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.

Comments

Of course they would

[rickb928]

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.

Censors love this story

[maroberts]

It seems like a wonderful way to export only real news approved by the despotic government of your choice.

Can you say doubleplusgood?

China using the same censorship as liberals

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:China using the same censorship as liberals

[swb]

I think the point the OP was trying to make is that liberals also have an ideology and object to news content that runs counter to their ideology. Objecting to factual information based on ideological adherence is the problem.

My own local newspaper has actually been doing this for over a decade. They *used* to include the race of a suspect in descriptions and arrest reporting, but dropped it because they felt it was prejudicial. It didn't matter that the *police* issued a press release saying that they were looking for a black male, aged 18-25 or that they had charged $Criminal, a black male, age 19 for committing a crime.

They were perfectly willing to suppress material facts made public by law enforcement because it conflicted with a multiculturalist ideology. Consistently reporting on high levels of black crime undermined their multicultural agenda and ideology, so they chose to suppress it as much as possible.

The irony has always been that the layout/copy desk doesn't always follow the agenda, they occasionally run mug shot photos after arrests. True to form race isn't mentioned in the article, but by displaying the picture, someone is thumbing their nose at the editorial policy.

21st-century "Stabbed in the back"

[knorthern knight]

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.