My comment wasn't meant to apply to a specific website/newspaper per se, but the general state of online news media. Surely you believe someone or some publication somewhere is performing quality journalism.
So, in your opinion, what is quality journalism?
Just because something is profitable doesn't mean it is quality. Clickbait titles bring in ad dollars, but no one argues they result in a better article/story.
Saying "nobody" is at least partially wishful thinking. Hell, lots of people on HN want it. Just look at recent discussions of encryption backdoors for FBI.
> We're not talking about US, Britain, Europe or any other country.
But you said "people of those nations"? Now you are backtracking?
> It's also not a prerequisite to be Chinese or Uyghur to discuss this topic. If someone learns and becomes educated on a topic they can discuss it.
I didn't say it was a prerequisite. My point is that the assertion that "we don't want dystopian surveillance" is absurd considering the amount of surveillance we already have. Okay? Considering the guy wrote for a western news outlet, I'm assuming by "we", he meant the western world.
> He's also not saying that Uyghurs want this. He's saying nobody wants this.
With the UK, this is already well known. They have about a camera per 14 people give or take. Post 9-11, in the US it's also spread. Typically it's in really crime-ridden areas where law and order is barely sustainable (yes these exist). The only one I can't comment much on is Russia. Given that they essentially have a dictatorship, I wouldn't be surprised if they had a big program as well.
imo the state of the art surveillance isn't in China. It's either in the Middle East (especially in Dubai) or Singapore.
The OP of this thread is missing the point of the article though. They can call themselves Liberals, Conservatives, Communist Party Members, Nationalists or whatever, but only the elites want mass surveillance and really no one else
> Most of the act's amendments came into effect on 20 July 2016. Amendments that require telecom operators to store recordings of phone conversations, text messages and users' internet traffic up to 6 months were announced to come into place on 1 July 2018; however, senator Anton Belyakov has submitted a proposal to move the regulations' start date to 2023, because of the extreme amount of data storage technology needed to make fulfilling the requirements possible.
On the plus side, there is no law against face coverings in the UK. You can legally walk along the street wearing a guy falkes mask, motorcycle helmet or niqab. Nor is there any requirement to carry ID.
So "leading surveillance systems in the world" means:
1. Who "started it"
2. How long they've been doing it
3. Percentage of people affected by it (not number!)
In other words, you worked backwards to produce vague descriptions of metrics by which your point would be true. If it weren't for the fact that these vague metrics in no way support your assertion.
Well if you start to kill people on street and doing nasty things that is not impossible to tag the knives :). If you look in to history of this particular area there have been fierce street fighting and there was a tradition or culture to hang your sword/dagger or knife around your waist (before these new laws established). I think that is for public security and peace its not oppression and the law is tailored to address their local needs.
> Not sure about you but I don't have to put my government issued ID on my kitchen knives.
Neither do I. But that's because I love freedom.
What's the difference between ids on or for knives and ids on or for guns? It sounds ridiculous to us because our murders are by guns. But in china people kill each other with knives.
Do you know what some people in the US want? Fingerprinted "smart" guns. More government surveillance/registry/etc of gun owners. What's the difference?
If people in china are killing each other with knives, doesn't "smart" knives or knife registry make sense just like a gun registry?
If we had as few deaths from knives as China has head from knife attacks as we in the US have die from firearms in a single month, maybe even weeks, it'd be historically significant.
Add to that the social utility aspect that someone else mentioned. Firearms are explicitly designed to make it easy to hit a target with lead from far away, which just so happens to coincide with killing people in perhaps the most efficient way possible(barring weapons of mass destruction).
Not sure if calling your own example ridiculous is a good argumentative tactic in short-form debates like this...
>because our murders are by guns
Sure, but a cleavers' main manufactured purpose isn't killing other human beings. The guns involved in mass shootings are made specifically for shooting people en mass.
>If people in china are killing each other with knives, doesn't "smart" knives or knife registry make sense just like a gun registry?
No. Even though the barrier for entry for making guns is getting lower and lower, they'll never ever approach the barrier for entry for making an edged weapon.
Bullshit. Britain and the US don't do anywhere near the scale of this collection. Also we have cases like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States which are set to (likely) outlaw ability for warrantless surveillance of position, which they do in China.
My experience is that you can speak about nearly everything here if you keep it civil, relevant, and substantial. Being nice and polite helps as well. There are exceptions of which I sadly have made my share of experiences (and my own mistakes!), but I still consider HN to be a remarkable place.
I wonder to what extent you've tried arguing positions that are unpopular with the San Francisco set.
Yes, HN has good comments on average. But my experience of moderation has been that it often seems wildly random and can be very politically biased. There was a story some time ago about the Guardian and when I first looked at the comments section, it was full of comments describing disappointment or mocking what sort of paper the Guardian had become. A few hours later it was a morass of greyed out, flagged and dead comments ... apparently some voters can't take criticism of that paper no matter how civil. One of my own comments on that thread got downvoted to the min and it consisted only of links to stories the Guardian had actually published, so was pure fact!
Perhaps it got a bit better lately, it's hard to tell, but HN's community is not a representative slice of opinion around the world and it's kept that way deliberately. This is especially true of anything that crosses into criticism of modern identity politics or feminism, even if the contents of the comment criticise ideas and not people.
Indeed doing a Damore on HN is a fast way to get lots of min voted or dead comments and a ticking off from the moderators for "engaging in ideological battle", although of course people posting the opposing ideas are never "engaging in ideological battle". The politeness, civility or level of research involved has no impact on this: it's purely about position.
although of course people posting the opposing ideas are never "engaging in ideological battle"
To me this bias is quite evident, although the mods certainly don't see it that way.
E.g. I once tried to submit a story from Breitbart. It had to do with soon-to-be-laid-off US workers being replaced by H-1B. But of course the hate here for Breitbart is strong, so my non-political story couldn't even be submitted. Breitbart is shadow-banned in its entirety. Submissions don't appear in "new" except to the submitter (and maybe if showdead is on?).
Fine and good. Their web site, their rules. But at the same time, the mods were cool with allowing submissions linking to rt.com. The hate for conservatives / right-wing is so strong here that mods were more accepting of stories coming from Putin's government-funded international propaganda network.
I haven't seen any submissions from RT lately, so I think it has now also become shadow banned. C'est la vie.
> In simple terms they couldn't keep up with comment moderation and were not able or willing to invest in enough moderators.
Has nothing to do with that. It's because their comment section gets no activity to merit investment. Instead they are investing in "managing" social media via twitter, facebook, reddit, etc.
> So I have to give credit to HN to having one of the most civil comment sections on the internet.
It also has the worst and most biased comment section. It's why traffic is down and hardly anyone uses HN.
> So, keep it up, dang and sctb!
Only on "hacker" news would someone support censorship.
I find it bizarre to see people equating forum moderation with some sort of freedom-bashing censorship. Does no one remember Usenet? Active moderation is essential for discussion forums, even if only to clean out spam and trolling.
There's just too many people on the internet, and only so many are housebroken.
Good point. The gap grew dramatically by the end of WWII, when the US produced 50% of global GDP. The devastation of two massive wars in Europe in 35 years ruined the economies there, and Japan was also greatly damaged. In contrast, the U.S. mainland was mostly untouched.
As long as the functionality is there, there will be initial outrage and then people will accept it. Having gone through a few redesigns of a major website, the first few weeks can be a nightmare though. People love to complain. But in the people's defense, we've had a few screw ups too.
Because you aren't a kid anymore? You are older and have a wife, children, nephews, nieces and responsibilities? Not only that you have friends from childhood, high school, college, work, etc and there are only 24 hours in a day?
It's called growing up. Are we supposed to stay naive children forever without responsibilities forever?
Maybe because it isn't quality journalism. Ultimately, something is worth what people are willing to pay for.
> The world will be a dark place if the only news sources left are blogs by self-proclaimed journalists.
It's just as dark a place with "quality journalism".