wiki-user: unruffled

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called “the People’s Stick.”

Mikhail Bakunin

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I’m not suggesting study bias, but I am suggesting that Chinese citizens’ social media and internet use is now so closely monitored by the CPP that it has a chilling effect on free speech, and this may have influenced the results even if they were told the study was anonymous.

    Secondly, since Xi took power, according to that same report, he has “effectively sidelined functional and professional institutions of party and state”, in addition to removing term limits. These are all classic authoritarian strongman moves. The study goes on to point out that having an effective authoritarian as leader - one who has helped improve the lives of many Chinese citizens - is of course going to be popular. The old saying goes that a benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government, and that may be true in some regards, right up until the point it isn’t benevolent anymore. Which is more or less inevitable imo.







  • We definitely shouldn’t normalise this sort of surveillance, whether it’s simply for advertising or for more nefarious purposes. China already banned apps like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter, so was that due to anglophobia or is it ok when China does it, but not when the US does it?

    I agree with you on some level - it’s definitely not cool to only focus on TikTok, because these surveillance machines are IMO all equally problematic. But most Lemmy users have a dim view of all mainstream social media apps because they all suck with regards to user privacy. But is TikTok hated on more than Threads or Facebook? I really don’t think so. And the narrative that any criticism of the Chinese state must be sinophobic is total bullshit. The Chinese state is just as sleazy and authoritarian as any other large nation state. They all deserve criticism when they use these digital panopticons for political purposes.








  • From the article:

    Mr. Wardle’s curiosity was piqued by recent news that Russian spies had used Kaspersky antivirus products to siphon classified documents off the home computer of an N.S.A. developer, and may have played a critical role in broader Russian intelligence gathering.

    From the “recent news” article mentioned above:

    Government officials, who would speak of the classified details of the case only on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Pho took the classified documents home to help him rewrite his resume. But he had installed on his home computer antivirus software made by Kaspersky Lab, a top Russian software company, and Russian hackers are believed to have exploited the software to steal the documents, the officials said.

    Honestly, I agree, it’s a serious accusation against Kaspersky with very scant details and allegations made by off-the-record “officials”. Having said that, just because they didn’t present any compelling evidence doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. In the words of Carl Sagan, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” I’m not sure where that leaves us though lol. Honestly, I don’t trust Kaspersky with my data any less that with any of the other big antivirus companies. I guess it makes sense they would want antivirus software with CIA/NSA backdoors over alternatives though :p