China scours social media, erases thousands of accounts | Hacker News Reader

China scours social media, erases thousands of accounts

uk.reuters.com

98 pointsdustinmoris75 comments

So, what would be an effective way of making censorship impossible?

I imagine a system where you publish news using your device (a mobile phone), and encrypted in a way so that only a small group of other devices, which you have explicitly trusted in an earlier step, can decrypt it, allowing only them to trace that the news came from you.

Then those trusted devices will decrypt and re-encrypt the news in such that they can forward it with only their trusted devices. When a device receives news from another, then it won't know whether the sender published that news, or is merely forwarding it.

Because all communication between devices is encrypted, a device can not be confirmed to be using this system, except by a device who he trusts.

When a device is compromised, he will only be able to see if another device is part of the system, if that device has trusted him. Also the compromised device will be able to read news shared to him, but he won't be able to see what device that news originates from.

To make sure that readers can filter news based on what publishers they like, there is the concept of a publisher.

Apart from news, devices can also share publishers. An publisher is a name plus public key. The creator of the publisher has the private key with which he can encrypt news (even before it encrypted for sharing), allowing readers of that news, who have the publisher's public key, to verify that the news came from that publisher. If a publisher is shared with a device while the device already knows a publisher with the same public key, then the device must chose which publisher to keep and which to delete.

Keep in mind that a sufficiently motivated and powerful state (China comes to mind) could block any messages that appear to be encrypted.

In such a case, bad state actors would not be able to decipher the message, but they could determine that you attempted to send an unlawful message.

US had stringent regulations on high levels of cryptography until recently, so the U.S. isn't immune to this train of thought either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

Indeed. Or they would just pass by the app developer to have a tea and 'request' a backdoor.

All these armchair technical solutions are nice to conjure up, but at the end of the day it's not the technical aspect which is the challenge.

xkcd comic comes to mind: https://xkcd.com/538/

It's true that technical solutions are not a solution to tyranny. I still think it's good that these solutions might give a slight advantage to people who could make a difference.

So, what would be an effective way of making censorship impossible?

Tangentially, should it be impossible? We can all imagine scenarios where we might think that actually some information should be withheld or erased.

This is an interesting question; almost everyone agrees that real child pornography should be censored, but there is only varying agreement (among liberals) on the matter of state secrets, intellectual property, assault, calls to violence...

Interesting watching the votes go up and down. There are those who strongly disagree; an axiom upon which to burn the whole world and all the people in it, one might say.

I believe you are forgetting something important: humans. You are focusing in technology without people.

Technology without people does not work. Specially in China: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/security.png Most devices in China cheap enough are compromised as they are manufactured by the Government, the channel is compromised. The apps are compromised, social media is compromised.

You can trust no body but your family, as simple as that, not even your family as the Government can blackmail them.

There is already a stronger version of this where you don't need to trust any nodes: https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en

China attempts to detect and block such TOR connections. It's an arms race of detection heuristics vs traffic obfuscation.

This is how China would attack such a system:

Declare use and possession of it illegal. Randomly search for it among people who they think might have it. Once they find people using it, they punish them very harshly, and widely publicize the consequences of using such a system. Then people will stop using it, because CPC is more than willing to ratchet up the penalties and enforcement until that happens. Up to summary death penalty and massive dragnets where military descends on an area to search every device they find. (The fact that everyone knows they would go that far means they'd never have to.)

There are no technical solutions to tyranny. You can think of such a system working because you live in a country where there is likely a constitution that prevents governments from banning apps they don't like without any actual real justification, and where there are laws that prevent anything you have from being seized for inspection just because the people doing the inspection feel like it.

There is plenty of dissent of all kinds in China. But the locals would never do something so brazen as to start using an app specifically designed to make their communication uncensorable. Because that would be a direct challenge to the state, and the state has a very well documented, extremely blood-soaked history of winning direct challenges through applying brute force.

Instead, the dissent uses the officially approved channels, and stays near the officially approved limits.

Such a system could also be attacked in a democracy.

Just look at how the US government handled the Liberty Dollar.

It would be even easier now with National Security Letters and Secret Courts. Heck, look what happened to Lavabit.

True. My point was that in a democracy, it would be attacked in a different way, and the post I was replying to was thinking about defending from the kind of attacks that would be done in a democracy. China has other tools.

Right now I think GitHub is the best way to share news that the Chinese government doesn't like, because it's the only Western platform that they rely on and are afraid to ban.. that being said, I doubt a Microsoft-owned GitHub will protect the users the same way GitHub did before the acquisition.

too late, github is already banned in China

No it's not. Just asked my friends in China and tested with https://www.comparitech.com/privacy-security-tools/blockedin... (try with github.com and reddit.com). The Chinese are heavily invested in GitHub, so if/when they do ban it then you can be sure it won't go unnoticed.

GitHub has been banned in the past and yes it didn't go unnoticed ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5090700 ), but that's not much consolation when you suddenly can't access it. Currently they mostly don't block it ( https://en.greatfire.org/https/github.com ), but if GitHub ever became popular among ordinary citizens (as opposed to programmers) downloading e.g. censorship circumvention tools from GitHub, they'd probably find a way to mirror most git repos, except those they want to block.

Indeed, and they've resorted to DDoSing GitHub precisely because it's so difficult (in terms of value lost) for them to block it (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub).

Sure, they could setup a selfhosted GitLab and mirror repos, but doing so would severely hurt them.

Kids these days forgot how Google or Gmail was banned.

Yeah it's very difficult to "block Google" and they are "afraid are afraid to ban" Gmail.

Why makes you think that a gov use tanks against its own people have anything to fear?

Obviously there is a limit to what GitHub would be able to get away with before getting banned..

My point is that GitHub currently provide so much value to Chinese research and tech that banning it would be extremely costly for them. Would they ban CNN for writing a negative article that not a single Chinese citizen had seen? No doubt. Would they ban GitHub for hosting a repo sharing the truth about the Tiananmem Massacre, the concentration camps, etc? No, at least not until this repo gained a lot of traction in China, and the question then is how many people would they allow to see the content before finally pulling the trigger? I'm imagining a lot.. And I also suspect that they would respond by attacking GitHub/Microsoft and even open up for GitHub again when they felt the storm had been weathered. FYI, all of these assumptions are based on their past actions with regard to GitHub and other websites/companies.. if you read up on it then you would probably reach the same conclusion.

Hey, Will this tarnish my social credit score ?

It bears mentioning that services like Radio Free Asia have been broadcasting into China via shortwave and have been an uncensored source of news for decades. Tuning into a shortwave broadcast is more anonymous than the Internet will ever be and easily accomplished with a cheap common, legal device... a radio. The Chinese government has gone to great lengths to jam these broadcasts, I'm not sure how successful those efforts are in 2018. I suspect more funding for these organizations can only help however.

(Bonus fact: Radio Free Asia contributed most of the initial funding for the development of the Signal protocol!)

> Tuning into a shortwave broadcast is more anonymous than the Internet will ever be and easily accomplished with a cheap common, legal device... a radio.

My sense is that analog methods are the best response to authoritarian regimes; and the best way to prepare for the advent of one is to familiarize yourself with analog spy trade-craft (and analog response to digital spying, like disguise).

Speaking of which, does anyone have any non-fiction book recommendations about analog spycraft and responses to authoritarianism? Things like how to do dead drops, samizdat, clandestine distribution of literature and the like?

I'd like to hear more about this, too. I would probably start looking for non-fiction about the Soviet Union and East Germany. My intuition is that the human factor is more important than the spycraft. In other words, how do you know who agrees with you politically? How do you know if you can trust them? They could be an informant for the police.

There's a scene from The Man In The High Castle season 1 where some of the Japanese are trying to figure out if the antique salesman shares their political beliefs. To give an opening, they ask questions sort of in the subject area, but plausibly deniable. He fails the test, but even if he passes, he can't just come straight out. It would be based on subtleties of words, facial expressions, attitude, maybe a joke in response. Even then, he's better off if there's not a Nest or an Alexa recording the whole thing.

Related, I heard about a man who was handing out political brochures on a street in the Soviet Union. Before too long, the police came and took him into custody. To their surprise, the brochures were blank inside. When they asked the man what was going on, he said, "everyone already knows!". But they can't talk about it.

Uncensored but not unbiased. Until 2013, Radio Free Asia and other Voice of America related broadcasts were banned in the US since it was considered propaganda.

> Uncensored but not unbiased. Until 2013, Radio Free Asia and other Voice of America related broadcasts were banned in the US since it was considered propaganda.

That's just wrong. For one, VOA/RFA/etc. aren't "banned" and it's hard to believe how they could be without active jamming. They're were just forbidden to direct their broadcasts at American audiences. The concern was that the government should not be in the business of competing with existing American media organizations. If there was any concern about the content of the broadcasts, it appears to have stemmed from the idea that the State Department, which used to run it, had too many communists in it.

They can turn off the Internet. They've done it before in Xinjiang. Just, poof, no more internet or mobile data connections! The only thing that worked were roaming sims from HK, but even those were targetted and blocked after some time.

USA is doing this too, but it gets reported on entirely differently. Facebook & Twitter are banning domestic American citizen accounts for simply acting like "Russians", whatever that means. They aren't claimed to be hate accounts either, it's just raw censorship. They won't provide example accounts so we can research what they're banning specifically.

I'm not sure why everyone thinks this is OK, but coddles their cozy propaganda blankets when China is doing it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/technology/fake-news-onli...

You glossed over the meaningful difference. In China it is the government, in the US it is private companies which enjoy freedoms to associate with whomever they want. I happen to disagree with all these banned accounts, but I still believe in freedom to be an asshole (posting as one, or running a company as one).

This is false in the practical sense of having board member commitments plus court cases interacting with the big corporations. At that point the will between corporation and government may be in tension, but they should not considered separable that we can say either are actually "free" to act how they want.

Twitter and FB are private businesses, China is a state. The US state is not deleting nor forcing or requesting deletion of accounts.

Russian propaganda bots are that, propaganda bots. Hate speech is a different issue.

In the USA we let capitalism do our dirty deeds so that gov't doesn't have to :-)

Exactly. These are enormous private governments at this point and should be treated like government.

They partnered with the Atlantic Council which is essentially a board the most evil capitalistic & imperialistic motherfuckers from past US government to decide what to censor. It's essentially state censorship and it's worrying to me.

I'm not sure how to fix such without getting the gov't involved, except maybe splitting Big Media (BM) per anti-trust laws. Either you regulate BM by policing their speech filtering or you regulate them by splitting them. And splitting BM won't guarantee their smaller versions won't do the same thing.

>Russian propaganda bots are that, propaganda bots.

What is Russian propaganda though?

A mishmash of whatever currently serves the Kremlin's interests.

"When Facebook took down 559 Pages in October, the reasons for why each Page was removed were not made clear. [...]

After looking into the historical Page data I had collected back in September a second time at the end of October — nearly a decade’s worth of analytics for several of these Pages (shown below), I’d argue that for the some of the most prolific of the removed Pages, “censorship,” or the fact they might have posted inaccurate and/or misleading news articles and links at some point in the past were not the reason for their abrupt removal in October.

The likely reason why several of the largest of these mostly conservative and politically fringe news Pages were taken down is because they appear to have been gaming the platform’s metrics for years. The pages I show in the following section had put up Facebook interaction numbers in the billions. Similarly, many of the videos consistently showed engagement in the tens of millions of views."

https://medium.com/@d1gi/the-2018-facebook-midterms-part-iii...

Western liberalism, by tradition, is a lot stricter on governments than on corporations.

At some level this makes perfect sense to me. I can have a website where I let you publish but not Emily.

OTOH, in 2018 a handful of corporations control most of social media. Banned from Twitter and FB is "silenced" to a meaningful extent. Also, these are mostly open platforms where most people get to publish if they want. This makes their "content policies" censor-esque in ways that bother liberals on instinctive freedom-of-speech grounds.

I agree, and I think that this is an issue we need to solve. FB is the most important media platform in history. Civil wars are being started on FB. Elections are won on FB.

I think it's a problem that needs a solution, or freedom of speech loses meaning.

But... it's not surprising that liberals are freaking out about a "government acting like a corporation." The principal is basically "government cannot just act like a corporation."

I can't believe how abstract and myopic people can be! The end goal of Chia or Rus*ia is to implement their policies on the world. If you aren't able to, or can't, answer clearly who you want to live under: psuedo-communism, or Western liberal democracy, and if this indecision and miscomprehension of what is at stake, is representative of many other people then, we are all in trouble!

Facebook, Twitter and others are partnering with organizations like the Atlantic Council to brazenly censor content [1] with little to no pushback. There is no basis to affect outrage about some far off country.

Thousands of accounts have been removed with no evidence, due process or transparency. Anything can be labelled as 'fake news', bots, propaganda etc and censored.

These new 'ministry of truth' structures are being used to delegitimize dissent and create an environment of conformity and suspicion where dissent and anything that challenges the status quo is tarred and banned.

It sometimes feels people are more interested in demonizing China and others and holding them to standards they do not hold democratic governments to.

[1] https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/09/facebook-allows-gove...

> The term “self-media” is mostly used on Chinese social media to describe independent news accounts that produce original content but are not officially registered with the authorities.

Another way to make censorship impossible: Ask all governmental, educational and technological websites to provide VPN services or links to other VPN services. If China wants to implement censorship, it has to ban all these websites that are essential for its economic development.

> Another way to make censorship impossible: Ask all governmental, educational and technological websites to provide VPN services or links to other VPN services. If China wants to implement censorship, it has to ban all these websites that are essential for its economic development.

Censorship is always possible. You can make it more expensive, but the censoring regime could just decide to bear the cost.

The PRC government may decide that China has developed enough that they no longer need to provide any access to the worldwide internet to their general population. They could switch the Great Firewall to default-deny mode, and only whitelist the minimum number of services they need to keep their economy running. I think that list is much smaller than a lot of people would assume, given the domestic coercive power of the Chinese state and willingness of foreign businesses to bend to its rules.

Chinese providers' external connections are already shit, firewall or not. Foreign language knowledge is not important for most of the population, and thus the Chinese internet simply gets more and more isolated.

Reuters shortened version:

> The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said in a statement that the campaign, launched on Oct. 20, had erased the accounts for violations that included “spreading politically harmful information, maliciously falsifying (Chinese Communist) party history, slandering heroes and defaming the nation’s image.”

Full paragraph [1] translated from Google Translate:

> According to the investigation, most of these dispositioned self-media accounts are on the WeChat Weibo platform, and some of them are also installed on today's headlines, Baidu, Sohu, Phoenix, UC and other platforms. Some spread politically harmful information, maliciously tampering with the history of the party history, smashing heroes, and discrediting the image of the state; some making rumors, spreading false information, acting as a "heading party" to profit, to attract attention, and to disrupt normal social order. Some arbitrarily spread vulgar pornography, violate public order and good customs, challenge the moral bottom line, and damage the healthy growth of the majority of young people; some use the hands of a large number of self-media account malicious marketing, engage in "black public relations", extortion, infringement of normal business or individual legality Equity, challenge the legal bottom line; some arbitrarily plagiarize infringement, smear the powder, build false traffic, and disrupt the normal order of communication. These self-media chaos seriously violated the dignity of laws and regulations, harmed the interests of the broad masses of the people, undermined the ecology of good network public opinion, and the society reflected strongly.

[1] Source in Chinese: http://www.cac.gov.cn/2018-11/12/c_1123702179.htm

In the West meanwhile, most internet firms have permitted the Southern Poverty Law Center, a private, partisan organization to define "hate" online, and to help purge it.

Be careful, you could end up raising the ire of a lawyer at the SPLC, like the British (Muslim) academic who was researching radicalization of youth in his own culture [0]

Oddly enough in most of the US now, allowing private organizations to squelch legit free expression is considered a progressive victory.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/maajid-...

You have to admit that open-ended free speech that allows one to say, "Your culture/people are inferior lazy violent criminals" is disturbing. Such is rarely constructive and just stokes sectarian divides. The worse wars often start that way, and Europe had the living daylights bombed out of them because of such. I can understand why they'd ban it. It's pretty close to yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre. A slow fire is still a fire.

I will agree it may not be enforced evenly by the big social media companies. If one rants about "gun-crazy ignorant rednecks", that should be treated just as ethnically offensive as the usual culprits. The left can be hypocrites that way.

However, equal enforcement would require banning the Orange Guy.

Listen to yourself: "We have to censor all possible communication methods and imprison people for words because jokes about Montenegrins being lazy are going to cause World War 3". "Calling a gun-crazy redneck a gun-crazy redneck is hate speech and subject to a fine of no greater than $5000 or no greater than 30 days in jail".

You don't have to jail people immediately. Give them a stern warning. If they do it again, THEN jail them.

Re: "[Silly that] jokes about Montenegrins being lazy are going to cause World War 3" -- A line has to be drawn somewhere. If the context is jokes, maybe let it go. But if it's part of a political rant that certain people should be discriminated against or removed, then a line is crossed.

Maybe if you had the daylights bombed out of your community like in WW2, you'd have a different perspective. Fully free speech is nice, but so is being alive. Dead people have no speech.

Please tell us how your experience of being bombed in WW2 shape your posts on HN!

If people valued safety over freedom, the war would not have been fought at all...the Allies would have simply signed over Hitler's gains to him in exchange for a cessation of hostilities. Oops they tried that at first. Didn't work.

I think we can safely conclude that you do not speak on behalf of WW2 survivors

I'm just trying to put myself in their shoes. Your other statement appears to be "if they had strategically been better, the war wouldn't happen." That perhaps may be true, but moot as far as I can tell. Humans mess "strategery" up because they are humans. An argument based on humans being perfect is an imperfect argument.

Fire. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_t...

Interestingly, I think the majority of citizens would disagree with the ruling. (And it was partly overturned a few decades later.)

Furthermore, the ability to state facts and opinions is important. If someone finds a culture oppressive he/she ought to be able to say it so.

Re: "If someone finds a culture oppressive he/she ought to be able to say it so."

One can word it based on the behaviors alone: "I don't like it when people do X and Y" versus "I don't like it when Mormons do X and Y" versus "Mormons are bad because they do X and Y". Why single out Mormons when others may do the same? The first can communicate pretty much the same as #2 and #3 without potentially offending groups. I don't think the first two should be banned, but #3 is stretching it. If I ran a discussion forum, I'd consider banning #3, perhaps first with a warning and a how-to on rewording.

If somebody believed "Hollywood is possessed by Satan", saying so wouldn't do any good. It's not objective and doesn't carry useable information. If you instead focus on specific behaviors, such as having too much violence & sex in movies, then a fruitful discussion can form without demonizing specific groups. If Mother Theresa produces movies with sex & violence, she should be held to the same criticism and standards, which should be based on observable actions/results.

Agreed.

Anyone criticizing should first establish the observable things (violence, oppression, whatever bias or other behavior) and then state the argument for how that is widespread in a culture, region, country, group.

To address your examples, #1 is okay as it doesn't make any associations with a culture (at least if we assume X and Y are void of such), #2 is for me the most problematic, as #3 is directly claims that a culture/group/region has a problem, because X and/or Y, whereas #2 is just singling out a culture for no apparent reason.

It's comming. The left in the west is demanding laws to ban anonymous social media posting, to stop online abuse.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/angela-rayner...

The problem of individual news media accounts in China is that they are a major source of fake news, disinformation, and often uses exaggerated titles or suggestive images. I’ve seen too many of those articles floating around social networks.

When a western media reports this, of course it is yet another way that Chinese government “suppresses information”. But the reality is, the effort of fighting these content just what Facebook is doing right now.

It is so ridiculous to claim individual news media accounts in China as "a major source of fake news, disinformation", when in fact the government official news media is shamelessly spreading fake news every single day on TV and newspaper, and they have the total control over how you report major events.

The government controls what can be reported, how it shall and shall not be reported. You blame individual news media accounts?

For example, the government is sending massive amount of people (village by village) to reeducation camps in Xinjiang province. Do you think the official news media will report any of this? Do you think any formal report from serious journalists will be allowed to appear on news media? Of course not! So yes, there are all kinds of rumors about Xinjiang in individual news media accounts. Who should we put the blame on?

If you ever actually read the articles published from these media accounts, you'll easily see how "Not ridiculous" the claim is. (Of course there're plenty good ones, I'm not blaming all news media accounts, but there're way too many harmful ones)

The problem of these media in China is not exactly the same as the those on Facebook, but it's way more common and cause lots of harm - e.g. a large portion of these articles are influencing people to buy / not buy certain product in a very problematic way.

There is no reason these news media accounts should not be regulated. e.g. You should not publish fake news intentionally misleading the public. (Otherwise why not just let Russians publish whatever ads they want to influence American election whichever way they want?) In western news reports, this is of course "controlling what can be reported and what cannot", and they won't tell you the full story. I just wanted to point out, a large part of this is actually fighting a real problem for the good.

> If you ever actually read the articles published from these media accounts, you'll easily see how "Not ridiculous" the claim is.

Rather than denying they exist, they said they are hardly "major" in contrast to what the the CCP is doing, which your reply completely ignores.

> "they" said they are hardly "major"?

Why would I care what "they" say if I have first hand knowledge about whether it's major or not?

> For example, the government is sending massive amount of people (village by village) to reeducation camps in Xinjiang province. Do you think the official news media will report any of this?

The government actually publicly addressed that a while ago and I've seen it in news. It's very different from what the western media claims of course, and it's a complicated issue like the fake news.

Also, it's mostly western media that cares the most about these topics, not the "individual self media".

> Why would I care what "they" say if I have first hand knowledge about whether it's major or not?

"Major" and "major in contrast" are two very different things.

Why would I care about your assessment of a situation when I see how you play fast and loose here?

> The government actually publicly addressed that a while ago and I've seen it in news. It's very different from what the western media claims of course, and it's a complicated issue like the fake news.

It's too complicated to explain, so I take your word for it?

> Also, it's mostly western media that cares the most about these topics, not the "individual self media".

Any intelligent human with a backbone cares about people murdered en masse, over decades, or put into concentration camps that grow like mushroom in mere months, including people you cannot tie the shoelaces of. You don't measure the importance of this by how many people care about it (how convenient for you to claim by the way, since anyone who disagrees, might have to fear for their life), you find out the importance of a person by their stance on this, among other things.

edit: I didn't mean to have a go at you. I'm kinda sorry for that, but I also have to weigh between not offending you, and not spitting on the people who get murdered, and which you downplay. Can't make everyone happy, and that's not really my fault either.

I'll just note that so far you aren't really speaking for yourself, but refer to Chinese media, without even stating their explanation, and bring up "Western media". Our media don't speak for us just like your media can't speak for you. Yes, Western media also sweeps Western atrocities under the rug (though not uniformly), and that's very deplorable. That just means we're not really better, maybe even worse when it comes to wars of aggression -- but that makes none of it okay, it's not a contest.

Well, thank you for the detailed explanations, and I think I owe you some more explanation.

I'm not sure how different are "Major" and "major in contrast". Sorry about my English, it's not my first language. It is my opinion that fake news and such are an important problem and it's prevailing in Chinese social media. I do believe freedom in press is great but freedom with no regulation would be very dangerous. I don't remember how many times I need to tell my parents "don't listen to that, that's completely fake" "seaweeds on the market are not made of plastic bags", "it's fine to eat persimmon",...

> It's too complicated to explain, so I take your word for it? It's just something I don't feel like arguing, because why would you trust me instead of those news reports you've been reading all the time.

> Any intelligent human with a backbone cares about people murdered en masse, over decades...

I'd feel terrible about those people, of course, but ONLY IF THOSE CLAIMS ARE TRUE. I don't really buy their claims because the reporters themselves are very unlikely to have investigated the situations in person, and the stories are most likely coming from sources that either are anti-Chinese government themselves or seeking personal gains (like getting refugee visa in US). And the stories don't really make sense.

The official claim from Chinese government is: those are re-education centers trying to train muslim extremists so that they have enough skills to get a job and live a normal life instead of becoming terrorists.

While I won't simply just believe the Chinese government's claim as it is, but it is much more plausible and much more likely to be truth adjacent. If you know more about China, you'll know there are actually quite many muslims living in peace in China, and you can easily find muslim restaurants in most cities. Why would Chinese government even care about put muslims in Xinjiang into concentration camps? What would they gain from that? The background is that there had been more terrorist activities in the past few years in that region, and it's becoming more unsafe, especially for Han ethnic group to live there. That's what the government is most worried about. Re-educations are just a way of making extremists less extreme.

> I'll just note that so far you aren't really speaking for yourself, but refer to Chinese media, without even stating their explanation, and bring up "Western media"

I do bring up "Western media" a lot because I am so frustrated with them bull-shitting about China and that they successfully influenced people's opinions with tons of single sided stories and disinformation. I had friends asking me about whether I have need to worry about social credit score, and what can I say? "It's at most a proposal yet and it's far from being established" "How can there be so many creepy rules before it's established?" "You can't just believe whatever NPR says because you think it's neutral. Their sources could lie"

Your English is very, very good. And thank you for not being offended by me snapping at you.

> It is my opinion that fake news and such are an important problem and it's prevailing in Chinese social media. I do believe freedom in press is great but freedom with no regulation would be very dangerous.

I agree with that, but of course, it then depends on what the regulations are.

> I'd feel terrible about those people, of course, but ONLY IF THOSE CLAIMS ARE TRUE.

Fair enough. Even if we may disagree about what is or isn't happening, I'd rather we agree on that and not the rest, than the other way around.

> Why would Chinese government even care about put muslims in Xinjiang into concentration camps? What would they gain from that?

To practice things that can be extended to the wider population maybe?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/china-s-xinjiang-p...

What would anyone gain from making all that up?

> Re-educations are just a way of making extremists less extreme.

How come people just disappear and nobody knows what happens to them?

Okay, so you don't think that's what's happening, but can you say how many people have been re-educated? How long does it take on average, how many are currently detained, how many have been released? Have there been any injuries or deaths? Are these questions even raised, much less answered? You don't owe me an answer to any of that, but that's why I think what I think.

> I do bring up "Western media" a lot because I am so frustrated with them bull-shitting about China and that they successfully influenced people's opinions with tons of single sided stories and disinformation.

I don't like what many major media are doing in general, so I don't really disagree. But saying it's all biased and therefore made up, could also be used against anything the Chinese or any other government says.

It turned into an interesting discussion actually, thank you!

> To practice things that can be extended to the wider population maybe?

I didn't read the full article you referenced, but from what I know it is true that surveillance has tighten up in Xinjiang. Why do you think that happened? Why does Chinese government needs to "control" Uighurs, and not other minorities that are living peacefully in other regions of China.

I don't know what exactly is happening out there, but naturally you'd need more security when the there's danger to public safety. I wouldn't say there's no wrong-doing of the government, but bottom line is, I don't really doubt the primary goal is just anti-terrorism and make that region safe.

> How come people just disappear and nobody knows what happens to them?

Well I don't know how could people just disappear in Xinjiang.

But it reminds me that, recently a friend of mine asked me "How could a person just disappear? How scary is that" after she read this article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/world/asia/china-fan-bing...

Apparently it sounds like the Chinese government "made" her disappear. Well, I only found it funny and I told her "It's fine, she just disappeared from media. Her agent probably knows her whereabout but won't tell the media as she's being investigated and there's no official result." Fan Bingbing reappeared just a few days later when the investigation ended, as most of us expected, and she made an official announcement about her tax evasion. Throughout the entire time I didn't feel anything scary at all, but that's not the impression if you only read the NYTimes report.

> But saying it's all biased and therefore made up

I wouldn't say they all made up facts, but simply selecting the truth to report and finding a way to report it that supports their existing belief can also make a huge impact on people's perception.

I also don't believe most professional news reporters would just make up facts. (The "Self-individual media" in China is way too different, plenty of them do make up facts;) So, a much more likely scenario in my mind, is that they interviewed unreliable sources. To depict that in a more extreme but easy to understand way, just imaging if reports interviewed a terrorist in middle east, and ask them about America. Plenty of people left China in the past century (very small in percentage but still a big number because of the large population base) because either they really hate Chinese government or they're trying to get refugee visa. They also have much closer relations with western media. But anyway, it's just my guess.

The way media works is you have the freedom to setup your own "media accounts" to refute things you don't agree with.

Shutting down them by a government agency? Well things can go really well with this one.

I think that when you suppress freedom systematically, stuff find other ways to come out, and it comes out ugly. (Like when you suppress healthy sexuality).

That explains the weird stuff floating around Vietnam social media (which is a smaller scale version).

> when in fact the government official news media is shamelessly spreading fake news every single day on TV and newspaper

I lived in China and outside China both over 10 years, and I have probably read more newspapers and watched more TV in China than you. I can safely say that your statement is false.

> there are all kinds of rumors about Xinjiang in individual news media accounts

There are no rumors about Xinjiang in individual news media accounts, within China, afaik. Happy to correct my understanding if you find such evidence.

> Who should we put the blame on?

If you talking about rumors about China outside China, I think Western media is to be blamed? Not sure.

Both sides of the world use the "fake news"/"disinformation" as a political weapon.

In the USA is made through the media, 501Cs, law and social media companies... in China they use the law to a greater extent.

Nothing is new, everything is repeated.

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