That sounds a lot like the C-10 bill here in Canada.
And yeah the world is steering towards china like totalitarian censorship, but canadians think that since we are a western liberal democracy (tm) it's all fine because we just couldn't be the baddies. Like when we do it it's fine and justified, because why should we even care about muh rights and muh freedumbz in a free country?? The cognitive dissonance is just maddening at this point.
The knee-jerk reaction, for many in the west, is to condemn this censorship as an invasion of privacy, or an unnecessary restriction on free speech, or an example of the old phase "the tighter you grip, the more will slip through your fingers".
The single biggest lesson I learned from a comparative cultures & ethics class at uni is that it is exceptionally, sometimes prohibitively difficult to analyze the ethical implications of policy in a foreign country. So many of the base assumptions that we take for granted in the US - freedom of speech, press, and assembly, for example - are not only less protected in China, but for many chinese citizens, these freedoms take a backseat to more pressing concerns like national pride and patriotism.
If anything, "China's censorship is bad" is a phrase that, coming from a westerner, really doesn't carry much meaning at all.
The other absurdity is the nerve of these western "human rights" organizations to believe that they should dictate morality and law for the entire world.
China's censorship is no different than censorship of hate speech in the west. They have just as much right as us to decide what acceptable speech is for their country and they have just as much right as us to demand that businesses operating in their country follow the law.
Look, I've spoken to this to my friends in China about this before, and I can understand that to them it's okay, they've seen their lives improve over the past 10 years. And I understand why they feel that way, they've never known anything else.
But anyone coming from the Western world, and agreeing with what their government is doing in terms of censorship, that I can't understand.
Where do you live in the west? I'm in the us, I just don't see extreme censorship except for racist pandering comments. Don't like the president, or cell phones, or capitalism, all good. Don't like poor people, no one will try to stop you. Only if you make racist, sexist, or gay bashing comments will people try to stop you from speaking. I haven't lived in China but I see the value in people being free to ask questions, read what they want, and not be worried about being kidnapped in the night and taken to prison - those seem pretty safe as universal rights to me.
The only two reasons that the CCP seems to not simply be exterminating is:
1) they see more value, for the moment, in these people as workers-slaves (so if they can successfully "rehabilitate"/"re-educate" them, then that's better for everyone), and
2) there could also be a factor of not overstepping too far over the line that would require the "free world" to apply the same level of economic sanctions swiftly against China as Russia was recently successfully hit with.
My current concerns are:
3) When might this change, what conditions change where the CCP goes full holocaust of political dissidents (and easy to do en mass now with the lockdown-quarantine-"test"-disappear ["they died of virus"] funnel): is it having their current disparate but synergistic systems, and teams of people under whatever ethical framework necessary for them to morally carry out their part of the work flow, far enough tested and refined and ready for scaling? Are they just getting into their practice, and seeing how the system, society responds?
4) The rest of the world, with the WEF seeming to toe the line, are pushing for Digital ID and moving towards similar levels of control on freedom, manufacturing consent for mandates and exclusion from society (similar to Social Credit system in China), and internet censorship (as part of "fight against disinformation" as their propaganda).
E.g. The internet censorship bill the government of Canada (Trudeau's Liberals) is currently trying to pass the Senate (bill C-11) ; the Canadian government trying to pass this, actually are claiming that censorship of some will actually increase free speech - basically that people being "offensive" are turning off people from freely sharing how they feel online; coddling, paternalism - as a guise to further control, suppress the truth; among other bills to be able to influence the information Canadians see, only inches less bad than outright censorship when it comes to further being able to program the majority of Canadians (such as required injection of content they deem you inject into what you present).
Oh please. The whole "no one is free anywhere, but at least those other people are honest about it" garbage. There should be a logical fallacy named after this sort of argument.
People in the West are measurably, significantly freer than people in China. That doesn't mean the West is perfect. That doesn't mean that there aren't bad actors in government and in the private sector who want to introduce more systems of control and propaganda.
But the difference is that we're allowed to speak out, protest, and fight against these people, and that allowance is enshrined in the lowest level of laws in most Western nations. Again: not perfect, and the worst of the bad actors will try to bend those laws to find loopholes to silence dissent. And sometimes they'll even succeed at that.
That is wildly different from an authoritarian censorship state like China where you get immediately deplatformed if you say things the government doesn't like. And that's the lucky outcome; annoy the government too much and they'll do far worse to you.
Thats the point! We in the west want to keep our freedom. If Google would censor there search for china every other dictatorship in the world would want there own censored one. Maybe Germany wants swastikas and Hitler censored. China should become more liberal but this won't happen because then the Chinese leadership will fall and a revolution would happen and together with that North Korea would fall and leave Russia as the last communist country.
The hypocrisy of western activist types on this issue is astounding. One week, they demand that tech companies across the US censor what they find "harmful", but the next week, they condemn the Chinese for doing exactly the same thing for content they find "harmful".
Either you're in favor of free speech or you're just partial about which content you want to censor. The activist crowd in the west lost all moral standing on this subject years ago.
Edit: This is not a justification or defense of internet censorship. It is an explanation of why the Chinese public may be more willing to accept strict government controls than the West.
While most Westerners see actions like this as serious violations of individual rights, the Chinese are used to such exercises of control by their leaders. There is a firm historical basis for similar behavior going back thousands of years, and the desire for social harmony and stability which in part enables strict government control through tacit public acceptance is deeply rooted in Chinese culture.
It's important for Westerners to realize that the Chinese never had a Locke, or a Rousseau, or a Hobbes. The foundational political philosophy taken for granted in the West has no parallel in China. Their political philosophy is grounded in a very different hierarchy of values.
Didn't we have this exact same story yesterday? And the day before? And the day before that?
When the EU, Australia and Canada does it, the news frames it positively as combating "hate" speech. When china does it, it's digital dictatorship.
For an industry, especially so in australia, that loves censorship and digital dictatorship, the media sure do love to criticize china about theirs. Maybe it's just envy.
There’s a faction / ideology (across all party lines) in the west that is doing the same thing as China. For the same reasons “to be respectful to one another”.
People often bring up similarly misguided policies in Western countries when defending China's policies but this kind of censorship is bad no matter who practices it.
I'm saying that censorship like this is incompatible with the western values as we know them. Yet this doesn't invalidate what the Chinese have accomplished. It's possible to have two conflicting ideas at the same time.
Completely agree. The real problem with China's censorship right now is not really the government. Yes, it's a government that's highly skilled and efficient at censoring stuff, but this would only take them so far if it wasn't the Chinese culture that allowed them to do it.
In other words, the vast majority of Chinese are still fine with this type of censorship, because they truly believe the government is protecting them and creating a better life for them. Surely an American can understand this, too (post-9/11 National Security brainwashing).
Until most Chinese start believing their government is evil, and that there is a much better, more free way to live, not much will change.
I agree. In particular I don't find the efficacy argument very strong. Making murder against the law doesn't stop it either, does that mean we should just let it go?
China also knows that their censoring doesn't stop everyone, but it stops an awful lot of people. So saying it's not going to work and then criticizing China for censorship feels like talking out of both sides of our mouth.
The broader implications are that his has a chilling effect on any type of user generated content and free speech in general.
It turns international business entities into enforcement arms for the government. Particularly problematic is that it's an attempt to extend the reach of our laws into jurisdictions with different laws and to do so through a business. People get all fired up when someone violates one of our laws, but they don't like it when China or Muslims attempt to push their laws into our jurisdictions.
And yeah the world is steering towards china like totalitarian censorship, but canadians think that since we are a western liberal democracy (tm) it's all fine because we just couldn't be the baddies. Like when we do it it's fine and justified, because why should we even care about muh rights and muh freedumbz in a free country?? The cognitive dissonance is just maddening at this point.
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