Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Internet Firms Punished For Permitting Spread Of Political Rumors
First time accepted submitter rover42 writes "Major Chinese sites Sina and Webo 'have been legally punished for permitting the spread of unfounded rumors. Specifically, the report cites unfounded rumors that were spreading like wildfire on Sina Weibo of an attempted coup d'etat happening in Beijing.' The source is the state-run Xinhua." Sadly for the people of China (even if they like it this way), this seems to be in line with the Chinese government's general attitude toward the Internet.
So now not only do they have to police for content, they have to police for truth?? Yikes.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
And Weibo is a part of Sina. Do you mean Tencent?
- Someone phoned me and said there's a revolution!
- Quick! Punish the phone company!
So they demand that people have correct informations, not just lies? This can not stand! We demand to have lies in our news!
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
...is minimise the purchases you make of products built in China. Buy local where you can, and buy from a country with the best reputation for respecting human rights otherwise. In particular, avoid trend-setting brands, as their response will be followed by others.
Contrary to popular belief, you don't free the slaves by paying the slave-owner.
...or even news to you, then you have not been paying attention.
And it is not just in line with the Chine government general attitude towards the internet. It is in line with their general attitude towards any public exchange of information. Internet did not change the attitude, it just made it more difficult to enforce.
Now, start looking for some of the same attitude elsewhere. Lots of people want to control information and define the truth. It is just that the Chinese are more obvious about it and more successful than most.
No one would be able to smugly post, "Citation?", after each rumor! Or post a Wikipedia link with an article to the contrary.
The Internet has always been a collection of unfounded rumors. Ever since Al Gore did not claim to not have invented not a non-significant part of it.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
"Weibo" is the name of Sina's microblogging service ("Sina Weibo") and also the Chinese word for "microblogging." Tencent Microblog and other sites have also come under fire and restricted commenting today.
The crackdown has been a long time coming, as Sina and Tencent, among other online microblogging sites, have basically said that they would be laxer than the government would like in cracking down on online discussion, mostly as a way of building their user bases.
More information about the crackdown and the reaction is at http://www.rectified.name/2012/03/31/and-the-reaction-becomes-the-story/.
The public has no opinion. You might as well point out how many people voted for Saddam Hussein... I think it was over 98 percent.
How likely do you think it is that 83 percent of Chinese people actually agree with internet censorship? And what does that even mean? That something should be censored? I mean, most people are not found of horse-porn or whatever horrible mind searing abomination could conceivably be dredged up by the folks at 4chan. But there is a world of difference between not wanting to see child porn everywhere and agreeing with the systematic domination of all public discourse.
That domination is complete in China. Everything is censored, controlled, tweaked, threatened, bullied, or groupthinked into "order"...
The chinese neither like nor dislike it. They have no right to an opinion either way.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
In other countries, I could talk about a faux coup d'etat all day long (although not necessarily about planning one) and the government would not care a damn.
The persons in charge were identified and executed on site to prevent further infection with dangerous thoughts.
America gets high and mighty about another country censoring the Internet. Next it will start criticising other countries for their dependence on fossil fuels, their dysfunctional systems of government, and invading other nations.
I find that the most interesting part of the story... the alleged stability of the PRC which attracts western companies could be at stake here.
I know this is a tech site, but we could be talking about news of historic proportions.
There is heavy unrest at the elite level China now, and the authorities are handling it in the typical full-retard fashion with which authority typically handles things in general.
Two weeks ago, Bo Xilai was removed by Wen Jiabao. This conflict has been buzzing all over the news here, and it is profoundly important.
Xilai was a classic Chinese Marxist (think "Cultural Revolution" posters) who was steering Chongqing towards a social democracy. His major contributions included deposing the mafia, which angered the businessmen, and offering low-income housing. Wen Jiabao, on the other hand, is very similar to Deng Xiaoping in that he espouses the newer vision of a "free-market" China, where invisible hands reign and free market is the best path to their prosperity.
The Marxist side of China has been raging ever since, and much of these people have been put on a "terrorist watch list", so to speak.
On the other hand, China still very much has an underground internet presence. You just haven't heard of it. As someone who is living here, I assure you, discourse is far from stifled.
I'm always puzzled by the number of people on Slashdot who seem to root for China and against the US. Anyone who knows anything about China knows that China only works for its Han Chinese, and the vast majority of posters on slashdot hoping for the downfall of the US will never be on the good side of China's foreign or domestic policy. Becareful what you wish for... Or perhaps you should work within the political system to change the US while there still is a superpower free enough to be changed politically.
I am the only that thinks that, in the event of a real coup, this policy would make things so much easier for subverting organizations? People in the coup would only need to control official media; they would need not to control private media and the internet companies because they would already been censoring this information per the government orders.
Why can't
And meanwhile there are more people incarcerated in the US prison system than in the Chinese and Russian prison systems combined...
The top 10 countries with the best HR records are
Norway
San Marino
Canada
Belgium
Luxembourg
Sweden
Finland
Denmark
Iceland
New Zealand
Slovenia
I doubt that even all 10 of them put together export as much as China. I think we just would have to stop buying at all.
Shocking news. But hey, they have cheap labor, so who cares, right? If those people were allowed free speech, they wouldn't be so cheap anymore.
so that different from the removal of advertising from your newspaper because you don't support a related political party? Or having to run all media content past the company lawyers before it's aired?
There was an unknown error in the submission.
So, it is somehow 'sad' that rumour-mongering and whipping up trouble is now illegal - in China, at least?
I am not necessarily convinced the best way to go about things is by going after the blogging services - I know too little about the subject. What I am convinced of is that you need to have a paricularly crooked mind to think that it is wrong to require truthfulness in reporting - all reporting. This is even more important in a democracy; the way American news media twist the trust or even outright lie does unfortunately have a huge influence on the way people choose to vote. If you believe in democracy and freedom, you must by logical necessity require that reporting is objective and truthful. It may not be practically possible to enforce, but I can't see that anybody can find fault with the logic of this.
The only people who have reason to be against this, are the ones who profit from spreading lies: the anti-democratic nut-jobs on the fringes and the religious fear-mongers, to whom truth and freedom are works of the Devil.
You may ask who is going to decide what is truthful? Well, haven't you learned anything from science? Science, or the scientific method, is the most democratic thing there is: you present your hypothesis, and everybody can check your data and accept or reject it based on their own insight. It doesn't require huge, intellectual resources, we are all able to do it, if we are allowed to.
As for China: they have the right to make their own choices, and our meddling is no more than bad manners, really. And what evidence do we in the West have to fear China's government? I mean, truthful and objective evidence - not the shite that you have gobbled up from the likes of Fox News. Of all the nations in the world, China seems to be the least aggressive and has been so for centuries. Even a pathetically small country like Denmark (my country) has been more aggressive to its neighbors.