I've dipped into the #TikTok debate, with a unique proposal. No ban, instead, mandate reciprocity.
Liberal democracies should restrict TikTok and other Chinese apps like #WeChat and #Weibo from accessing their digital markets until #China allows foreign platforms like #LINE, #Spotify, #Signal, and #Facebook equal and fair access to the Chinese #digital market.
There are #DataLeaks and then there’s this. A supermassive Mother of all Breaches [#MOAB] includes records from thousands of meticulously compiled and reindexed leaks, breaches, and privately sold databases. The full and searchable list is included at the end of this article.
The Chinese Twitter equivalent #Weibo censors searches for the names of places where there are protests. You could write a script that searches continuously for the main Chinese cities on Weibo and plots the ones that are censored on a map. Presto, a dynamic map of Chinese unrest!
Here's the #DictatorsDilemma: they want to block their country's frustrated elites from mobilizing against them, so they censor public communications; but they also want to know what their people truly believe, so they can head off simmering resentments before they boil over into regime-toppling revolutions.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Yang figured out how to test these dueling hypotheses. He got 10m Chinese social media posts from the start of the pandemic, before companies like #Weibo were required to censor certain pandemic-related posts as politically sensitive. Yang treats these posts as a robust snapshot of public opinion: because there was no censorship of pandemic-related chatter, Chinese users were free to post anything they wanted without having to self-censor for fear of retaliation or deletion.
Best reply from someone on Weibo regarding Twitter changing to X: "The life of the rich is just so dull. After Musk bought Twitter, he spends his whole day figuring out how to ruin it."