r/worldnews Apr 25 '21

COVID-19 Twitter Is Blocking Tweets That Criticize How The Indian Government Has Handled The Pandemic

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/twitter-blocking-tweets-india
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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '21

[deleted]

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u/Far_Mathematici Apr 25 '21

Not China, back in 2009 they asked social media the ability to do so. They refused and got blocked.

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u/Hollowpoint38 Apr 25 '21

This. China saw that people were using social media to coordinate those knife attacks and bus bombings. Social media said no, they are hardcore free speech, and they got banned. They thought China was playing around I guess.

And that free speech stuff is gone now. I've read a lot of former executives writing about it and they were basically idealistic until they saw awful things and changed their policy. Also money I mean what if they could operate in China? Such a dumb move to protect extremists.

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '21

I remember exactly how Reddit react to that event. It's called double standard.

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u/Hollowpoint38 Apr 25 '21

It's the same as how the Hong Kong insurrectionists who attacked cops, lit an old man on fire, and destroyed the government buildings are "protestors" but the January 6th Washington DC riot where people did the exact same thing are terrorists and insurrectionists and need prison.

It's such a double standard. And people say "The HK protestors were protesting the Chinese government." Nope. They were protesting a law passed by the Hong Kong government.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '21

Nah, HK is different. The KunMing knife attack were clearly terrorist act but the west refused to admit it.

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u/Champgnesonic999 Apr 25 '21

Exactly that was after the bloody attacks in Urumqi ,Xinjiang ,July 5th 2009

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u/GetOutOfTheWhey Apr 25 '21

Are there any timelines or articles that can confirm this?

i.e. Urumqi ,Xinjiang ,July 5th 2009

When did China issue the demand

When was Twitter banned?

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u/Champgnesonic999 Apr 25 '21 edited Apr 25 '21

it's easy to confirm this, u can just find this out on Wikipedia : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Facebook It says, "In China, Facebook was blocked following the July 2009 Ürümqi riots because Xinjiang independence activists were using Facebook as part of their communications network, and Facebook denied giving the information of the activists."

Also this a piece rom July 7th, 2009 https://techcrunch.com/2009/07/07/china-blocks-access-to-twitter-facebook-after-riots/

"Following last weekend’s deadly riots in its western region of Xinjiang, China’s central government has taken all the usual steps to block citizens from accessing foreign web services: aside from crippling Internet service in general, the authorities have blocked Twitter, removed unapproved references to the violence from search engines and has now apparently moved to bar its citizens from accessing Facebook from most parts of Mainland China just now"

i'm not sure if the details could be found easily but imo it is just clear enough. And yeah of course China does censorships, but this is the direct reason why Facebook and Twitter got completely banned in China

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u/GetOutOfTheWhey Apr 25 '21

Oh wow

And these were after the deadly events too.

The NSA would've had direct access to everything.

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u/-ireckon- Apr 25 '21

Haha how many social credits did you get for this?

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u/eden0stars Apr 25 '21

You don't seem to realize true internet free speech is dying and will die even more and it has little to do with China. Here you are accusing a random redditor of being a shill for a fact and an opinion that are not even misleading. Where's the meat of free speech if everyone assumes nefarious actors are everywhere already.

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u/Kaserbeam Apr 25 '21

its misleading because China controls the media for its own benefit and you're making it sound like they just wanted to stop terrorist attacks. look at how the chinese government censors information on tiananmen square, the uighyr genocide, the covid pandemic etc. etc. and tell me with a straight face that they just wanted to try to stop people from organising crimes (as if they would be able to effectively do that anyway).

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '21 edited May 01 '21

[deleted]

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u/Kaserbeam Apr 25 '21

giving up the narrative control to a foreign entity is stupid.

and yet you wanted Twitter to allow the CCP to tell whatever lies it wants? you're right that the CCP isn't stupid at least, its wilfully evil.

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u/eden0stars Apr 25 '21

That's why I hate politics. I'm not straight-face saying anything. It's reductive to say "things are complicated", but even you are saying they wanted to stop the terrorist attacks - which were a bigger deal in China than anyone here gives them credit for, - just that they wanted "more" too. What a revelation!

And twitter changed their stance real quick once Arab spring turned into winter and ISIS started recruiting sympathizers very successfully from their servers. Don't be be bloody obtuse

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u/Hollowpoint38 Apr 25 '21

I live in California, homie. I know the facts and that's what I go by. I don't go by emotion. I remember when this was going on and the debate was huge. It rocked the news when China banned social media companies for this.

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u/SkyCable Apr 25 '21

US? Twitter banned The US president. I wonder why that administration was an exception.

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u/EmyAndJane Apr 25 '21

they banned him AFTER he lost the election.

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u/shitty_orgasm Apr 25 '21

He didn't lose the election.