Post #1717220

2026-04-26 10:09 UTC

The firewall was created to foster and protect China’s fledgling digital infrastructure and data sovereignty. Many countries regulate foreign platforms and data flows. China built its own ecosystem instead of depending on foreign companies. We have seen what happens when foreign platforms operate without local oversight: Facebook facilitating genocide in Myanmar, coordinated anti-vax disinformation campaigns in Southeast Asia, algorithm-driven radicalization. The firewall makes those kinds of external influence operations harder or close to impossible to run at scale. I support it and so do many others as the alternative is plain to see. Also everyone has a VPN we’re not living in ignorance it is in fact people like yourself who are massively ignorant about us and our country.

Replies (1)

@khannie@lemmy.world 2026-04-26 10:51

I’ve been to your country. Many times. The ignorance call out holds no weight for me. I’ve lived the online surveillance and lack of access to sites or services I wanted. Hell even SSH connections are speed limited and frequently get a TCP reset to mess with them. Why? Because they can tunnel HTTP traffic. Not everyone has a VPN (keep arguing for paying for a foreign service for internet access though) and you continuously avoid talking about how end to end encryption is not an option while touting “real democracy” which is laughable and not the point we were discussing which is your assertion that online surveillance in China is no worse than elsewhere. It is measurably worse. Lack of end to end encrypted messaging is fundamentally bad in my viewpoint. All arguments against allowing it pale in comparison to the chilling effect it has on open discourse, hell even between a wife and husband. Head onto Weibo there and call for “Western style democracy” (even if you don’t agree with it) or criticise the handling of Tianenmen in 1989 and see how quickly you get shut down. It’s not just surveillance, it’s control. I’m all for digital sovereignty but let’s not pretend there isn’t a massive, massive control element to the lack of freedom there. If you try to argue that I’m afraid our discussion is at an end as I can’t take that viewpoint seriously.

Open ##1725315