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Cake day: September 1st, 2023

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  • That statement might sound obvious to you, and it certainly might be true, but stating it as a fact is something that imo should be backed by evidence. The Chinese Constitution mentions that local representatives (the ones we’re talking about here) are directly elected by people. Might be the case that this “works in theory yet not in practice”, which again seems not to be the case, as local governments tend to score pretty high in satisfaction polls.

    I would like to clear some likely misunderstanding regarding CCP control in China. “Parties” in socialist politics have a different meaning from what we are used to; they don’t represent different opinions or ways to approach decision-making, but they represent the interests of different societal groups, and their internal election process represents the actual decision-making within the group. Think of them as having multiple “governments” where you appoint officials to enact your desired policies to the one that represents you. This results in a situation wherein the largest group with shared interests (workers) has explicit, streamlined access to political power.







  • That sentence in the article is by no means evidence of such interference, it just states what the article itself seeks to prove. I argue that its findings can be better explained by propagation of anti-CCP content by American media, a conclusion that I support on the observation that the amount of anti-state content around specific matters (like geographical landmarks) is usually quite low, much below the thresholds that this article considers “baseline” for Chinese subjects.

    It may be the case that the CCP spreads propaganda or otherwise influences the narrative on its media, but I believe this article is not providing proof of that, but on the contrary, provides evidence that American media are state-influenced.



  • I would like to make some criticism of the conclusions. The study correctly determines that TikTok is significantly more likely to contain pro-CCP content versus anti-CCP content than American platforms, but seems to assume this is a result solely of Chinese interference, and therefore the amount of anti-CCP content in other platforms is organic.

    For reference, according to the study, over 30% of content on Tibet (a region known for its independence movements) on Instagram is anti-CCP. My region (the Basque Country) is also home to past and present pro-independence movements; imagine if 30% of all content about it on social media was not about its culture and landscape (which the article considers pro-CCP in the case of Tibet), but anti-Spanish posts, e.g. about the GAL.

    Therefore, an equally, if not more, likely scenario is simply that American platforms contain a disproportionate amount of American propaganda, which is what the work cited by the article itself dealt with originally (manufacturing consent, specifically for economic or full-scale war).








  • pancake@lemmygrad.mltoScience Memes@mander.xyzLow effort meme
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    19 days ago

    As useless as this AI nonsense seems to me, I do argue that it doesn’t violate copyright. For all purposes, looking at examples of something to do it yourself afterwards is not a derivative work. People who made those licenses probably did not foresee that we’d be able to automate that process, or store and copy that knowledge arbitrarily, or sell it, so it’s still a shitty situation…