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China Says US Uses Facebook To Spread Political Unrest
crimeandpunishment writes "A Chinese government-backed think tank says the US and other western governments use Facebook and other social networking sites to spread political unrest. Their report says, 'We must pay attention to the potential risks and threats to state security as the popularity of social-networking sites continues to grow,' and calls for increased scrutiny of the sites."
They clearly overestimate the deterministic nature of the average social network user.
...says the government that pays citizens by the post to write pro-government comments on Chinese blogs.
Most stable governments can survive a bit of political unrest and it's good for society in general.
We're not gonna take it!
The obvious solution is to use social networks to their advantage, to manipulate the people.
Seriously though, they do have something of a point, the US WOULD push social networking in China if they thought it would help bring freedom of speech to China. It's not the US government pushing social unrest, it's the people themselves communicating and finding out the problems with the government. I don't think the US government pushing anything would help anything though, and might even hurt in this case. Better to let the Chinese people find their own way, as long as they don't go insane.
Qxe4
No doubt the FBI, CIA and DHS log far more hours in Farmville than just regular folk. It's a conspiracy I tell ya!
Most of my friends and people in my social networks are the most politically unmotivated people I know. If anything the social network promotes apathy and isolation as much or more as it promotes the opposite. The medium is not the message. Individuals will seek whatever means to find the message they seek, the medium is not the issue.
What if the U.S. were to set up a radio station across the border from a nation, and began broadcasting propaganda into said nation?
The Slashdot community frequently criticizes the media for making arbitrary distinctions between the Internet and non-Internet realms -- time for some self-criticism.
or Chinese-government-backed-think-tank?
Perchance I wonder how many outrageous statements I could attribute to US government back think tanks if I tried.
F this warmongering nonsense. There are fanatical Chinese nationalists, yes. What I don't appreciate is the fact that there are warmongering US nationalists who get their 'stories' posted to slashdot.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Why not just outbid the US Gov in a tapping bid? What could the market value be? Stasi and KGB would have needed a saliva bucket next to the bed for this.
Given that the Chinese government pays people to do the very same thing on every Western media/blog site they come across. I seriously doubt the American government does the same. There is no need. Apparently the Chinese government can't tell the difference between real enthusiasm (even if implicit) for one's country and the enforced/coerced kind to which they are accustomed.
What are they doing, not "liking" China's status updates ? Perhaps people are joining groups titled "If a million people join this group, we will overthrow Hu Jintao" Gee China, paranoid much ?
In matter of fact, they are not so far away of the truth, considering all the privacy issues....or lack of privacy....
All elbowing each other side for the chance to date ME! Luscious, luscious me.
I would post more about my sexy good looks are spreading unrest throughout the world, but I have to be at the gym in 26 minutes...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
China's government lets hackers use open proxy servers in China to break into computer systems in other countries and then keep a copy of whatever is stolen for themselves.
They can keep their citizens behind a firewall but somehow cannot manage to shut down open proxy servers.
They set Chinese wages extremely low and then pegged their currency to the dollar so U.S. manufacturers could not compete.
The corporations that pay for U.S. politicians' reelection campaigns got a cheap source of labor and U.S. citizens got a huge national debt because the government's revenue base from manufacturing and exports was eroded.
Can't imagine why a Chinese worker on a subsistence wage would cause political unrest. It must be Facebook.
If the Chinese want stability then they must respect minority rights, languages and cultures and respect all human rights in general. If they did that they would have a stable happy population. There is no way they will ever do that so stability is not what they want. Obedience is what they want. I don't think they'll get that either.
...would they say that people speaking their mind is spreading political unrest.
Where has reason in the world gone? Have we abandoned it in favor of power and politics?
You said "wang."
No government really welcomes free speech. Some may claim that they do, but actions speak louder than words. The only interest that a government has in free communication is when they have a firm grip over it's contents. It just happens that the US and other western governments have measures already in place to control or obfuscate the information on the web and in the media.
They create tools such as the Fairness Doctrine, and generally flood the people with "different viewpoints" to muddy the waters. China's issue is that it has spent so much time trying to shut down the internet that it really hasn't been able to get the control that it would like. That's where this campaign comes in. It's the Chinese who are now muddying the waters. They come up with some reports that claim that the west is actively trying to hurt them. Then, when people see something online, the Chinese government can say "It's all lies made up by west. Trust us instead."
In time, and with the rise of contentless Flash pages and product ads, the web will probably stop being useful for information to any but the hardcore nerd with time and tools to push past the fluff. Where are all the RDF search engines that we were promised? With HTML5 I hear people talking a lot about video playback functionality, but I haven't heard any buzz about the semantic web. A web that gives you only pretty pictures won't help the world, and likewise won't hurt a government.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
Just read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution#Soros_foundation_and_U.S._influence
You also have "US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
An idea must have certain characteristics to spread. Usually it's concise, moderately witty, and in accordance with a person's beliefs. Historically, I'd imagine state sponsored think tanks would generate such ideas and spread them to achieve a political goal. With the internet, ideas are being randomly generated to such an extend I doubt a think tank could introduce a unique idea into the system. So that strategy doesn't really work anymore.
Right now, I would imagine that the more powerful force is subtle hinting by traditional media. I know a lot of older folk that get very little information from the internet, and it seems that just about all of them think China owns all of our national debt and will become hostile to the US eventually. I've no clue who the puppeteer is though.
That's it. I am unfriending China.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
This goes to something I've been saying for years now. The U.S. has some pretty impressive military power, but that's not what scares the world's dictators, religious zealots, and oppressive regimes. What do they fear about us? Rock 'n' roll, short skirts, blue jeans, and *especially* cell phones, e-mail, and Facebook.
The U.S. does a lot of things poorly, including, lately, waging ground wars. But one thing we're still very very good at: coming up with new ways for the world's young people to mock and ridicule authority figures, and for adults to talk to each other freely without government interference.
The cell phone, the 18" satellite dish, and the Internet are the most terrifying weapons against autocratic states the world has ever known. Is Facebook a threat to oppressive regimes? HELL YES, and we should be proud of that.
U.S. foreign policy should recognize this fact, and use it to its advantage. Rather than planning air strikes against Iranian and North Korean nuclear sites, we should be flying over and dropping cell phones, laptops, and MP3 players loaded with Rage Against the Machine and Ani diFranco.
Oh dear. Someone tried to organize a union on Facebook. Tisk tisk.
And here I thought it was completely useless.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Somebody planted the seeds of unrest...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
facebook is simply free speech
and in china, the simple act of free speech is a politicized concept. politicized by the chinese government
the chinese government has defined speech as not free, so anyone who engages in it is by that very act of speaking freely engaging in political unrest, according to the parameters established by the chinese government
and all the chinese government has done is defined their own weakness. most of the time, you speak freely, and if they don't like it, they send you to work camps for 11 years. but someday, dear china, someone will speak the simple truth, you won't like it, and the simple act of you moving against that speaker of the truth you dislike will ignite a maelstrom of political unrest that will sweep you away. all internal, dear china, no imperialistic meddling foreigners needed
you've made free speech your enemy, china, and therefore all you've really done is define the parameters under which you will fail: due to the anger of your own people. you have already defined how you will fall: your own hardheaded need to control, even to the extent of the contents of people's thoughts. it is your fatal weakness, because your people are not robots, even though you treat them this way
china, your weakness is not imperialistic foreigners. it is your own people. because you have defined them as such. you have told them their minds are not free
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While claims like these, particularly when considering the source, are easy to brush off as ludicrous, I feel an open mind is warranted. The United States has a long and sordid history when it comes to discretely tampering with foreign states (some of it now declassified).
Combined with the recent rise of so-called astrotrufing (fake grassroots movements), and the trend of PR firms working for foreign governments in order to exact policy change (eg as documented regarding Kuwait, in Armed Madhouse), I think that there is something to consider here. That being said, in this particular case would it be a good thing if elements in the US government were using an American based technology firm to help give a voice to oppressed peoples in China? Probably, yes... But I think the intellectual, tech-savvy elite have a bit of a responsibility to judge this kind of accusation based on merit rather than on the (dismal) track record of the nation making this claim. Why? Because if we close our eyes when the tactic is being used on a foreign, despotic regime, we risk ignoring a potential threat which could be used internally as well. Freedom works, anyone?
American think thank makes wild accusation all day long ... and now Chinese Think Thank, woah!!
How do you spread political unrest amongst an apathetic public?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I wonder if the Chinese gov't (or other regimes) have thought of just using Facebook to track down the networks of friends and acquaintences of dissidents, instead of banning it.
During the Cultural Revolution, they said "Let a thousand flowers bloom", meaning they let dissident and anti-regime opinions flow unrestricted, suddenly free of censorship. But instead of listening to those ideas and implementing them, after a short period of freedom they cracked down and jailed those who had raised 'bad' opinions after they had revealed themselves. The promise of free speech had been a trap. I wonder if the same sort of thing could happen with online social media?
People in the west talk about privacy violations of Facebook, but imagine if a bad gov't got its hands on all that data and data mined it...
...and here I thought it was just plain old "freedom of speech" that caused political unrest in politically restrictive governments. Far out. Yet another reason to blame Facebook for something or another. Can I blame them for the stains on my socks as well? Can I blame the US government for my washing machine breaking down? It could be a plot by the US government along with other Western governments to get me to move back to the US...OH WAIT, I'm in Australia...yeah...right...never mind...
YankDownUnder Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire
X = 1/X - isn't that the new age's definition of equality?
Someone please mod troll or flamebait. For god sake.
The game.
As a Chinese, I /facepalm very hard at this latest stunt of our paranoid government.
Honestly, I'd love to get paid by the CIA to use Facebook. Maybe then I'd start playing Farmville or some shit.
Wow... Does this mean that the Chinese government is also using Baidu Space to spread political unrest here in the US?
Maybe Gen. Jack D. Ripper was right, and they're using it to pollute our bodily fluids!
Adolf Hitler likes this
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
US tries to control what's on the web, China tries to control what's on the web. Go on, look at how the Italian/Australian/UK and US governments are treating Wikileaks and how just about EVERYTHING is now a state secret (e.g. ACTA). Now compare it to how China treats the WWW here.
Not a lot of difference, except the western world is secretly giving power to corporations whilst china is secretly giving power to its government. Neither are a worthy goal.
While decrying China's excesses, why aren't we doing something about our own?
And when the US want a kill switch, think of how much more anger there would be if China could get the same deal for themselves.
China can go suck a dick. I'm so sick of their hypocritical bullshit.
Now to make a serious point. One of the biggest problems of the US today stems from that time in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It's backward religions. Pioneers equipped with nothing but the Bible and no educated teachers went on to invent ridiculous religions - such as Mormonism and the wilder extremes of Southern Baptists - that continue to hold the US back socially and culturally today. (The same thing happened in South Africa, where the Dutch Reformed Church arose from semi-literate Boerdom.) The backward religions, just like fundamentalist Islam and settler-friendly perversions of Judaism, are well funded to gain support via the Internet.
The Chinese actually need to use the Internet to stop the same thing happening there. The Internet can spread a wider view of the world. My guess is that the Chinese government is well aware of the argument I've outlined above, in far greater depth, and their policy is simply based around the traditional Chinese policy of using the media to spread cultural homogeneity, but with an eye to the undeveloped part of China rather than the developed part. This is far from stupid. Freedom of speech is all very well in a pluralistic Western society where you can look out of the window and see that people are lying, but much less effective for isolated agrarian communities with no standards of comparison.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
China uses various tools to control and suppress political unrest.
China sees itself in a cold war with the west. The fact that they have their money fixed to the dollar should speak loudly. Perhaps more importantly, is their military actions have more to do with a first strike offense, then a defensive ability to withstand. At some point the west will have to realize that China's intentions is NOT to be our friends, but our master. Just like they do to their citizens.
The Chinese government know nothing about freedom of speech, all of it's statement is for it's own benefit. As a Chinese live in Hong Kong, we're trying hard to achieve freedom of speech but we're already under heavy attack of all the pro-Beijing propaganda. Yet they want to stretch their hands to western world, Trying to discuss or reply to it proof futile, just ignore the annoying Chinese government.
Hong Kong - International Joke Center (after 1997-06-30)
As I see it, the Chinese authoritarian attitude and the Republican authoritarian attitudes differ only in degree, not in kind.
Wow, they really do hate our freedom.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Just the existence of an outlet where people can voice their concerns "spreads political unrest."
If people don't know how badly the government is treating them or their neighbor there is certainly less unrest.
If people don't realize that there are others that want to make changes as well, they are more likely to keep still. Less unrest that way, too.
It unfortunately seems that part of the entire idea is to get people to talk to one another! Surely that can't be good for a restful totalitarian state, can it?
Now, if they would all just play Farmville instead...
Regards.
their country is run by a bunch of dictatorial bastards. anything that comes out of their media / pr is bullshit. we should ignore their campaign of disinformation, because that's all their citizens get.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Google and so on. If you think the US State Department don't use those resources to invoke change in totalitarian regimes then you aren't thinking straight.
Keep up the good work.
subject says it all. Quit blaming *.* for your political unrest. YOU are the common factor. Time for some self-reflection here methinks.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Murder rate in the USA is 42.8 per 1,000,000 people (freedom of speech and right to bear arms) Murder rate in the UK 14.0 per 1,000,000 people (freedom of speech) Murder rate in Hong Kong is 5.5 per 1,000,000 people (some limits on freedom)
I'm not saying that freedom of arms and speech turn people into hate filled psycho's (certainly other countries with limited freedoms have very high murder rates) but culturally people are very different all over the world and a murder rate more than 8 times lower than the USA is not insignificant. We have no idea what the effect of radically altering someone's culture might have and like it or not, ceasing all forms of censorship in China will have a shock effect on many of the people living there. I am preferably interested to hear what people in China feel about these issues more than people in the West demanding on behalf of people in China.
Please note that I had to use the rate for Hong Kong because China was apparently so low down as to not even be on the list of 62 highest murder rates, I note also that places under Sharia law were also absent from the list
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
Please note that I cannot vouch for either the accuracy or how recent these statistics are, but then you can say that about any posted statistics.
Personally I believe in as much personal freedom as we can get, but I felt the need to provide some kind of balance to the discussion and sometimes I wonder if we really have the right to demand and impose our freedoms on other places that work in a very different way, despite what the above poster said that all humans are basically the same and want to kill steal and rape all day, I'd like to think otherwise.
I would also like to quickly address the above poster who said "In the U.S., our constitution (or what's left of it) was written specifically, to prevent government from serving itself instead of society. It has managed to slow the progress of greedy and ambitious people who seek to limit people in order to enrich themselves."
I would like to draw attention to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States which states quite clearly "Americans have the highest income inequality in the rich world and over the past 20–30 years Americans have also experienced the greatest increase in income inequality among rich nations. The more detailed the data we can use to observe this change, the more skewed the change appears to be... the majority of large gains are indeed at the top of the distribution."
Like I said, freedoms are good, but our own implementation of them may not necessarily be the best method when considering some of the results.
We generate just as much unrest for domestic consumption as is generated (usually by local residents) overseas. But we have a system that is tolerant of dissent and free speach. Think of it as political Darwinism. Our system is more likely to suceed under these stresses that those of China or Iran.
Have gnu, will travel.
...but I can understand China's mistake, given that they're coming from a much more collective mindset.
China Says US Uses Facebook To Spread Political Unrest
I'm fine with that.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
To say that the U.S. government does not have people who regularly use social networking sites to push their agendas is very naive. The government regularly has people visit various websites and spread "information" either through pay or just people who work within the government. Although, we acknowledge that the unrest in Iran benefited from the use of social networking sites, are we really foolish enough to believe no U.S. government agents weren't linked in and helping to agitate? Seriously? The U.S. has the most sophisticated propaganda program of any nation, ever - including Germany under Hitler. It is so sophisticated many citizens just don't realize it exists. The same way the RIAA hires people to scour the Internet posting "poor" artist messages is the same way uncle sam does so to try to shape public opinion on its policies both internally and internationally.
Does anyone really think a government could allow an unchecked public media to exist without trying to use it to control the masses?
political unrest sucks... when your the politician in charge.
For many decades the Office of Executive, Department of State, Department of Justice and Department of Commerce have engaged in acts of fruad, extortion, assination, and murder as the situation and the Chief Executive of the USA called for.
A recent example comes from the murders in Abudabi by Israeli Military units using forged passport information supplied by the Government of the United Kingdom. In the deal, the UK was supposted to supply to the Governmnet of Isreal passport information on, Dead, British citizen. Unfortunately, the British Government supplied information from, Living, British subjects.
Oh Hell! I guess a "subject" has much less civil rights than a "citizen"!
Anyway, this has been a great FUBAR.
Surfice to say, that Obama wants to turn USA into Africa, in terms of polital tomfoolery. In Obama's own words. "Amerika ... is Afaka!"
the obvious fix is to stop being a regime that is threatened by political unrest!
If America, et al, are using Facebook to promote political unrest, why are they not worried that this political unrest will backfire on them?
Chinese government logic at work.
I KNEW IT! All those Farmville postings I saw were totally EVIL!
Unrest = Free thinking in other countries. I won't say that facebook is the epitome of free thinking political discussion, but you can say whatever the hell you want for the most part, as long as you aren't threatening someone, whether it's political or Britney's latest song teh suX0r. These countries HATE that. They want their working masses to not be thinking masses. Just listen to the government, we know best for you.
is that chinese people like being slaves
this is incompatible with human nature, and saying what you just said renders you incredibly out of touch with reality
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
When Facebook and other social networking sites threatened the People's Republic of China, there was only one group to call: The Internet Police.
Fine. Just ban it like Pakistan. Problem solved.
Its not like you have a problem censoring things eh?