People are assuming this is about gender, but it may well be about COVID. Wu refused to go along with China's huge policy shift, from trying hard to contain COVID to giving up. She still takes precautions and has been plugging for UV sterilizers and HEPA filters. The government of China has been hassling people who still want to control COVID spread. It's like "return to office" enforced by the cops.
She had a previous visit from "the authorities", and wrote on Twitter, back on June 30th,
"I think the "plainclothes cops" who came to visit today and I told to fuck off were fake since they left when I threatened to call the real cops. That said, in the future it would be super helpful if whoever runs things could give me a contact point so if there is a real issue, I don't tell them to fuck off."
"Personally, I think my uncensored rants and the fact that I get away with them makes us look really good, but if there are certain areas where things are delicate, I'm open to toning it down. Just ask." (She repeated all that in Mandarin.)
"For those of you that are curious- Shenzhen isn't some podunk 4th tier hick town, we have laws- and in my experience they are followed, which is why these two clowns were a whole bundle of red flags. (Yes, they need a warrant and would have had one if they were the real deal)"
I ordered the Nukit CO2 Controller, and it just arrived today! Super excited to use it to automatically refresh air in my basement office :-).
Naomi's tweets taught me that CO2 is a pretty good proxy for human contamination of air, so turning on a fan when CO2 is high is a pretty good mechanism for refreshing air that could contain covid microparticles. Also learned about UVC from her - she's a fantastic educator and I really hope she's OK.
Gonna play with it for a few weeks then might order a second to switch a filter in the living room to reduce the risk from having guests in our home.
Not at the beginning. There is evidence to suggest that some institutions intentionally lied about the effectiveness of masks at the beginning of the pandemic in an attempt to prevent a mask shortage, and the "trust the science" crowd ate it up. Hilariously/despairingly enough, many of those masking at the beginning of the pandemic when it was "unscientific" to do so would later become anti-maskers. Likewise, those "trust the science" folks were quick to put on masks when "the science" changed.
Throughout the pandemic, political preferences were a far more reliable predictor of human behavior than anything else.
"Ok for those of you that haven't figured it out I got my wings clipped and they weren't gentle about it- so there's not going to be much posting on social media anymore and only on very specific subjects. I can leave but Kaidi can't so we're just going to follow the new rules and that's that.
Nothing personal if I don't like and reply like I used to. I'll be focusing on the store and the occasional video. Thanks for understanding, it was fun while it lasted."
From my reading it sounds like her girlfriend Kaidi is under house arrest, and potentially both of them under surveillance. I'm guessing frequent checkins with the local police. Hope I'm not misinterpreting.
Article also notes her historic calling out of potential keyboard app keystroke siphoning threats in China could be related. Sogou input recently found to transmit every keystroke by Citizen Lab.
I don't think she meant her girlfriend is under house arrest (though possibly too), I guess she meant she can leave the country but her girlfriend can't.
Uyghur are systematically suppressed and discriminated in China. It's very hard for them to get even a passport, let alone be allowed to leave the country legally. Given the situation of Naomi now, it's practically impossible for Kaidi to leave China.
See also Peng Shuai 彭帅, a Chinese pro tennis player who disappeared last year after accusing a fairly high ranking politician of sexual assault. Plenty of differences from Naomi Wu's case, to be sure. But some similarities. Particularly in response. For awhile various world sports organizations and players were trying to highlight her predicament but that's mostly dissipated without having much impact.
I really appreciated her POV on China. Usually it's westerners commenting on events in China. Very rare to have someone born and raised in China who comments on issues openly to her extent in English able to articulate American and Chinese POVs on an issue. She's also living an authentic cyperpunk hacker lifestyle. Hope the best for her and her partner.
This is incredibly sad and disturbing, not least because there have been hardly a murmur about this in the west.... I really hope all the best for her and her partner.
I hope the tide will turn one day and Chinese people will be allowed to speak their mind again.
I always take this individual with a grain of salt. I originally supported her as that she was an enthusiast and talking about making things. However, she has a strong tendency to dramatize things and it's very easy to get caught up in her net.
Context: She started raking a maker site (I think it was instructables) about quietly dropping Chinese character support. She went a huge tirade that it was racism and it was intentional. I suggested that hey it's probably a dumb product owner/business decisions. Then she starts arguing with me that "she knows tech." She then quote tweets me so she can target her audience against me also manages to call me a mansplaining tech bro. (And blocks me)
Nearly everything she produced tried to focus it on getting attention, from 360 youtube videos to emphasis her sexual features, to selling 3d nude scans, overly dramatic videos to increase viewership. On top of that she's snaps any any journalist who doesn't cover her exactly how she wants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wu#Vice_article
She called it Sinophobic, not racist, which seems fair. In the most charitable light, instructables was apathetic about their Chinese users. I can't imagine how bad their engineering org would have to be for this to be an unintentional change.
I'm guessing you're one of deleted replies so we'll never know for sure, but from the tone of this comment I doubt your reply was respectful.
>Welcome to tech. It's less likely malice and more likely you have a pretty dumb product owner that "doesn't see business value". And there you have agile....
I agree with you - the tone is quite disrespectful, especially starting off a message to a tech expert with "Welcome to tech."
I mean, looking at those tweets myself, i wouldn't bat an eye at the receiver paraphrasing either one of them years later as racism or mansplaining, respectfully; sounds accurate to me (I guess, with their watered down meanings, since we get so much exposure to people trying to throw those words around at the drop of a hat)? Although, i can only see her side of dialogues.
Regarding that exchange in isolation, I certainly offer my criticisms. Fwiw, I otherwise appreciate (heck, am a fan of, even) her approach to what she does and her participation in public discussions to offer her perspectives (notwithstanding all the commentary about state-imposed censorship on her public conduct up to this point); i just hadn't seen any exchanges like that before.
Yep that's the one. I deleted my account after the takeover by Musk.
That was quite a while ago. You're right, apparently she didn't say mansplaining, at least in that tweet she didn't (not sure about the others I can't see the full statement anymore). But the conversation we had was incredibly insulting to me, she ended up quote tweeting me to amplify her attack, and blocked me. It was super weird to have a disjointed conversation where she doesn't seem to understand prioritization/feature cutting by businesses.. but yet she yells racism/sinophobia.
> she doesn't seem to understand prioritization/feature cutting by businesses
I think this is an incredibly patronizing perspective. She works/worked as a software developer for many years.
Instructables used to support Chinese characters, and someone made a decision that broke that support and it got pushed to prod. (Did someone change the text encoding of UGC and migrate the DB without thinking about other languages?!) At best it was the result of incompetence and apathy.
FWIW, it looks like instructables has Chinese character support again today. I bet her tweets played some role in getting that fixed.
> Instructables used to support Chinese characters, and someone made a decision that broke that support and it got pushed to prod. (Did someone change the text encoding of UGC and migrate the DB without thinking about other languages?!) At best it was the result of incompetence and apathy.
Or alternatively, something somewhere was not built to design UTF-8 (since, you know, its an actual hard problem) and it was a short term "get this out the door before tonight" solution. Which having been in the industry long enough at this point is probably the most likely reason. Not some unfounded "hate" for Chinese people. Wu's rant is unhinged and insulting. It's so typical of online discussion to immediately go to "-splaining", "-ism", "-phobia" the second something happens someone doesn't like. To ice the cake she even talks about "tech bros" (the implied tone being white men).
> I bet her tweets played some role in getting that fixed.
Being a crybully is a not a virtue. I found this part the most hilarious:
> If a CAD company gets tagged by one of the largest digital fabrication accounts on Twitter, and doesn't respond? That is your answer.
Sounds a lot like "silence is violence". Another laughable term used to crybully people. Unhinged thirst trap is completely unable to understand how tech orgs actually work. News at 11.
> To ice the cake she even talks about "tech bros" (the implied tone being white men).
It is interesting how you are projecting meaning onto her use of "tech bro"? I'm guessing you're a white tech bro?
It's interesting how men in tech get extremely offended by her lack of deference to them. I think it probably is a result of her appearance as a nonwhite "bimbo-aesthetic" engineer - (especially white) tech bros feel like she should address them as a superior and their egos feel threatened when she does not.
You're calling her a crybully. I'd argue this comment I'm replying to is a much clearer example of "crybully" behavior. I hope you can reflect on why you reacted in this way.
> > she doesn't seem to understand prioritization/feature cutting by businesses
>
> I think this is an incredibly patronizing perspective. She works/worked as a software developer for many years.
tons of people work in the software developing business and yet fail to understand prioritization. I don't think it was the issue with Wu, but it's not surprising in general
Am I being paranoid in thinking that Musk’s exposure in China & disdain for the LGBTQ community could lead him to lower the reach of tweets related to this issue?
However, I would say that a related, more general, and more disturbing hypothesis (in the "big picture") is more plausible:
Musk is all-in with China, Saudi Arabia, etc. For various reasons - access to markets, financing, etc. Some of those who left Twitter shortly after the bad deal he made was force-consummated, suggested that it might be far less safe for, say, Saudi dissidents to use the platform than it was prior to his takeover (and, there were "incidents" and indications of incidents before he took over, already).
I'd suggest that he has some general directive(s) in place for what to do about certain kinds of potentially sensitive tweets. His claims about "free speech absolutism" are interesting, in the use of the word absolute (think "L'État, c'est moi") and subsequent statements about "following the law" and the resultant behavior.
And, of course, his little trolincel fans are the perfect little army of toadies for these kinds of totalitarian governments... just waiting to denounce any "enemies of the people" (i.e., flag tweets so they may be passed on to House of Saud, CPC [CCP], etc.).
Edit: It's easy to see that this makes all of the craziness we've witnessed with Twitter, since the takeover, look less crazy. With this as a backdrop. That is: the bad deal is already done, but, some of the rationale and goals can still be salvaged.
So, come in, get rid of anyone with a conscience, more experienced, more independent. Have NDAs in place (par for the course already, at "MuskInc", good cover), and a set of foreign indentured servants. The environment is perfectly transformed to extract THIS kind of value from the whole clusterfck. Plus, Elon gets to build his mythos further in multiple ways, including fostering further disgust in "his enemies". And, if / when it all crashes down, well, at least we disrupted all those communities, independent journalist-types, etc.
I was thinking tweets about her or CCP oppression in general, not necessarily from her. There is plenty of proof out there showing that Musk has his fingers on the scales. Citations can be provided upon request.
Just search for "Naomi Wu" on Twitter. There's plenty of people Tweeting about how she was silenced. You can find all sorts of China critical tweets. Uyghurs, Peng Shui. Take your pick.
Not paranoid, but other non-exclusive factors are also in play and much more certain; e.g. “American influencers and press won’t talk about her plight because she’s an intelligent, non-white woman with large breasts and without shame about her body”.
I can't say, but I have been following Wu for a year or more and we interacted maybe once a month. Looking back through the timeline the last tweet of hers that I remember seeing was from late June. I rarely follow new people but don't easily notice when someone falls out of my feed, and Wu would tweet only once or twice a week normally.
No. At this point Twitter (I refuse to call it "X" and I will die on this hill) is little more than Elon's personal agitprop and trolling platform, and he would absolutely be petty enough to pull something like that.
I have to stop myself from thumbing or clicking the X. My brain sees it as something that got past the ad filter and needs closing. A hilarious experience in self-observation loops.
This was explicitly one of the things people were worried about when he bought Twitter. If you didn't notice this your personal filter bubble is giving you ideological blind spots.
This assumes filter bubble theory is true, which it isn't, because being exposed to things outside your bubble mainly makes you resent them even more because they're annoying.
Yes when I could still view tweets without a login I got some shit about some villian called Dark Brandon and a deranged woman using steroids called Margory not from Game Of Thrones.
This is very sad. I was at one point one of those anonymous cowards who criticized Naomi. But as I matured, I realized just how incredible she was, and it deeply saddens me to see that view isn’t shared by the CCP
She speaks the truth often, but I never really got how she portrays herself. Not a huge fan... regardless, she should be able to say whatever she wants and use the platform she built.
> Last year on HN, I wondered publicly if it was body dysmorphia and she replied "Yes, it is something like that."
>> Wu was raised as a boy due to the one-child policy in China at the time. She remembers wanting to look like the beautiful ladies who were mistresses of Hong Kong businessmen. She discovered her own gender and sexual identity when she was a teenager. She identifies as a dee lesbian.
What does the year have to do with it? Aesthetics and appearance have a lot to do with our decisions every day. The people you date, news you read, shoes you buy, etc.
There's nothing wrong with having a preference and/or being put off by something. I'm not bringing her down, her appearance and vibe just isn't for me.
I do like some things she has built and said, but I don't go out of my way to follow her or keep up with her.
It is not like she is going to be sent to a re-education camp but to me it seems there are certain things that are tolerated for now in China - you can look like a fetish doll and be lesbian and make tech videos but criticism of the paramount leader and the party is not on.
When the Taiwanese/US conflict eventually comes then it will get way worse and we are going to see things like LGBTQ is a Western evil etc ....
She really needs to leave now if she wants to be true to herself.
I've enjoyed following her on twitter so it is disturbing to see her silenced. However, I'm not sure I follow the thread between her mentioning security flaws in the software in 2019, this most recent report, and her getting in trouble.
I've been following Naomi Wu on Twitter for years, but I didn't notice that July tweet until reading this post. The reason: I'm barely on Twitter/X anymore because its so bad now, and even when I'm on Twitter/X I don't see stuff I wanted to see because their algorithm is trash now and just likes to highlight conspiracy theories and the latest cringe content from Elon Musk
Anyway, I'm super sad to see Naomi Wu so deplatformed, and even sadder that I didn't even notice thanks to how effectively Elon fucked up Twitter.
She's not the only one either. So many great voices are lost, and I wonder how many others I missed and haven't noticed yet.
I agree, this is tragic. I always enjoyed her spicy takes on the west, especially her pride in China. They were fierce, but they weren't mindlessly nationalist. She'd take the time to explain how and why people in China felt and she had an articulate pride in her country. Always meant a lot to be able to learn someone elses' viewpoint.
It's working now (8.8.8.8) but definitely wasn't earlier. The substack subscribe popover says it was launched 5 hours ago (which seems odd since hn has links from 36 days ago and whois says it was registered 2 years ago) but maybe that's got something to do with it.
Strange domain. I was not able to resolve the web site's (hackingbutlegal.com) IP address using Google's DNS, OpenDNS, or my ISP's default resolver. Cloudflare's DNS (1.1.1.1) resolves it to an IP address.
There is a large LGBT framing in the article on Naomi Wu's situation. I would rather hear from Naomi, it's entirely possible this is about her stance on COVID, Uyghur Muslims or something else entirely.
> Despite her primarily Western audience, Wu has consistently encountered unfavorable treatment from Western media, often tinged with misogyny. Notably, a VICE Magazine reporter appeared to consider outing Wu without her consent, potentially jeopardizing her safety by revealing personal information.
It was VICE who outed her sexuality, a publication by Sarah Emerson [0]. VICE itself has a massive left-wing bias [1], and doesn't quite fit the 'misogyny' narrative. It's entirely possible they could have got her arrested or killed (she was already living somewhat dangerously) [2].
I hope this article took the time and asked for permission to publish - it's entirely possible that this kind of attention itself could cause significant trouble.
Naomi said to the interviewer it was in regards to her previously publicising the Sogou software security vulnerabilities in 2019:
"Five days after Tencent (Shenzhen) admits to the IME vulnerability, the Chinese person (in Shenzhen) who originally publicized it suddenly gets dragged in by the cops and forced offline."
"NONE of them could read English to see my account does not even make China look bad, it was all Baidu fucking translate and demands why I was talking about Signal and the keyboard"
No, this is just censorship. The government showed up and told her to stop saying stuff, so she did. The problem is that the word has been diluted in contemporary usage. Almost everything that people call "censorship" in the discourse mostly amounts to "People disagree with me and I don't liek that", or occasionally "I got banned on <service A> so I'm yelling about it on <service B>".
"I got my wings clipped and they weren't gentle about it"
"I can leave but Kaidi can't"
"In fact, one of the latest turns is the Beijing LGBT Center's closure by the Chinese government in May of this year. "
And many other useful bits of information in the article.
Censorship is when you send a message from jail and someone elides stuff they don't want you to talk about. It doesn't involve goons visiting you, travel restrictions and wholesale restrictions on sizeable chunks of the population in terms of education or association.
Rethink your take. Censorship is when the government prevents you from saying or publishing what you want. The government's ability to do that ultimately stems from the threat of force/violence.
China's ways of doing this might seem crude to somebody in the US or EU, but boil down to the same thing.
If you continue to disobey either of those government's orders to stop doing something, they will send men with guns to pick you up and lock you in a cage, literally preventing you from traveling anywhere.
That's why censorship is a terrible thing in a purportedly free society, and discussions like this are why mis-application of the word "censorship" to mean things like "waaaah walmart.com refused to broadcast my tweet about how trans people should be beaten up" is also bad.
Agreed that private entities not posting your tweets is not censorship.
But I will stick to my guns that there is much more at stake for people in China that don't behave in the way the government wants them to than just being censored. 'to stop doing something' is doing the heavy lifting in your comment and what the 'something' is can be limited to media expressions and then I would agree it is censorship. But this goes much further than that: it is not just what you write. It is also how you behave, and about what your ancestry is, which activities you are allowed to engage in (and which activities you have to engage in).
Censorship is just about expression. This is full-on coercion, anti-LGBT policy and racism. To make it explicit.
I said 'it goes beyond censorship', that means that censorship is a part of it but that it goes well beyond that point.
Here is the dictionary definition: "the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security."
If we follow your logic then killing someone or jailing or intimidating them is just censorship. But the bar for what is censorship is much lower than that. So if the bar for censorship is met by just targeting the media (for instance: youtube, to tell them to pull the account and not to let her back in) then that would be censorship and it wouldn't require threats of harm or restrictions on movement. That's active and possibly violent intimidation. Xi's government gets a free pass from the West because (1) we like the goodies and (2) he's not as bad as some of his predecessors. But meanwhile he's a thug and his government is acting in very thuggish ways to achieve their goals and the casualness with which censorship escalates into other forms of abuse is telling. And that's why we have different names for those other abuses. Those abuses are not there in the service of censorship, censorship is just one of the elements from a palette of abuses that a state can visit on a person.
More telling is how apparently a fragment of the HN audience insists they see nothing more than the control of information. Trust me on this: if your internet connection is severed and/or your online writings are officially erased that's bad enough, having goons come to your house, threaten you and threaten your significant other that's another level altogether.
Censorship doesn't require guns, does not require goons and in general doesn't have a prerequisite of violence. But threats of harm, or being sent to a 'reeducation camp' (I hate that term) especially in a country where people tend to just disappear aim to influence not just your writings and your media expression but your general behavior and serve to cow an individual completely, apparently successful. So censorship is only a sub-goal, and a minor one at that. This is all about behavior and coercion, hence the travel restrictions and targeting of groups of individuals.
Censorship is not solely its most extreme form. Getting banned from your favorite baseball forum because you keep talking about hockey does in fact count, even if it's relatively minor and most people would even agree with it.
> Getting banned from your favorite baseball forum because you keep talking about hockey does in fact count, even if it's relatively minor and most people would even agree with it.
Fine. But then what word do you use for repressive coercion of speech by governments? I'm no linguistic purist. I get that words change their meanings over time.
What I was complaining about were people (1) using the word to imply terrible behavior on the part of some imagined enemy while (2) citing irrelevant nonsense evidence, as in your example. That's not a semantic argument, that's just lying.
No, censorship can totally be the answer to getting people to stop saying things you don’t want them to say if you don’t have any commitment to free speech. See how Tucker Max or Milo Yiannopolous are no longer culturally relevant. Censorship works.
You are comparing getting fired for costing your network billions by lying about elections and smearing, without substance, a company with getting silenced for your sexuality Nice.
I would argue it's more about eliminating bad faith actors from an otherwise healthy discussion. If you aren't arguing to make a point, just to get a reaction, you have no right to a platform.
If I can find it again there's a really great video explaining how, to have free speech, you must restrict some speech. Because bad actors use speech and claims om they are "defending free speech!" in bad faith as a weapon to further their ends, and once they're in a position of power will shameless drop the pretenses and restrict any speech that doesn't entrench their position.
> If I can find it again there's a really great video explaining how, to have free speech, you must restrict some speech.
It's nonsense. Constitutional governments with checks and balances can and do hold up to criticisms against them, even speech advocating against free speech. The paradox doesn't exist because the premise of the paradox, that tolerance of the intolerant inevitably results in the victory of the intolerant, isn't true.
A version that might be harder to misunderstand would be that if the other side resorts to violence first there's not much reason to continue using only rhetoric.
Which even still isn't a hard rule, there's a few well known examples of remaining tolerant (not trying to prevent your opponents from speaking) in the face of intolerance (your opponents do try to prevent you from speaking) and succeeding rather well.
The 'paradox' of meeting violence with violence is the most mundane "I'm 14 and this is deep" shit. I'm pretty sure this is not what people are actually talking about when they talk when they bring up Poppler's "paradox". The "paradox" is used to persuade people that authoritarianism is okay when they do it because everybody thinks of themselves as the good guys. The whole point of tolerance is that you don't meet words with violence, not that you should be a pacifist who refuses to meet even violence with violence.
Government policy ideals from a small handful of European men in the 18th century may be noble but I value more the documented modern observable effects of policies than their inspiration and goals.
The 20th century alone is not short on case studies. Again and again the empirical outcome of tolerating bad faith weaponized speech is the sharp reduction in the diversity of ideas and perspectives actually present in speech, by violently silencing or eliminating those who hold other perspectives.
> Again and again the empirical outcome of tolerating bad faith weaponized speech is the sharp reduction in the diversity of ideas and perspectives actually present in speech, by violently silencing or eliminating those who hold other perspectives.
So the problem isn't 'tolerating bad faith weaponized speech' but rather tolerating 'violently silencing or eliminating those who hold other perspectives.'
The second does not follow on from the first.
Also, what is (and who defines) 'weaponized speech'?
> Government policy ideals from a small handful of European men in the 18th century may be noble but I value more the documented modern observable effects of policies than their inspiration and goals.
The proof is in the pudding, the American system of political tolerance has an excellent track record and leads to better outcomes in the long run.
With all that has gone on, I think it is another example of how it works so well. Strife happens, what is key is dealing with it. And the us seems to be doing fine.
>The paradox doesn't exist because the premise of the paradox, that tolerance of the intolerant inevitably results in the victory of the intolerant, isn't true.
The paradox doesn't apply to actors operating in good faith who simply disagree, but those whose intolerance extends to authoritarianism and violence in oppressing the free speech of their opponents, such as the Nazi regime that insipired it, and its truth seems self-evident. You'll have to explain to me how greater tolerance of the Nazis would have resulted in a better outcome for anyone (besides the Nazis) than intolerance of them in order to disprove the premise.
In America it is legal to advocate for Nazism. This is legal and simultaneously a non-threat because our system of checks and balances prevents them from overthrowing the government. They are not denied their first amendment rights, and yet they're abject losers. The US government is simultaneously tolerant of them and not threatened by them.
The supposed paradox of intolerance says that silencing people who would silence you is the only way to prevent yourself from being silenced, but this is demonstrably not true.
They have eliminated 100% of conservative voices from the platform, as a result it's become a haven for leftist extremists who now openly and repeatedly advocate for moving 'beyond electoralism,' the meaning of which is well understood.
I mean, I've read people arguing for 'Swiss democracy' and 'American ballots' (because you also vote on a restricted set of laws when electing state representatives) when they talk about going 'beyond electoralism', which to me id super fair. Can you explain what do you think it means?
our system of checks and balances prevents them from overthrowing the government
This is uninformed dogma, and reads as if you've lived under a rock the last few years. But to speak to your broader point about the paradox of tolerance, we don't owe a platform to speech that advocates for killing others, which is by definition also an attack on the free speech of those others.
If you stop treating it as a moral commandment and instead consider it a treaty which allows civilization to exist, it becomes obvious that it doesn't apply to those who won't remain bound by it. It's not a paradox.
Tolerance is for all points of view that will allow the discussion to continue.
I trace tolerance in general back to the religious tolerance introduced by the Peace of Westphalia, and the centuries of religious war that preceded it. It obviously goes much further back, but that's the archetypical example for me.
Seen in this light, tolerance is somewhere between symbiosis and mutually assured destruction, and much less wishy-washy than everyone thinks it is.
While I feel sympathy for her having to deal with this tough and unfair situation, this isn't really surprising. Circumventing the great firewall to maintain presence on outside social media is not actually allowed. Just because enforcement isn't consistent doesn't give her a free pass to violate this policy.
And this notion of being high profile in western media conferring any kind of protection is just nonsense. CCP policy is total information control and they don't care one bit if anyone is offended by the concept or the actions they take to enforce it.
Oh the irony of this happening to someone like Naomi Wu, given past things that she posts about.
People should remember this any time they see an influencer living in China who is highly critical of the west and yet suspiciously silent on issues within China.
The answer is, of course, that as soon as one of these influencers cross the line they or their family get threatened with jail time.
It makes it difficult to argue with them or engage in good faith on topics of international politics when this is the real reason why they publicity say certain things.
Yeah it’s such a weird critique from GP, who elsewhere acknowledge that she had “credibility” for a “nuanced” perspective. The reason people thought that is that she was actually often vocally critical of China as well!
Ironically you have proved my point with the very tweets that you posted.
It's not illegal for people in China to get mad when they see a person randomly assaulted on the street, or mad about things in general that are happening in China.
That's not the kind of stuff that will get you silenced.
Instead, it is other topics. For example, if the perpetrator in those tweets had happened to be a high up/protected government official, in the national party, well then I assure you that you would have seen some suspicious silence.
Censorship in China is much more complicated than the false position that has been ascribed to me here, which would be "nobody in China can be upset about anything".
> People should remember this any time they see an influencer living in China who is highly critical of the west and yet suspiciously silent on issues within China.
> The answer is, of course, that as soon as one of these influencers cross the line they or their family get threatened with jail time.
Were any of us really ignorant of that? It should be obvious that in China if you are an influencer, you are either pro-CCP (or at least avoid politics completely) or you are simply no longer an influencer.
> It makes it difficult to argue with them or engage in good faith on topics of international politics when this is the real reason why they publicity say certain things.
Again, I don't think anyone is surprised by this. Why would you expect to have an honest debate with someone subject to rule by an authoritarian regime?
Apparently a lot of people in this thread are, yes. Because a bunch of people are all talking about "nuance" and how it is good to hear from a real perspective of someone living in China.
It's not a real perspective, and never was. It is instead one only optimized for saying what needs to be said to not get arrested.
It colors everything that she has said or not said, and makes it impossible to take any argument or statement that she says at face value.
> Why would you expect to have an honest debate with someone subject to rule by an authoritarian regime?
Although this may seem obvious to us, it was never obvious to her fans and her huge social media following.
Along with all the people who did get into debates and fights with her online (of which there were many!), who didn't realize that they were not engaging with honest good faith statements.
People liked her for the things that she said, taken at face value, and not because of the real truth of the matter which is that all of it was written within the context of a culture of fear of arrest.
Most people are out there to consume rather mundane material on pop culture, whatever dance is popular on TikTok, or perhaps someone who is hacking hardware in a bikini. These are pretty entertaining subjects that don't intersect with politics very well, and probably don't need to.
And ya, any content that we consume from China is going to be the variety that doesn't touch politics due to selection bias (the pro China position from China isn't going to be popular, the anti China position from China is illegal).
On the other hand, consider that if you’re in the US your own information most likely comes from sources that are antagonistic to China? Why are you so sure that other people are just mindlessly consuming while you’re getting the real truth?
> On the other hand, consider that if you’re in the US your own information most likely comes from sources that are antagonistic to China? Why are you so sure that other people are just mindlessly consuming while you’re getting the real truth?
Having lived in China for 9 years, I'm pretty familiar with the US and Chinese media. They can both be biased in the way that media is biased, but one is actually not controlled by a single party while the other most definitely is (if you aren't sure, check out the differences between CNN and FoxNews).
China prefers the narrative that the rest of the world is antagonistic against it and out to get it. In reality, it is just the CCP that is really unpopular, and its popularity wanes and ebs with however authoritarian it happens to be at the time. With an official approval rating of 140%, they are incredibly popular in China, at least.
This is healthy thinking. China might not be a place where there is any censorship, nor goons rounding up Uyghers, nor restrictions on travel, nor foreign-country-located police stations hounding ex-pats to return home under threat to their families.
It could all be made up and China could be a free-thinking, free-speech paradise where an insufficient number of western visitors have realized that everyone is free to talk about fair elections and Winnie-the-Pooh and a Green Party winning control of the Chinese Parliament.
That all sounds quite plausible. We should go and see.
Yes, you finally get it. It really isn't that there are only two options, but the Chinese media pushes there are only two options! You are either pro-china and completely in line with the CCP's agenda and ideology, or you are an anti-china western-media following racist. No nuance or middle ground, or even moderate positions, are possible. The lack of any middle ground in the debate is toxic, and that is mostly due to the Chinese government's hardline position on the matter.
> or perhaps someone who is hacking hardware in a bikini. These are pretty entertaining subjects that don't intersect with politics very well
Oh indeed they don't interact well with politics.
Which is why it is surprising that she engaged in so many online fights about politics all the time.
If she was just some hacker doing sexy hardware stuff then this would be nothing but a tragic story.
But Naomi wasn't that. Instead, she was one of the most viral Chinese influencers (in western audiences at least) who talked about international politics constantly.
She was the supposedly "nuanced" and "breath of fresh air" mainland influencer who was supposedly telling everyone in the west how things really were in China, from the 1st hand perspective of a someone living there.
Thats wasn't true at all though.
She supposedly had credibility to talk about these things. Or at least her fans thought she did.
But, in retrospect, no such credibility or nuance ever existed given the context of her situation.
> The omission of her predicament by the media isn't just an oversight—it's a signal suggesting that a significant portion of western media may be increasingly compromised by Beijing's influence, finding themselves unable to criticize foreign policy, lest they rile the tiger and negatively impact their business.
Compromised because they didn't provide coverage of a Youtuber in China getting silenced? You make sound as if western media have been dead silent on Uyghur matters, which they have not.
As for business interests, I would imagine foreign newspapers aren't carrying much hope of finally cracking the Chinese market.
Well, we got no coverage on Wu getting deplatformed, and a bit of coverage on Uyghur matters. Instead, we should have gotten a bit of coverage on the former, and a lot of coverage on the latter.
Isn't it fairly common to be not especially interested in what those other people over there are doing amongst themselves - even if it's genocide or censuring dissidents or whatever - and to care a lot more about important local news like which faction gets to impose their values on the public school curriculum and what color suit the president wore left week?
Perhaps. When I submitted a blurb about Naomi getting arrested it got flagged right quick despite the ample evidence that she was not trying to keep quiet about it in earnest. Make of that what you will.
My interpretation is since her sexuality was outed by a Western journalist she has had an antagonistic relationship with them. I've replied and responded to some of her Tweets and she definitely has her own identity that doesn't line up with what Western users think. I think they wanted a freedom fighter based in China to criticize the CCP and she was not taking the bait.
What I had not anticipated was her needing the exposure to Western media to keep her safe. I naively assumed it was the opposite. Like if she didn't stand to high or make much noise it would be water under the bridge. Once the politburo realized the Westerners weren't that interested in her they pounced.
You’re refuting her being a Western journalist because of her ethnicity? She’s been in the US since she was 3 years old, raised Southern Baptist, attended Ivies, and is a US citizen…
I’m providing context, to the parent comment. My reasoning is multi faceted. You’re welcome to read whatever you like, into why I provided the aforementioned context - but it’s probable, you’d be wrong.
> […] and is a US citizen […]
From 2017, according to Wikipedia.
I’ve been following the rise of Naomi Wu, for a long time. I’ve seen her skills, and abilities, called into question by Dale Dougherty, of Make Media/Magazine - simply because she was a woman, who didn’t fit the dowdy/frumpy stereotype, en vogue with the supposed “community”. In fact, they went so far as to claim, there was a hidden man/husband, controlling her, behind the scenes. Now it transpires she’s gay, they have even more to answer for - in their quest, in trying to gatekeep, who does, and doesn’t, fit the approved imagery of hackerdom.
> My reasoning is multi faceted. You’re welcome to read whatever you like, into why I provided the aforementioned context - but it’s probable, you’d be wrong.
Your reasoning is multi faceted, but instead of explaining your reasoning you waste your breath telling me I'm probably wrong? Good explanation.
I don't really care why you did it. Just that you're incorrect in adding "South Korean journalist" as a follow-on to her being labelled a "Western journalist."
This makes sense. “South Korean journalist” is a very clear way of saying “western journalist” also I’m sure “anti white racist” isn’t any sort of culture war word salad.
Explanation requested. I guess it's missing a hyphen but "anti white racist" is a pretty thin salad at three words and not especially ambiguous in terms of the politics it implies.
Yes, I’d also like to know what politics I’m supposed to be implying?!
For the record, and despite the handle, I’m not “white”. A “quadroon”, if you must!… Furthermore, I’m politically neutral - abstaining from voting, fully. I’m not American, either…
A South Korean working for an American media organization, specifically called out as western, is a western journalist as I see it. The term "Western" is imprecise and should usually be avoided for this reason, but South Korea itself is often ranked among the Western nations in the economic and geopolitical alignment senses of the term. And it's fair to say that any journalist working for an American media organization is a western journalist, in any sense of the term. Mentioning that somebody is from South Korea does not constitute a refutation of that person being a western journalist, nor do I believe that was the intention.
In any case, the rest of palefaces's comment plainly criticizes Sarah Jeong for doing the thing quoted: "since her sexuality was outed by a Western journalist" by sarcastically suggesting that Sarah Jeong should feel satisfied. Sarcasm is problematic, particularly in text, but I think in this case the sarcasm is clear. paleface's comment provides details which substantiate the claims, they aren't refuting it.
Incidentally, I think your comment employs sarcasm too. But just to be safe, "This makes sense" is you being sarcastic, right? You think this actually doesn't make sense?
> I’m sure “anti white racist” isn’t any sort of culture war word salad.
I am virtually certain that claim refers to this [quoted from wikipedia]:
> "In August 2018, Jeong was hired by The New York Times to join its editorial board as lead writer on technology.[18][19] The hiring sparked a strongly negative reaction in conservative media, which highlighted derogatory tweets about white people that Jeong had posted mostly in 2013 and 2014.[20][21][22] Critics characterized her tweets as being racist; Jeong released an apology,[23][24] saying that the tweets were meant to satirize online harassment toward her as a woman of color.[20][25]"
Whether or not you find the satire excuse credible, this incident is plainly the basis for the accusation of Sarah Jeong being racist. It may not be a perspective you agree with, I haven't bothered to look up the tweets and their context so I don't have an opinion one way or the other concerning Sarah Jeong actually being a racist or merely satirizing racism. But regardless of whether you agree with the claim it's not 'word salad' e.g. the incoherent speech of a schizophrenic. She would not have said her statements were satire of racism unless her statements could be reasonably construed as resembling racism. Satire of a thing will inherently resemble the thing, so teasing out the difference will be an exercise in subjective judgement. Tacitly accusing somebody of mental illness because you disagree with their subjective interpretation of ostensible satire is inappropriate.
> Mentioning that somebody is from South Korea does not constitute a refutation of that person being a western journalist
I don't understand other peoples' denial of the intent with GP's comment. GP specifically quoted the sentence that ended with "Western journalist" and followed that with "South Korean journalist", as an implied correction, when that journalist's South Korean birthplace could hardly be any consideration into her journalism, when she's been living quite the western life since she was 3 years old.
What does that mean? I think the point is she is racially Korean, aka Asian not white/Caucasian, given context to her being accused of being "anti-white".
> A South Korean working for an American media organization
This makes sense. Being born in a place irrevocably bestows a person with a nationality that supersedes citizenship, where they were raised and educated, or where they’ve lived nearly all of their lives. In this essay I will explain the good faith purpose of bringing up someone’s birthplace in this context, and I will begin with this thought: If California is west, isn’t Korea even more west? Furthermore I
> I think they wanted a freedom fighter based in China to criticize the CCP and she was not taking the bait.
Let's don't forget about the real-world context here which includes the on going large scale trade war against China, and there are US generals floating on a boat nearby ready to fight and won. Not to judge what's right and wrong here, but under this situation, you just don't think a Chinese, who's probably has good relationships with many of the negatively impacted, to further support the western narrative that (as many Chinese views it) too promoted the trade war.
The medias wants a perfect movie, a great story that they can tell and sell. Hero v.s. monster, good v.s. evil, this kind of things. And under this influence, many people views the world with this expectation. But reality is more complex, and everybody move based on their interests, including political ones.
The real question the media should be asking themselves is, why should Naomi Wu take the risk? She mostly already living her dream life, all is well for her and everyone she cares, why change it and diminishes her future opportunities?
It's depressing how many Americans and Europeans seem utterly allergic to any kind of nuanced discussion or deeper understanding of China. I think the same applies to the former USSR. I'm not sure why this is.
A language and internet barrier makes it difficult to find unbiased news and views. Most of us have no primary sources, everything is relayed to us by:
- People in China who choose or are allowed to bypass the GFW
- People who decided to leave China, or whose families decided to leave
- People who decided to learn Chinese
There can be a political motivation for all three of these.
The problem is that the pro-China position almost always comes either from an outsider (who isn’t really credible) or an insider (who is scared of giving even meek criticism or caveated opinions).
There are not really insiders willing to offer those nuanced opinions. Instead it’s up to the rest of the world to figure out what’s true and what’s not, what’s omitted, how to reconcile the two differing opinions, but without the context.
And I don’t agree that the same applies to the USSR in the modern era. I thought it was common knowledge that in post-soviet countries a lot of especially older folks held mixed opinions on the USSR (liking the safety net and sense of personal security, hating the shortages and queues, liking the international prominence, hating the corruption, etc).
I don’t know about neither, but I think there are people who are “both” like expats or people who emigrated from China at an age (say 20+) at which they could have credibly fully understood what it’s like to live there. You could also include people like ABCs with strong familial ties to China although I think those are more firmly outsiders.
In any case it’s rare for either of these groups to be fully candid with non-Chinese, or at least bold enough about it to broadcast is via eg news media, anyway because of the cultural taboo on discussing politics and risk of negatively affecting relatives back in China.
From the things people liked post-communism countries you forgot the most important ones like older people liking having been young and also all material things being universally shit rather then some people having better things afterwards.
The folks who would provide insight to China would be the citizens of China. If you buy the premise that China is a totalitarian state, a consequence is that you can’t have a public, nuanced discussion with its citizens, because they may be victimized by the state. So your only source of insight would be history and private conversation.
I think a lot of opinions coming from first-hand perspective is, if anything, more biased. People get inured to the life they live in and don't have perspective. A lot of people I know who live comfortably in the US that are from places like China or the Soviet Union are still pretty biased in favor of their nationalist propaganda. Not all of them, but some.
On the other hand, there are also a lot of Western expats who were very happy living in China for several years, but are leaving or have left China in the past 2-3 years due to the political changes taking place. China is a much more totalitarian nation today than it was 5 or 10 years ago.
no it's not. most of those people just didn't like china's covid response. things in 2023 are almost back to what they were in 2019 (in regards to western expat life)
I don't think you can give an honest reading of those threads and come away with the conclusion that it's just about COVID. Nearly every comment mentioned reasons other than just COVID.
And even the ones that were about COVID weren't really about COVID, they were about the consequences of the totalitarian response laying bare the lack of social contact and waking them up to what was possible. COVID was the trigger but it could have been anything and they know it now, essentially.
sorry i didnt read those threads. i am a western expat in china and have been for 10+ years, and i'm talking about the people i know and have seen and summarizing discussions with them. many people i know have left since 2020 and this is why
China has always been China. Tibet, Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen, Xinjiang. A lot of expats thought they could bury their head in the sand because they had a chance to make money. Same way George HW Bush did.
Do we have a nuanced discussion or deeper understanding of iran? Libya? Vietnam? Ethiopia? Myamnar? Niger? Of course not. People just follow state propaganda. Doesn't matter who it is, americans, europeans, chinese, russians, etc.
Besides, nuanced discussion or deeper understanding of china wouldn't change the geopolitical realities of the situation. Whether it was the ussr, ottoman empire, japanese empire, etc, our enemies have to be caricatured and destroyed.
The real question is why the china, ussr, ottoman empire, japanese, etc aren't doing or didn't do the same. Why is it that china or the chinese are so desperate for american approval or understanding? While we don't give a shit whether the chinese have a nuanced discussion or deeper understanding about us.
Why do you think it's easy for most to have nuanced, dispassionate discussions about the ancient Assyrians but not the Nazis? Spacial/temporal/ideological proximity. We're not likely to become anything like the former, but we fear ourselves (or at least our leadership) becoming more like the latter.
Obviously it would be ideal to learn from the good aspects of even the most evil totalitarian regimes, but in practice it's easier to wrap the whole nationalist/collectivist/communist idea-space up in a bundle and throw it out as one, at least in conversations with strangers of unclear motives.
Mostly more dispassionate, but not necessarily more accurate? I gather from reading acoup.blog that popular culture gets ancient cultures wrong quite often too. Especially the sort of thing that engages people's imaginations.
The USSR perpetuated the Great Purge and the Holodomor, which together killed approximately 5M people (estimates vary). This is a matter of historical fact, not just belief.
Because if you don't say what you are expected to say you are branded a shill, you are told you are repeating propaganda points, etc. All in all a toxic way of ending the discourse. That causes some people not to try.
Isn't it obvious that this is the result of the US state propaganda system? The US likes to pretend all speech is free, but it sure seems like the speech that supports the narratives of people with power get amplified 1000x.
Another reminder why don't ever invest in China or live there, being silenced like a leashed dog for what you are without even trying to hide behind the laws is totally unacceptable.
I used to like Naomi, but like a lot of intelligent people online recently, she has caught the politics mind virus and began using her platform to spread even more hate and division.
These days I find myself desperately craving an online community that just focuses on building cool projects and learning about new stuff, rather than pointless political debates that have extremely little relevance in anyone’s lives.
That's a very presumptuous thing to say. I'm not any different from anyone else.
The greatest lie that politicians ever told was that they have power over how you live your life. The sooner people stop believing this, the sooner we can all move on from politics and start building stuff again.
Naomi has taken to an extreme view on COVID, claiming that policies that are any less authoritarian than the (now provably failed) “zero COVID” policy are attempts by the state to purposefully kill elderly and sick people so that survivors can apparently enjoy greater tax revenue.
I don't know, in the context of my own country (Brazil) there seems to be some (probably small) amount of intentionality [0] of government officials in measures that are obviously malicious, like rejecting vaccines [1] and other actions that aided the spread of the virus. We shouldn't live in a world where the incentives of government officials coincide with excess deaths of elderly or any other population group.
But the trouble with conspiracies is that they ascribe a level of competency that's unrealistic. So it's unlikely there is a government program specifically targeted to kill the elderly, not because governments are above this, but just because this kind of thing can't be made secret for too long (just like this specific remark from some specific government official in Brazil quickly became public).
She had a previous visit from "the authorities", and wrote on Twitter, back on June 30th,
"I think the "plainclothes cops" who came to visit today and I told to fuck off were fake since they left when I threatened to call the real cops. That said, in the future it would be super helpful if whoever runs things could give me a contact point so if there is a real issue, I don't tell them to fuck off."
"Personally, I think my uncensored rants and the fact that I get away with them makes us look really good, but if there are certain areas where things are delicate, I'm open to toning it down. Just ask." (She repeated all that in Mandarin.)
"For those of you that are curious- Shenzhen isn't some podunk 4th tier hick town, we have laws- and in my experience they are followed, which is why these two clowns were a whole bundle of red flags. (Yes, they need a warrant and would have had one if they were the real deal)"
Meanwhile, her online store is still up.[1]
[1] https://cybernightmarket.com/