[ashleycole]

I'd say there's one non-violent way to fight back that could significantly hurt China. Host an open source repo on GitHub that highlights China's suppressed history, and use QQ/WeChat/Weibo/etc to spread it to Chinese locals. Do the same for Reddit, and every other western service that isn't blocked in China. (It would likely also help to leave 1-2 star app/play store reviews of WeChat and mention the fact that all private messages/pictures are accessible to the government, and they use the service to limit free speech.)

Imagine how much western companies would suffer if GitHub disappeared overnight. It would quickly become known to the Chinese that a freaking repo containing nothing besides accurate Chinese history was responsible.

If you already obtained a decent reach within Chinese social media apps, then you should consider this: China can easily "shadow-block" certain phrases like tiananmen, hong kong + protest in same message, etc. and you can be certain most of these imagines you find online will also be "shadow-blocked". However, all it takes to beat their current system is to modify a single pixel.

[Sacho]

Before you(or anyone else) commits to this plan, consider that your point of view may not be shared by the chinese people themselves. Your activism may have a negative effect for a variety of reasons - the people you're trying to educate don't have the same values as you, and they don't really see American intervention into local affairs as benevolent and virtuous.

[TeMPOraL]

> the people you're trying to educate don't have the same values as you, and they don't really see American intervention into local affairs as benevolent and virtuous.

Compare all the recent outrage caused by media stories that put the words "Facebook" and "Russia" in the single sentence. Messing with social media of another country is fun until you find yourself on the receiving end, then suddenly it's scandalous.

[srcmap]

Like two teenagers arguing on school yard, the Russian can easily said "you started first":

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...

[abiox]

technically that happened ~10 years before the cold war ended. at that time, both sides were understood to be engaged in various less-than-friendly activities.

post-cold war happenings are things worth focusing on, imo.

[ashleycole]

I'm honestly too scared to do it. Not because I worry I'll be known as the guy who got GitHub banned in China (presumably after the rest of the world had to suffer from the inaccessibility caused by DDOS attacks that would likely last weeks (I mean the DDOS would last weeks, not the inaccessibility)), but because I worry the Chinese government would retaliate on me.

I agree that many Chinese don't share these values (although I do believe most of them choose to sacrifice their freedom because they don't really have a choice, and they feel it's justified by the country's growth), and that many innocent people would suffer. But I feel as long as the repo focus on spreading truthful history, then the government is to blame for whatever negative effect that occurs as a result of this.

[richardknop]

As previous poster I would advise against this. While your intentions might be good it is usually a bad idea to try to intervene in domestic affairs of another country. See Iraq/Iran/Libya/Egypt and other examples from Middle East. You might just anger the local population and fuel anti American sentiment.

Plus also the point about Chinese people not necessarily sharing your western liberal values is a good one. It's not true that western values are universal (they are just a product of our society and history) and perhaps they have slightly different set of values based on their society and history.

[nailer]

> See Iraq/Iran/Libya/Egypt and other examples from Middle East.

The first three were military interventions, very different from fighting censorship. I don't know enough about Egypt/Mubarak to say the level of Western involvement if any.

Also China is interfering in other governments - specifically Taiwan and HK - all the time. *

* Re: HK, China agreed to allow HK people to vote for the leaders by 2017 in return for sovereignty, and did not fulfill this promise, therefore there is no reason to recognize their sovereignty.

[barry-cotter]

> Re: HK, China agreed to allow HK people to vote for the leaders by 2017 in return for sovereignty, and did not fulfill this promise, therefore there is no reason to recognize their sovereignty.

Sure there is, short of nuclear war there’s no way to get the PRC’s government out of Hong Kong.

And the PRC signed a treaty with the U.K., and the U.K.’s signature on a treaty is dirt. They guaranteed the indivisibility and independence of Cyprus and did nothing when the Greeks invaded, they guaranteed Ukraine’s borders along with Russia and the USA. Two things are always true in international relations; never give up your nukes and never trust the U.K. or USA.

[vetinari]

> They guaranteed the indivisibility and independence of Cyprus and did nothing when the Greeks invaded,

Turks, not Greeks

> they guaranteed Ukraine’s borders along with Russia and the USA

The Ukraine situation has much more nuance than you give credit for.

> and never trust the U.K. or USA.

As history shows, every superpower has interests, not friends.

[nailer]

> Sure there is, short of nuclear war there’s no way to get the PRC’s government out of Hong Kong.

It's entirely possible PRC could collapse. High growth rates and widespread corruption could easily cause a financial crisis that turns into a political one.

[richardknop]

> The first three were military interventions, very different from fighting censorship. I don't know enough about Egypt/Mubarak to say the level of Western involvement if any.

They were ultimately military interventions but military solution is used always as last resort if you can't achieve your goal without it. West has been meddling in their domestic affairs and trying to influence these countries internally long before military invasions. And it continues to meddle and influence after war is over.

With Mubarak of course there was a lot of US involvement. Obama and Clinton supporter Muslim Brotherhood & Morsi heavily for some reason which ended in overthrowing of Mubarak and establishment of a theocratic state... which had to be then reversed in another revolution.

> Also China is interfering in other governments - specifically Taiwan and HK - all the time. *

From their point of view HK and Taiwan are part of China. On Western maps it shows Taiwan as an independent country but mainland Chinese consider it integral part of China.

> * Re: HK, China agreed to allow HK people to vote for the leaders by 2017 in return for sovereignty, and did not fulfill this promise, therefore there is no reason to recognize their sovereignty.

That's true. But countries break promises when convenient including western democracies.

[zipwitch]

Equating invasions, bombings, and direct material support for local factions to "make some objective history available to people who want to read it" is extremely disingenuous.

[nradov]

Providing factual information to people is in no way intervening in the domestic affairs of another country.

[teresonos]

But how you report the factual information is important.

For example, suppose a ship with 1000 people was sinking.

- 800 lives saved by swift action and heroic first responders.

- Botched government response results in 200 dead.

[TheAdamAndChe]

Just like Russia in the recent US election cycle? Or is their propaganda and influence over a country somehow different?

[nradov]

Now you're getting off topic. Private citizens making factual information available is literally the opposite of propaganda.

It's no surprise that Russia tried to influence US politics. We need to do a better job of educating our citizens on critical thinking, including recognizing propaganda and fake news.

[stale2002]

What's China gonna do about it? If someone lives in America, then they have nothing to worry about.

China can go ban github or something if they get upset over "foreign intervention". Then they will suffer all the economic damages that comes from that.

The reason to do something like this is PRECISELY because it makes those who do not support "western liberal values" upset.

[wu-ikkyu]

>What's China gonna do about it? If someone lives in America, then they have nothing to worry about.

If you're on the internet, then you can be targeted by anyone across the world, no matter where you live. Psyops/social engineering, identity theft, DDoS, doxxing, blackmail...

[stale2002]

Oh no, china is going to come after me for posting information about them on the internet that they don't like!

Oh no, my anonymous github account will be hacked!

Seriously, this shit doesn't happen. There are too many people doing too many things in the world for a government across the world to do much of anything to anyone.

I am not ever going to live my life in fear of something dumb, like that. I am going to criticize and offend whatever world governments deserve to be offended.

If they don't like it, they can send their secret james bond assassins after me for posting stuff on the internet that hurt their feelings.

[teresonos]

The US can extradite foreign citizens for committing crimes against American interests. Whose to say that China can't do the same one day?

Maybe the US would never agree, but imagine you are vacationing in some country that has good relations with China.

[SolaceQuantum]

But it also looks like a western person showed up and messed with their system, thereby purposefully sabotaging them and trying to get services blocked to the average Chinese?

[stale2002]

Sabotaging a service by posting things on github that china doesn't like?

Seriously. Thats what this is about. People posting true stuff on the internet about china. I am not going to tiptoe around stuff like that, lol.

[teresonos]

Assuming you are an American, you have people in your own country that don't have the same values as you.

Question 1: Since they have the same access as you to "truthful history" why are their values different?

Question 2: Do you believe you could change their perspectives by introducing them to additional historical information?

[ashleycole]

I believe everyone deserve access to factual information and history, and it deeply saddens me when people abuse their power to suppress information, rewrite history, brainwash people, etc. China is not the only offender, but I'd say that they are the most dangerous one, and they even abuse their power to force other nations to submit themselves to their tyranny.

Everyone is unique, have different ideas, beliefs and thinking capabilities. It's only natural that, as such, people will process and respond to the same content in different ways.

I do believe that many Chinese people would form drastically different opinions if they had access to factual information. That being said, I must admit that my personal motivation would be less about helping the Chinese people, and more about attempting to limit China's power.

However, as I also mentioned in the other post, I'm not brave enough to even attempt to execute this idea. It's also important to anyone who might consider it that they would, if successful, endanger the life of themselves and their loved ones.

[teresonos]

Thank you for taking the time to respond. The problem is that "factual information" can have a narrative that changes how events are interpreted [1].

An additional question: suppose you could limit the power of the alt-right, neo-nazies, and other racist agitators by limiting the flow of information.

Would also be against that?

1. http://www.theweek.co.uk/politics/22535/both-china-and-west-...

[ashleycole]

Agreed, but I believe you'll also agree that factual information with a narrative is better than fictitious information (and I'm struggling to think of an example where fictitious/censored information wouldn't have a narrative as well).

In an ideal world, then I'd say that the goal should be to educate the current and future generations to develop critical thinking capabilities, so that they'll hopefully laugh/cry/shake their head (or if they have more patience/heart than me, try to educate) when they read the kind of information you'd more often than not find on the_donald.

I honestly don't support the idea of censorship, and I believe everyone should have the right to privacy (I'm very saddened today to discover that Apple/NSA/Chinese government/etc is likely secretly recording my iPhone screen as I type this message). A part of me would even want to go as far as to say that if people wanted to spread hateful messages/illegal activity, then the solution shouldn't be to censor them, but rather to rely on the people to downvote and educate. Imagine a Reddit where mods were incapable of deleting/censoring any content. What do you think would happen? I personally have no idea, but I believe that there's a real chance these alt-right and racist aggregators wouldn't be able to succeed in creating a "safe haven" where they'd continue to have their hateful views reinforced. I recently read an interesting article about a neo-nazi that was forced to interact with a black police officer, resulting in a friendship that ended his hateful views. I strongly believe that if they couldn't censor rational voices (which I'd like to believe outnumber them by at least 10 to 1) then there's a high chance that their views could be corrected.

It would definitely be very difficult to achieve this when governments like Russia's appear willing to commit hundreds of millions of dollars (I'm assuming) in supporting hateful views. But I do (probably naively) believe that if people were highly educated then it should be possible to build a platform that could withstand these state attacks (e.g. value an upvote by a high karma user higher than a low karma user). Do you think the HN crowd would be negatively influenced (persuaded) by hateful flow of information? If the answer is no, doesn't that mean that high intelligence can withstand hateful/fake information and that there'd therefore be no need to censor it?

Censorship is dangerous because it can easily be abused. You may want to argue that with the right censorship tools then we could've prevented Trump from becoming the president. But what happens when a manic like him ends up in a position of control over said censorship tools? I'm guessing he'd do everything possible to become a dictator, to rewrite history, to spread his hateful views, to worsen the education and attempt to brainwash the students, etc. The way I see it, the only sustainable solution would be achieving a highly intelligent population.

[paradite]

I thank you for having good intention, but please do research properly, understand the bias and perspective from each article that you read, and make a judgement only after you have considered all sides of the argument.

Do rush to spread information that you think is true just because you read it from the Internet and China is bad.

[nick32m]

I think they could block that Github repository/repositories but not the entire Github. Also I don't want them to DDOS Github and affect other uses.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9275041

[ashleycole]

They cannot block a specific repo (although GitHub could make it inaccessible to Chinese users, but I don't think they'd want to censor their platform), which is why China resorted to DDOS. I think it really speaks volumes as to how important GitHub currently is to them.

[marcosdumay]

HTTPS makes it impossible to block only part of the site. At least if they don't push their certs onto the population.

[singularity2001]

they would have to block all the Forks as well

[terminalcommand]

Github and Google services were once blocked in Turkey for political reasons. Even ATMs couldn't fetch updates because they relied on Github. When people started to realize the situation, github and google services were unblocked in a day.

[dilemma]

What have you done to spread the word about Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States?

[AnimalMuppet]

Why, if he wants to do one thing, do you pretend that he has to do everything?

[dilemma]

I don't. I'm merely asking for consistency.

[AnimalMuppet]

Consistency would be nice. I'll even give you a stronger word for it: integrity.

But you didn't ask for consistency. You asked for one specific thing. Why that one thing rather than something else? Why not something more general?

It sounds like you don't just want him to be consistent. It sounds like you want him to grind the axe that you want him to grind, or else like you want to discredit him while he's grinding the axe that he wants to grind. And it sounds like you want to hide that behind asking for consistency, which is a really dishonest and cheap rhetorical trick.

Now, it's possible that I'm misreading what you're trying to do. But you sure come across that way, at least to me.