
John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China - mikece
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/john-oliver-is-erased-from-chinese-internet-following-segment-on-china/
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jen729w
Does it count as ironic that I can’t watch the segment here in Australia
because “the uploader has not made this available in your country”?

~~~
mikedilger
In NZ it says "this video is not available" but plenty of other Last Week
Tonight videos are. Was this one singled out?

~~~
novaleaf
same with Canada. it also doesn't show any comments. almost looks censored
compared to the usa view.

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coliveira
I don't agree with the censorship decision, but I completely get why other
countries don't like Oliver's show. He likes to denounce other countries'
politics from the point of view of liberal, first world policy, which may not
be in the best interest of other nations. Even though he is doing comedy for
the first world market, it comes off clearly as another attempt of propaganda
directed at these countries. The way China has decided to deal with this is
banning, so I don't think this is a surprising development.

~~~
amerine
If I squint and ignore the fact that personalities like Oliver have been doing
their ideological-driven (rightly so IMO) comedy perspective bits for years I
can see how how you could naively call that “propaganda”.

However, the logical side of me can’t fathom how the reported events are
anything remotely “propaganda”. They are legitimate things that free-press
nations can discuss how they like, including laughing at them.

You can’t call things that rustle your jimmies propaganda just like you can’t
call news you don’t like fake.

~~~
EpicEng
>You can’t call things that rustle your jimmies propaganda just like you can’t
call news you don’t like fake.

I don't think that's a great analogy. Oliver is biased and he has never
pretended to be a journalist. He presents stories he cares about from a
specific viewpoint. The definition of propaganda is:

>information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or
publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

Seems fitting. Just because you may agree does not make it any less
propaganda. Essentially any narrative which is not 100% fact based and
unbiased is technically propaganda.

~~~
ctrl-j
I mean... under that definition isn't all media propaganda? At that point does
it just depend on whether or not you choose to use the term in a pejorative
manner?

If any biased claim can be called propaganda - then it seems the word loses
it's meaning.

Perhaps the word propaganda is losing it's weight over time? Do we need a
specific word for state sanctioned biased media? Or perhaps one specifically
for attacks on political states or policies?

~~~
bb88
The 20th century changed the meaning of the word to be more about
manipulation, where as the original definition was neutral. [1] The
manipulation suggested deceitfulness on the part of the party creating and
distributing it.

So it's one of these things where OP can use a politically charged word, and
then claim it was used in the neutral voice.

Personally, rather than have an argument about what amounts to "propaganda" in
the 21st century, let's just admit that Oliver is not deceitful, yet biased.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda)

~~~
EpicEng
Sure that's fair. He's been guilty of this part though:

>...often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis
or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a
rational response to the information that is presented.

And honestly, what major news outlet today _isn't_? Is that not a huge problem
with "mainstream media" (I hate that term) currently? So... still not sure he
or others can escape that label.

~~~
394549
You seem to be arguing exclusively from simple textual definitions of the term
"propaganda" from the dictionary and Wikipedia. I don't think that's a
fruitful approach because it fails to account for the nuances in meaning
between different words and the _contrasts_ and _distinctions_ that those
different terms are used to illustrate.

I think Oliver's segment is more accurately classified as an op-ed piece with
some satire, it's not propaganda.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editorial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editorial)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire)

~~~
EpicEng
I agree. I started with the definition and, honestly, I had no idea it was so
broad. In reality most would not consider this stuff propaganda until it
crosses over into seriously misleading territory.

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Jommi
What's funny here is that its completely overblown. No, its not banned at all.
I can easily post the whole episode on wechat.

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drogorbrn
Did they remove him from hacker news too?

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oelmekki
I think it's safe until we mention Winnie the Pooh. Woops.

Context: in his China segment, Oliver asserts that China has banned Winnie the
Pooh from the internet because it was used to mock the president. And then he
(Oliver) used tons of Winnie the Pooh references.

We already are seeing a lot of partisan arguments in this thread (as one could
have expected, I guess). For my part, I don't care about the politics on this
topic, I'm just glad someone stands up against internet censorship. Making
tons of Winnie the Pooh references is the way to go, we must prove censorship
doesn't work.

~~~
adventured
It won't work, China is perfectly happy to block every external Web site as
necessary. They're fine with relying solely on their internal network, they've
structured things to that end as it is now. Censorship does work if you're
willing to insulate your nation from external media, as they prove time and
time again that they are. That's why censorship has worked in North Korea for
nearly 70 years. It works if you're willing to pay whatever the consequences
involved happen to be.

~~~
oelmekki
Or maybe not. As Oliver was mentioning, China is shifting from self focus to
expansion. This is already something I thought when I saw the China sea
quarrels.

If it's the case, it's not just only their population opinion that matters,
but they need to have a good reputation in the world - that is, if they really
want to be a part of it.

With US withdrawing from the world, China has a good opportunity. But the
tyranny/autocracy archaism won't fly past their borders.

~~~
vinni2
Except countries and companies will eventually cave as their trade and profits
are at stake.

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mrdrozdov
> It’s impressive to see the pace of Chinese censors.

I'm not sure that impressive is the right term here...

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ggggtez
It is. If someone eats 100 hot dogs in 20 minutes, you might still say "That's
impressive" but also feel horrified and sickened.

~~~
mrdrozdov
I see your point, and although technically correct, the writer had a lot of
words to choose from.

For instance, if a nourishing lake had suddenly dried up, I'd use a different
word. Perhaps devastating.

~~~
thomastjeffery
I see the word choice as more than technically correct. "Impressive" does not
necessarily carry a positive connotation.

~~~
Retra
Even if it did, artistic license allows for a certain degree of irony and
detachment.

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toyg
The "ephemeralness" of the internet is still a huge, huge problem. We've only
started to scratch the surface of the issue, and between censorship, "right to
be forgotten" and linkrot, it's already a complete shitshow.

We need a distributed and censorship-resistant conservancy system, because the
Wayback Machine can only do so much (and it can trivially be censored).
Unfortunately, it's not a money-making enterprise.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> We need a distributed and censorship-resistant conservancy system, because
the Wayback Machine can only do so much (and it can trivially be censored).
Unfortunately, it's not a money-making enterprise._

Color me skeptical, but it seems like such a system would eventually need to
seek out a business model and would turn into mugshotsonline.us writ large. Or
"toxic yelp reviews of dubious origin" but for humans instead of businesses.
And with all the perverse incentives.

Censorship is bad, but profit-motivated society-wide forever-grudges against
people in no significant position of power is also bad.

~~~
rotexo
Once I got doxxed by bloggers from one end of the political spectrum who
thought I was a blogger from the opposite end (we have similar names, but the
doxxers put out all of my info). Even after I got my info taken down, someone
archived it and the archives got passed around on Twitter, prolonging the
mess. Even now all that stuff shows up if you google my name.

Should you care about what happened to me? I can’t really argue for it. But I
can say that the dangers the above comment lists are real.

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vfulco2
"Hurting the feelings of..." is the blanket whine for anything deemed
unacceptable. Not going to play well in the free, democratic, mature thinking
world.

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DINKDINK
The Ministry of Truth has no record of one "John Oliver"[1]
[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole)

~~~
stcredzero
George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair,) was a lifelong avowed socialist. However,
the Memory Hole was an observation squarely aimed at the behavior of the Far
Left. Beware of those who push a narrative against the facts.

~~~
coliveira
George Orwell was against all kinds of authoritarianism. A large portion of
the left has always disavowed authoritarianism as well, so there is no
conflict here.

~~~
EGreg
In fact libertarians were originally socialists, railing against capitalism as
a tool of the state, back when the state used to break up eg strikes with
violence. See Oscar Wilde for instance, “Man’s soul under socialism.”

~~~
icebraining
The word still carries that connotation in some places. The Center of
Libertarian Culture, in my EU country, is left-wing anarchist.

~~~
tomjakubowski
I know anarchism isn't the same as libertarianism, but in that vein, there is
a legendary post from the ancap subreddit about one naïve American's confusion
hanging out with Greek anarchists.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/3ucp8y/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/3ucp8y/i_was_beat_up_by_left_anarchists_in_greece/)

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lavazon
Is John Oliver any more important than all the other things that China has
banned?

Or is this just something that happens to be popular which creates outrage
even when it's not nearly as bad as other things that China censors?

~~~
anoncoward111
The interesting thing is that because John Oliver is not really a big deal,
the Chinese government shouldn't waste its time silencing him.

And yet they did!

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
In a way his segment is a big deal.

The Chinese can censor anything they like. During the Arab Spring, which
inspired Chinese protests and at the time was sometimes referred to as the
“Jasmine revolution”, the word “jasmine” was effectively banned from the
Chinese internet. From the rice itself to the Disney character, “jasmine”
disappeared overnight.

The implication of such a strict censorship system is that any uncensored
content is endorsed by the Communist Party. So if anybody says anything that
China doesn’t like, into the censorship bin it goes.

This comment would probably get censored.

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bdamm
That's entirely predictable given that was explicitly John Oliver's objective.
The real question now is when will this experiment implode? Isn't there a
theory that totalitarian states must inevitably collapse?

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SimbaOnSteroids
All states must inevitably collapse.

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simonh
There’s no law of the universe about this, other than the sun exploding and
heat death.

One of the plausible catastrophic end states for humanity is an ultra-stable
technocratic totalitarian global state, enabled by pervasive super high tech
surveillance and censorship. It’s one of the ‘great filter’ possibilities for
why sentient beings never colonise the galaxy - they’re all trapped in
bureaucratic self serving versions of 1984 where the state only exists to
maintain the state. Democracies and other forms of goveenment are never
stable, the only stable state is bureaucratic autocracy, and falling into one
only ever has to happen once and you’re done.

This is what China is building, and the model they are exporting to the world.

~~~
alazoral
I would disagree with your assertion there that bureaucracies are terminal.
Historically, military dictatorships tend to overthrow bureaucracies, while
democracies overthrow military dictatorships and bureaucracies subsume
democracies. Each of these transitions can be understood thermodynamically;
each transition results in a lower energy state for the problems facing them
at the time:

Bureaucracies lack military response time. Dictatorships lack economic
stability. Democracies lack efficiency. Each of these are actually each
model's strength, but over time becomes fatal.

~~~
simonh
I think that's arguable, but anyway a global totalitarian state with 100%
communications channel surveillance linked to super-advanced AI analysis
engines doesn't need a military. All they need is a detention force to send
anyone with seditious tendencies or too low on their Citizenship Points[1] for
organ harvesting[2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China)

