this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2026
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I was born and raised here. The VPN is for the firewall which has many reasons to exist and I support, also they're not illegal. Criticising the government is super common but mostly over mundane stuff because that's what people care about (there's a reason the approval even according to Harvard is 95+%). You people are always so arrogant while being so uninformed it's amazing.
Making a statement that online surveillance there is no different from elsewhere will get you that kind of response tbh. It is measurably worse.
It simply isn't. Remember snowden? The NSA? TAO? Pegasus? Our government is simply more open and honest with us (might be a side effect of having real democracy as opposed to a charade put on by bought candidates every 4 years). Also before you say that's just America, Europe are American vassal states all of these and more (since this is just what has leaked) are deployed against Europeans too and intel is shared in deals like five eyes.
The method of voting isn't what makes it real democracy it's the class content of the state and the fact that voting is a ritual for representatives that will only ever serve capital as opposed to voting being a single part of a daily system of feedback and interaction with deputies embedded in the grassroots situation who need accomplishments (to solve our problems) to go for higher offices. There's a reason the number of billionaires in China is shrinking while public services and social safety nets are constantly seeing investment while in Europe and America austerity for the masses and tax cuts for the rich is law.
Nice vibes based analysis sort of redundant when they have backdoors on every piece of technology deployed there or the fact that most end to end encrypted messages are some mix of lying and insecure like WhatsApp.
I hate to break it to you but if the government want to see that titty pic if it's on either of your phones or any other device they can and likely have.
Again remember snowden? If you live in the western hemisphere the US and Israeli intelligence apparatus owns all of your tech that's the unfortunate truth you need to reckon with.
If we work off the assumption that signal is secure then not without a court order where I live.
Not quite the same in China.
Edit: Awwww. The mods are removing my posts now. Bless their fragile hearts.
Since that's happening I'm out now. It's been an interesting discussion though I fundamentally disagree that surveillance there is the same as everywhere else. I've made my points. Catch you again o/
Yes the EuroAmerican intelligence apparatus famous for obeying court orders and never being outed by whistleblowers for running massive illegal spying and data harvesting operations. Are you trolling?
You fundamentally disagree because you're a chauvinist and an idiot
It's clearly true you are just stating things that are untrue but you feel must be because you are a chauvinist. And you are an idiot as you look past the very clearly documented history of the EuroAmerikan surveillance apparatus and pretend it's not real and if it is real it's bound by your laws etc etc. Hence you are a chauvinist and an idiot.
Fallacy fallacy. So epic owned. Fucking loser Reddit debate bro. Genuinely impressively arrogant while being so uninformed and apparently genuinely unintelligent.
"I'm actually laughing"
Projection: Rare vance incident, usa.
Wrong, but you keep on keeping on.
Bring it on. Disprove the rare vance incident, or prove your bullshit claims about WeChat. If you can do neither, it's a clear case of projection.
WeChat uses transport encryption but not end to end. This is well known. If you're unwilling to search here's an article.
Here's another.
And another (this one's from citizen lab and a reasonably technical dive).
There's no end to them tbh.
If you can find me anything that says WeChat uses E2E anywhere I'll read it but they don't even claim that themselves so I think you'll be hard pressed.
Here's a list of blocked phrases on WeChat.
I honestly have no idea what you're banging on about with the Vance thing. I'm not from the USA which I assumed was your assertion.
I didn't ask you to prove anything about e2e. I asked you to prove that "something bad happens to you when you use pgp in WeChat"
Read about the rare vance incident, what happened there was pretty much what you were so insistent on would happen in china. That's why I assumed you were projecting.
Maybe you were not projecting, that's ok. Maybe you read it in a fiction book. Or it came to you in a dream. Who knows, you certainly won't tell me.
Ah....I didn't say that something bad happens. I said see what happens. It's an important difference...
I wouldn't be comfortable using PGP encrypted messages sent through WeChat if I were there and communicating with a local (and I have been, many times). I would be very, very concerned about getting them in trouble. End to end encryption is not tolerated in China and using PGP would essentially bring that so I would consider it a significant risk. It's speculative, I'll admit that no problem but as I say I wouldn't do it.
That's my threat model. The fact that end to end doesn't exist in China should tell you everything you need to know about deep rooted state level surveillance there. It does to me but if you think that in general all messaging providers should be able to see your text messages for some reason and think that combined with that, all those blocked phrases are not because the state wants control and oversight then your threat model and view of government surveillance (not just in China) is.... different.
I'm glad I live somewhere that I feel free to text my wife on signal and I'm confident it's not being read by anyone. If the day ever comes that stops being the case I'll fight for it because privacy is important to me. Everyone can fuck off out of private conversations between me and my loved ones. They're boring as shite but they're mine and mine alone.
Yeah I'm not aware of the Vance thing but I'll have a search. If you have a link handy I'd appreciate it as it might be hard to find without more context. (Edit: yeah I'm not finding it.)
That block list makes for interesting reading. Worth a look.
Source: it is known
You are literally talking to a Chinese person from China, smug liberal dipshittery knows no bounds
Then they fit the second part, living in ignorance. Online surveillance there is measurably worse.
Edit: just for clarity, I'm not "china bad" in my worldview but claims they their online surveillance is the same as elsewhere is utter nonsense and either from ignorance or indoctrination.
You think they're posting on Lemmy without a VPN?
The firewall was created to foster and protect China’s fledgling digital infrastructure and data sovereignty. Many countries regulate foreign platforms and data flows. China built its own ecosystem instead of depending on foreign companies. We have seen what happens when foreign platforms operate without local oversight: Facebook facilitating genocide in Myanmar, coordinated anti-vax disinformation campaigns in Southeast Asia, algorithm-driven radicalization. The firewall makes those kinds of external influence operations harder or close to impossible to run at scale. I support it and so do many others as the alternative is plain to see. Also everyone has a VPN we're not living in ignorance it is in fact people like yourself who are massively ignorant about us and our country.
The firewall again isn't a surveillance tool it's a blacklist that protects us from the very clear worse option which is a US controlled digital infrastructure. Also you vacationing here really doesn't do much to assuage ignorance. Plenty of EuroAmerikans vacation across developing countries and are still massively ignorant on how they actually functions. I'd go a step further and say most EuroAmerikans don't even know how their own country really functions as "lived experience" is only a small part of the puzzle.
I'm assuming the choice of the word continuously is an artefact from an LLM considering end to end encryption was only brought up once. Also I very clearly didn't avoid talking about it I simply pointed out that the most common ones such as WhatsApp are mostly a mix of insecure software and lies, also are largely irrelevant considering the NSA backdoors on every piece of deployed tech in the western hemisphere
LLM? No, continuously was a deliberate choice. I don't see what's wrong with it.
I'm using the example of end to end encryption to show how online surveillance there is measurably worse.
Your assertion was that online surveillance there is the same as elsewhere. That's ridiculous. That's the starting point and it's what I'm sticking to. Lack of E2E is just such an obvious example of how it's worse.
You're making assumptions about back doors in all Western tech. China has them.
I can use any E2E encrypted platform I choose. You can't use any. That's worse.
It's not an assumption it's proven real
PRISM: Allowed the NSA to access data from major tech companies, including emails, documents, and photos.
XKeyscore: Enables the NSA to analyze global internet data, making it easy to track individuals' online activities.
Tempora: The UK’s GCHQ tapped fiber-optic cables to collect vast amounts of data, sharing it with the NSA.
Boundless Informant: A data visualization tool that documented the NSA's global data collection effort.
All revealed by snowden. If you think that they stopped any of this or this was all they were doing you are so incredibly naive it's amazing you lived past 12.
All I can say is cope.
I have no issues with people using llms to help them format and formulate responses into coherent comments I just think it's important to read over the output carefully hence I responded to the points while still pointing out it made some common llm errors that he must not have noticed. Why are you so aggressive?
Because I didn't make any LLM errors. I didn't use an LLM and every post I've made in this thread fits my posting style exactly.
If you say so
I don't work for the government. I do however have friends who are party members (shouldn't be surprising considering slightly over 1/14 people are) and I did work alongside the CPPCC for a period and many of my classmates from my master's in Marxist theory were doing it to work towards civil servant positions. Even besides all that I interact with my local party office fairly regularly to provide feedback as do many others.
You can check the modlog or DM the mods and ask I'm not a mod I also didn't report them so your guess is as good as mine.
I very clearly didn't dismiss any of his points I just pointed out that continuously didn't make sense considering we only brought encryption up once prior to this comment and I had responded to it at that time I didn't dodge I also then responded to the point at hand again anyway so idk why you're lashing out. I didn't dismiss him.
This is just typical chauvinist dehumanising bullshit. "Anyone who doesn't accept the western line on China is a bot or a paid shill" you should probably do some introspection on why you react so violently to a Chinese person providing a more accurate view of their country.
Holy shit the cope lol
Check the modlog, we can still see the comments if we want to, and they state the reasons for removal there.
Most of the time something gets removed because of bigotry or being an asshole (I've seen people the mods agree with also have their comments removed when being too inflammatory, just so you know).
The LLM accusation was after a rebuttal, and then followed by another point, not an excuse to avoid engagement. You can't be for real.
You people have fully become the cold war boomers that everyone made fun of in the 90s. If someone has anything positive or informative to say about ZE DESIGNATED ENEMY, you immediately freak out and start calling them a spy. It's such 12 year old behavior, the defense of a wounded imperial ego.