The Internet Is About to Get a Lot Worse (US focused)
Charlie Jane Anders discusses KOSA (the Kids Online Safety Act).
If you're in the US, https://www.stopkosa.com/ makes it easy to contact your Senators and ask them to oppose KOSA.
"A new bill called the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, is sailing towards passage in the Senate with bipartisa>n support. Among other things, this bill would give the attorney general of every state, including red states, the right to sue Internet platforms if they allow any content that is deemed harmful to minors. This clause is so vaguely defined that attorneys general can absolutely claim that queer content violates it — and they don't even need to win these lawsuits in order to prevail. They might not even need to file a lawsuit, in fact. The mere threat of an expensive, grueling legal battle will be enough to make almost every Internet platform begin to scrub anything related to queer people.
The right wing Heritage Foundation has already stated publicly that the GOP will use this provision to remove any discussions of trans or queer lives from the Internet. They're salivating over the prospect.
And yep, I did say this bill has bipartisan support. Many Democrats have already signed on as co-sponsors. And President Joe Biden has urged lawmakers to pass this bill in the strongest possible terms."
The internet is about to move to the rest of the world if this passes, no one will host a web server in the US after this.
which, considering that the U.S considers accessing a server based in the U.S grounds to extradite a person from the otherside of the world and try them for a capital crime might not be such a bad thing.
The problem is where? The EU is trying to apply similar censorship via the DSA, Russia we all know is LGBTphobic and not truly for free speech, Canada is a joke, and China is lol. Not even sure if Japan is viable.
What do you mean by China is lol?
Didn't a lesbian kiss get edited out of Star Wars Rise of Skywalker for the Chinese release? Just as one example
If we're using anecdotes, one of China's most famous TV personalities (Jin Xing) is openly transgender
This is like saying, "I'm not a racist I have a black friend"
I'm trans. No it isn't.
Claiming that China is actively repressing this while literally employing and front-facing transgender people is absurd. Where are the famous transgender TV personalities employed by the BBC? Britain's state owned media.
China is visibly trying to improve things for trans people compared to the country I'm currently in (the UK) and your absurdness about it is obviously built on racism because you don't behave this way about white countries. You only behave this way about non-white countries. Where is your equal criticism? Where is this behaviour when it's all the white countries that behave this way? You're american right? Where is it for YOUR country which is currently illegalising trans people, undergoing state sanctioned murder against trans people and having an internal refugee crisis because of it. Where the fuck are the federal protections to prevent this genocide being perpetrated by red states? Non existent. Because democrat support for trans people is performative.
So excuse me but fuck off about criticising China on trans people. You're a shit.
Lol
China isn't censoring their internet because you're a trans person who lives in the UK, BBC doesn't have trans personalities, and certain US politicians are attacking trans rights? Wow, what an argument.
Also I'm racist for pointing out authoritarianism from an authoritarian government?
You're doing a terrible job with your concern trolling. Put in some effort at least.
The point isn't about censorship which for the record here was performed by Disney for the sake of more profit. Not by the state.
Nothing about this comment string was about the internet. This is a non-sequitur.
The point here is that it is demonstrably obvious to trans people living in the US and UK that China is better to us than the US and the UK, one of which is currently performing a genocide against us and the other of which is transphobic on a near daily basis and is expected by the community here to follow in the US' footsteps if it gets the chance.
You didn't say a damn thing about that. You dismissed an argument about China being better about trans people than multiple major western governments. I gave concrete examples of why that is, and only now are you bringing out "muh authoritarianism", which frankly I don't give a shit about compared to the ongoing real genocide of trans people the US is doing.
It is painful talking to you morons when you can't even remember what you fucking said, or be bothered to go back and check it. But yes I am calling you a racist because you clearly have different standards for white countries than you do for non-white ones.
China is pretty blegh actually.
They are actively making things worse w.r.t accessing HRT online, and require even more nonsense than the UK on changing legal ID, including shit like spousal approval, familial approval, and permission from various things like work, school, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_people_in_China
Access to hrt is also comparable to the uk by the looks of it. More importantly, the illegality of gay marriage combined with the massive approval process for id change means that trans people with different-gender partners can't marry legally, and trans people with similar-gender partners are probably? in an unfortunate position here, though the page doesn't include info on this >.<
The more sex-segregated components of various aspects of China also causes significant issues >.<
I'd say it's worse in terms of being able to socially and medically transition, but there's less overt hate. It's more death-by-bureacracy and a need for even more extensive social approval to transition (I'm almost impressed that they managed a worse system than in the UK). The greater hold the Chinese Government has over their internet means accessing DIY HRT is likely much harder :/
People claiming China is much better on this than the US and the UK are wrong, they both have different issues. The UK in particular, most of the transphobia I experience is from institutions and media rather than "on the ground" (though this def. happens too), and the way the government is going with using us as a scapegoat is very concerning. But the - for now - lower amount of control over communications means I got started on DIY HRT pretty simply and pushed my way through the "official" system.
On a side note, stuff like this is one of the reasons opposing authoritarianism especially w.r.t communication is important, it makes it easier to do things the government has not approved of because the infrastructure is not in place to control communication and coordination as effectively.
The US is as always a clusterfuck because of it's more federated nature, some of their states are trying to do genocide while others are acting as refuges and have things like informed consent HRT access and active protection against the more hostile states ^.^ - but fuck me if the dems aren't spineless at opposing this stuff or (as can be seen in the op) sometimes support this.
Honestly most large states constantly try and censor the internet with stuff like this, though in the US/UK/Europe it has been a lot less successful at least. In this case it's a more brazen attack on queer people, but this sort of stuff seems to happen every couple years. It's very frustrating >.<
People definitely have some double standards though - maybe racism or the false idea that China is communist - but it doesn't mean the Chinese govt is good on things, in my observation, just that people underestimate the things European countries, the UK, and US states do.
They may be better or worse and just because people often have double standards doesn't make the Chinese government better (though it is often not worse in some respects, but the overall greater control of communication and computing infrastructure means it is harder to evade the subjugation or organise around it via tools like Tor, and the greater centralisation means that if the government decides to do something particularly awful it's both harder for public dissent to occur and harder for regions to undermine efforts like that or even actively counter them :/).
Why is it that liberals only source is wikipedia??? Please read other things.
China is expanding clinics for trans people. Notably for trans children, who it built its first clinic for in 2021 and has built a further 8 since.
This alone makes them incomparable to the UK, where the children's clinics have been institutionally attacked and set back for the last 5 to 10 years. There is an enormous difference between a state actively stepping up their transgender healthcare accessibility vs a state rolling it back.
Says the person whose entire fucking understanding of the matter was gained from wikipedia 5 seconds before making this comment. Jesus fucking christ.
I want you to read this then try to imagine it being written by the terfs destroying our lives at the BBC or Guardian.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202103/1219743.shtml
China is doing us right. Our countries are not.
They're not spineless you naive idiot. They see us as a tool, they don't give a fuck about us other than for pretending they're good and wielding as an electoral weapon to say "look trans people will die if you don't vote for us". Actually helping us would mean they need to find something else, so they don't.
China is a socialist state building towards communism. Your inability to understand this is a personal failure to understand it, not a failure of theirs.
Not a lib, and my source is wikipedia because it has it's own sources as well and provides a decent summary.
Yeah because you're from hexbear and I don't trust you to engage in good faith or not immediately jump to the worst possible interpretation of something I said or missed (like you have done with the trans clinic thing), or do the whole thing where you assume only you are right and people can't reasonably disagree on something, or always pivot to "but the us/uk did..." and act as if the inevitable and only correct conclusion to any debate or discussion is that the US and "West" (which is itself a messy concept) is worse in every aspect of every single thing than anywhere else in every possible action. And I, you know, can read the information and compare it with the uk/us pretty quickly, without listing every single tiny factor that went into my consideration.
Frankly, the behaviour of hexbear users has made me always check the accounts of people with square-brackets pronouns before engaging unless I'm in a community on an instance that has defederated. I should not feel this way when pronoun tags are a trans supportive thing and would usually make me feel more comfortable when talking with people. But blegh.
I will probably block after this because all engaging with 95% of hexbear users does is cause me irrational amounts of stress every fucking time because of the constant goddamn micro-nitpick and aggression on every fucking thing, constant assumptions of superiority and assuming they are always completely correct in ever single debate or discussion, it's like they can't even conceive of being wrong on something. Honestly this is just a vent at this point lol, not even something you specifically have done since you're nowhere near the worst I've come across from hexbear.
Engaging just makes me feel the need to analyse every single thing I say to see if it will set the hexbear folks off on a tangent or completely dismiss you and do the weird misdirection and whataboutism and such. It makes me afraid to ever engage with hexbears in any manner, or overanalyse every tiny thing I say in case they use it to deliberately evade my main point like I was forced to do when younger in very hostile situations as an autistic person to avoid unpredictably angry people, and just like then it brings very little practical success because all my effort is spent trying to find any tiny way what I said might be interpreted in the worst possible way and there's always some excuse anyway.
True. This doesn't change the other stuff I mentioned, and the UK also claims to be "improving" clinics for trans teens while doing the opposite, so forgive me for being a little skeptical of the persistency, especially since the hrt stuff is from 2022 and this is from 2021. It's also only in a couple provinces. However, if it pans out, which it seems to from what you see, it's a positive move, but again, it seems to be Shanxi and Beijing.
This was also explicitly mentioned in the wikipedia article and I did see it. But it was only a single province, compared to the entire government's more negative actions >.<
Aight I stopped reading right here.
If you don't think my response was in good faith, I won't participate. Eat my ass. Don't waste my fucking time.
You're a white nationalist, just like the other user. Which completely explains your desire to defend white western countries. You don't realise it but these are unexamined brainworms that you should absolutely do self-crit over. This emotional reaction you have to leap to the defence of the west and attack any claim that somewhere outside of it is better is at its source white western nationalism. And yes it makes you a lib, especially when it one country is demonstrably committing genocide against us while the other is not yet you still leap to its defence and to attack the other.
Why are you automatically blaming China for that? How do you know that decision wasn't made by the film directors/company? Unfortunately, propaganda runs deep and people easily believe whatever they want to believe
"Authorities in Dubai and in Singapore’s media regulatory board, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), threatened Disney and Lucasfilm to either cut a brief lesbian kiss from the end of Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker or else lose their film’s PG-13 rating ... While Chinese censors allowed the kiss to stay, an R rating in Singapore would’ve made the film inaccessible to its younger fans, hurting its financial success abroad."
It was the first Google search result
Disney and Lucasfilm are the ones to blame for chasing profit
many such cases
I consider that an absolute win for queers. Corporate pandering can eat shit.
Don't know about the kiss, but they basically edited out John Boyega almost entirely for the overseas release.
Seems pretty clear from context, China is an autocratic state well known to engage in censorship when it fits the party's desires.
And which governments don't engage in censorship when it fits their desires lol
Your whataboutism isn't really useful here, I'm just responding to the question about China. The point of his response was that there isn't really any place left to go. And even if your response was relevant it would be laughable, the censorship that the Chinese government perpetrates puts most other countries to shame.
Whataboutism, checkmate tankie
I mean, you are a tankie. You sub to hexbear. China isn't an autocratic state hahaha okayyyyy surrrrre. Just a single party "democracy" right?
Everything you said is facts, glad to see you're learning from us thanks to the federation
this is a thread about the US though? Who whatabouts the whatabouter?
Your reading comprehension is pretty low. My original comment was specifically in response to another individual questioning why the idea of hosting servers in China to escape censorship was "lol". That's it.
Which is his point,right? Like where else would you go to host if all governments engage in this BS
The arguments presented are so terrible and devoid of any meaninful substance
The first one was "China lol"
Then the one I replied to in support of "China lol" said "autocratic state" which is absolutely false unless all of your knowledge about China's governance system comes from reading CNN headlines and skimming Reuters articles written by a dude with a bachelor's in journalism that doesn't speak Chinese
They also said "well known to" which implies it's a special case when every state exerts overwhelming control and censorship over the media that occurs within their country
Isn't the CCP given explicit power and privilege in the Chinese government and isn't the CCP's officially headed by a permanent leader as it's "core"? I've been trying read about the political structure and it's hard to not argue that it seems very autocratic.
The CPC (not CCP) is the guiding force of the government, and adapts to the will of the people through the mass line/being comprised of 10% of eligible persons. The highest level of the CPC (after the various levels of party committees/congresses) is the SC of the Politburo of the Central Committee, which is comprised of members elected through all levels and with terms of five years, and the highest individual position is the General Secretary (also terms of five years), elected by the Central Committee. Provided the persons in these positions are fit to serve, there are no definite term limits (one can be elected for a term of five years indefinitely until they are too old to serve (age limit), wish not to in which case a subordinate would the replace them, or are voted out by the CC) although I fail to see how a term limit can be justified when it is merely an undemocratic method of preventing the election of someone regardless of their success/the will of the population.
So what is the "core" position in relation to that? When is the next election for Xi Ping for that position?
Xi Jinping was re-elected as GenSec in 2022 (third term), so the Central Committee would foreseeably be doing a new election in 2027 (for the SC of the Poliburo as well).
And that has affected you outside China operating a server based there when?
I don't understand, please rephrase your question.
What don't you understand about it? How has it ever affected you? Can you name a single time it has?
China does not care unless you live within its borders, and even there it only really cares when it is someone of influence, such as the rich capital owners or the celebrities.
I just didn't understand the way your question was worded because it was garbled. I don't have any reason to host a data server and I don't live in China, so you got me, I've never been personally impacted by Chinese government censorship and repression. Obviously that means it doesn't exist, QED.
But oh, as long as I make sure not to upset anyone rich or in power I would be fine, don't worry. Do you ever read what you type?
“The Chinese government has never done anything that has negatively impacted me or anyone I know, I have never known a Chinese person I disliked, yet I passionately despise China. I am extremely different from Republicans who have never set foot inside an American city yet are terrified of doing so. It’s you tankies who are propagandized, not me!!!!”
Strawman city over here. I do not despise China or the Chinese people. I have actually visited China and loved my time there, the people I met, and the food I ate. I think it is a beautiful country with wonderful people and a rich history. I can also recognize that their autocratic ruling party represses and censors their citizens, and I don't think that is a good thing. I wish the best for China and truly hope that some day, all their citizens will be able to express themselves freely.
The USA imprisons more people per capita than China. There are also limits to free speech in the USA, as evidenced by the bourgeois regime’s brutal crackdown on the George Floyd protests among countless other examples. Which society is more free exactly?
Dude i recomend you to let this one go. Those guys are from hexbear and looks to me that they are raiding this thread for some reason. Theres no way their tankie takes would get this most upvotes normaly, they are usually bashed outside of this thread but the up to downvote ratio is suspisous af. And besides their takes shouldnt be taken seriously. One of this clowns where claiming that china defends trans people and are actively making life better for them... fucking china, the ccp, really now? Ive seen that there are some centers for lgbtq+ studies, and while the name of Jing Xing sounds like dislexic joke for Xi jing, shes actually real and trans and very popular on chinese tv, but there are no laws that explicitly protect them and its reported that they still sufer a lot of harasment from the general population and the ccp isnt really looking into fixing this anythime soon if ever. But other than that just let this one go, its not worth it.
My friend, read the thread. You're getting triggered over someone laughing at the idea of westerners hosting web content in China to escape censorship.
How is the DSA in any way similar to this?
In what way is Canada a joke? Like, I'm not saying it isn't, but our online freedom is pretty good. We don't actually have a state sponsored censorship campaign, VPNs are legal, TOR is legal, all we legislate is that you aren't inciting violence or calling for the extermination of a protected group of people or doing shady dark web shit. Pretty much everything else is good to go.
Japan has terrible international peering.
There's some wisdom in the old soviet anecdote
The Internet is still mostly connected, the law enforcement is not as much. Many businesses exist only because of this. You are free to host (produce, store, distribute) your content where it is legal and access it from where it is not. Access to foreign resources may eventually be outlawed or the access itself restricted. This is already the case in EU, Russia, China, etc. - but for now Internet is mostly connected.
It is why more need to support the decentralized movement as then there is not centralized group you can choke to get your draconian ways.