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Comment by usernomdeguerre | Hacker News Reader

Except that it works. In fact it works for a population of 5 times our size (China). So it seems to me that the only people who have their heads up their asses are us, who seem to think that censorship is a childs model for maintaining power and influence. In our technological society censorship can work better than ever before.

Frankly, imo, in the absence of effective accountability for ones' words or deeds, censorship becomes one of the only few remaining tools for stability.

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It is a child's model. Look at how it is used by the ruling party. As a child with their toys. Look at the childish displays of outrage when we tell them you can't sexually abuse (and then disappear) your tennis players without consequences. Who even does that? "Oh, that toy said something mean to me so I threw it away." Adults don't do that, children do.

When we condemn slave labor it's more childish tantrums. That's what wolf warrior diplomacy is really.

It's a state of more than a billion under its care yet on the political stage it's a huge Akira-sized baby with a big toy baton smash-smash-smashing any who dare discipline it.

I think it's far too early to pass judgment on whether it works in China. Lots of very oppressive states have lasted for decades, apparently successfully, until they implode spectacularly.

Less than a century ago, many in the West sang the praises of communism as (unkown to them) a million people died in the Gulag. Things aren't always as they appear.

Preference falsification is the act of communicating a preference that differs from one's true preference. The public frequently conveys, especially to researchers or pollsters, preferences that differ from what they truly want, often because they believe the conveyed preference is more acceptable socially. The idea of preference falsification was put forth by the social scientist Timur Kuran in his 1995 book Private Truths, Public Lies as part of his theory of how people's stated preferences are responsive to social influences. It laid the foundation for his theory of why unanticipated revolutions can occur. The concept is related to ideas of social proof as well as choice blindness.