China Says Terrorism, Fake News Impel Greater Global Internet Curbs (reuters.com)
China's ambitions to tighten up regulation of the Internet have found a second wind in old fears -- terrorism and fake news. Chinese officials and business leaders speaking at the third World Internet Conference held in Wuzhen last week called for more rigid cyber governance, pointing to the ability of militants to organize online and the spread of false news items during the recent U.S. election as signs cyberspace had become dangerous and unwieldy. From a report on Reuters: Ren Xianling, the vice minister of China's top internet authority, said on Thursday that the process was akin to "installing brakes on a car before driving on the road." Ren, number two at the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), recommended using identification systems for netizens who post fake news and rumors, so they could "reward and punish" them. The comments come as U.S. social networks Facebook and Twitter face a backlash over their role in the spread of false and malicious information generated by users, which some say helped sway the U.S. presidential election in favor of Republican candidate Donald Trump.
China has no freedom of speech recognized in their constitution. They guarantee no one their right to speak out.
So yes, they would indeed be willing to manage the Internet in a way that would permit governing bodies to deny access and remove content.
In their country, I have nothing much to say about it.
In my country, however, I expect the government to protect and defend my rights, speech being among them.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It seems like a wonderful way to export only real news approved by the despotic government of your choice.
Can you say doubleplusgood?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Of course, a particular subset of democrats are completely on board with censoring "racists" ... as everyone who disagrees with them is racist.
A lot of liberals in the west are currently labelling conservative websites as "fake news" and demanding they be filtered on Google, Facebook and other sites. The liberals making these censorship demands see themselves as good people and believe that censorship is necessary for the greater good. However, I think they should take a moment to reflect on this article.
The Chinese government isn't exactly known for being champions of freedom and justice. They're known for oppressive censorship of all opposing opinions. They censor and imprison anyone who publicly opposes the Communist Party because they believe the Communist Party is right and just, and that anyone opposed to the communist party is a public menace.
This are a lot of parallels between what the Chinese government is doing and what liberals are doing in the west today. Just as the Chinese are now branding news that the Communist Party doesn't like as "fake news" and censoring it, liberals in the west are branding all news sits they don't like as "fake news" and demanding it be censored. Just as the Communist Party imprisons people who speak out against its agenda, liberals in the west use laws against "hate speech" to silence, publish and imprison people who speak out against their agenda. It's interesting that liberals have become a lot like oppressive dictators and are using the same censorship mechanisms to crush free speech and open debate.
Liberals, do you really want to create a society like China's were freedom of speech is dead and where anyone who speaks out is harshly published?
I thought China's main worry about the Internet was accurate news?
Everyone except trolls complain about it. The difference is in what one proposes to do about it. Obama does not propose gov't censoring, unlike the Chinese.
Nope, it looks like we gotta ride this one out. Let's just hope Donald not as distract-able, child-like, and A.D.D.-ish as he seemed during the campaign.
I don't get it. Somebody care to explain this? Did those wanting to move to Canada pledge to stay for battle or something? If so, please link it.
Table-ized A.I.
China is ahead in terms of what exactly? Human rights abuses and tyranny? Okay, you got me on that one. Personal productivity and innovation are pathetically low in China. Most of the advancements come from theft from foreign Governments because oppression stifles both productivity and innovation. If China had a 2nd amendment and right to speech the Government would be overthrown, and the Chinese government knows as much. Which is why Chinese people have neither.
The "American Republican idiocy" you decry is responsible for the overwhelming majority of industrial and technical innovation over the last 200 years (it is actually a shared ideology with much of Western Europe). The last couple decades of push to tyranny is what is causing the downfall, not personal liberty and accountability which lead to our peak.
Tyranny is the problem, not personal liberty.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Fake news might be a problem, which has been extremely sensationalized in the past few months, but authoritarianism wouldn't make it any better. If anything, it'd just take fake news to it's ultimate consequences. Better to have fake news that are exposed as fake than having fake news spread by a government that will turn them into real news at their own convenience.
Education, better critical reasoning, being able to tell what is better for yourself and in turn for your country will always be the more difficult but ultimately better route.
Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes will always try to appeal to people's sense of fear and inaction.
People who want the state/government to take control of every aspect of their lives can move to a country like North Korea to see how it's like. They have tons of "real news" to share with you, how their leader is God on Earth, how their country is the best, how their technology is the most advanced, etc.
So yeah Ren Xianling, you can shove your promotion of censorship up your ass. I can handle what I choose to believe myself on the Internet. And the last organization I'll trust to select what I should and should not hear is the government. Very precious coming from a government that actively puts people in jail and blocks webpages that talks about Tianamen Square protests, having some backwards moral police with feet firmly planted back in the dark ages with a whole lot of puritanism going on, among some other ridiculous stuff.
I personally don't have any problems with chinese people, companies and ideas... but get the f*ck outta here with their politics. Country where a bunch of people kill themselves because they feel trapped into workplaces with no welfare and no human rights... what a great government. And if you dare complaining about it, you end up in jail for spreading some "fake news" . heh
Problem is that reality has a well known left wing bias, so how can we ever trust it? Probably taking orders from Clinton or whoever the new mastermind of the left is.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Nearly a hundred years ago, an Austrian corporal rose to power in Germany by blaming Germany's loss in WW1 on being "stabbed in the back" by Jews. Let's just say that did not end well.
The Democrats' elite tilted the playing field to ensure Hillary Clinton a victory in the primaries. Given her scandals and political baggage, she was the absolute worst possible candidate they could've picked. Any no-name Democrat representative/senator/governor would've walked all over Trump. But no, they insisted on Hillary, and ran a lousy campaign to boot.
Now the Democrats' establishment is refusing to take the blame, and is going after social media, and the web in general. If you think Chinese web censorship is bad, wait until the next Democrat president in the US.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
...coming from China who has been waging an information and economic war on the west for decades now.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.