absolute peace is in fact, war. The wonderful "Trotskyist" universe you are defending does not exist, because human nature mandates that it cannot exist. What exists instead are websites with little red buttons on them that you can use to report your friends to the benevolent State.