The conversations are amazing

  • Sagittarii@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    There’s a bunch of Chinese posts asking if the stuff about school shootings, fires, homelessness are exaggerated propaganda only to be told otherwise. It’s both hilarious and sad.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I’m reminded of that ex Soviet joke about how they always knew the government was lying about their own countries but were shocked to learn it was telling the truth about america

    • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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      3 days ago

      People of the US and China are both unsure of what to believe about the other, because both are so propagandized lol

        • SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          You just made that up. You genuinely have no idea what the Chinese perception of the uyghur imprisonment is. In fact you’ve gone out of your way to call their prison system a “work camp”. I’m not even saying that it’s not a work camp. What I am saying is you wouldn’t call American prisons a work camp despite also being used for mass slave labor.

        • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          You don’t know what Chinese people do or don’t know. You only know what Western governments and Western corporate media tell you Chinese people do or don’t know.

          There’s nothing secret about what happened in Xinjiang. People are well aware of the terrorist attacks and of how the local and federal governments’ responded to them.

        • AnActOfCreation@programming.dev
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          2 days ago

          Thank goodness for the modlog! You are right on. Just because American propaganda is bad doesn’t mean Chinese isn’t bad too or that we have to defend it. Everyone should be held accountable.

      • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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        3 days ago

        Who told you that the people of China are propagandized, especially to hate other countries and peoples as much as the US does?

        • COASTER1921@lemmy.ml
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          3 days ago

          Their access to news is controlled and for some topics all available news is what we’d call propaganda. Particularly anything about Japan or the Taiwan issue. Most people I know there realize this to an extent but without any other information do still believe the core idea even if skeptical of details.

          But at the same time I’d argue there’s no such thing as a population that’s not propagandized. In the US the big news corporations only will present views favorable to their profitability and continued growth. Sure they disagree with eachother, but it’s still always a pro-business view. State news from Russia is (I’d argue rightly) not available on many US platforms to discourage it’s influence for example.

          • FreakinSteve@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            The US does NOT have a free press and is not at all interested in freedom and free speech. Notice that there are no socialists or leftists of any kind on any news channel or in political leadership positions.

            • kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              2 days ago

              This is just untrue. There is plenty of legal press in the US of any persuasion, from anarchist to fascist.

              The major US news outlets are in bed with capitalists because that’s where the money is, but there are lots of smaller outlets with other views. In China all news outlets kowtow to the government because anything else is illegal.

              • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                2 days ago

                In China all news outlets kowtow to the government because anything else is illegal.

                This is what our media tell us about their media. In every country the media kowtow to the government to some extent, but I’m not sure to exactly what extent they actually do in China, and I’m not going to take our media’s word for what that extent is.

                • kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  1 day ago

                  If you do not know the extent of pressure asserted on Chinese media that is willful ignorance.

                  Of course “our media” (whatever you mean by that) is the only media that can report on it as Chinese media is heavily censored.

                  If you want to know the extent the information easy to find.

                  Here’s some of what Reporters Without Borders have to say

                  “The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the world’s largest prison for journalists, and its regime conducts a campaign of repression against journalism and the right to information worldwide.”

                  “The Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party sends a detailed notice to all media every day that includes editorial guidelines and censored topics.”

                  “Independent journalists and bloggers who dare to report “sensitive” information are often placed under surveillance, harassed, detained, and, in some cases, tortured.”

                  Source: https://rsf.org/en/country/china

                  This is from The Committee to Protect Journalists

                  “China has long ranked as one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists. Censorship makes the exact number of journalists jailed there notoriously difficult to determine, but Beijing’s media crackdown has widened in recent years”

                  Source: https://cpj.org/reports/2024/01/2023-prison-census-jailed-journalist-numbers-near-record-high-israel-imprisonments-spike/

                  Here’s Amnesty International

                  “Chinese authorities continued to severely curtail rights to freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly, including through the abusive application of laws often under the pretext of preserving national security.”

                  Source: https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/east-asia/china/report-china/

              • Eatspancakes84@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                Mostly agree with this take. I just wanted to add some nuance. I was talking to a friend about Gaza/Israel-protests in my country and said that the media doesn’t show everything. He then told a story about the protests that was supposedly not covered in the media. However, I had literally just read about that story in my newspaper.

                Point is, there is some freedom of press (at least in my country) and the press is fairly pluralistic. However, to really find out what’s going on you need to read i.) several sources, and ii.) continue to focus on events after journalists took the effort to dig down. That’s a big ask for many people. And the stories that come out first tend to be most biased.

                • kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  3 hours ago

                  the stories that come out first tend to be most biased

                  I honestly think the concept of news is actually harmful, because it’s about reporting what happened, not about making the audience understand the subject. It puts a premium on getting the report out as quickly as possible, and favours the most shocking events and interpretations that draw people’s attention.

                  Ultimately most news are “empty calories” of information that mostly give an illusion of knowledge. “Explosion in Herptown, dozens wounded” does not meaningfully increase your understanding of the world, it mostly just makes you scared. It will take weeks until the cause and consequences of the explosion can be fully understood, and a lot of research to put that into perspective.

        • nick@campfyre.nickwebster.dev
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          3 days ago

          Friends of mine who have moved away from China. One of them had police at their door in China for social media posts that were friendly to Uyghurs (not even anything to do with the genocide, just general friendliness as a “we’re all Chinese” kind of message). Being taken to police stations for even slightly questioning the state narrative is terrifying.

              • zedcell@lemmygrad.ml
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                2 days ago

                Zero possibility that this friend lied?

                Some people love to lie especially if it gets a rise out of people. “Defectors” including the likes of Yeonmi Park from the DPRK also are financially incentivised to lie. I know people that lie about shit in the UK to make things sound worse than it is, and they will swear up and down it’s true after being called out on it.

        • vatlark@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Woah I never recognized your username in the wild before. Thanks for giving us Lemmy. Huge fan.

    • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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      3 days ago

      School shootings is something uniquely american. Even México doesn’t have them and we have a decent amount of narcojuniors (rich sons of drug dealers) that would have plenty access to guns, the only time i remember a school shooting happening it was in a private school in Monterrey like 7 years ago, which is pretty much the most americanized part of México.