They don't need Facebook for this. As the summary noted, Kaixin and Renren (Xiaonei) are well entrenched. I and many friends have been served warning and had status updates/links/journals deleted by the censors, with a nice PM to let us know to to repost it.

Chinese "copycats" of facebook are in full compliance. Facebook would need to comply just as well, if not more, to try to unseat them. If it is less cooperative than the Chinese companies, they will be of little value to the censors.

It applies in China as well- though only among a subset of the population, though still a much larger subset than would have been reached otherwise. For example. my friends on Chinese college campuses have been talking quite a bit about Charter 08 and Liu Xiaobo- almost purely as a result of censorship attempts.

Seriously, when will the Chinese government learn?

Liu Xiaobo was a nobody, just one more dissident activist who wrote some pretty crazy stuff. Nobody outside of dissident circles gave a crap about Charter 08 or even heard of it before it got banned.

Xiaobo himself: He's crazy as far as dissidents go. He basically worships everything Western, and has basically advocated China becoming a Western colony. Noone inside of China would take most of his stuff seriously- yet China insists of giving him credibility as a dissident. He'd still be a nobody if they didn't give him so much publicity.

With this, he'll turn into another Dalai Lama, except that unlike the Dalai Lama, he (was) just a nobody convinced that everything Western is good and everything Chinese is bad. If they had just left Charter 08 alone, no problems, it would have been passed around to the usual crowd and quickly forgotten. Instead it has become a rallying point.

Sort of like the "My dad is Li Gang" stuff- instead of censoring the story, if they just let it out and then publicly castrated the fucker, everyone would have been happy.

They really need help with PR. Even when they do the right thing, hushing things up makes it look like they really are up to something. Even when the guy in question really does deserve to be imprisoned (under Chinese law, even if such laws are unjust).

A note about the polls: as another one who lived in Taiwan (yes, Taipei, though I roomed with a dude from Kaohsiung, who was pretty green): Supporting the status quo does not mean supporting independence. Among virtually all supporters of the status quo, they support maintaining it until reunification is in their best interests.

That is, once mainland China catches up to them economically, and the human rights/democracy situation in mainland China improves to the points they aren't worried anymore, then they get a sweet reunification package, and reunify on (mostly) their terms. May take another generation, but time is overwhelmingly on China's side for this one. Most young Taiwanese- even in the south- speak Mandarin over Taiwanese. In Taipei, most people can't even speak Taiwanese (except to swear). Even in homes that speak Taiwanese, Mandarin is the language of school instruction, and as Mainland China's influence grows in Chinese pop culture, the next generation thinks of themselves as "Chinese" rather than "Taiwanese." Hell, even my Taiwanese roommate was happy to refer to himself as "Chinese" (in the cultural, linguistic, and ethnic sense; Huaren, Hanzu, etc).

Taiwan is complicated, but the GP was right when he said a majority of Taiwanese favored reunification. It's just that the majority favor it much, much later, not now. Noone in the Taiwanese government, or really noone other than a few extreme "nationalists", advocate for Taiwanese independence or consider it a realistic possibility. It's more or less an accepted fact- but "hey, no rush, let's wait til we get something really nice out of it, and have guarantees from a Chinese government we can trust".

But yeah, most of the people who want "immediate" reunification are Waishengren who came with the Nationalists in 1949. And Taipei is hardly representative of the "Nanbu". But hey, it is still the economic, cultural, and political center of Taiwan. And it rocks; I recommend the best eel outside of Japan, a place called "Feiqianwu" in Zhongshan district, right up one of the little red light alleys. You've got to wait in line to get in, but damn, that stuff is goooood.

If they wanted to give it to Chinese dissident, give it to one who actually deserves it.

Human rights are a worthy cause, but if anything, the reforms Xiaobo advocates could result in even more restrictions on human rights- not just through the Communist party clamping down, but rather through the horrendous consequences if people actually listened to him: there was an excellent editorial in the NYTimes today discussing this point.

Xiaobo has had some wonderful ideas, and Charter 08 was pretty cool as far as it went. But he has a lot of writings that go way too far- he basically claims China is inherently inferior, and needs to become a Western colony for 300 years (or at least as long as Hong Kong) before it has a hope of being civilized. Opinions like that aren't very warmly received, nor is his worship of anything associated with the West, be it democracy or laissez-faire capitalism or Christianity. I'm far more liberal than most Americans (and Europeans, for that matter), but most of his writings are far from constructive. He's had his moments, but for the most part, there are Chinese dissidents and intellectuals far more worthy of the prize than he. At least pick one who would rather see peace and prosperity in one of the largest nations on Earth than bloody revolution and chaos.

But then again, after Arafat, Kissinger, and Obama, it's a worthless prize anyway, so fuggedaboutit. If it's an anti-Peace prize now, then it's rather fitting.

In an ideal world, information should be totally an completely free. Even all the propaganda and lies. And it wouldn't be a problem, because everyone would be educated, informed, and willing to get off their ass and do some research to determine what was true. Holocaust denial? No problem. Claiming Obama is a secret terrorist Muslim? Let me check the facts! Everyone would be a conscientious, responsible citizen. False information would not travel far, as the masses would not tolerate blatant lying. We could react rationally to any shocking revelation.

But since this isn't the case, and huge numbers of people are dumb, panicky animals, in some cases, they should be protected from themselves. I'm not going to grab a torch and pitchfork because I see some article online criticizing a local party cadre, that happens to be on a blog with no sources. There are entire villages that would. Or can barely read, and could easily be controlled by some charismatic rabble-rouser. Until we reach the democratic utopia, for those countries that aren't as developed, stability and economic growth is more important. Chinese peasants need clean water and food more than political freedom. Once they've gone past the "The Jungle" stage of development, we can start working towards an ideal world, in which information is completely free, humans are completely rational, and pigs fly (yeah, it's gonna be a long, long time.)

I'm not sure if this a troll or not, but what the heck.

First, I agree that we should take a step back: China, the US, and other governments are all guilty of many infractions against freedom of information, and attempted (and successful) censorship.

Furthermore, pointing fingers and saying "But he's doing it toooooo!" is not an excuse. We can rightfully point out the US government is guilty of censorship, just as the Chinese government is guilty. It's not self-hating, though. It's legitimate criticisms of our government. We expect better from our government, since we have higher standards.

Also, if you really believe that crap about the US and China being locked in another ideological Cold War, you are sadly mistaken. They do not want to destroy "Western values“ any more than we want to destroy "Chinese values" or something. Would we like it if they were a liberal democracy? Sure. Is it a "fight to the death"? Hardly. Multiple systems of governance can happily co-exist on this planet, believe it or not. The Chinese and American leaderships are both smart enough to realize that. China also knows democracy!=party rule coming to an end. Look at Taiwan: the KMT democratized, and yet have usually been in power. Based on their rapidly improving living standards, most Chinese today would willingly vote for the Communist Party, despite its corruption, simply because there is no viable alternative. It will take time for those alternatives to take root.

In the meantime, take your Cold War somewhere else. I like peaceful development and co-existence, thanks.

And in the interest of doing so, we should vehemently criticize our own system, and actively think of alternatives to improve our own system of governance.

I speak fluent Mandarin Chinese, thanks. And on my trips, I was usually visiting the hometown of some college friends, who could themselves speak the local dialect (more often than not, we had to ask parents/uncles for translations, since they couldn't properly speak the dialect anymore :( ).

The authorities don't give a fuck about censoring English. Someone who speaks English (the elite) is smart enough to get around the firewall, or can simply use the international version of Google, or visit some of the many English websites that aren't blocked. They care about the masses who don't speak English, and thus the Chinese internet and Chinese-language websites are controlled much more closely than English language content. Anyone determined can get around the firewall, there's tons of software and proxies for doing so. I will call BS on your statement.

That was supposed to be part of my point: I don't think that many Americans can distinguish between the wheat and the chaff, and our democracy is collapsing under the weight of the ignorance and/or apathy of the voters. If America has such a hard time handling it (read: we produce "leaders" and movements like Sarah Palin and the tea party), then imagine what a similar movement in China would look like. America is far more urbanized and educated, and we already have such a large portion of the population willing to believe Obama is a secret Muslim/terrorist, or taking to the streets demanding "government leave Medicare alone". We can survive, barely, as it is.

Now what if 70% of America were susceptible to the Tea Party? We might very well end up with Glenn Becks in positions of real power, or without enough power to move the masses to do something really, really stupid and counterproductive.

And it has been crossed, both in China and in the US. With the universal accessibility of the internet, it is much harder to tier access to information. So, those who believe that it would be costly to have information fall into the wrong hands would rather let none have it than anyone have it.

Leaving aside the absurdity of meaningfully controlling the internet (a sentiment obviously shared by the Chinese informants, likely younger, New Guard leaders), they may have a point in trying to control the dissemination of information in China.

Personally, I believe information should be free, and fully support WikiLeaks. However, having been to China on numerous occasions, and having had opportunities to talk to some of those hundreds of millions of peasant that still litter the countryside... censorship can be a good thing in a society in which ignorance is widespread. I do think China goes too far, and censors many things that should not be censored, to the detriment of both its and society's interests.

But it also can prevent Fox-news style media from manipulating the masses (that role stays in the hands of the government). We in the West can do a better job of handling freedom of information. Many in China, however, are not yet ready. The urban centers could probably handle it. But I don't trust the peasants in the Chinese boonies any more than I trust rednecks and hillbillies in the United States. The Politburo leader who googled himself and found critical articles: some of those are legitimate criticisms, other are "Obama isn't America" style crap. The average Chinese peasant doesn't know the difference; given how the Chinese government often behaves, even conspiracy theories are all too believable.

The Chinese central government has improved a lot; based on my friends who have connections in Zhongnanhai, the central government basically hopes to keep the lid on things as it (really fucking slowly) tries to clean up its act (which is basically impossible, since the local and provincial governments very much like being corrupt). But until then, keeping local yahoos from rioting based on false information may take precedence over total freedom of information for China. Hopefully this will slowly change. But until then, keeping the masses ignorant may contribute more to social stability and prosperity than openness of information would. Democratizing too soon might result in Soviet-style collapse: democracy did not work out well for Russia in the early 90s, just as I doubt it would work out well for China now.

And all of it junk.

I honestly don't get why the advertise so much to college students; many will clip out coupons and such, but many of the sales advertised are still for items we are unlikely to consume. ....Then again, I figure the landlord is probably just selling our information to advertisers. Some shows up as "Dear Resident..." while other have the names of previous tenants/etc.

I had a really long, intelligent-sounding post detailing two F2P companies, but it got lost when I hit the back button. Oops.

Summary: F2P works, in both models.

Aesthetics: People will pay real world monies for in-game aesthetic improvements. See: Guild Wars, entire economy revolves around bling with stats identical to ordinary items bought from NPCs, just shinier.

Functionality: Silk Road Online. Either you pay to quicken the grind, get EXP, and stacks of pots/etc, or you are food for bots. Perfect World: same deal. No EXP scrolls? Enjoy getting PK'd. Oh, and watching everyone else floating around on really pretty animals in really pretty armor. PW is also interesting because they changed it for the Western release: much LESS grind, you level faster. They figured we westerners wouldn't sink as much time into grinding/farming.

Soth SRO and PW are expanding their userbases and continually adding new servers. GW isn't doing too poorly either (I still play, and buy items from their in-game store with cash).

I have the death sentence in 12 systems!