Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat" | Hacker News Reader

Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"

whatsonweibo.com

192 pointscow9175 comments

> YOU are of opinion it would be proper to establish a company of firemen in Nicomedia, [similar] to what has been practised in several other cities. But it is to be remembered that societies of this sort have greatly disturbed the peace of the province in general, and of those cities in particular. Whatever name we give them, and for whatever purposes them may be founded, they will not fail to form themselves into factions, assemblies, however short their meetings may be. It will therefore be safer to provide such machines as are of service in extinguishing fires, enjoining the owners of houses to assist in preventing the mischief from spreading, and, if it should be necessary, to call in the aid of the populace.

( Plin. Ep. 10.34; https://www.bartleby.com/9/4/2043.html , or in the original at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:19... )

That's the Roman Emperor Trajan denying the administrator of the province of Bithynia permission to establish a fire department. If you let men get together, for any purpose, they'll start talking about politics. It's better to let things burn.

What happens if you get women together?

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I have posted and do frequently see "unsubstantive" comments, but somehow the mere connotation of gender is a flag.

From a historical perspective, such a question in even its simplest form is entirely valid given the nature of gender roles in societies. Are/were conspiring women's groups more or less feared than men's? I don't know myself, and my comment was sincere in that regard.

Both you and pmontra above are completely misreading thaumasiotes's comments in a knee-jerk reaction. They were simply paraphrasing the intent of the quote from Trajan... If you have an issue with it, bring it up with Trajan.

So we can discuss men but not women on this forum?

Could you please review the guidelines and stop posting comments that clearly break them? They include: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

So thaumasiotes was sarcastic here

> Women getting together is fine. Not once have groups of women ever been known to rebel against the government.

I agree with the sarcasm. Women are generally less problematic than men but they rebel when it matters. Another example, Rosa Parks.

Speaking for myself, no, that statement is entirely serious. Women are not now and never have been a direct threat to any government. They don't fight wars.

Would Trajan have known this? Of course.

Compare your descriptions of suffragettes' terrorist activities with the research on how effective terrorist campaigns are at even getting their favored policies implemented. (And then, of course, ask yourself whether Trajan could have been aware of a 20th-century women's movement.)

Women work. Withholding labor is a threat to the state. Women were a crucial part of the civil rights movement. Women are absolutely a threat to the state.

Please keep cheap gender rhetoric and grandiose pop-historical generalizations off this site.

It is my understanding that, in the classical world, conspiring women's groups were viewed with suspicion by men in general, but not viewed as a threat to the government.

The concept of a women's conspiracy was familiar. Lysistrata involves all the women of Athens conspiring to end the Peloponnesian war by calling a general sex strike.

Gender isn't a flag per se. The problem is that invoking it with a generic, informationless one-liner is almost always going to be flamebait. Not just gender—this is true of any divisive topic. If you add something interesting and thoughtful to the discussion, it's a different story. That's welcome. You just need to express it in a flame-retarding way, not the internet equivalent of a lit match.

All this is covered by the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We didn't come up with these rules in a bubble bath! They've all been hammered out by the brutal processes of the internet forum.

Is this a joke? Half the damn comments on this site are entirely unsubstantiated bullshit and you’re enforcing the rule on THIS comment which doesn’t even make a claim to be substantiated?

If you’re claiming it is without substance you’re simply erasing sex, which is OBVIOUSLY A SUBSTANTIVE CONCEPT.

Sure, and the GP was not a substantive comment. It was a generic, off-topic, flamebait tangent. Why flamebait? Because people can't discuss that topic without yelling at each other, and certainly not when the trigger is an information-free one-liner.

Speaking of yelling, can you please not use allcaps for emphasis on HN? This is in the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

By the way, "substantive" isn't the same as "substantiated". It just means containing information that would be of interest to a curious reader. For example, if I describe an anecdote from my experience, that can easily be substantive without there being any need to substantiate it (e.g. by proving that it happened).

If this is off topic, so are all topics of substance. “Flamebait” is just a term for “topic you’d rather not have on the forum”.

I don’t particularly care for the guidelines as they significantly harm the quality of conversation. You’re welcome to ban me.

Women getting together is fine. Not once have groups of women ever been known to rebel against the government.

Were you also attributing "It's better to let things burn" to me personally?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffragette

> A suffragette was a member of militant women's organisations in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections, known as women's suffrage.

> The suffragettes heckled politicians, tried to storm parliament, were attacked and sexually assaulted during battles with the police, chained themselves to railings, smashed windows, set fire to postboxes and empty buildings, set bombs in order to damage churches and property, and faced anger and ridicule in the media.

Men and women are human beings. We all fight for what we want.

I assume the commentor you were replying to was being sarcastic.

If you look at the history of many early US volunteer firefighter organizations, he wasn't exactly wrong. They often became gangs of a sort, taking advantage of people who they were "helping" and competition between groups often got violent. That's how Boss Tweed got his start in politics.

It's also how Marcus Licinius Crassus made his fortune.

"How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression"

https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-Censorship-China-...

The extremely strong freedom of speech laws we have in the US is definitely something we got right. Reading things like this make me really grateful about those protections.

except at the moment we're dealing with highly organized paid misinformation campaigns and widespread propaganda under the guise of free speech. This will not be popular on Hn but in my opinion holding users and platforms responsible for the messages they distribute to millions is the inevitable evolution and future of social media, society has demonstrated the inability to responsibly handle anonymous unchecked mass communication - anti vax is just one example and those consequences (Measles is back) are just the tip of the iceberg.

All mainstream media is also guilty of running misinformation campaigns and widespread propaganda all the time as well, so who exactly are we going to hold responsible here? To me it seems like a recipe for giving more power to the people who already have the most.

I’m not sure I agree. When they debated how our democracy should function, they were actually quite aware of the power of the mob. How easily swayed and passionate people can become. They built safeguards for it everywhere.

But at the end day they agreed that freedom of speech is too important even with all of its dangers.

I strongly disagree. There are many ways to combat misinformation that do not involve censorship. There is nothing to applaud about oppression driven government censorship.

Can you list those methods of combating misinformation?

Not trying to be confrontational, just curios to know as I don't know of many and haven't done the research.

Answering for GP:

1. Education (how to form solid arguments and how to view topics from multiple sides)

2. Plurifomity. By combining people from different social-economic groups. Basically an anti divide and conquer which state sponsored media have driven us towards.

3. Acceptance. Everyone picks their fruits of freedom of speech. Just because the fruits of one are the pains of others does not mean we should throw the baby away with the bath water.

4. New policy and law. The anti-vac movement indicates the necessity of new laws and policies. Perhaps vaccines should be mandatory. Perhaps we should let the anti-vaccers pay for the damages.

5. Work on the public perception of that which is embattled. In this case of anti-vac it is science as a whole.

In my opinion we should do loads and loads more of #2, but it seems everyone and everything is in its own filter bubble. We need much more social cohesion.

This is impossibly naive. Large social media companies are highly incentivised to derail any of these utopian efforts.

#6 discourage the use of those platforms. Disable your accounts; Meet face to face; use & promote alternatives (Mastadon, Signal, Scuttlebutt); collectivise and lobby against them.

All if these ‘utopian‘ concepts have been successfully implemented in the past by governments and social organizations. The only naive part of my narrative is if we expect the change to come from the social networks. We need to step outside of that sphere and influence via other channels such as work, sports, spiritual life, books and the public sphere.

I think the best example to consider is the tobacco industry. Smoking is by any measure a scourge on society. Untold numbers of people have suffered and died because of it. Healthcare systems haemorrhage money they don’t have treating conditions that basically don’t exist without smoking.

The tobacco industry pulled every trick in the book to maintain their own interests. Society spends even more money on public messaging, education etc etc to try and reduce smoking rates.

Do we want more of the same, but with social media this time? They do us harm. The rule is we do not let anyone make money by doing us harm.

Funny, I argued similarly 11 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19665221

We do ourselves harm because we do not understand the power of the interactions we are part of. Children should be protected. Adults should know better.

The "problem" with your #2 is that only one side wants that.

The other side fears losing their privilege/capital/power/reputation and cares not a whit for those they consider sub-human.

Putting some foxes into the henhouse won't go well for the hens when it's dinner time.

Well, obviously we can effect change outside of the social networks. We can invite people into dialogues. We can provide them with vision and narrative based on higher principles.

> The "problem" with your #2 is that only one side wants that.

If this were true, only one side would have wedge issues.

Do you honestly believe conservatives want an open, honest, inclusive dialogue in which both sides of all issues are considered with respect for every viewpoint?

Their "gotta get mine before anyone else gets theirs" attitudes and beliefs are absolutely antithetical to such a thing.

So I stand by my statement: Only one side is willing to have a productive conversation about any given issue.

If I may use a bit of reduction, isn't the logical conclusion of freedom of speech that truth simply doesn't matter?

If every idea is acceptable, and I cannot face consequences for anything I say, then what difference is there between the statements "Apples are fruit" and "Apples are the square root of 45"?

Certainly, that's not the level of free speech we're at, but all this clamouring for unrestricted free speech makes me almost as worried as the threat of censorship.

You can certainly face consequences, just the government cannot be responsible for imposing them. I'd much prefer that bad and dishonest ideas be dismissed and the speakers censured by their community rather than jackbooted thugs forcing silence at gunpoint.

It's obviously not a perfect way of going about things, but I think it definitely errs in the right direction.

It's just that on the scale of the internet, the breakdown tends to be: 3X of people come out in support of your ridiculous idea, X people actively disagree and 100% - 4X ignore it, where X is some small number.

To an outside observer, you must have a good idea, after all, you have so many more people in agreement than detractors!

Which basically makes it impossible for "the community" to hand you any consequences.

Still better than highly organized misinformation campaigns that you must agree with or go to jail, forced labour camps or death

Bear with my perhaps unusual opinion. If we want to preserve our freedom, every generation needs to have it threatened to realize its importance, and learn to fight to protect it. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants".

If the current generation needs to undergo a propaganda war, it will either fail or rise above like the generations before. And then we will be protected from that particular attack, like our national immunity has grown stronger from a particular type of sickness. If we try to avoid the problem we at best are just weakening ourselves for the next attack, at worst we give up our freedoms in the cause of maintaining them.

Fight it out, good ideas kill bad ideas. Live free or die.

If you read the referenced article in Chinese, you'll see the point of the regulation in China is cracking down illegal activities that often occurs in group chats, e.g. selling illegal stuff, organizing crime. I doubt US would take no actions against these activities.

>Besides obscene and illegal content, it is not allowed, as this article lists, to post “politically sensitive information”, “spread rumors,” “bring news about Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan that has not been reported by official news channels,” or to publish “military information.”

The scope of "illegal activities" is what's at fault here, not the means by which they are enforced.

The fact that we can even have this discussion is in itself proof that there's orders of magnitudes of difference in allowed speech.

I didn't see anywhere in the Chinese article that mentioned "politically sensitive information", "bring news about Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan that has not been reported by official news channels", publish “military information.” The sentence "spread rumors" is mentioned in combination with "scamming" and should be focusing on "scamming" part.

We all know what "spread rumors" stands for.

No you really don't

Maybe you are right, I am not Chinese, but here is one rumor that won't go away: http://time.com/5571372/tiananmen-massacre-june-4-1989-china...

From one of the articles[0](in a bit of a more readable format here[1]):

目前，微信群已经开始立法，规范管理。任何发言都要担负法律责任，尤其是群主，所以请群成员今后发微信一定要注意。

1、政治敏感话题不发

[...]

5、有关港澳台新闻在官方网站未发布前不发

It's there, black and white. I don't get what your bit here is (I find it hard to believe in the value of actually paying people to astroturf HN of all places on CN net policy), but the list is there.

[0]: http://jnews.xhby.net/waparticles/10/mpgxaeczAjZ1YnAf/1 [1]: https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1631969530712383182&wfr=spi...

The laws are useless when the spirit upholding them evaporates.

http://www.hoteliermiddleeast.com/33151-marriott-employee-fi...

> Jones told the WSJ he wasn’t aware of any instructions on dealing with China. He also said he didn’t fully understand what the issue was about.

> “This job was all I had,” Jones also said. “I’m at the age now where I don’t have many opportunities.”

This makes me think of this Reddit meme I saw in the Gaming section, the gist of it: if you mentioned some specific chinese massacre in a game with chinese players, they would all leave the game.

There is a large copy-paste block with English and Chinese spellings of “Tibet, Xinjiang Autonomous Region, Tiananmen Square Massacre 1989” that also frequently gets posted on sites like 4chan and YouTube to ward off Chinese commenters. I imagine it’s not very effective, however, since these sites are blocked on the Chinese Internet, so any Chinese users would by default be posting via an encrypted VPN.

That's… one of the more interesting things I've read today.

The parent referred to "Chinese commenters" (and "ward off" was bad enough), but your comment seems to imply that they're all "CCP astroturfers". That's against the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Obviously there are real issues to be discussed here, but to do so well means we have to get good at not doing things that kill real discussion, and denigrating large groups en masse is one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party Wu Mao Dang is common enough and well known enough that it has a wikipedia page(a very thoroughly edited and referenced one)...it IS real discussion.

That is extremely well known—so much so that people rush to repeat it on every relevant, and many an irrelevant, occasion. Please see my reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19821356.

The issue here was conflating all Chinese commenters with CCP astroturfers and representing them as vampires who need to be "warded off". It's great that you're concerned with discussion integrity on HN—so are we, very much—but please take care that garden-variety prejudice doesn't leach into this. That happens so easily as to be a bigger problem than the astroturfing people complain about, which they frequently imagine to be happening based on zero evidence. I've written about this a great deal if anyone wants more: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

I don’t know what the comment to which you’ve replied said originally, but it’s true that China pays thousands of people to astroturf comments on the Internet. This fact has been established by the international press and also by the Chinese government. Furthermore, people in China aren’t stupid, and many are aware of this phenomenon as it is quite prevalent on the domestic Chinese Internet (Weibo, WeChat, etc).

Are all positive comments about China made by the “wumao army?” Of course not. Are many such comments astroturfed (Edit for clarification: speaking of the broader Internet)? Absolutely. Would it be racist to point out the existence of the large and well-funded groups paid to make such comments? I don’t think so.

Obviously, this isn’t a cudgel to be used against any pro-Chinese government comment or argument. “Wumao” is often employed as a slur. But it is 100% a real phenomenon.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7783640.stm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Water_Army

https://youtu.be/yCnnPf2OnHo

Everyone knows that's a real phenomenon. The issue I was addressing was people's tendency, unfortunately very common, to conflate every Chinese commenter, indeed anyone advocating a Chinese perspective, with CCP astroturfers. That's a serious problem on HN. (I don't think it was colanderman's intention to do this and I'm sure that's why he edited his comment after I replied to it.)

The temptation is strong, when encountering views one dislikes, to regard the person expressing them as disingenuous and pushing some sinister agenda. This is why the site guidelines explicitly say "Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried, email us and we'll look at the data."

As geopolitics between China and the West heat up for reasons totally beyond this site, users here need to remember that HN is an international community where all are welcome. Being welcome, among other things, means not being slurred because of your national origin, language, race, and so on. It's nice that HN feels like a small and intimate place, but it's not a living room—when you post here, you're broadcasting to an audience of millions. Many come from very different backgrounds than you or I or any of us does, and they have just as much a right to be here as you and I and any of us does.

The image of "warding off Chinese commenters", which you invoked in your comment upthread, is dismaying and exactly what we don't want here. People need to listen to each other more, not less, when there is distance between them. I don't want to be part of any site that works against that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Perhaps my initial word choice evoked the wrong assumptions. Allow me me rephrase.

I’ve related a dismaying image because the reality is dismaying. One group of (mostly awful and hateful) Internet users “wards off” another by copy-pasting what are to them, for all intents and purposes, magical runes. Scribe them down and the others disappear, banished by some arcane and unseen force. The crazy thing is that these runes may actually work, because the targeted users live under a system of censorship and surveillance unprecedented in its scope, scale, and level of detail.

That’s nuts. It’s utterly fascinating. It’s (the block-text posting) not behavior to be emulated anywhere on HN. It is absolutely dismaying. And as a story, it’s also completely on-topic and within site guidelines.

For context, the comment I edited out was a joke on the "magical runes" aspect. But, thinking it in poor taste to use the Chinese people in general as the butt of the joke, I framed it specifically about astroturfers. In context (and, given that said "runes" don't recognize such a distinction), the joke did (unintentionally) read as an implication that all Chinese are astroturfers, as dang rightfully indicated; hence my redaction.

Yes, I agree.

For the curious, here is a Reddit post with the copy-paste text and more context:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/b3im9t/whats_...

动态网自由门天安門天安门法輪功李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏土伯特唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主言論思想反共反革命抗議運動騷亂暴亂騷擾擾亂抗暴平反維權示威游行李洪志法輪大法大法弟子強制斷種強制堕胎民族淨化人體實驗肅清胡耀邦趙紫陽魏京生王丹還政於民和平演變激流中國北京之春大紀元時報九評論共産黨獨裁專制壓制統一監視鎮壓迫害侵略掠奪破壞拷問屠殺活摘器官誘拐買賣人口遊進走私毒品賣淫春畫賭博六合彩天安門天安门法輪功李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门

For those wondering.

that's interesting. no Winnie the Pooh ?

It's at the end?

This kind of solves PUBG cheating problem, thank you! Will try next time.

I guess:

1.Most people who can not read Chinese believe "detained" or "arrested" is on the photo of the newspaper as a proof. Is it true? Ask your friend who can read Chinese what the head line says. If the author was honest, she should explicitly stated that "detained" or "arrested" is from other source but not from the image. She is manipulating readers perception while she can claim she didn't lie.

2.No body notice the date of the newspaper is missing. If I say this is quite old news , would anybody be supprised? Is the missing date accidental?

Here's my anecdonal experiance:

It the photo true? Yes.

Is CPP tighten the control of WeChat? Yes, Just as the photo shows. a while ago. There's no warning of arrest though.

Are there any WeChat admin arrested that public know? Yes, somebody selling pornagraphy content.

Are there any trouble with WeChat groups because of politics? Yes. I have been inside at least 2 groups with many members havning strong anti-government sentiments. The consequence is the groups were shut down because of many anti-CPP content. The admins openned another group , hand picked up all the old members into the new group because the "shut down" was that anybody in the group can only see his/her own words but not others. The admin can still access all the members information.

What do we behave in the new group? Still the same but use twiseted expression that anybody knows meaning while avoid automated censorship. No human really read messages to detect sensitive word but robot. Usually replace some words sounds the same but wrong characters.

What if you can not help expressing anger against government? Don't do it in group but in your "Moment" and use images with text content instead of text that robot can detect. Even most Chinese believe this can cause trouble from government but one of my friend did this all the time. Nobody from government pay attention to him.

I totally against censorship. But I also don't like media selling their own ideaology with disinformation. Tell truth please.

Talking about political opposition in a media controlled by the state is irresponsible. I would not do it France, making it in China is suicidal.

Do not take anecdotal tolerance for proof of government benevolence. WeChat is monitored, your discussions are archived. When one of the members of any of your group discussion commits a legal offense, or ends up in a terrorist watchlist, you will all be blacklisted.

"Modern" censorship (quotes because it was already like that during the STASI) focuses on public declarations. Officials weight the impact of the speech vs the (social) cost of censoring.

Say shit about the government in a place where a thousand people are listening, you will be shut down. Say shit about the government to 5 of your friends, the government simply archives this and notes this and puts you on a "dissident" list, for later purpose.

Later you will find out you have a visa refused for "security reasons" or a public funding cut "for budget reasons".

One of the discovery of the East-German propaganda machine is that the best way to shut down opponents is to make their life harder but without ever telling them this is a punishment for their opinion.

> No body notice the date of the newspaper is missing

The article itself mentioned a date, Oct 8, 2017, when the "new" regulation come into effect. So yes, this is old news.

Reading the article in Chinese, I do understand that the main focus of the new article is cracking down illegal activities like distributing pornography (which is illegal in China), gambling, scamming, etc, which are problems on the social networks that are quite important to solve.

But again, there's nothing surprising that western media interpret this in a completely different way. That's just one thing they all love to do.

> illegal activities like distributing pornography, gambling, scamming, etc, which are problems on the social networks that are quite important to solve

Distributing pornography happens all over, right on the street. And on the regular internet, outside of chat groups.

I would not say that distribution of pornography through private chat groups rises to the level of "important to solve" given the infinite other very easy ways to get it.

Well, different country, different laws

Different country? I'm talking about China. And you?

I grew up in a communist state and hearing the words "spread rumors" gives me the chills. We all know what it stands for. Here is a hint if you don't: http://bit.ly/2Y4V8Mi

Well I grew up in China, and I feel totally different

> Ask your friend who can read Chinese what the head line says. If the author was honest, she should explicitly stated that "detained" or "arrested" is from other source but not from the image.

Headline from the image in the article: "Whoever establishes a group is responsible [for it]" "Whoever manages [a group] is responsible [for it]" "New rules established for national internet messages, after this the responsibility of group masters will be big[ger]"

Headline from the image in an article prominently linked from this one: "[If] members break the law, the group master will be 追责ed [pursued and interrogated? punished? arrested?]"

Headline from the other Chinese article linked from this one: "Whoever establishes a group is responsible for it! Many group masters have been detained, everyone who has a group [should] read [this]"

> No body notice the date of the newspaper is missing. If I say this is quite old news , would anybody be surprised? Is the missing date accidental?

This looks like a fair complaint, actually. The pictures are clear that this was announced in 2017, with the new rules to take effect October 8th 2017. Coverage in April 2019 seems to have missed the boat a bit. On the other hand, according to this piece, the state has chosen to re-emphasize the message now. ("“Did you all think being a group host is free and easy? Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!”, official state newspaper Xinhua posted on Weibo on April 26.")

> it is not allowed, as this article lists, to post “politically sensitive information”, “spread rumors,” “bring news about Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan that has not been reported by official news channels,”

Well that's just Orwellian...

Those words are never in the Chinese report being referenced, and I have to call out this article being just a lie

Maybe they changed the link, but now it's definitely there:

1、政治敏感话题不发 don't post on politically sensitive topics

2、不信谣不传谣 don't believe rumors, don't spread rumors

3、所谓的内部资料不发 don't post so-called internal information

4、涉黄、涉毒、涉爆等不发 don't post content involving pornography, illegal drugs or explosives etc.

5、有关港澳台新闻在官方网站未发布前不发 don't post news about Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan before it has been reported by official websites

6、军事资料不发 don't post military information

7、有关涉及国家机密文件不发 don't post state secrets

8、来源不明的疑似伪造的黑警辱警的小视频不发 don't post suspected fake videos of unclear origin that smear the police (search 南应 on YouTube for a recent example of what's probably meant by this)

9、其他违反相关法律法规的信息不发 don't post other information that violates related laws or regulations

Censorship coming soon to a neighborhood near you. You don’t have to look too far to point fingers at censorship. Our Social Media overlords just banned “conspiracy theorists”. What if I like watching conspiracy theories for the heck of it because the MSM is nauseating merchant of “truth”.

My rule of thumb is that people who get banned for saying "out there" stuff are controlled opposition and people who get banned for saying common sense and obvious stuff are real opposition.

What's common sense and what's out there depends on the reader.

That's by design. By keeping it vague it becomes more broadly applicable.

Man am I glad I live in a country with strong freedom of speech protections.

There is something like this in Malaysia as well, under the previous government. The way that some people deal with this is make everybody admin.

It's basically another way to spread fear to encourage self censorship. If admins believe they are liable for anything non-kosher, then they'd actively censor it themselves to avoid potential wrath.

Throw in a few news articles of someone being arrested for a trivial group post, and it becomes an example of 杀一儆百 which translates as "to kill 1 as a warning to 100"

"... and it literally becomes an example of ..."

No, you would need to actually kill someone in order for that to literally be an example of "to kill 1 as a warning to 100".

Predictable consequence of the GDPR: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18863496

Sorry but, what does the GDPR have to do with this story about China? China doesn't care what laws Europe writes.

I didn't mean to imply they are subject to it. It's another example of something new assisting the self-censorship trend (as noted in the story the commentator I linked to gave).

If you run a group and allow criminal activity to continue on that group without moderating said activity, why wouldn’t you be held responsible?

This is why full end to end encryption is required.

How do you know someone in the group chat isn't a spy for the government?

How do you know the government does not already have the root cert anyway

I hope some day we have RISCV phones where you can swap processors and all software is auditable.

This isn't how E2E encryption works.

You don't know that a group is free of spies, but a group is less likely to have a spy than the current setup whereby pervasive, omnipresent surveillance is facilitated by WeChat, leading to people needlessly imprisoned and tortured for the thoughtcrime of others.

In that case you need to pay those spies, while at this moment you just run a database query.

You don’t need to pay neighbors to report one another. They’ll turn each other in over petty grievances, or the expectation of favored treatment by authorities. China’s social credit points seem like a potentially powerful incentive.

Examples from East Germany:

https://spiegel.de/international/germany/east-german-domesti...

WeChat groups are designed to be private (as opposed to being public, not necessarily to protect privacy). To join one you normally have to know either the admin or a member of the group. A QR code for public access is available but it's forced to expire in seven days. So for a regular sized group of a few dozen people, it's relatively easy to spot a stranger.

How do you know you can trust your friends?

See xkcd 538: https://xkcd.com/538/

There is a difference between "a random bureaucrat can read all my chats just by typing at the keyboard" and "a random bureaucrat must authorize and pay for someone to pay me a visit".

You don't encrypt everything to prevent the state actors from breaking it--if a state actor wants you bad enough they'll just fabricate what they need and arrest you. You encrypt everything to prevent random idiots (including those working for state actors) from getting at your stuff cheaply.

If it's expensive enough, there will always be lower hanging fruit to go after. I don't need to out run the hungry tiger; I simply need to out run somebody else being chased by the tiger.

I think that’s naive. China can just arrest you for using encryption.

Same result.

(This isn’t limited to China - the US could have similar results with slightly differing laws)

Enter: steganography. Useful under totalitarian regimes, I would think.

Unlike the burden required to hide gigs required for large file transactions, hiding mere hundreds of bytes for textual conversations might be feasible. Maybe. Distribution of participating client software might be the problem.

When they discover that you have stenographic tools on your computer, how will they know when to stop torturing you?

So the real solution is to force everyone to use stenographic tools.

Basically, the point is to make it so it is impossible to tell the difference between a normal user and a crypto user.

So the only way they could target you is if they target 1 billion other people in the world.

Unfortunately there's already steganography detecting software on the market[0], and it seems they have a branch in China[1]. But that is a little reductionist of me because there are evolving techniques being produced by researchers that are not so easy to detect. For example I recently read about a CNN-based method for hiding data in images that proved much more resilient against detection.

[0] https://www.wetstonetech.com/products/stegohunt/

[1] https://www.wetstonetech.com/corporate/channel-partners/

Steganography can be trivially detectable though if someone actually starts looking for it. The problem is that making it accessible makes it stand out.

As long as you don’t share it in a picture of Winnie the Pooh! LOL!

They can't arrest everyone. Make encryption widespread and unquestionably superior to unencrypted communication and I don't think the government can do much to stop it.

According to Wikipedia [1] Stalin actually came pretty close to arresting everyone.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#Brief_history

Encryption should be a free speech issue, assuming we keep free speech.

Not if literally everything is using encryption.

The point of encryption and plausible deniability, is to force everyone to use encryption, so that if authoritarian regimes want to punish people, then they have to screw over everyone, including completely innocent internet users.

Technology always loses to policy when the government has a monopoly on force.

No government does. There are power vacuums and blind spots everywhere. That's why you taking a bit of power in your hands works.

A few years back, some software is banned from Chinese internet because its release number is 6.4

Source?

We are biased on HN to consider technological solutions to an ideological problem: there are powerful people who benefit from sowing distrust. Ideally, the Chinese leadership wants each citizen afraid of their neighbors.

This is easier to do in a society when large family ties are much weaker (due to one child policy).

From my experience, China and most of Asia has very strong family ties as a core tenet of their culture.

Yes, very strong small family ties.

So, no Winnie the Pooh fan fiction groups? Damn.

Make everyone an admin of the group!

In the UK you can be arrested for teaching your girlfriend's pug to heil as a joke.

While the prosecution was dumb (it was clearly a joke), he did turn out to be a huge right wing racist anyway

Is it an American thing to not care if someone is a “______” when talking about their protected rights?

It used to be.

The rights enshrined in our constitution are viewed as natural rights so they cannot be qualified, all people are entitled to their protection.

Oh absolutely. For the more egregious example of it, “______” is “felon”.

Not many countries fare better, to be fair.

Im far from American however

Hence the question.

Yes, see "Indians", "Africans" etc

Well that appears to be what your media has informed you

I'm sure your media is far more correct than my media.

Should that be something to arrest someone for, though?

I’ve seen his bizarre case being used by the far right as an example of why they’re correct and various conspiracies are against them.

And let’s be real, being afraid of a pug to the point you arrest someone? Come on. The government caring about stuff like that is taking the Streisand effect to new levels. It’s even more bizarre when supporters of those laws condemn China. It’s the same policy, just different politics.

After this culture war is over, the first people in the hole will be the actual right wing racists

The second people in the hole will be left wing people throwing that accusation around at any spare target.

The leftist McCarthyists need to go.

"as a joke"

You think he was taking the pug to rallies?

This has already been happening in India under the current govt

Any Anti PM post gets the Whatsapp admin arrested under National Security Act!

Of course, there must be some stupid party supporter who probably had to file a case or something.

This will be worse as it'll be automatic as China MITM's everything

Pretty interesting comment. Let me see a reputable source which backs up 'anti pm message arrest under national security act'. I googled those and found just one arrest in a state which said

> Asked why Shinde had been suspended, Sharma said, “He has not been suspended just for the message. In the past, too, complaints were received against him for favouring certain political party person and showing political inclination. The WhatsApp message he posted is one of the reasons why he has been suspended.” Asked what exactly did he mean by showing political inclination, Sharma said, “I won’t be able to give all the details. But the past complaints and WhatsApp message are the reasons he has been suspended.”

source: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/mumbai-const...

Forgive my naivety, but aren’t Whatsapp messages encrypted? If so, how can the authorities see what’s written in them?

Someone in the group chat is a snitch.

Maybe someone snitched?

That is exactly what happened.

If people in the chat want him suspended, I guess it is those people with the complaint making a recording/listing of the chats and then passing the evidence onto authorities.

I thought only 1-to-1 messages were encrypted and group chat wasn't.

The group chat is also encrypted, but anyone in the group chat can share the messages.

Whatsapp does E2E for groups, which have upto 256 members. A Matrix dev said they scaled E2E to groups with thousands.

> In the past, too, complaints were received against him for favouring certain political party person and showing political inclination.

Why is this even a "valid" reason?

It's not, it's government censorship.

I mean, sure, everyone knows it is. But usually governments of democratic countries try to hide their intentions with some sort of reasonable-sounding excuse?

'Censorship' is bad, but I'm a little more concerned about the 'arrest' part ...

Even in the US there are restrictions on political activity by civil servants. Although I doubt those would encompass what was described here.

You seem to have taken only one source

Google "whatsapp admins arrested Modi"

First link: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ndtv.com/karnataka-news/wha...

Tdlr; Karnataka WhatsApp grp asmin arrested for morphed photo of the PM

Well looks like I'm blind because I find no mention of the national security act in the sources you linked as well. You're trying so hard. Oh well..

It is glad that you accepted. If only more ppl were like you who accepted their incapability while proving others wrong.

The source I gave was "Whatsapp admin arrested Modi"

If u want to look for those arrested under NSA, the results are one click away.

Now don't tell me your hands stopped working as well...

Haha 'one click away', I see nothing that proves your original comment, the burden of proof lay upon you (when the argument was active).

That's quite a jump to conclusion too. But whatever helps you sleep at night while accepting your bullshit narrative was openly called out and you made a fool of yourself. Must be hard spreading propaganda on internet forums. Have a good one. You may choose to reply to this comment but expect no further conversation. Peace :)

lol

I googled "whatsapp admin arrested Modi NSA"

And guess which link came first?

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-44925166

Article says

> student has spent five months in an Indian jail over a WhatsApp message he says he did not send.

> Local reports say the 21-year-old man was charged with sedition because of "objectionable" content, although it is not clear what the message said.

I rest my case.

We ban accounts that do flamewar on HN. Please don't get involved in arguments like this on HN again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hey, sorry. My previous response was very rude. I immediately updated it to the current one. Does this also constitute under flamewar? (If so, I'm sorry)

It's not as bad. But it's still unnecessarily argumentative. A better spirit to post in is expressed in this old line of pg's: Comments should be written in the spirit of colleagues cooperating in good faith to figure out the truth about something, not politicians trying to ridicule and misrepresent the other side.

Try to find a point of connection between you and the person you're talking to. You don't need to say what it is explicitly; you just need to find it and feel it. Do that, and flamewar will magically be transformed into conversation.

Flamewar and personal attacks are not allowed here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. We ban accounts that do this, so could you please review the site rules and follow them? They're at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and we'd be grateful.

Great point. I would happily follow the rules and I do.

Evidently though, the other person went ad-hominem with a very aggressive reddit-esque comment on a simple reply I gave. No one chimed in to flag that comment so I had to speak for myself. I just hope a moderator would have sprung into action sooner. That being said, it's nice you guys are making effort to keep the board clean from becoming `that`.

I'll just keep away from inciteful comments the next time. I really wish there was a report option here too.

This is false statement without no supporting source. This is the problem with social media. Someone posts fake news/propaganda and everyone starts believing or starts forwarding (whatsapp), which is causing Govts to take certain action against them/regulate them

If you keep your bias aside and read actual news rather than propaganda TV channels maybe you'll know what really happened

And what about BJP IT cell spreading edited photos and videos? Never heard a single BJP person getting arrested

Source:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ndtv.com/karnataka-news/wha...

Forget about PM, Even state leaders are abusing this and getting opposition sympathizers arrested in India for a while.

This abuse is most common in State of Andhra Pradesh (Whose chief minister claims he invested IT and claims to have influenced Satya Nadella enter into software :) ).

1. https://www.mirchi9.com/politics/one-case-abuse-ysrcp-social...

2. Another Arrest Video in local language (telugu): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osWZE0-cQ1g

Yeah

One man sets trend, it blows up

Any reputable sourcee on this?

Google "Whatsapp admin arrested Modi"

One source:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ndtv.com/karnataka-news/wha...

I wouldn't be surprised if this could happen in the US, if someone created a "terrorist" group chat.

Did all the dictators get together and decide on the phrase "national security" as the go to when implementing authoritarian laws?

No. They just copied the US and UK showing them how to do it, immediately after 9/11.

>> "Any" Anti PM post gets the Whatsapp admin arrested under National Security Act!

This is blatantly false. Singling out "Anti-PM" posts and demonizing only BJP (in your latter comment) is clearly biased.

Here are the instances of people being booked for "remarks" in Social media against the opposition leader Rahul Gandhi and Opposition:

[1] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/case-against-shimla-man-for-...

[2]https://www.news18.com/news/india/mp-man-posts-photo-of-rahu...

[3] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/mahesh-vikram-hegde-arrested...

There is nothing "automatic" about it. All such charges happen after off-line complaints in the police station by either party.

Rather if you would say, based on police complaints on violating Indian Penal Code, people are booked or arrested - that'll be a more reasonable statement - rather than coming out with blanket statements.

How convenient of you to selectively handpick few cases of opposition leaders while ignoring all those journalists who are jailed under Draconian laws for posting things govt didn't like.

I don't need lectures from BJP supporters about being biased. Except Indira's emergency, I don't remember journalists being jailed under NSA. get your facts straight from real media and not whatsapp forwards

P.s. this acc is made a few hrs ago. Obviously a fake acc

British media: you can be arrested for makes jokes on twitter or calling a woman a woman.

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