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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.
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?