Er… it is different. The Chinese firewall also includes massive censorship of what can be said internally, and it’s far beyond whether links can be shared and discussed.
What do you mean by “what can be said internally”?
Doesn’t the free market Great Firewall of USA do that? There are lists of topics that, if you express support for them, will get you automatically banned from facebook etc. Social media sites sell information about your activities to data brokers who in turn sell services that help decide what jobs or loans are available to you. Reddit blocking an entire ccTLD is pretty over-the-top but demands for more censorship have been in vogue in the USA since 2016.
Actually not 2016, censorship trend increased when GamerGate happened. Things went off the cliff on the internet ever since, of course accelerated by the specific kind of people Trump in USA and India’s Jio mobile internet democratisation mobilised.
Okay, but there’s a difference between removing solicitations to join ISIS and shutting down every criticism of Xi Jinping. Facebook is also being a lot more transparent here about its actions. China can be incredibly opaque from my understanding, so there is a significant degree of self-censorship.
It’s not that rules are entirely unpublished. It’s that the laws that exist are so vague and broad that it’s opaque what rights you actually have. Case in point: it is unlawful to “injure the reputation of state organs”. Uh… okay. So I can’t bad mouth the reliability of state media while in China? Well they don’t exactly say, but that seems a safe inference. This has historically been a complaint of companies, that they don’t know where the boundaries are so they have to be extra conservative with restrictions.
Its unclear for you because that concept doesnt exist in your country, and the translation is likely missing some of the nuance. For someone who grew up and went to school in China, its probably pretty clear.
Er… it is different. The Chinese firewall also includes massive censorship of what can be said internally, and it’s far beyond whether links can be shared and discussed.
What do you mean by “what can be said internally”?
Doesn’t the free market Great Firewall of USA do that? There are lists of topics that, if you express support for them, will get you automatically banned from facebook etc. Social media sites sell information about your activities to data brokers who in turn sell services that help decide what jobs or loans are available to you. Reddit blocking an entire ccTLD is pretty over-the-top but demands for more censorship have been in vogue in the USA since 2016.
Actually not 2016, censorship trend increased when GamerGate happened. Things went off the cliff on the internet ever since, of course accelerated by the specific kind of people Trump in USA and India’s Jio mobile internet democratisation mobilised.
Okay, but there’s a difference between removing solicitations to join ISIS and shutting down every criticism of Xi Jinping. Facebook is also being a lot more transparent here about its actions. China can be incredibly opaque from my understanding, so there is a significant degree of self-censorship.
Maybe its opaque to you because you dont speak Chinese. Why would they bother to publish the details in English?
It’s not that rules are entirely unpublished. It’s that the laws that exist are so vague and broad that it’s opaque what rights you actually have. Case in point: it is unlawful to “injure the reputation of state organs”. Uh… okay. So I can’t bad mouth the reliability of state media while in China? Well they don’t exactly say, but that seems a safe inference. This has historically been a complaint of companies, that they don’t know where the boundaries are so they have to be extra conservative with restrictions.
Its unclear for you because that concept doesnt exist in your country, and the translation is likely missing some of the nuance. For someone who grew up and went to school in China, its probably pretty clear.
I’m not judging what you’re saying, but Facebook is anything but transparent.