Comment by xyzzy123
2 days ago
As I understand it the idea is not necessarily to stop all dissent / awareness, but that it's useful to be able to slow the spread of "rumours" / incendiary information when it is spreading virally. This gives authorities time to come up with a response if required.
While I personally wouldn't want to live in a country which does this, the flip side of unrestricted virality in countries that culturally might not be prepared for it are events like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings
Given that the US controls much of what happens on the Internet, another issue for many countries (not China so much) is that without controls they become extremely vulnerable to US influence campaigns and "colour revolutions".
I predict that all countries will end up with something like the GFW eventually because there's basically no other way for governments to achieve "Internet sovereignty" (enforce laws regarding users and publishers on the web). The US might be last to do this because it is in the doubly privileged position of a) being able to exert significant pressure on other countries and b) being able to apply regulation to major US-based Internet companies using their own legal system.
The apparatus we call GFW is really a Chinese CDC for memes. The CDC expects novel strains of bird flu every year, it’s okay, they closely monitor the situation, research the novel strains, cull risky populations, and develop vaccines for worst case scenarios. GFW expects novel strains of anti-CCP viral memes every year, it’s okay, they closely monitor the situation, they analyze the meme for spreaders and origin, they use the new meme to gauge changes in public sentiment, they fine or jail or imprison particularly quarrelsome netizens, and in the worst case scenario they prepare narrative shifts or outright censorship to maintain a net that is deemed healthy. It’s meme epidemiology, with mind viruses instead of RNA viruses.
I think GFW is more of a fallback (hammer) in the overall system but yeah that does happen "in detail" on WeChat etc.
In the US, censorship is obviously a hot-button political topic (core values), but we are starting to see US concerns around things like troll farms, foreign influence, election misinformation etc and systems to quietly tamp that down. The sorts of things that appeared in the "Twitter Files".
The US doesn't usually need "big hammer" technical controls for this because they have legal control over the corporations involved and can ask them to moderate themselves in line with US law & natsec requirements.
Places like e.g. the UK are in an interesting pickle because while they are _largely_ culturally aligned with the US, their lawmakers don't have the same level of influence on platforms. They can either impotently "shake their fist at the sky"; or they can reach agreements so the major platforms co-operate with their governments; or they implement China-like technical controls.
UK and PRC need a censorship apparatus because they are one party states. UK is a monarchy based on a religious aristocracy. PRC is a socialist state with Chinese characteristics. Memes can destroy these countries because they can delegitimize the despot. But in America memes benefit the polity, because parties lose power all the time. We’re constantly switching who rules, and the baton passes frequently enough that we tacitly agree it’s better to just come back next election with better memes. A meme like “Trump shouldn’t be President” is not an existential threat to America, whereas “Charles shouldn’t be King” and “Xi shouldn’t be Chairman” are direct threats to the continuation of their respective systems of government.
It’s the definitive strength of the United States.
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It's not meme epidemiology, it's outright fascism