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China on the Brink — of Winning
I posted recently about the important and perhaps even consequential protests in China. I noted in a comment elsewhere that one of the videos had been age-restricted. Well, here’s one of the channels I linked to from there also noting in a tweet that their video had been age-restricted. This is not the same video or even the same channel I noted in my earlier comment.
As the world watched China erupt in protest today, YouTube once again censored our coverage. Our episode on the enormous protests at Foxconn was age-restricted, essentially killing the viewership. No reason was given. This is a travesty @TeamYouTube #Chinahttps://t.co/FhKONGcFDm pic.twitter.com/UTy6j7TLg8
— China Uncensored (@ChinaUncensored) November 28, 2022
This was the first time I had seen a China Insights video age-restricted, and now for the first time I can recall, a China Uncensored video has been age-restricted. Why does this matter? Age restrictions kill video uptake in the first few days, which is make or break for visibility — never mind demonetization. It’s not about the kids, although they matter — I do not have a Google account at all, so I cannot “log in” to YouTube to view age-restricted videos. That’s their system working as designed; gotta give something to get something right? I’m not willing to live with Google around my neck any more than I have to.
So Apple has turned off a key peer-to-peer file-sharing ability for users in China; one which the Chinese protesters (dare I say, freedom fighters?) have been using to circumvent the otherwise all-seeing, all-controlling CCP.
I have no doubt that Apple feels they have little choice in this — Apple’s phones and laptops are built in China, despite some recent, limited moves away from there. iPhones are now built in India, but crucially, only for the Indian market. Apple is already having massive trouble with their Foxconn plants where iPhones are made due to protests and lockdowns in China. Imagine if the CCP gets angry enough with Apple to just keep those plants shuttered. Well, this is why some people say that doing business with, in, or for China is a Bad Deal. Stupid, short-sighted plans do not perform well in the long run.
Google has long been known for its CCP-friendly censorship, even back when its motto was still “Don’t Be Evil.” Cisco built the Great Firewall of China, and of Iran, for that matter.
Our Big Tech monopolies are not harmless, not even if you think that privacy is over-rated and that you have nothing to hide. These transnational actors are stateless predators who slurp up information about us while denying us the ability to speak or to be heard. They get away with it because governments around the world depend upon American tech companies to perform their outsourced Big Brother subroutines.
There is not a single tech company that you can trust, but I rank Google in the worst tier, Microsoft in the middle, and Apple as the least objectionable. Yet I still object. Apple is facilitating the CCP’s quashing of the current protests in China.
Oppress Different.
Published in General
Chinese dude not having it:
“These ‘foreign forces’ you keep talking about — do you mean Marx and Engels? Lenin and Stalin?”
It is funny how having dinner with someone is the absolute showstopper, but being in business with a genocidal dictatorship is OK.
It is disheartening to see so many formerly American companies doing the CCP’s dirty work. They should be ashamed.
Ha! FoxConn was going to put offices in Our Fail City, but the lefties around here nixed it. “We don’t want a giant corporation setting up shop here! That’s not who we are!”
Meanwhile, as they send jobs away, they extract ever more taxes from the residents.
Is there anyone who thinks that the Commie Government of China is going to collapse because of the protests? How many times have we seen this movie? Citizens under an oppressive government protest, the world gets all misty-eyed and cheers them on. The government, being oppressive, brings out the big guns. Protesters die (or are otherwise overcome by the government). Everything goes back to the unacceptable status quo. Repeat every few years in Iran or China. Seen recently in Canada, The Netherlands, Spain, France, Germany, . . . coming soon to the United States?
When have the citizens won?
1989.
Fair. Name another. ; )
Subscribe to The Epoch Times for the best news reporting out of Communist China.
1947 (India) but you are right it is very rare. At least very rare without a civil war and foreign intervention.
Interesting. I reverse that order.
Apple runs an extremely strict walled garden for all of its products.
Microsoft has built some fences around the home editions of Windows, and low curbs around the professional/business editions, but you can run still run any darn software you like on your machines. (They tried an Apple-style lock down of the ARM Surface product line and thereby killed it.)
Google has some fences around Android, but you can still opt-out of those fences and install what you like, and since they’ve open-sourced it, you can run alternatives. The only truly locked-down Google platform is the ChromeBook line.
Doesn’t China have such a huge demographic problem that even if they became “free and democratic” TODAY they would still have to at least largely collapse, before they could POSSIBLY recover?
Already happened Jan 6. in embryonic form.
See this.
Well, I can *clearly* not drink from the cup before me.
FIFY.
Great OP!
Different threat.
Apple has built a reasonably secure data exfiltration pipe. Microsoft’s is buggy and leaky, but they run the OS and apps not only on the workstation / home PC, but at the office and the government’s servers as well. Google weaponized the whole internet and continues to push for “updated” protocols which benefit them and leave everybody else out (FLOC etc). Only the Cisco types are deeper. Google by running search and video hubs is also able to push the most effectively for propaganda purposes, regardless of client OS or app.
Apple is doing an interesting (horrifying) end-run by leveraging the ubiquitous iDevices. No headphone jack means bluetooth is always on, and anything that radiates a MAC address is beacon uniquely identifying you. Now with BTLE (which cannot be turned off no matter what), the entire iDevice infrastructure amounts to Apple’s private mesh network for tracking people — but this is a developing situation. While this is new and awful, Google still hands-down wins the surveillance and exfiltration game.
Okay … which one of you wiseguys is smuggling bullhorns into China?
Google ands Apple are still hosting that Chinese spyware known as TikTok, but Evil Incarnate Elon Musk unbanned the Babylon Bee, so Twitter has to go.
1989 wasn’t just one case or one country. I don’t know the exact number, but there were more than two dozen communist countries where the people spoke, protested, and upended their own governments. Overall, communism has been instituted in 46 countries so far. Every one of them has failed spectacularly except in – China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos.
Sure, but in recent memory? For example, what effect did the Trucker protest have on Canada’s drift toward Totalitarianism. None that I can tell. In fact, we had people right here on Ricochet condemning those protests. seems like these days you try to save people from commie dictators and they don’t want to be saved. They’d rather be kept citizens.
But they were blocking the roads, damnit! At least the commies keep the roads open!
Dinner with “someone” hahaha. You are the best
TDS rears its ugly head again.
Anyone saying that you think dinner with a racist is worse than aiding China in mass murder is not interested in right and wrong, only virtual signaling.
Thanks for the clarification on what sort if person you are.
You keep moving the goalposts, but for what it’s worth, the latest successful protests or revolutions were – 2018 Armenian Velvet Revolution resulting in the ouster of their prime minister, 2018-2019 Sudanese Revolution which resulted in the ouster of their president, 2014 The Abkhazia Revolution which resulted in the ouster of its president, 2014 was also when the Ukrainian “Maiden Revolution” resulted in the ouster of President Yanukovich and the removal and prosecution of a bunch of his ministers, along with release of all political prisoners and reforms of government.
Sri Lanka – last March.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lOa1OoIxxfA
Not really. My point is not to get too excited when a bunch of fed up citizens take to the streets in China or Iran. Because the usual result is that they get mowed down and everything returns to the status quo.
Well, you originally said that none of these protests ever work. Granted, that is usually the case, but repressive regimes do not last. They eventually collapse because of their own corruption and dissatisfaction among the populace. It may not happen soon, but I expect China will eventually implode.
And Mussolini made the trains run on time!! sarcasm
I just don’t see things going the other way without violent civil war. Here, Canada, Europe, China, Iran, . . . everywhere.
In Europe there may have been a period after the fall of the Commies where they were relatively free. But then those countries hooked themselves to the EU, and now technocrats in Brussels oppress them.
There is no peaceful exit.