
China's New Wave of Internet Censorship: Name Verification for Online Commenting - malloryerik
http://thediplomat.com/2017/08/chinas-new-wave-of-internet-censorship-name-verification-for-online-commenting/
======
neya
There are a dozen popular live streaming apps in China where one can simply
just stream what you're doing to everyone on the site and people can just
watch them for hours. You can think of it like Instagram stories or Snapchat
per se. Or even Facebook live.

This isn't some western media propaganda. I tried one of them very recently (I
don't want to give them any undeserved marketing), they allowed me to sign up
and the moment I clicked on my camera button it took me to a page asking me to
"verify" my profile as apparently it was Chinese government's new regulation.
Guess what? They asked me for my passport before I could upload a damn thing
on their app.

Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live
stream. Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable
like these regulations, while still gaining loyalty from their citizens to the
point where these supporters will even defend the govt. everywhere online
trying to explain how normal it is to submit your passport and your real
identity to some random app company because you know, you just wanted to try
it out and it's totally normal.

~~~
paradite
To create a facebook account, you need either mobile phone number or email.

To have an email, you still need a mobile phone number to register for gmail
(the most popular choice).

To have a mobile phone number, you need your passport or ID.

Yes, in some cases you can get phone numbers without passport, but then again
you can also get IDs and fake passports easily in China if you want.

~~~
quicklime
According to
[https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1733224?hl=en](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1733224?hl=en)
a mobile phone number is optional when signing up for Gmail.

~~~
notyourwork
I'm not sure I agree with that answer. I just tried signing up to test this
and after submitting was asked for a phone number to verify. The first form
didn't require a phone but after that it redirected to a page with a link to
[https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/114129?hl=en&ctx=...](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/114129?hl=en&ctx=ch_UserSignUpIdvChallenge&p=mail)
that referencing GSuite verification.

~~~
nwjtkjn
I feel like this is a very recent change; I've definitely created "burner"
gmail accounts in the past and I don't remember providing my cell phone
number.

~~~
notyourwork
Yep, same here. For me it had to be at least 5 years ago.

------
chairmanwow
I'm frightened by how a seemingly pragmatic government has been able to spiral
into dogmatic, protectionists policies so rapidly. I suppose that I mistook
the recent decades of economic development as evidence of true ideological
reform taking place. Now I feel naive for expecting more from the government
that imprisoned the father of their ubiquitous high speed rail system.

The Eastern desire to require "harmonious thoughts" is so at odds with the
skepticism required to birth true innovations. I was once convinced that China
was on the verge of becoming a new force in modern technology. But after
seeing a long line of regulations meant to increase the echo of their
political echo chamber, I doubt technological innovation can linger much
longer.

~~~
donatj
> I was once convinced that China was on the verge of becoming a new force in
> modern technology

They have amazingly intelligent people and a wonderful hacker community, the
problem is it stands entirely at odds with the government's "what's best for
society" attitude. The problem most overtly controlling government's aren't
willing to accept is that what's best for society this exact moment might not
be what's best for it overall. This is why there's no Chinese technology
leaders, no Chinese Apple. Communism brews mediocrity.

~~~
1_2__4
You act as if the Chinese populace doesn't broadly suppprt their government,
including these kinds of restrictions.

~~~
sgift
It's hard to know if they do - everyone who dares to state something else
finds themselves in dire circumstances.

------
SCHiM
Leaving aside subjective judgments if doing this is right/wrong, good/in-line
with the Chinese culture or whatever else.

If you view the societal/political cohesion/consensus as a process of
behavioral survival of the fittest (eg. requiring a certain flexibility to
adapt) then taking away the flexibility that anonymous online communication
affords your citizens might not be so good when/if it becomes time for the
system to adapt. There will be less space to communicate and plan gradual
change, skipping that possibility and going straight for more bloody forms of
change. Say like the way we did things 200 years ago.

Personally and subjectively, I think this is a dumb and evil thing to do. But
not unexpected.

~~~
paradite
You make some very interesting points on flexibility and the ability to adapt.
I also wonder how China is able to keep adapting to circumstances and survive
if the voice of people is not heard.

But then I realize China has a different system to allow that to happen. In
modern China, the only way for politicians to go up the ladder of leadership
is to slowly rise from the bottom.

In this sense, they were once a normal citizen as well, and through working
closely with the local community in the early political career, they should
have a good understanding of the impact of policies on average citizen.

The fact that China is still strong in terms of economics despite being one-
party is largely due to the economic reform pushed by the highest leadership
Deng Xiaoping.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
You are excluding princelings like Xi Jinping, who only started from the
bottom in theory, but have a lot of family connections to help them rise
quickly. In fact, as time goes on, princelings are becoming more dominant in
Chinese politics and even the economy (many companies and industries are
controlled by red families).

~~~
paradite
On that front, I can only hope that they have learnt the lessons from South
Korea politics.

------
Canada
This is already the case for any substantial public posting. In order to get a
crappy virtual web host that's not even on your own domain name one needs to
supply a national ID number. For a virtual machine a corporation with an ICP
license is required. This number must be displayed on every web site. It's
evil. Their Twitter copy already requires ID. Anyone with a substantial
following is known to authorities. I wonder if this new push to cripple the
internet will kick off unidentified WeChat users.

Leaving aside political effects, this regime makes it very difficult to
innovate. A Chinese developer just starting out can't just just rent a VM to
show off his work. I helped someone get a webapp running on one of the big
Chinese cloud service and it's really, really awful. Exactly what you would
expect from an industry completely protected from competition by government.

------
gergdgdfg
I grew up in China and came to the U.S. more than 10 years ago.

What I have been seeing is the decline of the United States.

That's said, I'm worrying about China a lot more. I think it's on track to
repeat the mistakes it had done before.

You often see articles here saying China will surpass the States in A.I. and
science. I doubt it. I doubt a country without freely accessible information
will be competent. I doubt true intellectuals would like to live in a place
like this. soviet union was an example.

I used to get angry at these things (censorships, corruptions). But now I'm
tired, not because China is clearly drifting away from what I want it to be,
but because I saw many fellow Chinese really believe in government propaganda,
and justify its wrong doings. They have the Stockholm syndrome, decorating a
nightmare into a beautiful dream (of China being the new world leader and all
the censorship shit is necessary to fence off the invasion of western culture.
such a bullshit!). And there are also many others who simply don't care.

Now I just want to hide somewhere and mind my own things.

Who will be replacing the States? Europe is weak and is at its bottom, Russia
is no better than China. Maybe Australia or Canada.

~~~
guscost
I'm cynical about a lot of things, like our dysfunctional mess of a
government, a Fortune 500 saturated with exploitative bullshit, and the silly
summer-camp that college has turned into. And people have been telling me
about the decline of America for my whole life (admittedly not a long life).
But I think they are just overwhelmed with worry because we have access to so
much information, and I think America easily has another couple hundred years
of prosperity ahead, even if it won't be smooth sailing the whole time.

~~~
jjeaff
On almost any metric I can find, the US is getting better and better. The only
decline the us is experiencing is a decline in growth "rates" which is
predictable for any mature economy.

Crime is lower, standard of living is higher, poverty is less... That's not to
say the us doesn't have a lot of problems, but overall, it is objectively
better than before.

------
bitL
So technology, once a progressive force, is now going to be used to conserve
dysfunction. Can't wait to see the latest Deep Learning advancements used to
enforce whatever is deemed appropriate. Future generations are done with
approved high-school popularity contests enforced everywhere. I am wondering
if China is going for another 2000 years of no advancements, like it used to
when it exhausted its cultural roots before.

~~~
MikkoFinell
On the one hand those advancements are being used to enforce users only view
whats deemed appropriate, while on the other hand it's used to maximize your
time-on-screen by stealing your attention in increasingly ingenious ways. I
believe we are already past the event horizon on a dystopian singularity that
will land us somewhere in the middle of Orwell and Huxley.

------
Elect2
Anyone interested in how to get identified? You need to download an app (or a
built-in feature in an app), it open your camera, you need to make it focus
your head. And then you need do what the speakers(a bot) tell you to do:
"Shake your head. Good!", "Blink your eyes. Good!", "Open your mouth. Good!",
"...", Then your videos will be uploaded for review.

~~~
ezVoodoo
A lie.

~~~
yorwba
Which part is wrong? That seems to me like a standard procedure to take an
identifying photo of someone while making sure that it's really a living human
head.

------
alistproducer2
At least here in the states, social media + anonymity hasn't exactly been a
boon for human progress. I will never support the laws being proposed in
places like the u.k and China, but I like the fact that we are forced to
grapple with these ethical issues when laws like this are proposed.

Humanity is mainlining an experimental drug in social media. What makes it
insideous is that most don't realize it. Governments are grappling with how to
insulate themselves from the threat this tech represents; when will regular
people do the same?

~~~
eighthnate
> At least here in the states, social media + anonymity hasn't exactly been a
> boon for human progress.

I'm geniunely astounded at the small but vocal pro-censorship group on
hackernews of all places. Where did this come from?

Just 5 or 10 or 15 years ago, the idea of any tech minded person being anti-
anonymity would be incredibly shocking.

Just in the past 2 or 3 years, there has been quite a small vocal group
advocating against anonymity and advocating for censorship. Why?

Not only that, there have been a rise in anti-open source software, anti-GNU,
anti-linux rhetoric that is slowly rising on social media as well.

I'm just curious what the mindset or rationale is? Is it because hackernews
has grown in popularity beyond the programmers/IT crowd?

~~~
tnone
The new generation is more censorious and intellectually sheltered than
before. Blame schools and colleges who decided to focus on providing a safe
space, and the tech companies those students moved into.

------
real-hacker
I am from China. Call me selfish, but I really hope China Internet censorship
is not discussed on HN. HN is one of the few sites I like that GFW (Great F
__king Wall) doesn 't block. More threads about the 'sensitive' stuff about
China, will almost surely get hacker news blocked.

Github has been blocked before. An outcry from the dev community finally got
it unblocked. But that seldom happens.

------
asdfologist
Not condoning this, but isn't this true in South Korea as well?

~~~
yladiz
Yes, to sign up for pretty much any service you have to have either a cell
phone contract or a bank account, both of which require a government ID. You
don't need to do this to sign up for a forum, but if you want to sign up for
something like a movie theater loyalty program, you need to.

------
EGreg
I remember being freaked out when I read THE DIGITAL IMPRIMATUR, which was
authored in the early 2000s. I thought it was already reality, but it was just
describing what COULD happen with a determined censorship / police state that
can use the power of regulations to make it happen.

So I wrote this:
[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=114](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=114)

I am going to post it on HN actually right now.

------
golemotron
> China to forbid unidentified citizens from posting on internet platforms

This is inefficient. They just need to incentivize companies to identify
citizens like we have.

------
Overtonwindow
This sounds similar to South Korea, or perhaps the scheme Russia is attempting
to implement.

------
brudgers
So kind of like Facebook...

------
imhoguy
Nothing surprising. At least they state it officially in the law. But Western
goverments approach providers to open backdoors (e.g. Lavabit case) and keep
users fooled that they still have any anonimity.

~~~
pas
False equivalence.

Look how the 8 years Dem controlled spooks were insufficient to get 4 more
years.

Yes, US law enforcement and security services are doing a lot of dumb things
(TSA security theatre, NSA sitting on 0-days and playing cyber instead of
helping the civilian sector patch up), but they don't arrest troublemakers.
(They arrest you for weed, but not for running an anti-establishment site.)

~~~
zaro
> They arrest you for weed, but not for running an anti-establishment site

Funny you say that, because arresting people for weed started as a way to
arrest people running antiestablishment sites ;)
[http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-
ehrlichman-r...](http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-
richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks)

~~~
pas
That link doesn't work for me, but I guess this is it:
[http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-
ehrlichman-r...](http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-
richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html)

And yes, of course, there's a clear bias in the Controlled Substances Act, and
its enforcement.

------
socratewasright
It's not that bad I believe. With the way PR companies and political parties
are using astroturfing/bots to influence public opinion, asking for
identification is one way of making sure the person participating in an online
discussion is real. It also safeguards against online foreign influence.

Additionally, I think anonymity tends to bring the worst in us. Perhaps it is
because we feel less pressured by social norms of behavior since we are not
held personally responsible for our speech as much as it would've been the
case irl. While no one is truly anonymous to the state, asking people to
identify themselves makes them conscious about it and I believe less likely to
start using a given service under the assumption of anonymity.

~~~
yorwba
I'm pretty sure the Chinese government will give its astroturfers a free pass
on the identity requirements. And the social norms that pressure people when
they are not anonymous include not making the government look bad.

While anonymity-enforcing environments can be useful when users have the
freedom to choose, as soon as they become mandatory under an authoritarian
regime, they turn into a strong silencer against all dissent.

