There are a dozen popular live streaming apps in China where one can simply just stream what you're doing to everyone on the site and people can just watch them for hours. You can think of it like Instagram stories or Snapchat per se. Or even Facebook live.
This isn't some western media propaganda. I tried one of them very recently (I don't want to give them any undeserved marketing), they allowed me to sign up and the moment I clicked on my camera button it took me to a page asking me to "verify" my profile as apparently it was Chinese government's new regulation. Guess what? They asked me for my passport before I could upload a damn thing on their app.
Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations, while still gaining loyalty from their citizens to the point where these supporters will even defend the govt. everywhere online trying to explain how normal it is to submit your passport and your real identity to some random app company because you know, you just wanted to try it out and it's totally normal.
> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream.
It wouldn't surprise me if a Western government (probably the UK's) considers introducing legislation to require exactly this in the not-too-distant future, most likely under the guise of preventing the spread of extremist propaganda.
If they do, companies like Facebook and YouTube will face a choice between acceding to the new regulation or incurring punitive fines. Guess which option most of them will choose?
The only way we can prevent George Orwell's vision from becoming a reality is if we build a more decentralised web. However, that also threatens the walled gardens' revenue streams.
It's been known for ages of course, there's always been a bogeyman, I like how there's some older articles out there that have predicted which bogeyman it was going to be today.
I've yet to see any proposals from the latter camp whereas I've seen dozens of pieces of legislation successfully passed and attempt to pass from the former.
Are you aware of how the only people in the US to ever be successfully censored from the public internet for political (as opposed to legal) reasons are far-right websites? This literally happened in the last week; domain registrars (the only gateway the public has to critical public DNS infrastructure) decided to voluntarily censor various far-right websites citing "hate speech" as their justification.
There is, evidently, a fairly powerful and far-reaching population of left-leaning people who believe and are willing to act on the idea that the internet should be politically controlled. I've never heard of this being done successfully against, say, a communist website.
I also found this surprising. Cloudflare specifically always took the stance that it's not their place to censor the internet, which is why they permitted extremist/terrorist content[1] that people were pressuring them to remove. It amazes me that they kept that, but deleted the alt-right stuff. Now I think these alt-right websites are disgusting, but worse than ISIS?
ISIS is a bad example. Antifa however? CloudFlare (and domain registrars) should either exile the extremes on either side, or allow either side. The situation right now is stupendously lopsided.
I don't see Antifa mowing down protesters in cars and spewing Nazi hate speech at Nazi rallies they organized though, so I'd say that's a false equivalency.
That's because the media has insanely lopsided coverage of recent attacks. It's a miracle no one's died from antifa attacks yet. Look up Eric Clanton. I also encourage you to watch actual footage of events starting with the Milo protest in berkely; the stuff I've been seeing on my news feed has nothing to do with reality.
Having abundant first-hand experience of such events, I don't think your comment has anything to do with reality either. Poor as the quality of the coverage by the professional news media is, that by the amateur news media is just as bad or worse - framed and edited for maximum sensation with no attempt at fact-checking.
Yes, there has been some violence from the anti-fascist side, such as Eric Clanton being hit with a bicycle lock. But you are overlooking the fact that fight-wing activists have initiated more and more deadly violence in similar contexts: a stabbing at a rally in Sacramento last year; a shooting Washington state earlier this year; and of course the deliberate driving of a car into a crowd at Charlotteville a couple of weeks ago. Screenshots from Discord suggest that particular tactic was discussed in advance by RW activists.
I don't want to go on a Gish gallop or we'd be here all day, but I'd also encourage you to reflect on the fact that while Antifa supporters endorse the idea of punching nazis, popular figures with a public following on the far right have publicly and formally expressed the desire for civil war and even genocide. It's not possible to have a reasonable discussion without addressing that dichotomy.
I haven't seen any Nazis completely ripping up a town like Antifa did to Hamburg, so yes, actually, Antifa is shit and we should be rid of them sooner rather than later.
No where did I say or imply that. No violence is okay. However classing the Antifa bogeyman in the same league as the group that fired guns into protesters and ran down people in a car does a massive disservice to yourself and your country.
Okay, and Antifa have seriously hurt multiple police offers. I seriously don't get how you can ham on the alt-right but defend Antifa, they're both fringe groups that shit over society's rules.
See anigbrowl's comment below for a well thought out response.
I'm also not defending Antifa, I'm commenting on your equivalence between the two groups. Sure, in the broadest of strokes they are the same, but so are all criminals. But one would not say a shoplifter is the same as a murderer.
> I seriously don't get how you can ham on the murderers but defend shoplifters, they're both fringe groups that shit over society's rules.
> Are you aware of how the only people in the US to ever be successfully censored from the public internet for political (as opposed to legal) reasons are far-right websites?
It wasn't the GOVERNMENT that did this. That's the only thing that freedom of speech laws give you freedom from.
And, those sites weren't suppressed because they impacted politics; they were suppressed because they impacted profitability.
It's almost like the right needs some sort of "neutrality" laws that guarantee that internet websites and internet traffic they need can't be restricted.
I'm pretty far left in my politics, and I find the idea that these websites got kicked off quite worrying. However, I also find the centralization of internet services quite worrying.
I'm still old school enough that I run my own servers for exactly this reason.
I agree. I did not claim this is the government's doing.
I agree censorship of political content on private infrastructure is (and should be) legal; I also believe it's plainly immoral and should alarm people. I also believe that, given that the public DNS is government-controlled, it nominally belongs to the public and private entities like cloudflare should not be gatekeepers to it.
Of course, the best solution is for everyone to switch to some sort of crypto-based truly public DNS system like Namecoin, but that's not happening for a while.
I'm under the impression that the Daily Stormer was at least somewhat widely known. Is there a website of similar reach that, say, calls for a Communist revolution or sabotage of power plants in the name of environmentalism?
I get my only news about US politics from HN, so I genuinely have no idea.
Wikileaks is left-wing? I did not know this. The narrative, of late, has been that Assange is a fan of Trump and aided Putin's goal during the election.
Obviously most of the right is against Nazis, but the modern conservative faction seems to draw a much higher ratio of violence and fascist rhetoric than the left.
When something happens, the media gives right-wing fascists the benefit of the doubt; "we don't know who he is", "he doesn't represent the movement", "he was scared", "he was attacked", "he's crazy", and once the proof is out they tend to draw false equivalencies with left.
That doesn't happen as much on the left - it's stigmatized full stop, no excuses. CNN's clickbait news will drag it out
>When something happens, the media gives right-wing fascists the benefit of the doubt; "we don't know who he is", "he doesn't represent the movement", "he was scared", "he was attacked", "he's crazy", and once the proof is out they tend to draw false equivalencies with left.
Does it though? Because I found the majority of the media except niche-oriented ones like FOX and Breibart do not fit that profile.
CNN had no problems attacking with everything they knew, but they avoided excess speculation and treated the Charlottesville attacker the same as Hodgkinson... which was my point.
Don't forget neo-nazi "threat". The entire establishment media/propaganda apparatus coordinated their attack together to institute censorship regime on the internet.
They bind our hands and tape our mouths all under the guise of protecting us.
Germany has recently started requiring identity verification of this sort to obtain prepaid phone service. I was shocked to learn that, and find it frighteningly close to what China is doing.
The perps in the Paris attacks used Hungarian prepaid SIM cards. Of course the national defense agencies were so dumb they haven't noticed that a few guys registered hudreds of thoudands of accounts.
So making phones more traceable doesn't really work against terrorists, when there are so many incompetent people watching us :(
> Of course the national defense agencies were so dumb they haven't noticed that a few guys registered hudreds of thoudands of accounts.
Would you elaborate more on the background of this? Were the SIM cards sold and registered with a private company? I would suspect it is (or they were, if more than one). Which national defense agencies are you referring to? Did the national defense agencies search these records? Do you assume the agencies have access to this information by default? If it's through a private company, should the agencies have access by default? Do you think the private companies should have contacted the agencies if they didn't have access?
There are answers to these questions, some of them factual, some of them ethical or legal, and up for debate. In only a few situations I think it would be fair to call the agencies "so dumb". What leads you to use those words?
In the communications act there was a provision about suspicious registrations reporting requirement.
The big providers (like Telekom, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telecom) have a well established working relationship with the defense agencies (they are called national security services, there are a few of them in Hungary, some are focusing on Internal Affairs (counter intelligence), some are on conspiracies, etc.
Thanks for the links. Assuming close cooperation between the telecom companies and the national security agencies is the direction you want things to go, there's definitely room for improvement. In the Bloomberg article, improvement is what's happening.
Expecting perfection out of the gate--or even at any given time--is setting someone up for failure. If this is something you care about, what you can focus on is that they're making changes to improve the situation: they're actively responding to correcting and preventing these kinds of mistakes in the future. Unless they're omniscient and omnipotent, it's really all they can do. This applies to work in general, not just security.
That "improvement" has been the only thing coughed up after staying silent for 3 full days. And of course no one ever loses their job in the Hungarian government for not delivering.
Eventually they'll fix this "security hole", but they won't magically become hyper-competent :/
They are not dumb, they just don't work for the people and terrorism is not even a threat they care about. On the contrary, they consider the people a threat and consider terrorism a form of propaganda, that is useful to trick people into accepting all kinds of crap.
In Russia, where there is a similar regulation, the solution is simple: find a homeless person with a passport, pay him to register a new mobile phone number under his name. There are also companies selling already registered phone numbers.
I would be pretty surprised. Not everyone in the UK has ID, and since the NIC scheme failure, it's less likely than ever to happen. ID isn't even required to vote at the moment...
That is a minor oversight that will probably be rectified at some point — other countries are doing it, it is already required in Northern Ireland, and in 2018 a pilot will be held introducing the requirement in a number of districts¹.
People likely won't resist it too much. We've had this identification requirement imposed upon us in the Netherlands a few years ago, and while there is valid criticism on this requirement, it passed. So to vote now you need to bring a valid ID. If the British government wants to do this with a minimum of fuss, they'll do what our government did and make the driver's licence a valid identity card. That way the majority of adults will already have their ID on them as a matter of habit (and won't complain).
Of course mentioning that it is needed to prevent Muslim voters from committing voting fraud (see¹…) will help push the bill trough.
Only an extraordinarily confident and popular government would have another go (and it's not what the UK has now).
As for the voting scheme you describe, it's entirely voluntary, for 2018, and no council has signed up yet.
Things may move in that direction slowly, but to suggest that the UK is particularly close to requiring ID for internet accounts is downright silly I'm afraid.
You mean you count not showing up to vote as an active vote choice that should be protected by secrecy? Because the secrecy of the physical votes is produced by the mixing of large numbers of indistinguishable containers prior to reading, not by the votes being handed in by strangers.
No amount of decentralized web will help if ID is legally required to post things. Torrenting, encryption, and similar will simply be made illegal, since that's required for enforcement. Many of the established lobbies would support that, for the usual justifications.
You can only fix this by not letting the law start on this crazy slippery slope.
While I agree that it's critically important to not get on the slippery slope of laws that restrict internet freedom, I think a decentralized internet infrastructure would make censorship significantly more difficult for governments to impose.
Without centralised gatekeepers, the only viable way to censor the internet is to enforce laws on end-users, which is a daunting task for any government.
And technologically, at least two of the necessary elements for a global meshnet are here: protocols for decentralized addressing and routing, like cjdns >1, and protocols for peer-to-peer electronic value transfer between nodes, like Raiden >2. The only major missing piece of the technological puzzle, AFAICS, is a technology for cheaply deploying telecommunication backbone links.
If it comes to having the same legislation in the UK, it'd likely ban decentralized web as well, perhaps requiring submitting your ID upon connecting to Internet every single time.
I think in the far future, cloud computing and the web will morph into a single entity where you will login to your cloud. This idea of identifying yourself prior to accessing your resources and having your resources connect to others doesn't seem far fetched anymore.
Especially with the way we are moving. Most people today are happy to use sso with services like facebook or google. Most people also have their real identify tied to their core profile they use to sign on to other services. The abstraction between the internet and the cloud is becoming more blurry to a internetizen that is technologically ignorant.
Which are unavailable in many EU countries already.
Practically the only way of connecting anonymously to the Internet is the old-fashioned wardriving, or getting lucky and finding a "free wifi" which is not limited to the Web only.
The Facebook thing is already happening to some extend, some of my friends had their account blocked because they didn't use their real name and the only way to unblock this account is to upload a scan of an ID or a passport.
I know a lot of people who were using artist/business names as personal acct names on facebook, and were contacted and told they had to change to their legal names. In many cases, they were asked to submit a drivers license for proof, and lost access to their accounts until this was completed.
> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream.
When I created an account with AirBnB I had to upload government-issued ID documents and a photo of myself [1]. Their Android app even asked me to scan the chip in my UK passport via NFC.
This was probably necessary due to instances where someone rented an AirBnB apartment under a fake identity, and then proceeded to completely trash the apartment.
In cases like this, where anonymity allows users to cause serious damage without repercussions, I don't think identity requirements are problematic. However, extending this to harmless actions like commenting online is a completely different thing.
People can use commenting to call for genocide or push people into suicide, they can use communication to plot terrorist attacks, etc.
The only difference is that it is not physical damage.
I support anonymity, I hated what Airbnb made me do in terms of insecure exposing of my identify to them (and then had I use an empty gmail account to verify in the end).
I don't understand how you can expect to be anonymous in a service where the point is to physically show up. There are all sorts of practical safety considerations that don't apply to other services.
similar thing for Airbnb China. They ask for National ID and fullname then run ID check. I was surprised and thought it was a chinese thing. Look not..
> Many countries do. To watch certain youtube videos in south korea you need to provide your social security number or something like that.
South korea also strictly censors any publicly visible posting relating to elections and requires something like social-security number, or a faxed and verified passport for foreigners[0]. I guess that's meant to stop subversive groups from swaying elections.
Oh snap. Because in the mean time, government security agents were using the internet to propagandise for their preferred electoral candidate and manipulate the outcome of elections. Which only switched to direct vote pretty recently, and even then, merely elect a president with near dictatorial powers over all major government appointments.
Anyway, they're an ally, so there's no need for outpourings of scorn like there is in the case of china or russia.
[0]. wiki Internet_censorship_in_South_Korea
[1]. guardian "South Korea spy agency admits trying to rig 2012 presidential election"
South Korea passed the anti-defacement law after a number of high profile suicides were linked to online harassment. Now a lot of online services require your ssn to sign up, which kinda sucks. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_defamation_law
> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations, while still gaining loyalty from their citizens to the point where these supporters will even defend the govt.
Many Western messengers try to obtain your phone number and phone contact list when installing the app, and some of them (Whatsapp, Telegram) require you to provide a phone number to register.
Private companies and democratic governments are no less curious than Chinese government. They also want you to save your data into their "cloud" so NSA can look at any time.
Russian major social network Vkontakte requires a phone number to register an account. Russia is also developing a legislation requiring all messenger apps to identify their users with a phone number.
And by the way (I have read it somewhere) if you are trying to access pornhub from Russia it requires you to sign in with Vkontakte (social network with real names policy) account to prove that you are adult. So even if you want just to watch video you have to identify yourself first. I wonder, what are they going to do with that information? Will they post "videos you might like" to user's wall in Vkontakte? Or will they show who of your friends likes the same genre?
Few years ago I spent time on Omegle. I got to speak with Chinese guys. Their first question was often about how we liked China (maybe invested in national pride, or worried).
I love most asian things so I could gladly list much many things I liked from China. Even after that happy introduction, the discussion went into "you know China is not all good" then listing a few problems. So far nothing surprising. But then a weird silence occured and all of a sudden, the other user started to nervously type "nono, forget it, I said nothing; oh my god .." * user disconnected *
> To have a mobile phone number, you need your passport or ID.
Not in the UK you don't. I can order a bunch of free sims with fake names and addresses and get them. I've got about 20 from EE, gifgaff, Vodafone, NanoSim, O2, etc.
So by your logic. I can create fake facebook and email from a free SIM of a number that has no connection to me.
Every system has a weakspot. You just need to know how to exploit it.
except that your mobile provider can probably localize you to within tens if meters. If you use modern tech, there's no real anonymity - just degrees of difficulty.
> To have an email, you still need a mobile phone number to register for gmail (the most popular choice).
> but then you again can also get IDs and fake passports easily in China if you want.
I agree to a certain extent that your passport is indirectly linked to these online services.
Where I don't agree is that you can still use an email service that doesn't require you to provide your phone numbers and you can use it to sign up for Facebook (not a legal offence, there is still a way to access the service).
Use of fake passports is a criminal offence (And there isn't a viable alternative to use the service without committing a criminal offence).
It is one thing to have alternatives, but to actually execute the switch to alternatives seems near impossible. Breaking away from Google is already hard, breaking away from Google + Facebook (which has your phone number on WhatsApp) seems impossible.
Not to sound too personal, but I thought everyone pretty much gave in to Google already.
I doubt even a majority of HN has Facebook accounts and Gmail for email.
A lot of us use services like Fastmail, Protonmail for email and simply do not use Facebook. Gmail is so bad it's not even usable for me in comparison to how it was several years ago.
Changing your email account is easier than you think, especially if you already use Password Managers like most of HN will be doing. You can redirect email from Gmail to your new email address, and at your new email provider put a footer into your every sent email which states you've switched to this new email address. I advise backing up your email from Gmail using Thunderbird just in case, but personally I've never had to access the backup, it's really much easier than you imagine.
Actually I'm talking about Google account and services in general, not just gmail. Google account also exists as an IAM service for various Google branded products, such as YouTube, and a lot of other external services, which use Google account as the preferred or only authentication method. It is much harder to break those once you are locked in.
And those are the more savvy users who actually care about their privacy a lot.
If I may draw another parallel:
There are also loads of people out there who can migrate out of the system (China/Google) if they don't like. And those who stay with the system (China/Google) seems to be fine with the system knowing their identity.
Are you calling my old dad, with his yahoo account, or my other colleagues in marketing with live/hotmail accounts "tech savvy"? What a about my Hungarian relatives with freemail or humail? What about fastmail?
People on HN are terrible with email. How on earth is it possible to think Gmail is the only option for email, a decentralized, standardized service? How ignorant do you have to be to make that assumption?
Oh, anything can be faked even if it isn't faked well. They work as long as the numbers aren't verified.
There was something about how Wen Jiabao's mom's ID number must have been stolen to drive a billion dollar empire...so, at least as far as the government officials are concerned, it happens (or to say, they use it as an excuse).
I'm not sure I agree with that answer. I just tried signing up to test this and after submitting was asked for a phone number to verify. The first form didn't require a phone but after that it redirected to a page with a link to https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/114129?hl=en&ctx=... that referencing GSuite verification.
I feel like this is a very recent change; I've definitely created "burner" gmail accounts in the past and I don't remember providing my cell phone number.
Yes, but they will link you to a mobile number and then require that you confirm your number on grounds that they cannot identify you from your login. Gmail did not have my number confirmed until I moved and they locked me out of my email, despite answering all security questions. Theory and practice can be very different.
I found it interesting to read that GMAIL can be quite anal about account creation. I have one from years back. Hardly ever use it. But I have noticed that GMAIL accounts seem to be the email service of choice on Craigslist (Casual Encounters). I better explain myself here. I live in area that is well protected by the police. But one night I went out to pick up a pizza, halftime, and I was outside by my car waiting, and was approached by a Lady of the Evening. I was kind of stunned. So I started monitoring Craigslist. I said all this to bring up my experiences with Outlook.com.
I set up 3 accounts, all using the "Alternate email address" option. One for my father, stop his griping about GMAIL, one for a friend to keep in touch while I was on a roadtrip in Oregon, and another one for me. Once set up, I tested them out, send/recieve an email. Within few days, all were "Temporarily Suspended", for some unspecified "possible" violation of ToS. To unlock them I would be require to provide a text able phone number to recieve an activation code, and require to use the code within 10 minutes. Now I did not create these accounts all at once, there were months in between. I am just waiting for the day, when my other accounts, which I have had for years, multiple accounts were needed in the days before email aliases, to recieve the same treatment. So I am not really hot on the idea of providing them my phone number, especially after this type of treatment. Therefore, what they call "burner phone", I guess is the solution. Suggestions would be appreciated on a "burner phone". I remember years ago, when there was talk of the government controlling the internet, and websites protested by turning their backgrounds to black. That today there are many large tech companies now applying their own version of privacy invasion (tracking) and censorship.
ID for a cell number is certainly not a requirement in the US. Or anywhere in Western Europe. Or Canada. Or Mexico. Or anywhere in South America. So where are you talking about that being a requirement ?
> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations
No. For what it's worth a very famous French website dedicated to FPS started asking for ID card scan before registering new members and to keep your account active.
I don't know if they still do that though, at that point I stopped visiting the website as much as I used to. It was like ten years ago.
> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream.
I seem to remember in some case they are asking for it.
The only time Facebook asked me for ID was after I copied the profile of my friend for a laugh. After a while the account was blocked and I would've had to provide identification to prove I was indeed my friend and unblock the account.
> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream
No need to imagine anything. Right after Facebook started their war on fake news, my FB acount was locked and the only way to unlock it is to provide my ID/passport to prove the name of the account is my real name.
Um, Facebook can arbitrarily lock out your account and demand a scan of government issued ID. It happened to a friend of mine. I think there is only a small step to the government working with Facebook to do this in the name of keeping people "safe".
In Russia, when you open Pornhub, it asks to verify your age with Voktakte (popular social network) account. Your can only register there with a working mobile number. And you can only buy a sim card with your passport.
So, essentially, you can't even watch porn without an id now.
as a Chinese, I can verify what you said, It's not something that is normal. You need to upload your ID card no to Ask a question? to comment one? It's just disgusting.
The reason, in my opinion, is that the Chinese leadership is about to change recently, the 19th party meeting, Those who currently control the power just want everything under control. So the do not CARE about what the civilians care about. POWER is above all of that.
>Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations
The US and EU have tons of those sort of things. Patriot Act? Mass surveillance programs? Required ID to get a mobile connection? UK's largest number of CCTVs on any place on earth?
Heck, in the US they can trial you as an adult at 15 and send you to war at 17 but you need to be over 21 and show ID to drink a beer at a bar...
That's because opinions in the US don't have the potential to go far. If they had, they'd be illegal. In China they can tumble a whole state of 1+ billion people and its unstable-is regime.
loyalty? what other options have people who don't like CCP - vote for different party, go to jail for actions against social order, move abroad? i don't see any of these changing status quo
I'm frightened by how a seemingly pragmatic government has been able to spiral into dogmatic, protectionists policies so rapidly. I suppose that I mistook the recent decades of economic development as evidence of true ideological reform taking place. Now I feel naive for expecting more from the government that imprisoned the father of their ubiquitous high speed rail system.
The Eastern desire to require "harmonious thoughts" is so at odds with the skepticism required to birth true innovations. I was once convinced that China was on the verge of becoming a new force in modern technology. But after seeing a long line of regulations meant to increase the echo of their political echo chamber, I doubt technological innovation can linger much longer.
Innovation in china is a numbers game: there are going to be more than a few people who are unharmonious enough to innovate, despite the government's best efforts. Just look at how many Chinese are interested in jumping the wall. Of course, if they keep this up, hose people will just continue to emigrate (we will have lots of innovation from Chinese, even if they don't do it in China).
> I was once convinced that China was on the verge of becoming a new force in modern technology
They have amazingly intelligent people and a wonderful hacker community, the problem is it stands entirely at odds with the government's "what's best for society" attitude. The problem most overtly controlling government's aren't willing to accept is that what's best for society this exact moment might not be what's best for it overall. This is why there's no Chinese technology leaders, no Chinese Apple. Communism brews mediocrity.
Um, you seem to be unaware of Tencent and Alibaba, both vast enterprises. Tencent owns League of Legends, the biggest multiplayer game in the world, as well as WeChat, which is comparable to WhatsApp in number of users. WeChat is revered by tech leaders in the West, it basically blows everything else out of the water in terms of features and robustness.
I'd say those who aren't affected don't care much. The rest tries to find ways around it. Every student I met during an exchange semester in Shanghai was using a VPN to access foreign websites.
same point as in my original comment, and it shows because there's barely any use outside of china (and maybe expat communities). they're only a "leader" in china.
> Phone: Xiaomi Mi Mix, One Plus series
For one, apple has killer margins on its phones, whereas they do not. Even comparing among android phone manufacturers, they're worse in terms of market share and profitability (as opposed to Samsung, for instance). Their only selling point their $/performance, which will surely disappear when their VC subsidy runs out. "leaders" aren't underdogs. "leaders" don't sell discounted phones at a loss.
>JS framework: Vue.js
I can't say i know the js ecosystem very well, but vue.js does seem to be the fastest growing MVVC framework (at least in the realm of logic-in-tags languages). But the problem I see is that javascript frameworks come and go, and it could very well drop off a cliff in a year or two after the next hottest thing comes out. Is it a leader? Sure, for now...
Alibaba or Aliexpress? I've got tens of packages off Aliexpress and have had no problems other than slow delivery (although it seems to be improving).
Yes, you have to know what you're looking for and you'll occasionally run across very low quality products (motorcycle gloves), but you'll find the same on eBay - where do you think most of those sellers are buying from?
Try using WeChat every day for a few months and then tell me again they're not leading the pack. I don't even use it in China (where it's power is significantly higher than everywhere else), yet even ignoring features that only work in China, it is by far the most powerful messaging client currently available.
Define, "powerful" because WeChat is the only chat application I know if that has built-in government censorship. That sounds like the opposite of "powerful" to me.
"Enjoy chatting with your friends while the government of China monitors your every character and transaction!"
...unless you meant "powerful censorship and dissent-destroying spy capabilities."
They're still being pragmatic - they're trying to stay in power.
China is ruled by a one-party oligarchy that acts pragmatically in its own interest, not in the people's. A China with higher risk of regime change - even if it's a stronger and more prosperous China - is not in their interest.
> A China with higher risk of regime change - even if it's a stronger and more prosperous China - is not in their interest.
Substitute a few words in there and you would be describing Brexit today. Every ruling regime think they are the best thing for the country and are unlikely to voluntarily step down even when the truth is conyrary to that idea.
>I'm frightened by how a seemingly pragmatic government has been able to spiral into dogmatic, protectionists policies so rapidly.
What makes you think that this is ideological rather than pragmatic? They look to America and they see the greatest power of all time being torn apart by internal cultural and political conflict. I don't like China's authoritarian system–not one bit–but I can see the logic motivating its leaders.
An understandable misconception when the freedom of presses enables publicly airing anyone's dirty laundry. Not to mention that (god forbid) there is actual debate and conflict between our citizens on the best way to handle issues.
These differences are nonetheless not my biggest grief with China. The moment you restrict criticism of your institution, you have committed to sacrificing pragmatism for ideology. Pragmatism requires commitment to the truth, which can only come from the status quo being continually challenged.
Leaving aside subjective judgments if doing this is right/wrong, good/in-line with the Chinese culture or whatever else.
If you view the societal/political cohesion/consensus as a process of behavioral survival of the fittest (eg. requiring a certain flexibility to adapt) then taking away the flexibility that anonymous online communication affords your citizens might not be so good when/if it becomes time for the system to adapt. There will be less space to communicate and plan gradual change, skipping that possibility and going straight for more bloody forms of change. Say like the way we did things 200 years ago.
Personally and subjectively, I think this is a dumb and evil thing to do. But not unexpected.
You make some very interesting points on flexibility and the ability to adapt. I also wonder how China is able to keep adapting to circumstances and survive if the voice of people is not heard.
But then I realize China has a different system to allow that to happen. In modern China, the only way for politicians to go up the ladder of leadership is to slowly rise from the bottom.
In this sense, they were once a normal citizen as well, and through working closely with the local community in the early political career, they should have a good understanding of the impact of policies on average citizen.
The fact that China is still strong in terms of economics despite being one-party is largely due to the economic reform pushed by the highest leadership Deng Xiaoping.
You are excluding princelings like Xi Jinping, who only started from the bottom in theory, but have a lot of family connections to help them rise quickly. In fact, as time goes on, princelings are becoming more dominant in Chinese politics and even the economy (many companies and industries are controlled by red families).
This is already the case for any substantial public posting. In order to get a crappy virtual web host that's not even on your own domain name one needs to supply a national ID number. For a virtual machine a corporation with an ICP license is required. This number must be displayed on every web site. It's evil. Their Twitter copy already requires ID. Anyone with a substantial following is known to authorities. I wonder if this new push to cripple the internet will kick off unidentified WeChat users.
Leaving aside political effects, this regime makes it very difficult to innovate. A Chinese developer just starting out can't just just rent a VM to show off his work. I helped someone get a webapp running on one of the big Chinese cloud service and it's really, really awful. Exactly what you would expect from an industry completely protected from competition by government.
I grew up in China and came to the U.S. more than 10 years ago.
What I have been seeing is the decline of the United States.
That's said, I'm worrying about China a lot more. I think it's on track to repeat the mistakes it had done before.
You often see articles here saying China will surpass the States in A.I. and science. I doubt it. I doubt a country without freely accessible information will be competent. I doubt true intellectuals would like to live in a place like this. soviet union was an example.
I used to get angry at these things (censorships, corruptions). But now I'm tired, not because China is clearly drifting away from what I want it to be, but because I saw many fellow Chinese really believe in government propaganda, and justify its wrong doings. They have the Stockholm syndrome, decorating a nightmare into a beautiful dream (of China being the new world leader and all the censorship shit is necessary to fence off the invasion of western culture. such a bullshit!). And there are also many others who simply don't care.
Now I just want to hide somewhere and mind my own things.
Who will be replacing the States? Europe is weak and is at its bottom, Russia is no better than China. Maybe Australia or Canada.
I'm cynical about a lot of things, like our dysfunctional mess of a government, a Fortune 500 saturated with exploitative bullshit, and the silly summer-camp that college has turned into. And people have been telling me about the decline of America for my whole life (admittedly not a long life). But I think they are just overwhelmed with worry because we have access to so much information, and I think America easily has another couple hundred years of prosperity ahead, even if it won't be smooth sailing the whole time.
On almost any metric I can find, the US is getting better and better. The only decline the us is experiencing is a decline in growth "rates" which is predictable for any mature economy.
Crime is lower, standard of living is higher, poverty is less... That's not to say the us doesn't have a lot of problems, but overall, it is objectively better than before.
Maybe it's decline, or maybe it's just slowly taking off the rose colored glasses that younger people tend to wear :)
There is no replacing the US anytime soon and if there is, all the problems you mentioned will persist.
Why wouldn't they?
When you're younger you think there's some villain comic book style, that you have to overcome. You know, a Hitler. Then the world's going to be different.
It's not like that - the country is a reflection of it's citizens - narrow minded citizens, narrow minded governments.
If you want to know where things are headed - just go watch some TV. Is it uplifting/informing or dumbing things down? That's the general direction we as a society are heading in.
As for hiding somewhere and doing your own thing - that's what scientists and intelligent people do - find their niche that is ok according to society (allows them to make a comfortable living), and pursue their intellectual curiosity there.
Europe, totally won't agree. We are maybe not so big than others, specially the little country that are not part of the Europe, but we surpass all the others country.
U.S. can be better with time, but they will be weaker and weaker if they don't stop losing money. Don't forget that you owes me 19 188 102 400 000 $ even in 4000 years we still talk about the debt.
I don't understand why there needs to be a replacement? I feel as though the United States isn't declining but information is spreading equalizing the equation globally. Sure there are political issues that cause back and forth, but I feel we are moving more towards a global culture with aligned goals faster than ever before.
So technology, once a progressive force, is now going to be used to conserve dysfunction. Can't wait to see the latest Deep Learning advancements used to enforce whatever is deemed appropriate. Future generations are done with approved high-school popularity contests enforced everywhere. I am wondering if China is going for another 2000 years of no advancements, like it used to when it exhausted its cultural roots before.
On the one hand those advancements are being used to enforce users only view whats deemed appropriate, while on the other hand it's used to maximize your time-on-screen by stealing your attention in increasingly ingenious ways. I believe we are already past the event horizon on a dystopian singularity that will land us somewhere in the middle of Orwell and Huxley.
Anyone interested in how to get identified?
You need to download an app (or a built-in feature in an app), it open your camera, you need to make it focus your head. And then you need do what the speakers(a bot) tell you to do:
"Shake your head. Good!",
"Blink your eyes. Good!",
"Open your mouth. Good!",
"...",
Then your videos will be uploaded for review.
Which part is wrong? That seems to me like a standard procedure to take an identifying photo of someone while making sure that it's really a living human head.
At least here in the states, social media + anonymity hasn't exactly been a boon for human progress. I will never support the laws being proposed in places like the u.k and China, but I like the fact that we are forced to grapple with these ethical issues when laws like this are proposed.
Humanity is mainlining an experimental drug in social media. What makes it insideous is that most don't realize it. Governments are grappling with how to insulate themselves from the threat this tech represents; when will regular people do the same?
The new generation is more censorious and intellectually sheltered than before. Blame schools and colleges who decided to focus on providing a safe space, and the tech companies those students moved into.
I am from China. Call me selfish, but I really hope China Internet censorship is not discussed on HN. HN is one of the few sites I like that GFW (Great Fking Wall) doesn't block. More threads about the 'sensitive' stuff about China, will almost surely get hacker news blocked.
Github has been blocked before. An outcry from the dev community finally got it unblocked. But that seldom happens.
Yes, to sign up for pretty much any service you have to have either a cell phone contract or a bank account, both of which require a government ID. You don't need to do this to sign up for a forum, but if you want to sign up for something like a movie theater loyalty program, you need to.
I remember being freaked out when I read THE DIGITAL IMPRIMATUR, which was authored in the early 2000s. I thought it was already reality, but it was just describing what COULD happen with a determined censorship / police state that can use the power of regulations to make it happen.
Nothing surprising. At least they state it officially in the law. But Western goverments approach providers to open backdoors (e.g. Lavabit case) and keep users fooled that they still have any anonimity.
Look how the 8 years Dem controlled spooks were insufficient to get 4 more years.
Yes, US law enforcement and security services are doing a lot of dumb things (TSA security theatre, NSA sitting on 0-days and playing cyber instead of helping the civilian sector patch up), but they don't arrest troublemakers. (They arrest you for weed, but not for running an anti-establishment site.)
Unsubstantive name-calling comments, especially putting down other people's countries, will get you banned here. Please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
So is the US at times - and Norway (the places I've lived), and every other place I've visited. The same places are generally very nice in other ways. It just depends on what you are focusing on, who you are, and that sort of thing.
If you were living in China, hearing the Chinese media's propaganda about the west instead of the western media's propaganda about China, you'd probably be saying the same thing about the west instead of about China.
Chinese always talk about biased western media against china but can never point anything out, having to dig back a few years for anything substantial.
Here is a clue: a westerner will have even more of a negative impression of china if they restrict themselves to Chinese media only (like chinadaily, globaltimes, CCTV 9). So is Chinese media biased against china????
It's not that bad I believe. With the way PR companies and political parties are using astroturfing/bots to influence public opinion, asking for identification is one way of making sure the person participating in an online discussion is real. It also safeguards against online foreign influence.
Additionally, I think anonymity tends to bring the worst in us. Perhaps it is because we feel less pressured by social norms of behavior since we are not held personally responsible for our speech as much as it would've been the case irl. While no one is truly anonymous to the state, asking people to identify themselves makes them conscious about it and I believe less likely to start using a given service under the assumption of anonymity.
I'm pretty sure the Chinese government will give its astroturfers a free pass on the identity requirements. And the social norms that pressure people when they are not anonymous include not making the government look bad.
While anonymity-enforcing environments can be useful when users have the freedom to choose, as soon as they become mandatory under an authoritarian regime, they turn into a strong silencer against all dissent.
I agree with you, although people should have the choice to be anonymous or not. Users should also be able to make the difference, and have less trust towards anonymous individuals.
I agree that there should be places where anonymity should not be authorized, but it should not be mandatory.
Even if the state need people's identity it doesn't share that data with private companies (in general).
> Additionally, I think anonymity tends to bring the worst in us. Perhaps it is because we feel less pressured by social norms of behavior since we are not held personally responsible for our speech as much as it would've been the case irl.
You're right, but what you are describing is the pressure of the politically correct, which can be toxic. Anonymity let people express their opinion without fear of retaliation.
It's a double edge sword. The best solution is to educate people so that they can make the difference, and let people use platforms with strong identification where it's better.
From the other side once you share your data, you lose control over it. Your identity might be stolen / sold / used for something illegal by whoever has the access to it. Nobody is gonna solve this problem.
Moreover in a lot of countries nobody will protect you once prosecutor has enough "clues" to put you in jail for something you didn't commit. Just look at the prosecution process of mr Bogatov for hosting Tor exit node [1]. It's already happening.
Or imagine the possibilities for government to track down the opposition. Well in some countries government already puts in jail opposition based on internet activities.
So even in case anonymity might make people to be a bit overly aggressive online, that's the price I'm happy to pay for my own safety and freedom. Otherwise I would prefer to stay passive network participant or even be offline.
This isn't some western media propaganda. I tried one of them very recently (I don't want to give them any undeserved marketing), they allowed me to sign up and the moment I clicked on my camera button it took me to a page asking me to "verify" my profile as apparently it was Chinese government's new regulation. Guess what? They asked me for my passport before I could upload a damn thing on their app.
Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations, while still gaining loyalty from their citizens to the point where these supporters will even defend the govt. everywhere online trying to explain how normal it is to submit your passport and your real identity to some random app company because you know, you just wanted to try it out and it's totally normal.