this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2026
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"non authoritarian governments are known to implement mass firewalls and online surveillance"
Every country should be blocking the US surveillance giants, its extremely naive for countries to be letting facebook, twitter, reddit, and google operate unhindered.
There' no such thing as a "non-authoritarian" state or other myths like the tooth-fairy, but even if they existed, then it'd be hard to argue that letting the US surveillance state operate freely within your borders is somehow "non-authoritarian". The US is more likely than any other country to use the intelligence they've gained learned to harm you physically. See the Phoenix Program.
Literally every government with the capability to control information is doing that, and frankly the rise of bleach-injecting covid denialist flat earth tradwife inflluencers has proven China right to do so.
From Merriam-Webster
" of authoritarian
1 relating to, or favoring blind submission to [authority].
2 relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people
So like, objectively not China? Because their ruling party consists of 90 million members and they're constantly debating shit? And their cops don't even have guns like ours do?
It's been over 100 million since 2024
104 milliion last I checked.
Would a non-aurhoritarian government be able to institute a one-child policy like China?
Given the vagueness of your definition, yes absolutely.
I don't see how "blind submission to authority" could be any more clear cut than it is.
Explain to me what that actually means, what "blind submission" actually entails. You're just going off of vibes
Yes, of course they could. Individual people make the decision to practice birth control every day, and a vast democratic assembly of millions voted in by their peers can make that decision as well. Meanwhile in the US, reproductive policy is dictated by nine unelected ministers: an objectively far less democratic process, yet our media never describes the US government as "authoritarian." Because it's not a term meant to usefully delineate important differences in form and function, it's a vibes based epithet meant to be wielded against geopolitical enemies of capitalism. It's a thought-terminating cliche, deployed highly selectively against anti-imperialist societies to artificially cast proletarian authority as uniquely evil while tacticly normalizing the authority of billionaires and corporations.
In practice, authoritarianism is when you are objectively more democratic in function and policy than western countries, but commit the cardinal sin of using that authority to safeguard your sovereignty, people and resources from the inhumanity of global capitalism.
Yes, but those are entirely voluntary. The point is that a government should have no say in reproduction whatsoever. That is why campaigns to change the cratering birthrate have failed.
That's cool that you can have that opinion from your position of being one doordash order away from having food to eat, but if you were an elected representative of a society that had to build itself up under seige after a century of colonial pillaging and a world war that devastated your economic and food infrastructure and killed millions of people, you might actually have to engage with the brutal reality of famine and underdevelopment, with the unavoidable questions of survival. If the Palestinian Resistance manages to secure it's territory to administer, they will have to engage with these questions to. Will you simply write them off as "authoritarians", and dismiss those who support their struggle as "simping for authoritarians"?
Lol such a tired argument. If you get to fucking assume shit about others (aka build a strawman) then the rest of us get to do it to you.
You’re not even worth giving the time to read that whole thing. The moment you clapped off about fucking doordash you made yourself irrelevant.
If you think you're being super dismissive with the 'not worth my time to read' bit, you should it's now well into being an overused Internet trope that makes one look childish and lazy.
You have no response to the fact that the work of building society requires engagement with reality, so would rather attack the person pointing it out on the grounds of some imaginary debate rules. Your desire to avpid thinking about the actual conditions of reality is transparent and cripples your ability to understand the world and why things happen in it.
i love that it has the caveat in the second definition abt a constitution. like, no guys, totslly not us, look at this definition we created to show how we arent authoritarian
You clearly don't understand the purpose of the firewall and the online surveillance is no more than any other country but at least our government is accountable to us as opposed to owned by capital.
Are they accountable to you or to party members?
To us. There's a reason that even from Harvard's research the government has a 95+% approval.
Direct elections reach the township and county levels where voters choose deputies to local people's congresses. These grassroots deputies constitute the overwhelming majority of all deputies nationwide. Advancement to higher levels requires proven service at lower rungs, ensuring every national deputy has worked up from local material conditions and remains accountable to the masses below.
Grassroots legislative liaison stations and community consultation channels ensure mass input shapes policy at every stage, making democracy a daily practice not a periodic (meaningless) ritual. Whole-process people's democracy embeds consultation and pilot programs into governance: policies are tested locally, refined through mass feedback, then scaled nationally. This grounds decisions in what we want and need.
All 55 ethnic minorities hold guaranteed representation in the NPC. Farmers and labourers comprise roughly 15% of deputies while professionals and technical personnel make up the remainder.
Even besides all that if you just look at what the Chinese government does as opposed to those owned by capital. Mass poverty alleviation, anticorruption at all levels, massive investment in socially profitable but monetarily unprofitable public services, deflating the housing bubble. These are not the actions of a government only looking out for a select few.
And also the CPC has over 100million members since 2024 that 1 in 14 people are party members not to mind those who aren't but are active in consulting due to their position such as most engineers and scientists.
You should be skeptical of any poll or survey that presents that level of agreement on anything with that breadth of societal implications.
How do you square the whole Hong Kong protests in regards to the extradition laws? Or the aggression towards Taiwan?
Just because the anglosphere is a socioeconomic nightmare realm of genocide, immiseration and omnipresent propaganda where everyone is at each other's throats doesn't mean everywhere else is too.
What you're saying is you want to be suspicious of data that paints other places in a better light than us, because it makes you feel bad. You then rationalize this desire as "wisdom" while continuing to apply it selectively against societies your government has told you to hate.
Oh, I assure you, I have no red tinted glasses for my home. We are run by a decaying orange pedophile and his fascist sycophants.
That means I'm less inclined to trade one set of unaccountable "elites" for another just because they don't like each other.
China is a state capitalist society that has the very same problem the US does. Overproduction of a group of "elites (parasites)" that need more and more power and wealth so they can get more power and more wealth.
Chinas actions towards the HK protestors and towards Taiwan indicates they are imperialist, which is a non starter for me already.
I was born and raised here. The VPN is for the firewall which has many reasons to exist and I support, also they're not illegal. Criticising the government is super common but mostly over mundane stuff because that's what people care about (there's a reason the approval even according to Harvard is 95+%). You people are always so arrogant while being so uninformed it's amazing.
Making a statement that online surveillance there is no different from elsewhere will get you that kind of response tbh. It is measurably worse.
It simply isn't. Remember snowden? The NSA? TAO? Pegasus? Our government is simply more open and honest with us (might be a side effect of having real democracy as opposed to a charade put on by bought candidates every 4 years). Also before you say that's just America, Europe are American vassal states all of these and more (since this is just what has leaked) are deployed against Europeans too and intel is shared in deals like five eyes.
The method of voting isn't what makes it real democracy it's the class content of the state and the fact that voting is a ritual for representatives that will only ever serve capital as opposed to voting being a single part of a daily system of feedback and interaction with deputies embedded in the grassroots situation who need accomplishments (to solve our problems) to go for higher offices. There's a reason the number of billionaires in China is shrinking while public services and social safety nets are constantly seeing investment while in Europe and America austerity for the masses and tax cuts for the rich is law.
Nice vibes sort of redundant when they have backdoors on every piece of technology deployed their or the fact that most end to end encrypted messages are some mix of lying and insecure like WhatsApp.
I hate to break it to you but if the government want to see that titty pic if it's on either of your phones or any other device they can and likely have.
Again remember snowden? If you live in the western hemisphere the US and Israeli intelligence apparatus owns all of your tech that's the unfortunate truth you need to reckon with.
If we work off the assumption that signal is secure then not without a court order where I live.
Not quite the same in China.
Edit: Awwww. The mods are removing my posts now. Bless their fragile hearts.
Since that's happening I'm out now. It's been an interesting discussion though I fundamentally disagree that surveillance there is the same as everywhere else. I've made my points. Catch you again o/
Yes the EuroAmerican intelligence apparatus famous for obeying court orders and never being outed by whistleblowers for running massive illegal spying and data harvesting operations. Are you trolling?
You fundamentally disagree because you're a chauvinist and an idiot
It's clearly true you are just stating things that are untrue but you feel must be because you are a chauvinist. And you are an idiot as you look past the very clearly documented history of the EuroAmerikan surveillance apparatus and pretend it's not real and if it is real it's bound by your laws etc etc. Hence you are a chauvinist and an idiot.
Fallacy fallacy. So epic owned. Fucking loser Reddit debate bro. Genuinely impressively arrogant while being so uninformed and apparently genuinely unintelligent.
Loving the irony. Thanks for the laughs.
"I'm actually laughing"
Projection: Rare vance incident, usa.
Wrong, but you keep on keeping on.
Bring it on. Disprove the rare vance incident, or prove your bullshit claims about WeChat. If you can do neither, it's a clear case of projection.
WeChat uses transport encryption but not end to end. This is well known. If you're unwilling to search here's an article.
Here's another.
And another (this one's from citizen lab and a reasonably technical dive).
There's no end to them tbh.
If you can find me anything that says WeChat uses E2E anywhere I'll read it but they don't even claim that themselves so I think you'll be hard pressed.
Here's a list of blocked phrases on WeChat.
I honestly have no idea what you're banging on about with the Vance thing. I'm not from the USA which I assumed was your assertion.
I didn't ask you to prove anything about e2e. I asked you to prove that "something bad happens to you when you use pgp in WeChat"
Read about the rare vance incident, what happened there was pretty much what you were so insistent on would happen in china. That's why I assumed you were projecting.
Maybe you were not projecting, that's ok. Maybe you read it in a fiction book. Or it came to you in a dream. Who knows, you certainly won't tell me.
Ah....I didn't say that something bad happens. I said see what happens. It's an important difference...
I wouldn't be comfortable using PGP encrypted messages sent through WeChat if I were there and communicating with a local (and I have been, many times). I would be very, very concerned about getting them in trouble. End to end encryption is not tolerated in China and using PGP would essentially bring that so I would consider it a significant risk. It's speculative, I'll admit that no problem but as I say I wouldn't do it.
That's my threat model. The fact that end to end doesn't exist in China should tell you everything you need to know about deep rooted state level surveillance there. It does to me but if you think that in general all messaging providers should be able to see your text messages for some reason and think that combined with that, all those blocked phrases are not because the state wants control and oversight then your threat model and view of government surveillance (not just in China) is.... different.
I'm glad I live somewhere that I feel free to text my wife on signal and I'm confident it's not being read by anyone. If the day ever comes that stops being the case I'll fight for it because privacy is important to me. Everyone can fuck off out of private conversations between me and my loved ones. They're boring as shite but they're mine and mine alone.
Yeah I'm not aware of the Vance thing but I'll have a search. If you have a link handy I'd appreciate it as it might be hard to find without more context. (Edit: yeah I'm not finding it.)
That block list makes for interesting reading. Worth a look.
Source: it is known
You are literally talking to a Chinese person from China, smug liberal dipshittery knows no bounds