Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes

> To ice the cake she even talks about "tech bros" (the implied tone being white men).

It is interesting how you are projecting meaning onto her use of "tech bro"? I'm guessing you're a white tech bro?

It's interesting how men in tech get extremely offended by her lack of deference to them. I think it probably is a result of her appearance as a nonwhite "bimbo-aesthetic" engineer - (especially white) tech bros feel like she should address them as a superior and their egos feel threatened when she does not.

You're calling her a crybully. I'd argue this comment I'm replying to is a much clearer example of "crybully" behavior. I hope you can reflect on why you reacted in this way.

I have to stop myself from thumbing or clicking the X. My brain sees it as something that got past the ad filter and needs closing. A hilarious experience in self-observation loops.

Since I don't have an account, I am no longer allowed to search.

In any case, this does not at all indicate if the reach of those tweets was restricted or not.

I trace tolerance in general back to the religious tolerance introduced by the Peace of Westphalia, and the centuries of religious war that preceded it. It obviously goes much further back, but that's the archetypical example for me.

Seen in this light, tolerance is somewhere between symbiosis and mutually assured destruction, and much less wishy-washy than everyone thinks it is.

In America it is legal to advocate for Nazism. This is legal and simultaneously a non-threat because our system of checks and balances prevents them from overthrowing the government. They are not denied their first amendment rights, and yet they're abject losers. The US government is simultaneously tolerant of them and not threatened by them.

The supposed paradox of intolerance says that silencing people who would silence you is the only way to prevent yourself from being silenced, but this is demonstrably not true.

> Again and again the empirical outcome of tolerating bad faith weaponized speech is the sharp reduction in the diversity of ideas and perspectives actually present in speech, by violently silencing or eliminating those who hold other perspectives.

So the problem isn't 'tolerating bad faith weaponized speech' but rather tolerating 'violently silencing or eliminating those who hold other perspectives.'

The second does not follow on from the first.

Also, what is (and who defines) 'weaponized speech'?

Likewise, who defines 'bad faith'?

> Government policy ideals from a small handful of European men in the 18th century may be noble but I value more the documented modern observable effects of policies than their inspiration and goals.

The proof is in the pudding, the American system of political tolerance has an excellent track record and leads to better outcomes in the long run.

The 'paradox' of meeting violence with violence is the most mundane "I'm 14 and this is deep" shit. I'm pretty sure this is not what people are actually talking about when they talk when they bring up Poppler's "paradox". The "paradox" is used to persuade people that authoritarianism is okay when they do it because everybody thinks of themselves as the good guys. The whole point of tolerance is that you don't meet words with violence, not that you should be a pacifist who refuses to meet even violence with violence.

I said 'it goes beyond censorship', that means that censorship is a part of it but that it goes well beyond that point.

Here is the dictionary definition: "the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security."

If we follow your logic then killing someone or jailing or intimidating them is just censorship. But the bar for what is censorship is much lower than that. So if the bar for censorship is met by just targeting the media (for instance: youtube, to tell them to pull the account and not to let her back in) then that would be censorship and it wouldn't require threats of harm or restrictions on movement. That's active and possibly violent intimidation. Xi's government gets a free pass from the West because (1) we like the goodies and (2) he's not as bad as some of his predecessors. But meanwhile he's a thug and his government is acting in very thuggish ways to achieve their goals and the casualness with which censorship escalates into other forms of abuse is telling. And that's why we have different names for those other abuses. Those abuses are not there in the service of censorship, censorship is just one of the elements from a palette of abuses that a state can visit on a person.

More telling is how apparently a fragment of the HN audience insists they see nothing more than the control of information. Trust me on this: if your internet connection is severed and/or your online writings are officially erased that's bad enough, having goons come to your house, threaten you and threaten your significant other that's another level altogether.

Censorship doesn't require guns, does not require goons and in general doesn't have a prerequisite of violence. But threats of harm, or being sent to a 'reeducation camp' (I hate that term) especially in a country where people tend to just disappear aim to influence not just your writings and your media expression but your general behavior and serve to cow an individual completely, apparently successful. So censorship is only a sub-goal, and a minor one at that. This is all about behavior and coercion, hence the travel restrictions and targeting of groups of individuals.

Agreed that private entities not posting your tweets is not censorship.

But I will stick to my guns that there is much more at stake for people in China that don't behave in the way the government wants them to than just being censored. 'to stop doing something' is doing the heavy lifting in your comment and what the 'something' is can be limited to media expressions and then I would agree it is censorship. But this goes much further than that: it is not just what you write. It is also how you behave, and about what your ancestry is, which activities you are allowed to engage in (and which activities you have to engage in).

Censorship is just about expression. This is full-on coercion, anti-LGBT policy and racism. To make it explicit.

You should read the Wikipedia article on what censorship is:

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

"Censorship can be conducted by governments,[5] private institutions and other controlling bodies."

This is healthy thinking. China might not be a place where there is any censorship, nor goons rounding up Uyghers, nor restrictions on travel, nor foreign-country-located police stations hounding ex-pats to return home under threat to their families.

It could all be made up and China could be a free-thinking, free-speech paradise where an insufficient number of western visitors have realized that everyone is free to talk about fair elections and Winnie-the-Pooh and a Green Party winning control of the Chinese Parliament.

That all sounds quite plausible. We should go and see.

> On the other hand, consider that if you’re in the US your own information most likely comes from sources that are antagonistic to China? Why are you so sure that other people are just mindlessly consuming while you’re getting the real truth?

Having lived in China for 9 years, I'm pretty familiar with the US and Chinese media. They can both be biased in the way that media is biased, but one is actually not controlled by a single party while the other most definitely is (if you aren't sure, check out the differences between CNN and FoxNews).

China prefers the narrative that the rest of the world is antagonistic against it and out to get it. In reality, it is just the CCP that is really unpopular, and its popularity wanes and ebs with however authoritarian it happens to be at the time. With an official approval rating of 140%, they are incredibly popular in China, at least.

Explanation requested. I guess it's missing a hyphen but "anti white racist" is a pretty thin salad at three words and not especially ambiguous in terms of the politics it implies.

A South Korean working for an American media organization, specifically called out as western, is a western journalist as I see it. The term "Western" is imprecise and should usually be avoided for this reason, but South Korea itself is often ranked among the Western nations in the economic and geopolitical alignment senses of the term. And it's fair to say that any journalist working for an American media organization is a western journalist, in any sense of the term. Mentioning that somebody is from South Korea does not constitute a refutation of that person being a western journalist, nor do I believe that was the intention.

In any case, the rest of palefaces's comment plainly criticizes Sarah Jeong for doing the thing quoted: "since her sexuality was outed by a Western journalist" by sarcastically suggesting that Sarah Jeong should feel satisfied. Sarcasm is problematic, particularly in text, but I think in this case the sarcasm is clear. paleface's comment provides details which substantiate the claims, they aren't refuting it.

Incidentally, I think your comment employs sarcasm too. But just to be safe, "This makes sense" is you being sarcastic, right? You think this actually doesn't make sense?

> I’m sure “anti white racist” isn’t any sort of culture war word salad.

I am virtually certain that claim refers to this [quoted from wikipedia]:

> "In August 2018, Jeong was hired by The New York Times to join its editorial board as lead writer on technology.[18][19] The hiring sparked a strongly negative reaction in conservative media, which highlighted derogatory tweets about white people that Jeong had posted mostly in 2013 and 2014.[20][21][22] Critics characterized her tweets as being racist; Jeong released an apology,[23][24] saying that the tweets were meant to satirize online harassment toward her as a woman of color.[20][25]"

Whether or not you find the satire excuse credible, this incident is plainly the basis for the accusation of Sarah Jeong being racist. It may not be a perspective you agree with, I haven't bothered to look up the tweets and their context so I don't have an opinion one way or the other concerning Sarah Jeong actually being a racist or merely satirizing racism. But regardless of whether you agree with the claim it's not 'word salad' e.g. the incoherent speech of a schizophrenic. She would not have said her statements were satire of racism unless her statements could be reasonably construed as resembling racism. Satire of a thing will inherently resemble the thing, so teasing out the difference will be an exercise in subjective judgement. Tacitly accusing somebody of mental illness because you disagree with their subjective interpretation of ostensible satire is inappropriate.

The USSR perpetuated the Great Purge and the Holodomor, which together killed approximately 5M people (estimates vary). This is a matter of historical fact, not just belief.

sorry i didnt read those threads. i am a western expat in china and have been for 10+ years, and i'm talking about the people i know and have seen and summarizing discussions with them. many people i know have left since 2020 and this is why