The Chinese Internet Is Shrinking (nytimes.com) 88
An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese people know their country's internet is different. There is no Google, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. They use euphemisms online to communicate the things they are not supposed to mention. When their posts and accounts are censored, they accept it with resignation. They live in a parallel online universe. They know it and even joke about it. Now they are discovering that, beneath a facade bustling with short videos, livestreaming and e-commerce, their internet -- and collective online memory -- is disappearing in chunks.
A post on WeChat on May 22 that was widely shared reported that nearly all information posted on Chinese news portals, blogs, forums, social media sites between 1995 and 2005 was no longer available. "The Chinese internet is collapsing at an accelerating pace," the headline said. Predictably, the post itself was soon censored. It's impossible to determine exactly how much and what content has disappeared. [...] In addition to disappearing content, there's a broader problem: China's internet is shrinking. There were 3.9 million websites in China in 2023, down more than a third from 5.3 million in 2017, according to the country's internet regulator.
A post on WeChat on May 22 that was widely shared reported that nearly all information posted on Chinese news portals, blogs, forums, social media sites between 1995 and 2005 was no longer available. "The Chinese internet is collapsing at an accelerating pace," the headline said. Predictably, the post itself was soon censored. It's impossible to determine exactly how much and what content has disappeared. [...] In addition to disappearing content, there's a broader problem: China's internet is shrinking. There were 3.9 million websites in China in 2023, down more than a third from 5.3 million in 2017, according to the country's internet regulator.
Ah yes the memory hole (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember that story, don't worry, soon your history will be back on the internet. It might not be the same history, but are you going to dare point it out?
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Honestly this is what is really frightening about the digital era. We are already seeing this with books and film, 'edits' to reflect the sensibilities of the week, and the copyright owners all but kicking in your door and demanding your hand over your VHS/DVD/Paper copy. If its in your streaming account, on your kindle etc, good luck getting the original if they decide you can't have it anymore.
There is a whole slew of words and ideas you are not allowed to express anymore that literally won popular votes
Re: Ah yes the memory hole (Score:5, Insightful)
"but they take their queues and strategy for the Marxist and Maoists"
Look bro, they are taking their CUES and strategy from fascists, not commies. China is far from Communist. They are very, very capitalist and very, very far right, and they have a strong man leader to rally behind - that is textbook fascism.
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so in essence what you are suggesting is that CCP is in fact FAP (fascist authoritarian Party)
i for odd reasons, welcome that change
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another FAP - Forever Achieving Prosperity
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but only for the few.
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Few Achieve Prosperity
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There is not much different between fascism and what you would consider pure communism. By your definition pure communism (Marxism) doesn't exist because it requires fascism (a strong leader) to establish. Your definition is wrong though, fascism is socialism with a strong racial purism aspect.
Although China is somewhat fascist when it comes to the Han Chinese, I'm not sure it amounts to racial purism (the other types of Chinese are tolerated unless it comes to religion).
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Your definition is wrong though, fascism is socialism
Then why did socialists and communists hate each other so much?
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Why did Menscheviks and Bolscheviks hate each other despite working together? Pol Pot killed all his frenemies too after he got to power. Because the promise of communism/socialism requires a dictator and the eradication of people that do not agree (even Nietzsche pointed that out before communism was established anywhere), there is no room in a dictatorship for 2 ideas.
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There are two dimensions (at least, probably more) to it all. Communism and Fascism are not polar opposites. It was very educational to first be exposed to a web site called Political Compass where they analyze politics on a two-dimensional scale. We have an economic scale, where we have libertarians on one end and socialism on the other end. Then we have a political scale where anarchism is on one end and authoritarianism on the other end. Fascism as we saw it during WWII consists of authoritarianism c
Re: Ah yes the memory hole (Score:2)
Ah yes, the monsters canâ(TM)t possibly be extremists on my side of the political spectrum, can they?
Bro, all extremists are bad.
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It doesn't help to throw terms like communist and fascist around when the subject is neither of those things.
China is neither communist nor purely capitalist in an economic sense. It is more like Europe, with capitalism that is well regulated and where the government is directly involved in much of it.
As for fascism, they aren't that either. Fascism is a form of populism, but the CCP doesn't need it because it has widespread support due to having greatly improved the lives of most Chinese people. I think th
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Honestly this is what is really frightening about the digital era. We are already seeing this with books and film, 'edits' to reflect the sensibilities of the week, and the copyright owners all but kicking in your door and demanding your hand over your VHS/DVD/Paper copy. If its in your streaming account, on your kindle etc, good luck getting the original if they decide you can't have it anymore.
There is a whole slew of words and ideas you are not allowed to express anymore that literally won popular votes just a 10-12 years ago; but you have certain parties demanding that things from that time be scrubbed and sanitized because they want to paint the illusion "nobody ever spoke like that" and "it was never a popular position" in your lifetime anyway; because they want to make it seem unthinkable it could be different or we could reverse, its the very gaslighting progressives and other hard left authoritarians are always wingeing about!
but they take their queues and strategy for the Marxist and Maoists so it unsurprising to see China doing this, just know Nina Jankowicz will be advocating for dear old Uncle Sam to take over doing it here, as soon she thinks she can get away with it again; until then it will be employee the puppet media cartel!
You write as if there was a past where books and movies weren't reedited, AFAIK books and movies has always been reedited (and that goes for the other arts as well, painting and sculpture comes to mind)?
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The difference is that before, they could edit all they want but the copy sitting on my shelf didn't change. But now it's all going digital, so that book on your Kindle or that movie on Netflix can change from day to day.
Re:Ah yes the memory hole (Score:5, Insightful)
"Not allowed to express" means "you get punished when you express it."
Cancel-culture is a thing. If you say some of the things you mentioned, you can lose your job, and have a ruined reputation that blocks you from future jobs. That is real and impactful punishment that equates to "not allowed to express."
You also cannot express things like that about specific people, as you can wind up facing charges of libel or slander. Such legal punishments means you are not allowed to express those ideas.
There are plenty of types of image that you are not allowed to distribute (legal consequences) as well. And of course you are not allowed to express military secrets as such people as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have learned.
Re:Ah yes the memory hole (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Absolutely not.
Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom from consequences.
When our founders signed their names to the declaration of independence, they all knew that there would be consequences. When they wrote the constitution, they did not enshrine freedom-from-consequence: they enshrined freedom-of-speech.
You are allowed to express yourself. There is no prior-restraint applied. What comes after you express yourself does not prevent the expression.
Part of being a grown-up is knowing that actions have consequences. Adults accept responsibility for their actions.
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No, that doesn't make sense. You are splitting semantic hairs.
Try this: "you are free to murder anyone you like. But there is a consequence: you will get arrested and put in jail for life."
What that means is, you are not free to murder anyone you like. The fact that it is illegal, means you are not free to do it. It is the very nature of law to limit freedom.
The same goes for speech. If saying something brings legal consequences, then I am not free to say it. So slander and libel laws are a limit to f
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Also if you say the wrong thing, you can get whacked by the mob, or by the government (illegally). And of course there can be social consequences to your speech; this is a desirable result of also having freedom of association. In order to be free to speak illegal or unpopular things, anonymity can protect your freedom of expression, without abridging freedom of association.
Looks like modders don't like me today (Score:2)
Here is an education [wikipedia.org] on the topic:
"The Supreme Court of the United States has recognized several categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment and has recognized that governments may enact reasonable time, place, or manner restrictions on speech."
Our freedom of speech is not absolute, the government can pass laws to curtail it, and inasmuch as it does so we are "not allowed" to say those things.
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You are allowed to express yourself. There is no prior-restraint applied. What comes after you express yourself does not prevent the expression.
Get the fuck out of your ivory tower you idiot (you live up to your nom de plume!)
REALLY read what you just wrote.
And then realize Freedom of Speech means freedom from consequences of your speech from the US Government.
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Freedom of Speech means freedom from consequences of your speech from the US Government.
Yes. ONLY from the government. You are not protected from consequences that are not inherently governmental in nature. Actions have consequences: social consequences, financial consequences, personal consequences, even LEGAL consequences -if you (while exercising your rights) violate someone else's rights, they can seek protection and redress. Your right to swing your fist ends at someone else's nose...
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Well what you just said doesn't qualify as "cancel culture."
But you knew that. You drew that false equivalence on purpose.
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You'd be cancelled instantly.
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Cancel-culture is a thing. If you say some of the things you mentioned, you can lose your job, and have a ruined reputation that blocks you from future jobs.
What you call "cancel culture" is more correctly called "boycott", and it is a historically effective and potentially grass roots action. It is often claimed that what is new is involving public opinion, but that is rubbish. It's true that it's easier and more democratized to spread memes (in the actual sense, not memepics) through the internet than it was before it, but boycott actions always involved recruitment through any available and affordable media.
That is real and impactful punishment that equates to "not allowed to express."
People have always been allowed to have an opinion
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What you call "cancel culture" is more correctly called "boycott"
Cancel Culture is not a boycott, it's a blockade.
Re: Ah yes the memory hole (Score:1)
"Cancel Culture is not a boycott, it's a blockade."
False. What's a blockade is when Reich wingers block access to an abortion clinic. When liberals announce they won't be consuming media from someone because they don't like it, that's a boycott.
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Cancel-culture is a thing. If you say some of the things you mentioned, you can lose your job, and have a ruined reputation that blocks you from future jobs.
What you call "cancel culture" is more correctly called "boycott", and it is a historically effective and potentially grass roots action. It is often claimed that what is new is involving public opinion, but that is rubbish. It's true that it's easier and more democratized to spread memes (in the actual sense, not memepics) through the internet than it was before it, but boycott actions always involved recruitment through any available and affordable media.
They don't want to call it a "boycott" because the boycotts they support don't work (I.E. Disney).
This kind of thing, trying to change the language, the meaning of words is ironically a very fascist thing. One of the guiding principles of fascism was the rebirth of society, specifically through language. That ideas and thoughts could be controlled by limiting the words that are used... If you're thinking "this sounds a lot like Newspeak", good, go get yourself a juicebox, you've earned it. Nineteen Eight
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This kind of thing, trying to change the language, the meaning of words is ironically a very fascist thing.
You mean referring to boycotts as cancel culture? Yes, that is a thing done by fascists.
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It actually relates to the consequences of what your words reveal about you. If others don't like it they have the freedom to express that dislike in any way that is legal, its not being cancelled its bring held responsible for your own words.
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Shoot all group X, what about election interferance from here:
https://edition.cnn.com/intera... [cnn.com]
or denying the holocaust from here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
attempted to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol by calling lawmakers to convince them ... to delay the certification
He was just saying something, expressing an opinion. There are plenty ideas and expression that will get you into a lot trouble.
Please not I am not commenting on if these are right or wrong laws just that they are laws and in many if not all countries that are consider free there are limits on what you can express.
And that is just criminal punish
Pr0n (Score:2)
As long as Pr0n is there, who cares :)
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Is this like when embarass changed to embarrass? Or was it always spelled embarrass? Or do I have a memory of a teacher telling the class that remembering the number of letters is easy because , em bare ass. But no, it has always been embarrass, even though it doesn't follow the spelling rules that we were taught as children.
Do they have any tips (Score:1)
on how to reduce the crap infecting the internet in the rest of the world?
Special tip for you (Score:4, Insightful)
Show us your papers and your social score before we let you access your website, comrade.
Can't happen here (Score:4, Funny)
>> all information posted on Chinese news portals, blogs, forums, social media sites between 1995 and 2005 was no longer available.
It's a good thing that can't happen here. My Geocities site is safe.
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Why do people think web sites will be perpetually available?
You're right, they won't be...but there's a nuanced difference between "it wasn't viable for Yahoo to keep it running" and "President Obama mandated the deletion of Geocities" (it was shuttered in 2009). Moreover, The Internet Archive still exists, and has snapshots of many Geocities sites. To my knowledge, nobody has attempted to have TIA purge its archives of those pages.
The West lacks many 'old internet' pages from pre-2005, but it's primarily due to apathy. The East lacks many 'old internet' pages from
Re: Can't happen here (Score:3)
As you yourself point out, the outcome is not the same, because of the Internet archive.
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My Geocities site is safe.
And it is!
https://web.archive.org/web/19... [archive.org]
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Just noticed that easter egg: https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Re:Just like the US : see the Twitter files (Score:4, Informative)
Ah yes, the lies continue. Since you've put out the lie I'm using my freedom of speech to call you out on it.
No, the government did not direct any social media web site on what they could or could not say. That is a flat out, bald faced lie. What they did say is the sites should be more proactive in countering the false information and outright lies being posted, something those same sites were already doing, including Shitter.
Now go whine you're being censored even though your lie is available for everyone to see. Unlike on Shitter where Must is actively censoring people who say anything remotely bad about Nazis such as Hans Kristian Graebener being StoneToss. Can't have that on a site where the owner claims they're "free speech".
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> countering the false information and outright lies being posted
Eh, sort of? They had specific concerns about particular things
that were being said, and communicated those concerns. Some
of the "disinformation" that they were intent on having suppressed,
later turned out to have way more basis in fact than we were lead
to believe (particularly, regarding COVID). Some of the statements
found in their private communications, are deeply concerni
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Some of the "disinformation" that they were intent on having suppressed, later turned out to have way more basis in fact than we were lead to believe (particularly, regarding COVID).
You're not being specific. Is this on purpose, or have you lost the information? What "disinformation" and what does it mean, "have more basis"? Spell it out.
Some of the statements found in their private communications, are deeply concerning
Really? Which ones? Were you a participant in those? Do you understand the context?
I don't want to fall into the trap of claiming that one particular political party is guilty of this sort of thing and the other not;
You've not "fallen into a trap", you spew lies and shell out baseless libel, passing it as facts. You're one of those people that George Orwell wrote about, the ones who kill the language by destroying the meaning of words.
Personally I think we should hold *both* sides accountable for their actions
Really? What's your opinion on the sentences of
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That's the whole reason we have archive.org and the like.
In the old days, people would wipe history off a manuscript and rewrite it, which seems wrong to us today. They did that because the writing medium was valuable and could be reused. The modern thing is to wipe data off a hard drive and write over it with new things, we do that because the writing medium is valuable and can be reused.
Re:Just like the US : see the Twitter files (Score:5, Insightful)
I read the Twitter files. They don't say what you said they say. They said that government officials request lots of shit be taken down. What they don't say is that those requests were orders or were coercive. They were just requests. Half the time, Twitter said, "No." The government is definitely allowed to ask companies nicely to do shit. What they can't do is force it. And they didn't even attempt to. Don't read everything printed as a conspiracy theory. Often times, they're not.
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If you are completely at the mercy of another entity and that entity 'requests' something. Is it REALLY a request?
There is a reason for anti-fraternization rules in the military: The lower ranked soldier is not guaranteed to be acting under their own free will. Same here.
I am not trying to destroy your argument here, but I am trying to get you to understand something.
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Maybe so, but applying your logic, the government would never be allowed to ask nicely for anything. They'd have to officially order it or nothing. That doesn't make any sense. Politicians wouldn't even be able to engage in non-political business, since it MAY be POSSIBLY coercive. You'll excuse me if I want something more than insinuation here.
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But nothing in that was government interference, even if Musk has strong beliefs that his Twitter popularity was declining due to the government wanting to shut him up (heck everyone from his wife on up wants him to shut up) but he's having none of it. Musk is a big believer in conspiracies here. He demanded that employees fix the "bug" that caused his posts to not be shared enough. Yes, internal to Twitter there was censorship, moderations, etc, but it was not directed by shadowy forces in the governmen
Netcraft confirms it (Score:1)
Another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Chinese intranet today...
Number of websites (Score:3)
We bemoaned the consolidation of retail under Walmart. The same thing happened on the web, as a few websites get most of the page views. That's why Facebook's market cap is $1.2T.
It was not meant to be a "how to" book. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, the 60s-80s were particularly bad when it came to the rise of communism in the US, but that died down in the 90s and 2000s with the advent of the Internet. The debate was once again ignited when early 2010s (and a little before that) the government started abusing anti-terrorist laws from the early 2000s to prosecute political speech that didn't align with that of the government, especially in the terms of social media to the point that now the FBI regularly marks people as domestic terrorists for just
Digital info is fragile ... (Score:3)
Data archaeology is a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Then there is the problem of not losing the old files to begin with. Maybe my former employer had a crappy provider but half of my requests for files from offline archival resulted in "files unrecoverable". I had much better luck going to the former project leader of a project from 10 years ago and asking if they had personally backed up everything to CD/DVD.
Euphamisms, like ... (Score:2)
... "that time 35 years ago this week when I paid my respects to Chairman Mao" (map [app.goo.gl]).
DNS Blocking (Score:5, Interesting)
ever it was thus (Score:3)
"We have always been at war with Eastasia." -- George Orwell, 1984
Hmmm... (Score:2)
Re: Hmmm... (Score:2)
Yeah, and those companies decided to not serve China, not the other way around.
Although, Facebook were supporting terrorism, so they were shut down.
Re: Hmmm... (Score:2)
Last time I checked, Alphabet did not block China, China is the one that blocked Alphabet services. Care to show any sources where Alphabet actively blocked China mainland users from accessing YouTube or Gmail for instance?
Chinanet (Score:2)
>"Chinese people know their country's internet is different"
That's because it isn't the internet, it is an intranet. Or perhaps "Chinanet".
Re: Chinanet (Score:2)
I don't think you understand what "Internet" means. It isn't short for "international - net", it's literally interconnected networks.
The Chinese exercise sovereignty over their network, and that is right and proper. All those services mentioned could provide services to China if they wanted (except Facebook, maybe) but they decide not to. It's their decision.
Other countries don't physically enforce sovereignty, and rely on the courts instead. I think we can agree that relying on a western biased legal syste
When their posts and accounts are censored, (Score:1)
The Chinese Internet is not shrinking (Score:3)
It's just the Web that is shrinking. They simply don't use it (much). It's all native apps and wechat/miniapps. There are no PWAs or any other regular web apps to speak of. If you want to buy anything, you often need a company's native app.
The Web and Web technologies have never really caught on in China, since they were largely junk back when flash was all over them. I mean, it is way better than then, but developers just concentrated on native apps and wechat miniprograms.
Blocking is in both directions. (Score:2)
If you've tried to use western Web sites from China, you'll likely have hit the problem where western sites actually block access from China.
Also, using services that don't serve China at all, like Google or Cloudflare, means you'll keep hitting the "confirm your human" challenges....over and over and over. This is particularly true when accessing via VPN.
I don't think there's such a problem when using roaming cell data, which isn't subject to the GFW at all in China, unless using a VPN, of course.
So, it se
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If you've tried to use western Web sites from China, you'll likely have hit the problem where western sites actually block access from China.
Also, using services that don't serve China at all, like Google or Cloudflare, means you'll keep hitting the "confirm your human" challenges....over and over and over. This is particularly true when accessing via VPN.
Thankfully, websites served by Cloudflare are almost always worthless. Same for G**gle.
They do it to us too. (Score:2)
Not shocking (Score:2)
The thing is, the Western internet is also disappearing in chunks [slashdot.org]. See the discussion there about why.
It's okay (Score:2)
There were 3.9 million websites in China in 2023, down more than a third from 5.3 million in 2017
While ccp.gov.cn exists, I'm not worried.
China has a solution (Score:2)
They'll soon be snail-mailing CDs containing the software for their New And Improved service, Asia On-Line. AOL for short.