China dev fined 3 yrs’ salary for VPN use - eviltoast
          • cnnrduncan@beehaw.org
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            25
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Eh the authoritarian capitalists who love the CCP generally seem to embrace the fact that China is authoritarian - they see it as a good thing!

            • Blue and Orange@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              I think that we in the west sometimes fall into the trap of believing that our core values of freedom and democracy are supreme and are what all people across the world want to achieve and should aspire to.

              Maybe a lot of people in China think that a strong centralised government guiding the economy and most aspects of people’s lives is the sign of a healthy society and they are happy with it. Maybe they think it’s we who are sick because we don’t like the state being too involved in our lives. To them, perhaps it’s complete insanity.

              Idk, I might be talking complete bs. I just think that different people have different values and there’s no right answer to how society is set up.

  • Bloved Madman@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    80
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    The ever aging battle of living in a digital world with global reach whilst being forced to live and comply within the lines drawn in sand.

    • meseek #2982@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      31
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Not sand, pencil, and the rich have all the erasers. But yeah no, good luck out there, it’s a totally fair and even playing field, trust!

  • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    80
    arrow-down
    14
    ·
    1 year ago

    Third party scraped reports citing a crypto shill site’s reporting on a blurry and redacted document from China’s equivalent of Facebook is how I get all my accurate and true news about things that really happened.

    • Affidavit@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s good to show genuine scepticism to what you read, but I can’t help but think yours is not particularly honest.

      It is extremely clear via auditing the trail of this report that the ‘crypto shill site’ is negligible to the story. You would have had to go back one step in the chain, stick your fingers in your ears, then ignore everything else from that point onwards to think Coin Telegraph was actually relevant to the reporting of this story.

      True or not, here you can find a clear summary, along with screenshots stamped with the seal of the Chengde PD. These screenshots, contrary to your claim, are not at all blurry, and have minimal redaction (to protect the person’s privacy).

      Given fairly credible and detailed screenshots of a police report, numerous reporting across a number of different websites in both Chinese and English, even a reported GitHub profile of the person in question, I think there’s sufficient evidence to believe this is likely a true story.

      But you do you.

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        47
        arrow-down
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        First of all, if there is a better source then OP should post the better source to begin with. Everyone should be skeptical when presented with a second hand summary of something going through two weak sources.

        As for the original source, it’s an NED front based in the US so as far as I’m concerned it can be dismissed with no further consideration.

            • Scribbd@feddit.nl
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              7
              ·
              1 year ago

              Against Chinese imperialism and their absurd historical claims to steal land?.

            • Affidavit@aussie.zone
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              9
              arrow-down
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              Hmm… To debate with a conspiracy theorist or not… Such a difficult choice.

              You know what, let me try something different…

              You win this debate! I concede! Although I am not an American and don’t live in America, I am a stooge of the American imperialists! And yes, like the other 8.1 billion people on the planet (sans you, of course), I live on stolen land! Have mercy!

              • nighty@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                31
                arrow-down
                4
                ·
                1 year ago

                You know you can’t take in information wholesale, right? News corporations have their biases. So do individuals. When talking about countries regarded as foreign adversaries, most of these reports about an unnamed individual tend to be bullshit.

                • Affidavit@aussie.zone
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  8
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Did you even read the comment chain you’re responding to? You know, the one where I said it is ‘good to show genuine scepticism’? Or the one after that, where I linked the ‘unnamed’ individual’s alleged GitHub?

                  I am not the one being overly trusting here. I think it is ‘likely’ that this story is true. I researched it, looked at the significant amount of evidence, and I am still not 100% convinced. That is far more than what I can say for you people replying to me en masse who all assume the story must be an American plot with absolutely no evidence to back up this claim.

                  Ugh, I need to figure out a way to unsubscribe from replies to a post. You people are bonkers.

              • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                25
                arrow-down
                3
                ·
                1 year ago

                And yes, like the other 8.1 billion people on the planet (sans you, of course), I live on stolen land! Have mercy!

                Engaging in genocide minimization to own the socialists.

          • TheGamingLuddite [none/use name]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            35
            arrow-down
            6
            ·
            1 year ago

            The NED is directly and openly an arm of the CIA, an organization which has contributed to and participated in the politically driven murders of human being numbering in 7 digits.

            If you can’t find a source that doesn’t link back to them, the story is bullshit and you’re falling for American state-sponsored disinfo.

          • PosadistInevitablity [he/him]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            28
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Inventing conspiracy theorists was the most intelligent thing the US state department ever did.

            Pointing out the CIA does active psychological operations on it’s own population is seen as crazy and unbelievable by the average person in the West.

            For the credulous, I ask this. How many times has Kim Jong Un been reported dead now in the media? Do you really think that was just an accident every single time, or do you think someone might have an agenda?

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        32
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        The first link is just quoting the social media post verbatim. Treat it with the same degree of reliability as “this guy said on Facebook/Twitter…”

        Second article actually goes out of its way to say how uncommon it is to be punished for circumventing the firewall:

        “Climbing the firewall results in punishment” is not the norm A common misunderstanding among the public about circumvention is that anyone who circumvents the wall will be punished. This is unrealistic for two reasons: first, the public security organs do not have that many law enforcement police; second, the public security organs are not as busy as you think. Most of the time, the punishment for circumventing the wall is to pull out the radish and bring out the mud. There are typical cases where the public security organs take the initiative to go to the external network to arrest people, but the number is very small.

        Judging from the 50 cases, only one case adopted the first-level “extreme law enforcement model”, that is, the “use of circumvention software is punishable” model. The description of the case was “A certain person used his own mobile phone to use a VPN on the Internet to circumvent the firewall.” Wall software, its behavior constitutes the unauthorized use of non-legal channels for international networking." Even so, the actual situation of enforcement may be different from the description of the administrative penalty decision.

    • Affidavit@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      That’s hardly the original source. The second paragraph of that article links to another source again.

      • example@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        indeed, original source is the wrong term, but at least it’s an english derivation of it, which was only copied by the link in this post

    • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      There’s a coin telegraph logo on the top of the website so I guess is some licensed syndicated content

      • example@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        it is indeed somewhat attributed, but it still very much looks like scraped content.

        a very strong indicator is the inclusion of

        Subscribe The most engaging reads in blockchain. Delivered once a week.

        Email address

        SUBSCRIBE

        at the end, which on cointelegraph’s page is separate from the content and provides a sign-up form.

  • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    38
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Good luck being a developer or do technical support without GitHub, Google, Reddit (Lemmy?) or stackexchange

    Or market your product without the possibility of accessing any western social network

    If you ever notice, all apps developed in china are similar. Ads at start, invasive tracking using dummy images dropped in /pictures, unnecessary permissions like phone and IMEI, and so on. They literally don’t have a way to compare to something else. There’s the Baidu SDK, Tencent SDK, aliyun SDK and they are using bad coding practices because they’re doing that in isolation

    They’re shooting in their feet

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      31
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      If you ever notice, all apps developed in china are similar. Ads at start, invasive tracking using dummy images dropped in /pictures, unnecessary permissions like phone and IMEI, and so on. They literally don’t have a way to compare to something else. There’s the Baidu SDK, Tencent SDK, aliyun SDK and they are using bad coding practices because they’re doing that in isolation

      jesse-wtf

      What kind of shitty apps are you installing? Some of the most popular mobile games in the world are Chinese (Genshin, Honkai, Azurlane, Ark Knights, etc) and none of them do any of this shit.

      I went to China recently with a buddy and I loaded a ton of China specific apps onto our phones. Mine was a Samsung and his was an iPhone. Between WeChat, Alipay, Taobao, Amap, DiDi, Dianping, the China Customs Service app and a bunch of other store and region specific apps, literally none of them did anything you described. I also bought a Xiaomi phone in China and migrated all my data over, so I can confirm that these apps don’t do anything like that even on a Chinese phone (which, btw, is way more strict with permissions than my Samsung, down to telling me each and every time google maps requested my location).

      In addition to that, I have a bunch of apps for stuff from Chinese companies on my phone like Mijia, Fiio, Huawei, Moondrop, etc and none of them do this shit either.

      • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        WeChat, taobao, alipay, amap they all do this. Go to watch /pictures on your android with a file manager. You will notice some folders called .gs0 .gs3 and so on.

        Inside there are dummy images with tracking data. They do like this because apps on Android don’t need an extra permission to drop “images” on /pictures

        Those folders are not shown by default because normal file managers on Android hide any file with the name that starts with a dot.

        And those dummy images aren’t shown in photo galleries also because of another file that’s dropped in those folders, .nomedia

        You also never saw the ads on the taobao splash screen??? Did you ever opened that app? Not to mention that phone permission is mandatory to use that app for some reason. (And can’t do any search until you register your phone number with SMS verification)

        Other Chinese apps with ads on the splash screen is Huawei store, mijia, amap

        And the Chinese customs app also requires an insane amount of permissions, never gave my European phone number, but a week after entering the country I got a phone call from +8621962110 - who gave them the number? (Don’t know what that call was about because answering a phone call in roaming is 2 euro per minute, but from some search on Baidu it looks like it’s some robocall from the Chinese police)

        • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          18
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          I just tried this with both my Xiaomi and my Samsung using both first party and third party file managers. Xiaomi showed 3 .gsX folders despite it being absolutely full of Chinese apps that I loaded on. Samsung with the same method had zero.

          Why are all Chinese apps like this?

          • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            1 year ago

            and the situation drastically improved since android 10, before they created dozens of directories because they pretended full memory access

            those .gsx directories contains “images” that are just tracking data. For example taobao drops a “picture” in /pictures/.gs9/ccdcwdc that contains your unique tracking id. Alipay then using the same aliyun sdk accesses that “picture” and can match the user activity between the two apps.

            Just because now is “just three folders” does not make it better. They’re still exploiting android sandboxing with the intent of tracking the user activity without consent

            • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              21
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              All three gsX folders were empty by the way, and that doesn’t explain why the samsung was squeaky clean. By your own admission this is no longer the case on newer versions of the apps and android, so you should at the very least go back and edit your post to put it into past tense.

              Also, your assertion was that all Chinese apps are similar, so 3 out of dozens makes your statement demonstrably false.

              • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                7
                ·
                1 year ago

                did you use the apps or just install them? Of course they’re empty if you just installed them.

                i repeat the statement, all chinese apps are similar, look for example mijia and meidi smart home, they’re basically identical, like “there’s only one way to make a smart home app”

                I use dozens of chinese apps and i can totally distinguish immediately when the dev is chinese.

                I didn’t say it’s no longer the case in the newer version of the apps. It’s mitigated on newer versions of android, because they’re exploiting the OS in order to trace users, which should not happen.

                • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  15
                  arrow-down
                  4
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  I used all of them because I got my new phone a few days into the trip and used it for the remaining week or so I was there. I’m still using Chinese apps on a daily basis now, so why are they all empty?

                  Let’s talk about your other claims as well. Irrelevant permissions? Zero. Ads on boot? Hardly everything since most of the utility apps don’t have ads at all.

                  i repeat the statement, all chinese apps are similar, look for example mijia and meidi smart home, they’re basically identical, like “there’s only one way to make a smart home app”

                  All American apps are similar. Look for example Twitter and Threads, they’re basically identical, like “there’s only one way to make a social media platform”

                  I use dozens of chinese apps and i can totally distinguish immediately when the dev is chinese.

                  Well I’m sorry my digital caliper sense isn’t as developed as yours. I’ll strive to be better.

        • figaro@lemdro.id
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’m glad someone else sees this problem. Thanks for writing it out.

          It is true that there are some pretty impressive apps made in China. Genshin impact is honestly some kind of black magic, how they made it so well optimized for mobile. That tends to be the exception though, not the rule.

    • Dyf_Tfh@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      It is incredible how overbloated their app are. I have no idea why every app need to integrate a social media feed, and be able book a taxi/takeout or whatever.

      They seriously need to have a look at KISS principles.

  • stepanzak@iusearchlinux.fyi
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    38
    arrow-down
    12
    ·
    1 year ago

    And there is still a lot of people, especially on lemmy, basically worshipping China and other communist countries.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      33
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      and other communist countries. Authoritarian dictatorships.

      Just because they slap socialist or communist on the country name doesn’t make it so.

    • diskmaster23@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      43
      ·
      1 year ago

      Capitalists put you in jail for marijuana. They used to put you in jail for alcohol. Hell, child labor is used in capitalist countries. China honestly is an authoritarian mixed economy. But perhaps, even in the USA, authoritarism is preferred.

      • airportline@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I’m not trying to defend America but they don’t put you in jail or fine you for using a VPN (yet).

      • Dr Cog@mander.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        The difference between democracy and fascism is that the laws are quickly changing due to public opinion in America, but that does not happen in China.

        • VentraSqwal@links.dartboard.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          People have been smoking Marijuana since the 60’s and it’s still a federally illegal drug at the level of heroine. Laws don’t change quickly in the US at all.

          • Dr Cog@mander.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            I never said laws change quickly.

            Marijuana use only recently became publicly accepted by the majority of people. As a result, it is now completely legal in many states and will likely soon be legal federally.

            This kind of thing would never happen in China.