Title, I'm a leftist but after reading some things on lemmygrad and here it seems I might have been lied to all my life. I have talked with some people from Cuba and Venezuela (expats) that support the west narrative about poverty and mismanagement. I "believe" that Russia is attacking Ukraine for selfish reasons and that China censors access to foreign information using the Great Firewall, please prove me wrong. Furthermore, it ultimately depends who do you want to believe or there are hard facts from reputable sources that are simply a hidden by the mass media?

EDIT: Thanks everyone for your very civil responses. I'll answer as many as I can!

  • geikei [none/use name]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Hundreds of millions of Chinese people access YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, FB, Wikipedia etc every day. No one gives a shit, not even the government. The point of the bans were

    A. Legal. FB, Twitter etc weren't arbitrarily banned but they failed to meet a d follow domestic Chinese regulations regarding data collection and algorithms. PRC demands that you have to store your data of Chinese users IN China if you want to operate in china and you share your algorithms with the Chinese government. FB, Reddit etc didn't agree to that and so they can't operate legally on China. Hardly dystopian and a logical move to say the least. Obvious requirements Especially since they are in a new cold War against the US initiated by the US .

    2.To cultivate domestic social media and information hegemony and sphere. Having Western social media freely operate on your soil means the convo and information war is de facto dominated by the Western dominated and led information and propaganda campaigns and narratives in social media. Hell even for random countries that aren't even designated US enemies we have seen just FB playing a big role in creating and spreading narratives and propaganda that determined elections. Not allowing FB, reddit etc in in a time where Chinese social media and online communities were still shaping up allowed China to create just as good or better domestic equivalent and have a sovereign internet, news and information sphere. No matter how influenced by domestic state propaganda it's undeniably much better than the alternative. And there was only one alternative. Chinese people getting their brains rotten by the hundreds of millions by FB etc and the West going 1000% all in to push anti-prc news and narratives that target them. There wasn't some magic secret third alternative of free non Western non state influenced billion people online environment

    • kristina [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Facebook helped perpetrate the genocide of the rohingya people

        • Retrosound [none/use name]
          ·
          1 year ago

          China heavily censors Weibo, too. Remember that train crash? And everyone was sharing the truth on Weibo, the official narrative was clearly lies, and then the director of the rail bureau said something like, "I don't care whether you believe it or not, I believe it" and was widely ridiculed for lying again? Yeah, they learned a lot from that. That will never be allowed to happen again, the Party's honesty being shown in a bad light like that.

          • kristina [she/her]
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            guy got fired btw, when similar happened here stock prices went up and all was ignored

              • kristina [she/her]
                ·
                1 year ago

                so a fate worse than death. the chinese are so cruel, fully on board with western propaganda now

    • marderbot [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 year ago

      I understand that if a company doesn't comply with reasonable regulations they can/should be banned. However, I'm not sure if asking for the algorithms is reasonable due to it being part of their competitive advantage (or so they would say).

      I don't see the need of domestic social media, why not a global one? Why do you need a sovereign internet? If FB and other companies brain rot with lies, why can't other parties show the truth?

        • marderbot [none/use name]
          hexagon
          ·
          1 year ago

          I don't think nationalism is good, taken to the extreme you will only care about your closest family and see everyone one else as enemies.

            • marderbot [none/use name]
              hexagon
              ·
              1 year ago

              Every country should set up domestic sites to protect themselves from US surveillance.

              I extrapolated from this, if what you want is non-US, why not create a neutral one insted of a hundred per-nation ones?

                  • GarbageShoot [he/him]
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Philosophically speaking, there appears to be an objective, consistent world, but any individual only has their perspective on it and fundamentally cannot escape having just their perspective. There is no such thing as neutrality or objectivity in people short of, perhaps, formalized a-priori systems like mathematics.

      • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        The marketplace of ideas is fake. Debate doesn't work. People either leave on the side they came in with or go with the side they hear the most. Letting cognitohazards just float about consumes the time of good people to fight, and the brains of everyone else to consider. There is no upside to having garbage everywhere.

          • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Are you asking me if it is fascism to not waste time hearing out fascists?

            • marderbot [none/use name]
              hexagon
              ·
              1 year ago

              Debate doesn’t work. People either leave on the side they came in with or go with the side they hear the most.

              That sounds like “don’t think and don’t hear anyone else”

              • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
                ·
                1 year ago

                You are aware you can evaluate ideas in ways other than watching two nerds be wrong at each other?

      • Tommasi [she/her]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I don’t see the need of domestic social media, why not a global one?

        People have mentioned restricting western ideology and propaganda, but imo the more important reason for this is money. The PRC doesn't want all the potential money in tech and social media to fly across the globe to California. "Global" social media are nearly exclusively based in the US.

      • AHopeOnceMore [he/him]B
        ·
        1 year ago

        Why should anyone in the left sympathize with American companies' competitive advantages?