China tightens Web controls; commenters must register real names

http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-web-controls-20150204-story.html

by dak1 • 11 years ago

54 55 11 years ago

parennoob• 11 years ago

I fail to see how this is different from Facebook (and formerly Google+)'s real names policy which will flag unusual names and force you to give a valid Government ID to reactivate your account.

Facebook (along with Twitter) is often the gateway to commenting on a lot of popular sites in the US. Very few people stop and make the alternate account required.

References:

1. https://www.facebook.com/help/159096464162185

2. http://boingboing.net/2011/08/27/eric-schmidt-if-you-cant-us...

screwedup2• 11 years ago

One is a decision by a private company (which you can get around by using a different service) and one is a mandate from the government.

arca_vorago2• 11 years ago

Given both Googles and Facebooks origin funding, I think a debate could be had about this point.

dmfdmf• 11 years ago

This is exactly what he fails to see.

hyperpape2• 11 years ago

In case anyone hasn't previously encountered Poe's law, this post is a great example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law.

screwedup2• 11 years ago

Before you start thinking "oh, those crazy Chinese...", remember that many people in the USA (and other western countries) fervently believe that we should do the same thing.

hyperpape2• 11 years ago

I think one can think both that the Chinese government is exceptionally repressive and be scared how many people in the West might be willing to follow their lead.

Thankfully, I don't think a real names policy has much chance in the US for the time being.

marvin• 11 years ago

Most Norwegian newspapers enforce a full-name policy in their comments sections. Which is frankly ridiculous; anyone who seriously wants to troll just comes up with a fake name. But it's very worrying that this is taken seriously by people in our own society.

higherpurpose• 11 years ago

Oh, those crazy Americans...

You made it sound as if we shouldn't call the Chinese crazy over this. When in fact we should call both crazy.

innguest• 11 years ago

Yes, and those people in the USA that believe we should do the same are called net neutrality supporters.

mc32• 11 years ago

The difference is in who is requiring this. The site operator/company (such as blog,newspaper,social network) or the central govt. It makes a big difference.

hga7• 11 years ago

As US custom (e.g. the Federalist Papers) and jurisprudence has anonymity so strongly established, it's hard for me to see such a thing here without a simultaneous hot civil war. It would tread on a very important part of our Constitutionally enshrined core political free speech.

wyager• 11 years ago

I've even seen support for such measures here on HN. The most popular justification is "to fight cyber-bullying".

guelo• 11 years ago

It's weird how everytime there is criticism of some country people pop up to say that the US is also bad in some way. It's a non sequitur. China is fucked up, full stop. Is the US fucked up too? Yes. That doesn't mean China should not be criticized for their fuckupery.

buro9• 11 years ago

Does this apply to Chinese commenters on overseas blogs and forums?

If so, they've just solved a huge chunk of the comment spam problem.

mentat• 11 years ago

If the Chinese government wants to help unmask people?

arca_vorago2• 11 years ago

What really bugs me is that this is the same direction a lot of policy makers and even tech companies seem to want to go, all the while decrying the Chinese for the same actions. I hope we don't allow it to progress that far in the US, but we really need to step up to the debate when people start droning on about cybersecurity, trolling, libel, and defamation on the Internet. Perhaps I'm just in the minority that thinks free speech should include the right to offend and we should not allow everyone to get offended at anything they want and get it banned.

Youtube co-founder jawed's first youtube comment: "why the fuck do i need a google+ account to comment on a video?"

sukilot2• 11 years ago

Note that Google has reversed course and apologized for Real Names policy

azurezyq• 11 years ago

I don't think it will affect much, most of the sites are using qq/weibo/renren openids, and they have long been "real named" behind. And actually I don't care how the gov track my activities, just care about the leaks of personal information, which were kept safe most of the times for big names.

happyscrappy• 11 years ago

It may be hard to persecute you if we cannot easily identify you.

pagnotta2• 11 years ago

It is funny how american media is eager to depict China as a North-Korea, and how americans opinions end being formed by their partial media in the same way it happens under dictatorships. Have spent a decade in China, I have yet to see a cop carrying a gun. Cops in China are way more friendly than in US, and for me, way more trustable. people think they keep the chinese people under fear and draconian control, but if you spend some time in China and listen to the people, you see thats not the whole truth. American media call Mugabe a dictator and call Cameroon's President a "chief of state", but both countries hold the same kind of elections. Anyone saw the news about the recent death of the Arabian king? I didn't read any mention about him being a dictator, indeed he is, but he is an ally.

dmix2• 11 years ago

In China the citizenry is constantly fed lines how 'China is not bad, don't listen to the foreign critics, just look at all the awful things the West does'.

Pretty easy way to never look at yourself critically and fix problems. The west is bad sure, but why does that mean China can't be better? The self-maintained status quo by the citizens in China is incredibly strong. This is by design.

api2• 11 years ago

America is simply much more sophisticated in its methods of mass control. China deploys primitive ham-fisted stuff like web controls and their "great firewall," while America is much more skilled in the fine-grained use of soft power and propaganda to achieve the same effects. American oligarchs know better than to whack people indiscriminately with crude mallets or to show their hand too overtly. My guess would be that they learned this from the British elite, who are probably the undisputed global masters at weathering social and political storms through flexing and employing soft nuanced mechanisms to hold power. Britain still has a royal dynasty while most of the rest of Europe's royals lost their heads.

America excels at creating the illusion of freedom and at permitting enough freedom at lower levels of society to sustain that illusion, but at the top American corporations and the American national security state are almost indistinguishable. Ex-vice-presidents serve on the boards of major VC firms, and Google is basically the state department. That's not that different from China. When American financial elites get in real trouble, unlimited public funds suddenly materialize to bail them out. The same thing of course would happen in China. In both nations if you are sufficiently connected, neither laws nor the ordinary rules of economics apply to you... unless you are so crude and reckless that you overtly tip your hand in which case an example is made of you to preserve the illusion. This also happens regularly in China's "corruption crackdowns."

Americans value freedom of expression, and that's a good thing, but at the end of the day we have no real choice but to elect a Republican or a Democrat and our media is remarkably complacent and docile. I'd say the vast majority of our media are akin to BuzzFeed for government propaganda, and the rest are too chronically under-funded or intellectually out to lunch (e.g. conspiranoids) to make any difference. I highly doubt the condition of our media is an accident. The public is free to converse, but most of that talk is impotent.

I'm really not familiar with any large-scale society that is not an oligarchy. That being said, some are pragmatically better places to live than others. I'd rather live in the USA or another Western "democracy" than in most other places. Soft nuanced mechanisms of control generally don't kill you or send you to camps.

dragonwriter2• 11 years ago

American media call Mugabe a dictator and call Cameroon's President a "chief of state", but both countries hold the same kind of elections.

"Chief of state" and "dictator" are orthogonal descriptions. "Chief of state" describes the ceremonial head of any state, whether or not they are actually the head of government, and whether or not they are elected, and whether or not they exercise dictatorial power.

"Dictator" refers to anyone exercising dictatorial power, whether or not they are also the chief of state (its possible, particularly, for a dictator to be head of government in a system with a separate head of government and chief of state, as might happen in a military junta in a state with a ceremonial monarch.)

pagnotta2• 11 years ago

I know that very well. The same goes for the term "President". I didn't say the terms are mutually exclusive, the point is the way they choose the terms to describe those considered allies and those considered enemies.

bostonpete• 11 years ago

I think the strong negative opinions by many when issues like this come up is tied to how highly, in general, Americans value freedom of expression. The rationale for this is that no matter what injustices may be present in society at least if we can discuss them in open forums, there's reason to hope that the injustices can be corrected. China, with its track record of stifling expression and even attempting to write unfortunate events out of history (e.g. Tienanmen Square) has consistently trampled over what many Americans consider to be the most critical safeguard protecting people from a government that acts badly.

eva1984• 11 years ago

Not Entirely True.

Possibly, mainland China is the second last countries in the world, next only to North Korea, where hacker news audience wants to live.

NO INTERNET. End of story.

Disclaimer: Chinese.

ThisIBereave• 11 years ago

I lived in China for 6 months and saw plenty of cops with guns and saw undercover cops roughly throw around a street vendor who had gotten too close to the forbidden city for their liking. Your view here seems to be willfully obscured.

Having your opinion formed by the media is a necessity of living in a world where you can't get first hand information for everything, i.e. a constraint imposed by reality. the difference is that in the west you can choose what media you want to pay attention to, and the media itself is free to report what it wants.

virtuabhi• 11 years ago

If media is free, then why is Glenn Greenwald in Brazil and Laura Poitras in Berlin?

[0] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2797916/filmmaker-di...

malandrew2• 11 years ago

Go to Xinjiang. Many of the police there carried automatic weapons. It was basically an occupied country AFAICT. This was back in 2006. I don't know how things are today. I reckon that the policy of "ethnic cleansing by dilution" might have changed things, at least in Urumqi. Kashgar I reckon has the same occupied country vibe.

JeremyMorgan3• 11 years ago

This isn't the craziest idea in the world. Trolls can be distracting and a ton of garbage to discussions. This isn't one of those "evil Chinese laws" in my opinion.

But I guess I'm posting this as someone using their legal name so there's that.

freehunter2• 11 years ago

Someone trolling an Internet discussion board shouldn't result in a federal law removing all privacy from everyone. The trolls might stop, but what about government critics who are now being silenced because they will be killed if they reveal their real name?

You might not have to worry about your government breaking down your door if you post something negative about your politicians. Some people in other countries do.

JeremyMorgan3• 11 years ago

While that's a good point I'm just playing devil's advocate here. It's probably among the least crazy things China has done.

By the way thanks people who disagree with me for the downvotes. Cause that's what they're designed for.

malandrew2• 11 years ago

I wonder if this regulation will also apply to government sock puppets.

yongjik• 11 years ago

South Korea tried that several years ago. The outcome was (well, apart from gross restriction of freedom of expression) that every small and large websites were legally required to ask for people's personal identifying information and store it somewhere. There were several popular incidents where millions of people's information were hacked, and who knows how many incidents were there that wasn't publicized.

These days it's safe to assume that the name and Residential Registration Number of pretty much every South Korean is floating somewhere in China. (Well, at least the law is gone now...)

Glad that China is following our lead.</sarcasm>

China tightens Web controls; commenters must register real names

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