Roskomnadzor, the Russian agency that monitors and sanctions media has decided to slow down Twitter…
RIA Novosti reports that such a decision was taken because the website refuses to block illegal content. The moderators of Twitter have allegedly failed to remove 3,168 publications containing calls for suicide, child pornography and about the use of drugs.
That is, Roskomnadzor does not care that people with a pro-Russian opinion (see here and here) are massively being blocked by US social media sites, and they come up with a lame justification for why an American tech giant should have their work made more difficult in Russia.
I personally believe that American websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube ought to be blocked in Russia (a market of 150 million people) as an answer to US and Western sanctions. These billion dollar businesses would be easier to ban than food imports. It is not like Facebook is something you necessarily need for living.
Insomniac Resurrected 
Yeah I get what you mean. But then again, I still believe it’s probably wise for Russia to maintain some access though.
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There is a concerted effort to deny Russians this access. So, I am not certain Russia needs to try getting into spaces where it is not welcome.
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Then again though, I don’t think it’s in Russia’s interest to have a Great Firewall set up. Look at China; it’s getting shitted on by US, EU, India, Japan, Taiwan and even those NGO in Hong Kong and it doesn’t even much chance at fighting back, all thanks to that Great Firewall. The common Chinese are even more clueless than Russians as nobody really inform them about how the outside world actually looks like. This is why they believe that western world is still a model to learn from and the west will have solution towards all China’s societal problems. Even though I believe that Russians, being better educated and more worldly than Chinese, might not come across as that pathetic under GF, but still I wouldn’t say it won’t cause damages on the long run.
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If they block you on Twitter, what are your chances to promote your own opinion. Your ban will be celebrated by NGO workers with blue checkmarks. It is the sense of inferiority that makes people look up to the West. I don’t know if China has something like InoSMI, a website that translates foreign press in Russia. The government needs to have its own programme that will educate the population.
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For this InoSMI, I believe you’re onto something here Leos. In China, if you can ever get access to Sina, Guancha, Sohu, or even QnA sites like Zhihu, you’ll see tons of voluntary translators. Their fluency varies, but at least enough to read news articles and have certain level of understanding. That’s about the only thing close to InoSMI. On top of that, you’ll have to be careful about what you read there. Sometimes they’re talking bullshit and mix their own personal opinion that might or might not do harm to Beijing and it might mislead the publics who’re not worldly enough and have very little English fluency or don’t speak it at all. From many recent moves by Chinese government, I believe they want everyone to “stick together and face one single direction”. However, what can you do when the publics don’t even really know what the fuck is going on except selective few? The way I see it, as long as Beijing slips for one bit, any agent provocateur can start Hong Kong caliber shit storm within Chinese population.
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But there must be enough fluent people to set up a translation firm like InoSMI. I have studied with scores of Chinese in boarding school and uni.
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The key is organization. If Beijing knows what’s good, it’ll do a two things; let the ones who know how to speak English to form into a InoSMI-like firm to ensure people know what’s going on in the west. On top of it, find a way to end the juying phenomenon and for fuck sake, stop promoting the idea of “piety”.
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What do you mean by idea of piety?
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This is one thing I like about Russia, Russians are not only more capable at fending for themselves than us as a group, but Russians are also better educated and know more about how to deal with the situation and Russian government has done a great job at ensuring it. In another words, Russians are tougher target than Chinese. Chinese in general got serious case of dependency issue, and that can leave rooms for exploitations. Then again, this is linked to the “juying” phenomenon (巨婴, literally translated as gigantic infants) , a product of that lame ass parenting and the type of schooling we got. Which is also why I’ve been promoting the idea of a Chinese Jamahiriya based on people with experience as a long term runaway children (running away from abusive homes, just like that Confucian-infused child abuse, a big business in China. At least not all of us take it up our asses like those other Confucian guys in the region), instead of the “well educated”, well established achievers. I can go on and on about it, but this links to many Chinese societal issues and many of them are in fact cultural based rather than political.
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By piety…you know, just like Japan and Russia, China is an ageing society. What Chinese government wants, is to have the younger populations resort to one of the most obsolete Confucian virtue: the concept of “familial piety”, to take care of the often abusive C-boomer parents. This is the very same reason why the book ”巨婴国“ (translated as “The Countries of Giant Babies”, was banned in China; the book encourage young people to lose the unnecessary dependency and learn to think on their own, which means more young adults will stop caring about the C-boomers.
Now if you ask me, I say to hell with C-boomers. There are way too many of them and if the government insists on trying to find ways to care for them, how the fuck can we live a decent life, let alone having any bright future? At the end, this will just lead to men carry all the burden and are almost always stressed out while the women get to carry their bitchy attitude everywhere as they’re the least affected by it. Just let the C-boomers die. They’re the product of people who don’t understand the concept of only reproduce the amounts that the parents can actually afford, and instead of finding ways to care for them and bear with their gigantic attitude problem, everyone should learn the lessons from the 50’s and 60’s and the government should focus on how to uplift the abused children out of their misery because you know what? As China gets realer with US, it’ll only be a matter of time till US finds its way to those abused and/or runaways children and turn them into a political weapon.
The least we could do, is to give C-boomers a proper burial. That’s only thing sensible we can do about them. No matter how much China want to use that familial piety value to solve the ageing society problem, it’s not gonna go away and at the end, the result will be a very angry nation with many rejects and tormented souls who can be manipulated by other rivaling countries and/or NGO into doing something stupid.
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Speaking of the book, it’s on Amazon too. However I have yet to find English nor Czech version of it.
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There are very few Czechs, who can translate Chinese.
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