- someone@lemmy.todayEnglish3 hours
There are so many speech restrictions and humans rights violations in China that scare the hell out of me, but then I see rulings like this and their progress on robotics and tech and I think “Well, they are doing something right…” I hope one day there is more free speech for people in China who deserve to be able to say what they want.
It’s a great ruling because companies that would normally favor efficiency and profit increases are in a better position to take these existing workers and utilize them in different ways than just have everyone fired en masse and then somehow the market will sort it out. Even under classical economic theories, governments are supposed to regulate externalities and AI displacing workers too rapidly could be considered a type of externality.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
50 minutesThere are so many speech restrictions and humans rights violations in China that scare the hell out of me
I hear an earful about how horrible and repressive the Chinese state government is to its citizens from the outside, largely by national media talking heads and Big Data surveillance company flaks. Meanwhile, the consequences of talking shit on the Chinese internet - account suspension/deactivation, getting in trouble with your employer/school possibly with the threat of firing/expulsion, periodic investigation by state police for threats of violence, possible restrictions on business/travel because you’ve been added to a “watch list”, potential for arrest on some bullshit charge - seem to be all the same kinds of consequences periodically doled out to western citizens.
I’m told Americans have “free speech”. But then the Supreme Court lays so many caveats down that even a silly toothless joke is strictly prohibited under US laws. I’m told Chinese officials are brutal and draconian and mean-spirited, but they don’t have anything approaching our prison population. I haven’t seen evidence of any kind of mob-rule social media gang dedicated to doxing Chinese dissidents, either. So they manage to stay ahead of Canary Mission and Project Veritas in that regard.
I hope one day there is more free speech for people in China who deserve to be able to say what they want.
I want to know what that’s supposed to look like in practice. Where can I find the Free Speech that the Evil Foreign Country is supposed to one day get?
Because if the dream is an American style system of free expression… What are we pinning for, really? Chinese Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson? Uyghurs given the Palestine Action treatment? An independent Taiwan that enjoys all the diplomatic kindness we afford to our neighbors down in Haiti and Cuba?
What are we even asking for?
- FlyingCircus@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
It’s crazy that a country with no free speech has tens of thousands of protests every year.
- kiagam@lemmy.worldEnglish55 minutes
I saw that protests are free as long as they are against the local government. People can complain online and in-person against local authorities and demand central government step in to save them, too. But if the rethoric starts going to “central government is wrong”, then it gets supressed
dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
44 minutesI heard online that it’s illegal to be against Christianity in America, as well as it being illegal to be against fascism, or ‘anti fascist’ in the USA as you’ll be labelled a domestic terrorist. I heard in America that the cops won’t kill you if you are a white person walking at night but not if you are a black teenager. I heard in America that the government will allow your father to shoot you until you die if you disagree with him politically but ask to see his gun. I heard in America you will be killed by the government for being
homelesspoor and there’s nothing anyone will do about it.But America is where freedom is. If you live in any conditions freer than that, you are actually in a less free country than America because actually America is actually freer than any other country actually.
- kiagam@lemmy.worldEnglish45 minutes
I understand the parallel, but all you said can be confirmed or denied by several sources I have access to. I don’t have alternative sources for most of the claims about China. Could you provide them? When I read about these things, it seemed trustworthy.
Also, I’m not even american, chill. I am not chinese either, I don’t have a horse in this race. Both can burn in nuclear winter as far as I care
dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
43 minutesby several sources I have access to
Does your government limit your access to any sources?
But also all of those things are true and verifiable. That’s freedom in America baby—free to be rich and if you’re not filthy rich and just middle class or above you’re good as long as you’re white and male. Not so free for many other people.
- kiagam@lemmy.worldEnglish38 minutes
What I mean by “have access to” is that information about china is scarce unless you are reading in chinese and talking to chinese people. I will be visiting there later this year btw and have family that goes frequently for business, but that doesn’t really show political reality
- kiagam@lemmy.worldEnglish40 minutes
No, third world country that doesn’t give a shit and isn’t technically capable of doing anything to that scale (maybe I saw a DNS block once? And only on the ISP DNS)
- vagrancyand@sh.itjust.worksEnglish3 hours
It’s almost as if the speech restrictions and human rights violations are grossly exaggerated or entirely misreported by companies that are exclusively funded by the US intelligence community. . .
Don’t get me wrong, some still do exist (especially on the company side of things). Since, you know, it’s a country consisting of 1/7th of humanity; but equally it’s pretty silly to think 1/7th of humanity is too stupid to do anything about a single supposedly hyper repressive government that allegedly doesn’t let them speak against it.
- IndustryStandard@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
You mean like how the West mashes people skulls in for holding a banner against genocide?
- humanamerican@lemmy.zipEnglish2 hours
I bet in China you can talk about the genocide in Gaza without getting beaten, jailed, or deported.
pelya@lemmy.worldEnglish
1 hourTry saying
Tibeton a bus stop, and watch your ass getting hauled to the nearest police station in like 30 seconds.- humanamerican@lemmy.zipEnglish57 minutes
Perhaps. And if not that, I’m sure there are other forbidden topics there.
Just like in the West.
The difference is that the West pretends to care about free speech and even uses it as an excuse to bomb/sanction/invade other countries.
- FlyingCircus@lemmy.worldEnglish5 hours
I would kill to live in a country like China that optimizes its economy for use value over exchange value.
- 4 hours
Honey, I used to live there, and I hate to burst your bubble, but there’s a huge HUGE difference between what China says and does.
- VeryFrugal@sh.itjust.worksEnglish2 hours
Tankies call you out for
patronizingwhen literally every single comment ever by tankies on Lemmy are patronizing and calling out people for “being brainwashed capitalistic libs”. Yikes. - FlyingCircus@lemmy.worldEnglish3 hours
I’ve heard from many other Chinese people who say the opposite, so I’m gonna go ahead and press X to doubt.
Edit: I also don’t really care what someone with enough resources to emigrate has to say. I’m more concerned with ordinary workers, who have a 90%+ approval rating of the CCP.
- Saffire@sh.itjust.worksEnglish2 hours
I agree with everything you posted except I have to also press X to doubt on your claim of 90%+ approval ratings amongst ordinary workers. You can’t get 90 percent of people to agree on anything else in the world, except the CCP? It just doesn’t compute as a real number for me I guess. But I’d love to be proven wrong.
- FlyingCircus@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
Here’s an article from the Harvard Gazette talking about the surveys. The approval rating was 95.5% and notably, Harvard did not dispute the accuracy of the findings or have issue with the methodology of the survey.
- Doomsider@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
What do the rural poor in China think of their new billionaire class and their ever increasing wealth gap?
- FlyingCircus@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
They probably hate it, but are glad that they have the CCP to prevent them from gaining political power as well as economic power.
- Doomsider@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
The CCP are the wealthy people in control. Those are some good mental gymnastics.
- humanamerican@lemmy.zipEnglish2 hours
If those policies aren’t enforced it hardly matters. 996 is technically illegal there but last I checked some of the richest companies in China were still practicing it.
Happy to be shown evidence to the contrary, but I don’t think the plight of Chinese workers is better than Americans, and certainly not Europeans.
- 5 hours
This one policy is better in this extremely superficial description.
Neither country has workers rights on par with Europe for example.
- 4 hours
Neither country has workers rights on par with Europe for example.
For now. Now watch us fuck it all up.
- vagrancyand@sh.itjust.worksEnglish3 hours
Europe has executed CEO’s for violating their worker’s human rights?
- vagrancyand@sh.itjust.worksEnglish16 minutes
Murder is when crimes against humanity are prosecuted. You’re so smart.
- Doomsider@lemmy.worldEnglish6 minutes
Hey, if you cool with human rights violations and state sanctioned murder that is on you.
- 4 hours
Did you even hear about America’s Apple’s Foxconn factory in China where the factory has nets on the windows to stop the frequent ‘inconvenient’ problem of cheap labor workers attempts of window jump suicides, for example? Co-operative structure (worker-owned) companies have more likelihood to have more human policies to, uh, themselves, than ponzi scheme corporations. Despite a fancy socialist (‘communist’) sounding title of government structure, Russia and China both took International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans, with their conditions of worker rights suffocation policies and market concentration monopolization policies. America’s and China’s feudalist monopolist billionaires have a lot more proximity of ideology than either of their propaganda machines has acknowledged so far.
- BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.todayEnglish3 hours
Yeah, I know about all of that, and they still have a better working environment than Americans.
As China has prospered, they have managed to reduce most poverty in their nation. As we have prospered under MAGA, Americans’ quality of life is decreasing, and the slide is increasing. China is going the right way, we are definitely going the wrong way.
I’m not saying that China doesn’t have issues, but they are still committed to the betterment of their country’s future, while American leaders are ONLY concerned with exploiting our country and it’s people to the absolute maximum degree. They don’t want to leave one illegal penny on the table.
I don’t want to be China, but I don’t want to be MAGAMERICA either.
- Doomsider@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
Typical Chinese factory workers have 10-12 hour shifts 6 days a week. Many workers literally live at the factory. Sounds way better than the US or Europe.
- 11 hours
It just means they have to write “mistakes” or “performance issues” on the paperwork instead of “replaced by robots”
- liuther9@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
You massively underestimate the efficiency of Chinese social policies.
- boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish6 hours
996 is not legal either and yet many companies did that. I’m sure many still do, it’s a hypercapitalist country just like the US.
- hahattpro@lemmy.worldEnglish10 hours
Step 1: give unrealistic KPI, cited performance increase due to AI Step 2: put employee into PIP Step 3: fire employee due to performance Step 4: do stock buyback because you have extra budget from firing employees
- 10 hours
I’m not sure about step 4. I mean, China is pretty strict with those kinds of things.
- Spacehooks@reddthat.comEnglish10 hours
Step 5: hire employee back as part of expansion plan and because AI did it poorly.
lechekaflan@lemmy.worldEnglish
14 hoursJust to save your eyes from being assaulted (had to turn off styling):

Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
14 hoursHow the hell does an article that we can’t even read get so many upvotes.
Stuff like this really shakes my belief in the voting system.
- Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish10 hours
Because hate for AI is so blind that you can post anything and people will immediately fall for it.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
5 hoursMy take as well.
Was recently “assaulted” by a load of China-stans. So I assume this is similar pro-china (neutral about it) or at least anti-US (positive about that) community upvoting it.- 10 hours
Yeah, I certainly don’t wanna just blindly promote china, they do a lot of things I find abhorrent, but it can’t be denied that they are so much better than the US in a number of areas.
- Barrington@feddit.orgEnglish11 hours
It’s one of those subscription blocks you can get around by selecting reading mode in Firefox.
I’m not sure if it works for other browsers but I was able to read the article.
- qaz@lemmy.worldEnglish10 hours
People only read the title, not the article
You can’t require reading the article before someone vote/comment, but what if communities could enable “ponder voting” where users can only vote 30 seconds after viewing the post? This would prevent people from scrolling by from voting, but people who at least slightly skim the article first won’t be affected.
Probably not viably due to it having to be supported by all platforms, but just a thought.
EDIT: It could work by returning a JWT with a post ID and time when fetching the post and having the vote endpoint support providing it. Although, I can also see it being a bit annoying and being trivially bypassed by adding some code to the client.
Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
16 hoursI’m not going to hand my money to that paywall on such an overstimulating website riddled with AI.
China (its court, anyways) is a civil law jurisdiction (i.e. precedent doesn’t exist too much) so I’m curious what law’s letter is being applied here.
- Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish9 hours
Strange to see China of all places to be societal ahead of everyone else.
- iglou@programming.devEnglish9 hours
Not really to be honest. They’re an authoritarian regime, but they do a lot of social policies. It’s a weird mix but not a new one.
- FlyingCircus@lemmy.worldEnglish5 hours
It’s not nearly as authoritarian as people like to claim. Chinese citizens hold tens of thousands of protests each year against a wide variety of topics, and the government is legally required to respond to them. As a consequence, the Chinese government is orders of magnitude more responsive to local corruption or abuses of power than almost any western country.
- iglou@programming.devEnglish4 hours
It absolutely is. Have a look at the definition of authoritarianism, China checks all the boxes.
Amnesigenic@lemmy.mlEnglish
3 hoursLiterally all governments are definitionally authoritarian, it’s a stupid criticism
- iglou@programming.devEnglish2 hours
Absolutely not! I encourage you to re-read the definition of authoritarianism and research a bit more about the governments all around the world!
- iglou@programming.devEnglish1 hour
Ah! So you consider that every single restriction a country applies makes it authoritarian. Yeah, I don’t think you understand authoritarianism, and in today’s context, that’s dangerous.
But I won’t lose sleep over it!
- kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish9 hours
Turns out when you run a government like a corporation properly, you can think about long-term profits instead of only next quarter. It isn’t fully-automated luxury gay space communism, but it’s a hell of a lot better than neoliberalism.
- prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish3 hours
Turns out when you run a government like a corporation properly
This is not what China has done though…
Stop trying to launder this “run the government like a corporation” garbage
- kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish2 hours
In the sense that they’re maximizing (tax) revenue by investing in infrastructure, maintaining a strict hierarchy, and so on, not the Reaganite destroying it and selling it off for parts.
- Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish9 hours
It is indeed a weird mix in China, but I had not expected this one. Its a law that could be useful everywhere, even though it is hard to prove.
- anon_8675309@lemmy.worldEnglish6 hours
One has to wonder if they do this to influence USA. I mean it’s china, they do whatever they want to people.
- Atomic@sh.itjust.worksEnglish4 hours
Believe it or not, but everything is not about the US. Sometimes countries decide on policies without a single thought as to what the US thinks about it
- prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish3 hours
I’m far from a China cheerleader, but they lifted billions of people out of abject poverty over the course of like 20 years.
Or do you think that was also somehow about the US?
- WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.todayEnglish9 hours
I don’t need a fuckton of money to conquer the world, I have ideas. Not that I would.














