Google+ Unblocked In China; President Obama's Page Flooded With Comments

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Google+ Unblocked In China; President Obama's Page Flooded With Comments

Posted by timothy on Sunday February 26, 2012 @06:35AM from the bottleneck-opening dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google+ has recently been unblocked in China and Chinese netizens have found their way to President Obama's G+ page. The result is that topic after topic has hit the limit of 500 comments, most of them in Chinese. Some express political views, but many are just everyday banter or showing off."

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China unblocks Google+ by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-26 06:40 · Score: 5, Funny

China unblocks Google+ Figures no one uses it anyway. Myspace is next to be unblocked.
1. Re:China unblocks Google+ by AliasMarlowe · 2012-02-26 07:46 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  If the Chinese completely took down the Great Firewall, many other sites would start to howl in pain. Think how useless lots of corporate feedback pages would become (e.g. on Facebook). Consultants would make a fortune implementing anti-Chinese firewalls all over the place...
  
  --
  Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
2. Re:China unblocks Google+ by PDF · 2012-02-26 10:04 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Fortunately, Slashdot lacks Unicode support, so we're already protected.
Widespread interest by sdw · 2012-02-26 06:44 · Score: 5, Informative

Interesting how much of the world is interested in our politics.
Several years ago, I was walking around Porvoo, Finland, taking pictures. I talked to a few teenagers doing skateboard tricks. In their perfect English, they were very curious how we could have elected Bush II twice. It's all they wanted to talk about.

--
Stephen D. Williams
1. Re:Widespread interest by Kenja · 2012-02-26 06:47 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  What's more interesting is how little interest we have in our politics. At least, little interest in finding out for ourselves what's going on rather then blindly following our parties marching orders.
  
  --
  
  "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
2. Re:Widespread interest by Nerdfest · 2012-02-26 06:54 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The US now seems to treat politics like just another reality TV show.
3. Re:Widespread interest by surgen · 2012-02-26 06:54 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Are you trying to say ignorance of foreign issues and jingoism isn't a the best way to form opinions on international matters? You're such a communist.
4. Re:Widespread interest by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2012-02-26 06:58 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  What's even more interesting, is how little interest our politicians have in us.
  As opposed to their own careers and their paymasters.
  
  --
  Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
5. Re:Widespread interest by apt142 · 2012-02-26 07:02 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  I blame this on only having two political parties. Since each party only really has one competitor, it boils down to us versus them rhetoric.
  With a viable third or fourth party, I think we'd see less "that party wants to eat your children" attacks and more stands on what they believe in. Because it's much harder to go on the attack against two or three opponents, the merits of a particular stance would have to take center stage or least get out of the back alley behind the concert where it's drinking it's cheap whiskey and crying itself to sleep.
  But, for that to happen we'd need to have less of a winner takes all approach to our election system.
  
  --
  Star Pirates
6. Re:Widespread interest by Leafheart · 2012-02-26 07:10 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I can only speak for me, but I wage that it helps to a lot of other Brazilians. Your politics reflect on ours.
  Recently, one of our center-right parties renamed themselves Democrats (yeah, you read right, center-right) and have tried to mirror the Democrats politics here. And even without taken them into considerations, a lot of politics and companies keep an eye on what is going on there to try to mirror it on national legislation. Thing about things like SOPA, had it passed, there would be a hard push to implement similar language here. So your politics directly influence ours indirectly. And also directly.
  Let's say for example that Grinch becomes president and he works on his campaign promise to invade Iran. Suddenly it is a new Middle East war and again we are thrown on the Iraq war cycle of problems on the international scales. So yeah, we need to pay lots of attentions to your politics.
  
  --
  --- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
7. Re:Widespread interest by JimCanuck · 2012-02-26 07:18 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  No mod points, so commenting, if anyone saw the debate yesterday you'd have realized how right Nerdfest is.
8. Re:Widespread interest by msobkow · 2012-02-26 07:33 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  If your government and corporations didn't interfere with the rest of the world's nations, believe me, we wouldn't give a shit about American politics.
  
  --
  I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
9. Re:Widespread interest by Charliemopps · 2012-02-26 07:35 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Did you point out that we're only give 2 choices every 4 years and those 2 choices are usually almost identical?
10. Re:Widespread interest by Kenja · 2012-02-26 07:43 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  No, we care who wins reality TV shows. More people vote for American Idol then for their representatives.
  
  --
  
  "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
11. Re:Widespread interest by muindaur · 2012-02-26 07:59 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Was there another final debate?
  After the final debate?
  That followed the final debate?
  That was really just childish bickering, pointing fingers, and attacks instead of an actual debate?
12. Re:Widespread interest by Idimmu+Xul · 2012-02-26 08:25 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Seriously, it's a form of voyeurism for a lot of us non-Americans. How badly can you fuck things up this week? Tune in 24/7 for as much as you can read!
  The really scary thing is watching our own governments follow your mistakes after :(
  
  --
  The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
13. Re:Widespread interest by MagicM · 2012-02-26 08:26 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  If you had five parties running, the winner might win with 22% of the voting population's support, and then the 22% would be able to impose their political views on the remaining 78%
  That is indeed what happens with "winner takes all". If instead the winner wins a 22% stake (say, 22 seats in a 100-seat house) then the result is representative of the electorate.
  So a multi-partisan system for Congress and the Senate would not have to be undemocratic at all. The Presidential election would, by your definition, but if the President is able to "impose their political views on the remaining 78%" then that's a flaw with the Presidential powers, not with the election process.
14. Re:Widespread interest by therealobsideus · 2012-02-26 08:27 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  You guys are over near Japan, right?
15. Re:Widespread interest by drawfour · 2012-02-26 08:34 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  It's called a run-off election. In most countries that have multiple parties, unless one candidate already got an absolute majority, there is a second election between the top two candidates, so that someone has to win by an absolute majority.
  
  It could easily be extended to more rounds, where the least popular candidate is eliminated in each voting round until there is an absolute majority for one candidate, but it's usually simpler to just take the top 2 winners and have one more election between them.
16. Re:Widespread interest by alonsoac · 2012-02-26 09:14 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Part of this is because of the influence the U.S. has on our countries. I guess we need to keep an eye always looking at you to know if you are planning to sign a free trade agreement with us, change the amount of monetary aid you send our way, pass some law that makes us outlaws, try to change our style of government or just bomb us. You have the power to change our lives maybe more than even we do.
17. Re:Widespread interest by SteveFoerster · 2012-02-26 09:42 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  In fairness, there are a number of eurocrats in Brussels, etc. who don't recognise this either.
  
  --
  Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
500 is a lame limit by gl4ss · 2012-02-26 06:49 · Score: 5, Interesting

(it's per post though).
pretty nice way of "occopying" something though. one comment explaining something..

We have no chance to occupy our president Hu. He hates Internet and has no account on any sns website, so we can just occupy Obama, forgive us.

--
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Not surprised. by pushing-robot · 2012-02-26 06:51 · Score: 4, Informative

I seem to recall plenty of people milling about when the Berlin wall came down. When you give people access to something formerly restricted, plenty of people will show up just to say they were there.
The Internet will be an interesting place on the day the "Great Firewall" finally gets shut down for good.

--
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Totalitarian regimes today... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-26 06:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

I feel solidarity with these chinese people who wrote to Obama just to say "we need freedom"... (This theme is also relevant to me as I was born in another totalitarian regime, the soviet one, a year before it broke; now we still have to build our country and resurrect its culture, persisting against all the pro-soviet-russian forces (i'm from Ukraine.)
1. Re:Totalitarian regimes today... by bit+trollent · 2012-02-26 07:05 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  The Ukraine is weak.
The Best Way to Rule a Country by NicknamesAreStupid · 2012-02-26 08:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

Force choices onto the electorate and make those choices bad. Many will quickly grow cynical and weary, finally giving up on the process. That leaves the few to rule, using the 'elected leaders' as front men who can easily be replaced due to their lack of credibility. Of course, that would never happen here.
DOS by goodmanj · 2012-02-26 09:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

Interesting. Half a billion people exercising free speech is indistinguishable from a denial-of-service attack.
Our society and the way we structure our conversations, both on the Net and off it, aren't really equipped to deal with the problem of billions of people trying to have a conversation in the same room. We need a new way to think about mass communication in a way that doesn't cause information overload. I wonder if self-moderating systems like Slashcode are part of the answer...