tmay

waveparticle said:

Blizzard said:

GeorgeBMac said:

Yeh - like I said:  Australia joined Trump's smear campaign against China by legitimizing and propagating right wing conspiracy theories against them.  China was smart to shut them off.

Like I said, Australia made a very reasonable request that there be an international investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. There is nothing unreasonable or conspiracy theorist about that.

You did not have the full story. In 2019 Presidential election in Taiwan, Australia harbored a Chinese fugitive who spread false information accusing CCP involvement in the election. This caused the KMT candidate to lose hugely. 

On January 11, President Tsai Ying-wen received an overwhelming 57.1 percent of the vote in Taiwan’s general election, winning her a second term. Not only did she win, but she also received the most votes ever cast for a candidate in Taiwan, and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) retained control of Taiwan’s legislative body.

While these results are significant in their own right, they are even more noteworthy because they occurred in spite of China’s concerted effort to prevent Tsai Ying-wen and the DPP from winning. China’s interference in Taiwan’s election was multifaceted, and included paying Taiwanese media outlets to promote China’s preferred candidate, Han Kuo-yu of the Kuomintang, as well as spreading disinformation through social media platforms and launching cyberattacks to steal sensitive Taiwanese government data. These efforts largely failed for three reasons.

First, unlike in Taiwan’s 2018 election, social media platforms contained and weakened Chinese influence campaigns. Thanks to Facebook’s decision to crack down on content farms, or accounts that coordinate to spread disinformation, Chinese actors had to try other measures, such as attempting to buy pro-Taiwan Facebook pages. However, due to linguistic differences between China and Taiwan, it was immediately obvious to moderators that the people offering to buy their page were from China. These linguistic giveaways similarly undermined a trend on Instagram and Facebook, where posts by people declaring their intention to vote, pictured holding a fist at their chest, a gesture often used by Han Kuo-yu, and complaining about Taiwan’s economy featured language that seemed strange to Taiwanese readers. Twitter also closed its platform to Chinese trolls and bots by deleting and suspending over two hundred thousand accounts in the months leading up to the election.

Second, Taiwan’s government took concrete steps to combat China’s election interference campaign. Government task forces were formed to conduct investigations, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs partnered with the United States to share expertise and information. Two weeks before the election, Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passed the Anti-Infiltration Act, making attempts to influence elections on behalf of “overseas hostile forces” punishable with up to five years in prison and a fine of over $300,000. Prior to the election, multiple unnamed news sources admitted that China’s Taiwan Affairs Office paid them to censor themselves and run feature stories that portrayed China positively. Taiwan’s National Security Bureau also discovered that Taiwanese news outlets were sending content to Beijing for approval before publishing. The Anti-Infiltration Act provided the legal framework necessary to address these threats. The Taiwanese government also collaborated with Facebook to establish a regional elections center to counter disinformation ahead of the election. On December 13, weeks before the election, the center removed a fan page for Han Kuo-yu that had 150,000 members for violating Facebook’s community standards.

Finally, Taiwanese civil society effectively mobilized to combat disinformation. CoFacts, a non-profit staffed by twelve volunteers, designed a chatbot on the social media platform Line to respond to users unsure if something they saw on the platform was legitimate. Once a message is received by the chatbot, it is added to CoFacts’ database and a human volunteer fact-checks it. In the weeks leading up to the election, CoFacts’ volunteers fact-checked thousands of dubious messages. Another non-profit, Taiwan FactCheck Center, partnered with Facebook to track and fact-check viral posts. If a post turned out to be inaccurate, Facebook alerted the user. DoubleThink Labs, an organization founded by academics, monitored one million accounts on Weibo and WeChat and sorted through thousands of instances of suspected fake content daily during the weeks before the election. In addition to fact-checking, groups also focused on educating voters and held workshops on differentiating between real and fake news. These organizations influenced both large corporations and individuals at the grassroots level.

To be sure, China made a number of mistakes, and many of its attempts to interfere in Taiwan’s general election were too overt. Xinhua, for example, reported on United Front meetings in 2019 that openly discussed using the internet to spread Chinese government ideology. The suicide of Su Chi-cheng, a Taiwanese diplomat in Osaka, after Chinese news outlets falsely reported that he failed to rescue Taiwanese people during Typhoon Jebi further alarmed Taiwanese voters. But while China made mistakes that didn’t help its cause, Taiwan’s success in undermining China’s disinformation campaign was ultimately due to legal measures taken by the Taiwanese government and successful cooperation between the government, civil society, and social media platforms. This model of cooperation should inspire other countries as they prepare to hold elections in 2020.

verne arase said:

Xed said:

LOL I can't wait to hear the contortions of people against the gov't intervening in private companies that are also jingoists that hate private US companies from doing any business outside the US, especially in China.

At this point, you'd pretty much have to be an idiot to advocate exporting high tech to China.

China is at the cusp of improving their military to push the US and western interests out of the South China Sea, and a potential invasion of Taiwan is growing more and more likely. The world's most advanced chip maker - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company - is right there which has to be the cherry on top for any mainland aggression. The mainland has been trying to develop their own chip manufacturing, but due to lack of expertise and corruption all attempts have ended in failure.

You send manufacturing to China and the first thing they do is steal your designs and manufacturing techniques - the Chinese Communist Party has no respect for Intellectual Property and right now hostility to foreigners and foreign manufacturing is at an all time high.

Please do try and keep up with current events and trends - the Chinese Communist Party is probably the greatest threat to western society at this point in time.

waveparticle said:

22july2013 said:

Xed said:

LOL I can't wait to hear the contortions of people ... that hate private US companies from doing any business outside the US, especially in China.

I buy from non-dictatorships any time I can, even when it costs more. But I don't hate. Don't make it sounds that I'm motivated by hate. I'm motivated by love for freedom and democracy. 

If you want to imagine that I'm motivated by hate, I guess that's your right to be wrong.

Are you an American? You are illogical. You do not live in China. Why are you afraid of losing freedom and democracy because of China? 

waveparticle said:

The chip shortage will continue under Biden administration. Companies will not manufacture chips in US. They cannot make money. If they try to raise prices they need to double or triple the prices. And this route is not working. Democrats have no concept of capitalism. 

waveparticle said:

verne arase said:

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

When you demand absolute control over what apps users can run, you must take absolute responsibility for anything those apps do. Notice that no one sues PC makers when users install apps that pirate video?

That's a load of bull hockey.

How do you control what the apps do or will contain in the future.

This is a losing battle for Apple in a country which has no regard for intellectual property. That this is an IP case is particularly ironic.

This is simply a shot across the bow at Apple from the Chinese Communist Party - one of many, in fact. Apple will simply have to eat these judgements fighting as best as it can in Chinese courts until such time as it makes doing business in China impractical.

This is one reason why opening the Indian market is so important - the Chinese market is closing rapidly, and the CCP is becoming increasing hostile to foreigners in general, foreign manufacturing, and foreign products. The opening up of China under Deng Xiaoping is rapidly being reversed by Xi Jinping, and the populace is totally under CCP control now that Cisco has helped China isolate the local populace from world information and views with the great firewall.

You are too political.