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China's Censors Can Now Erase Images Mid-Transmission (wsj.com)
Eva Dou, reporting for WSJ: China's already formidable internet censors have demonstrated a new strength -- the ability to delete images in one-on-one chats as they are being transmitted, making them disappear before receivers see them. The ability is part of a broader technology push by Beijing's censors to step up surveillance and get ahead of activists and others communicating online in China (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). Displays of this new image-filtering capability kicked into high gear last week as Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo lay dying from liver cancer and politically minded Chinese tried to pay tribute to him, according to activists and a new research report. Wu Yangwei, a friend of the long-jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said he used popular messaging app WeChat to send friends a photo of a haggard Mr. Liu embracing his wife. Mr. Wu believed the transmissions were successful, but he said his friends never saw them. "Sometimes you can get around censors by rotating the photo," said Mr. Wu, a writer better known by his pen name, Ye Du. "But that doesn't always work." There were disruptions on Tuesday to another popular messaging app, Facebook's WhatsApp, with many China-based users saying they were unable to send photos and videos without the use of software that circumvents Chinese internet controls. Text messages appeared to be largely unaffected.
What did Winnie the Pooh ever do to the Chinese government?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/world/asia/china-winnie-the-pooh-censored.html
By "activists" they mean shills paid by the west and the ignorants they bamboozle who both subvert Chinese culture and government.
>Waaah Chinese culture isn't like my liberal echo bubble, that means it's oppressive
Not everyone deserves a voice. Speaking is for rational proposition, anything irrational is nothing more than animal noise and should be put down one way or another. Let the Chinese decide their way, let us worry about our own problems of speech and rationality.
Well, ok, your questions sound rhetorical, so this will probably be unwelcome, but I think the difference is intent.
In the US it's done for a variety of reasons -- intellectual property, porn, unlawful content, politically incorrect (ahem-facebook), and in China it's specifically targeted at political dissidents. Here we can say Apple (or Microsoft if that makes you more comfortable) is being a dick, I'll use some other service. Over there it's more problematic, because (a) it's the government doing it (yeah, I know, bear with me) *and* (b) it's specifically targeted at anti-government speech. Which we would call, over here, free speech.
So over here someone can post a photo holding the bloody decapitated head of the president... no wait, that's a bad example... no, on further thought, it's a valid example. She was able to post the image without having it deleted by the government. Other bad things happened, but government deletion in transit wasn't one of them.
So, I'd argue, not hypocritical at all. Freedom and privacy are complex issues, and I don't think there's anyone within the sound of my voice that believes we in the US have complete freedom. Whether we should or not would be a lively discussion. But I think we can agree that people in china have much less freedom.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.