What is Digg?140 Comments
- error00101, on 10/12/2007, -10/+26why can't anyone around here spell ridiculous?
- jszaszvari, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15Its quite rediculous how china thinks they can controll everything, Even the keyword "Freedom" is blocked
- sid0, on 10/12/2007, -5/+17re the first few comments:
It's shameful really. You Americans have no respect for the freedom you get. If you said something like this in China you'd probably be burned on a stake or something. - FarcePest, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13"why can't anyone around here spell ridiculous?"
Maybe "ridiculous" is a blocked keyword, too. - rwg999, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11It’s interesting just how China does control the Net. The monitor and record who uses the net so they can come after them, after the fact. Like requiring Cybercafes to keep detailed user logs, just like the Patriot Act requires US libraries to keep user logs. They require ICPs and ISPs to store user access, just like the US government is requiring of Google/MSN/Yahoo. ISPs filter emails searching for specific words, just like that US program a couple of years back (can’t remember it’s name at the moment)
- i6koi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Jonty, I've not heard of that bill at all. And if it were true, I doubt it would last very long here. I'm not one who thinks Americans are the only people with freedoms, but forgive me for saying I do not think you are more free in the UK. The BBC is one of my primary news sites, and I am constantly amazed by some of the restrictions you people have. One example I clearly remember was from last year when newspapers/tabloids in the UK were banned/fined for publishing photos of Prince Henry donning a Nazi costume (the fact that expression of Nazism---however deploarble---is banned itself says wonders about European free speech). Also, there is hardly a public street in the UK where you can be free from closed-circuit cameras. There are 3000 times as many cameras in London as there are in New York or Washington, D.C. And the taxes which the government imposes upon your people...don't even let me start.
I have been to the UK and have experienced much of this difference (between your country and mine) firsthand. I am not trying to say that the US is perfect by any means (we certainly seem to be headed toward disaster), but unless you've come here and seen for yourself the "lack of freedoms" we supposedly suffer from, I would advise you to be a bit more cautious with all of the doom and gloom the intl. press seems to be throwing our way. - Ginjeet, on 10/12/2007, -14/+20"Thank God the U.S can't do this. Right? Right?" I think the US gov. has been doing it from the start.
- sennmen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6It is beyond me that no international organisation has stepped up and said something about this. Blocking information on opposing parties and democracy? Please.
- coredump0x01, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Here's a way to trigger the filter and see for yourself. set your browser to route through this proxy at 219.232.9.180:80 which is hosted in beijing (beware, very slow), then goto google.cn and enter Falun Gong. I get results like "Outlawing Falun Gong Cult" and absolutely no information about Falun Gong or what it is about at all. Now reset your browser settings and compare the results you get from your usual connection through google.com. Pretty disturbing and 100% totalitarian IMO. (more chinese proxies at http://www.samair.ru/proxy/proxy-02.htm )
- NanoStuff, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8In communist China, Internet censors you.
- Jyuu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7That's just ***** up.
Seriously, there's nothing else that expresses my disgust towards such a thing. - schrodingercat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5China is no longer a Communist country. You know nothing of the nation's economic state if you still believe that to be true. What *is* true is that it is still an oppressive regime. They are keeping the name "Communist" because any change would be too "revolutionary" and chaotic.
- hunchback, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Shameful shameful Chinese government
- urbanrant, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I wonder how many people here visited China before and tried to access the Internet from there. It is very slow even on "broadband" and you cannot access www.bbc.co.uk.....which is quite an innocuous site really.
- kris2pe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6They block information on STD? Who the HELL doesn't wanna share vital information to prevent STD? Obviously it won't start any insurgencies! Hello!!!!
- Toshibi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5We are more free simply because I can say things like "I disagree with my governments policy on...." or "I'm interested in governments besides...."
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The US government doesn't need censorship. Why would you need to censor your people when you can just classify everything as top secret, and use major media outlets to distribute misinformation?
- cathode, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7And some people hate the US... we don't know how good we have it.
- joxrox22, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Have you read the George Orwell novels Animal Farm and 1984? Enuff said.
- scotty1024, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4That's so simplistic. If you want real fun proxy through China and surf to cnn.com and read some of the stories, especially those involving China. Now go read those same stories on CNN with out going through the China proxy.
Google at least had the guts to just block access and tell you what is going on. CNN though, their stories flow through into China and are altered before arriving with no notice that its happening.
Are the Chinese doing bullet edits on the content as it flows through? Why hasn't CNN been yelling and screaming like a wounded Media Bull? After all the BBC is totally blocked... is CNN a Chinese collaborator to prevent being blocked like the BBC? - hunchback, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I liked the part about circumvention, FU big brother.
- whizzbang, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Bad and all as the US government can be re privacy I do think China is in a whole other league!
- urbanrant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3DoubtfulSalmon, for your information I am a Singapore-born ethnic Chinese who visits China multiple times a year. You should get outside of your circle and see how normal local Chinese access those websites.
- lmlloyd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Wow, the thing that gets me more than anything else is that you are reported to the police, and can be fined or even imprisoned, if you just try to access a blocked site from an Internet cafe! How do you know which sites are blocked, before you go to them and find out they are blocked? It is very Kafkaesque.
Here is a question for everyone, what are we here in the US doing to help these people? I mean, surely there is something us geeks can do in the way of clever redirection pages and proxies and whatnot to make it even easier for people to get around these restrictions! It is certainly a more noble use of coding skills than figuring out the latest way to make CSS try and act like Flash. I'm sure that they have plenty of tools to get around these blocks, but I can't imagine that more would hurt. We certainly don't have to abide by their laws, and we can't be put in prison for breaking a Chinese law.
I always hear about people trying to democratize software and content, and here are some people who really need it. - Phyrefly, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I agree with many of the points that you made.
However, you forgot the new generation, the internet-savvy generation. The generation that could probably whoop your ass in anything but English and American History ;) - Toshibi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You did see the part where I said I ran one, right(a corp.)? You know most corporations are small outfits....dont you? Mom and pop places? And I agree with you that we are losing freedoms at an astonishing rate....
So, I'm going to settle this once and for all....right here on Digg.
Thomas Jefferson wrote: "To insure freedom there should be a revolution every 20 years." paraphrased, but it's close.
I'm an American citizen, live in NC. No problem getting my info....
The people of the united states should revolt against their tyranical masters to take back a government out of control that is no longer favorable to the US citizenry.
I'll post a story on digg when I'm arrested. "In your face China!" - AnotherTechie, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9And what country are you posting from?
I think many of "us Americans" love the freedom that we get in this country. While admittedly we may occasionally take it for granted, the freedoms we are afforded in this country are wonderful and I couldn't imagine living in a place like China. I just don't understand which of the "first few comments" warranted this response.
So, again, which country are you located in? - lollerskates, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I don't know, I was in China and I was reading slashdot.org fine.
- cathode, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Ouch, look at some of the words blocked:
# Revolution
# Equality
# Freedom
# Justice
# Taiwan
# Tibet
# Falun Gong
# Dissident
# Democracy
# STD
# Human rights - Crickey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Are there really stil Americans that think they are the only country with the freedom of speech or any other form of freedom?
That's sad! But that's probably what you get with "World News in 30 seconds" kind of programs.
The time that America was THE ONLY Land Of The Free is over!
Western Europe countries have as many freedoms - if not even more in some countries - than the US - Daem0nX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I have a few friends I talk to in China, and it's really sad we can't always talk about everything freely. We can't talk about our Governements activities, use certain keywords, etc. Hell, they are even afraid to apply for a US visa, passport, etc as they are afraid both govt (theirs and ours) will somehow get pissed.
- Quarks, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Exactly, just because they don't make it public doesn't meen it isn't there.
Funny to see people in "the land of the free" cheering over their freedom of speech while the US is ranked 44th in the World Press Freedom index 2005, just above Bolivia and below Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Korea and Japan. - jasqwerty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I wish Digg had a community action user submitted poll thing. That would be great in this case, for example, we could run a vote to have scotty1024 renamed Chinese_Disinformation_Agent_#1024. How much do they pay anyway? It sounds like fun work.
- wonginator1221, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2well obviously you were all in area's that have been westernized. Maybe a mile out of there and you'll be in luck trying to get digg on. I have family friends that live there, and it often happens that if there is a contraversial thing showing on TV, 30 seconds later a black out might occur.
- joeydoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Also, there is hardly a public street in the UK where you can be free from closed-circuit cameras. There are 3000 times as many cameras in London as there are in New York or Washington, D.C. And the taxes which the government imposes upon your people...don't even let me start."
This the subject of what you are willing to give up for personal security. With those cameras we were able to closly track the july 7th bombers. It wasn't much help before they did anything, but it ment that we could quickly catch them after. Having camera in public I wouldn't call a loss of any freedom. It's public space. You are tracked to a much greater degree online.
I agree with you on the taxes though. We get hosed if we own a car. They are talking about tracking where you go in your car and charging you on that basis soon. Bastards. - Jeffery, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7Try pathetic... about the comments around here. rwg999 is about the only one with half a brain. All these comments are complete crap. CNN is an American propaganda machine. None of you (or few) have even been to China or know anything first hand of what actually happens. You're spoon-fed crap from biased, uninformed, sensational news sources. Yes, there are many things in China that I don't agree with. But uneducated, uninformed, ignorant tangents after reading a half-baked CNN photomontage... give me a break.
To the brainwashed ignorant American's in the audience... take a look in your own back yard before you go pointing out the garbage in others. The US has become the most freedom-oppressed nation in the world in a period spanning a few years. The amazing values your nation once stood for are gone; replaced by an oppressive regime of sadistic fear mongering fed like a firehouse through the mass media and direct from your president. Ushering in broadly oppressive laws in the name of the war on terror. Putting the rights of corporations over the individual. Now that is something to get upset about.
Peace. - sid0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yes, that is correct. They have special areas demarcarcated for foreigners, to keep them happy. Foreigners and those in diplomatic missions are the only ones who receive foreign TV channels. Chinese citizens receive only state-controlled propagandist (sp?) TV.
From this, you can draw your own conclusions about Internet access. - tdowling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You don't even need to go through the proxy to see the filter at work. Just go to google.cn as you normally would and enter 'Falun Gong' ... it is kind of creepy when you compare the results of google.cn and google.com
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3holy hell, even emails are filtered and censored. i could send an email to someone there, it would be filtered, I would be imprisoned or fined, and the email would never reach the person..
maybe they should resort to smoke-signals? or would that be censored too.. would they have huge machines that blew big puffs of air at undesirable smoke-signals? - saska, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Didn't work for me, but I see McAfee makes WebShield for the Chinese network. o_O
- DoubtfulSalmon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You cannot begin to understand this situation until you open your mind to alternative points of view. It's pretty clear that not a single commentator here recognises that the view expressed in the trashy CNN article, and many of the views here, have been constructed from American propaganda. People forget that 'their' system can be wrong too.
- i6koi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2casiotone, again, it may be easy to say 'Patriot Act' and 'DMCA' in one sentence and think that you have "shot down" America's freedoms, but don't believe everything you see or read...certainly not on Digg. Case in point:
http://digg.com/technology/Feds_visit_student_over_communist_book
That article received 2101 diggs and featured such comments as "Wow, ***** 1984. This country has gone to *****" (mournsanity) and "So... when are you going to stop implying that the US is a bastion of free speech? It really pisses us Europeans off" (RobCowie)...of course the follow up article for that story can be found here:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/12/24/students_tall_tale_revealed/
Its Digg equivalent (http://digg.com/technology/Feds_visit_student_over_communist_book_---_A_HOAX) received a grand total of 30 diggs, and probably did not make the front page (although I'm not sure). But of course, what's done was done and the 2101 diggers who dugg the first story are now walking around believing the Dept. of Homeland Security is going to knock down their door for checking out a library book. This is but one example, and there are many more, but I think my point has been made (I will be happy to post more links of other examples if you are not convinced). - geoboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"ISPs filter emails searching for specific words, just like that US program a couple of years back (can’t remember it’s name at the moment)"
Ah yes, that would be "Carnivore"
http://www.howstuffworks.com/carnivore.htm - thewise1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Very insightful post, scotty, although I reserve the right to disagree with parts of it :)
- yahoofrom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2My favorite "equality" is 1+1 =2.
and the position of a particle has three degrees of "freedom".
The inertia of "revolution" of a cylinder is caculated by the formula blobloblo... I don't remember.
ok enough.
here's the real one. 獨立 獨立 獨立 獨立 獨立 獨立 獨立 獨立. (translation: Independence) - Jeffery, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yes, they come through fine.
- scotty1024, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You are looking at that through western eyes.
They took down wikipedia and the world is still as it was in China.
Westerners all think Google is the cat's pajama's but the Chinese have their own search engines that are better adapted to finding Chinese content than Google. Google is the "new kid" on the search block in China, why do you think they are bending over backwards and kissing their own ***** to stay in the Chinese market?
There isn't any guarantee that Google is going to dominate search in China like it has in the west. Don't go counting your revolutionary chickens yet. - lollerskates, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Toshibi: Yes, you are right, but the _rate_ at which freedom in the US is disappearing is faster than in China. In fact, China has made huge leaps in freedom since Mao; don't get me wrong, they still have less rights than in the US, but I expect that to change within 50 years or so. The US, on the other hand, has just be going down a steady slope since the cold war, and more recently, the 9/11 incident.
Also, you mentioned corporations. Did you know that corporations have the same rights as people? Now _that_ is wrong. It just screams of an oligarchy to me. - HiddenForce, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Interesting article.
I wonder, though, if it would still block the good little student of Communism who is looking up information on the Bolshevik Revolution, Castro's revolution, or even Uncle Mao's very own revolution. After all, not all revolutions result in freedom from opression (even though those involved may believe it to be). - gaoshan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@scotty1024 -> Yes. Very insightful comments... nice to see someone commenting on China who knows what they are talking about. I travel to China frequently and, for the past 10 years have spent about 2 months out of the year living there. I'm not Chinese myself, however. I think most Westerners simply don't realize how ignorant they are of China. The news we hear here in the States and the opinions of most people (re. China) are quite biased and inaccurate. It is frustrating for someone who knows quite a bit about China and has much experience in dealing with the country and its people when I read the ridiculous opinions and comments on an issue like this one. If only people realized how ignorant they were.
FYI, for those not in the know, use a word like "peasant" IS the most common translation of the word, you could also say farmer or countryside person but peasant is more common, used by the Chinese themselves (sounds like "Nong Ming" but swallow the "g" in Nong a bit) and it doesn't carry the loaded significance it does in the U.S.... i.e. chill. -
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