China’s internet regulators have launched a campaign cracking down on puns and homophones.... The “clear and bright” campaign is targeting “irregular and uncivilised” language online, particularly jokes, memes, and wordplay, the Cyberspace Administration of China and the ministry of education announced this month....
“For some time, various internet jargons and memes have appeared frequently, leaving people more and more confused,” said an editorial by the Communist party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily....
The People’s Daily noted the quick turnover for online memes, and urged authorities and social media platforms to not allow “obviously ambiguous” new words to spread quickly without “rectification.”
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68 comments:
Hey- just like here!
The Chinese are far more along in their skill at censoring than we are here in the US. I do expect that Sen. Amy Klobuchar and her staff are taking notes on what the Chinese are doing at their advanced level.
She's still working on just getting X to lose its advertisers. So we're still in the early stages here. British Advisors to Kamala Harris Hope to "Kill Musk's Twitter".
They've cleaned up half pint milk cartons in grade school. Ours used to be stamped in purple ink "Homo milk."
heh. They said 'recti-fication'. heh. heh.
The BBC tells us ...
o Language is constantly adapting and changing to reflect our changing lives, experiences and cultures.
o Language change enables us to accommodate new ideas, inventions and technologies.
o It's not just the words themselves which change; the way in which we use them can shift too.
BBC
And the BBC knows a thing or two about language.
I'm reminded of Roxanne with Steve Martin going through a list of insults without 'insulting' someone.
In addition, British censorship laws created a social mechanism to create insults and 'swearing' out of commonly used words.
I tried to research this topic by googling "Chinese girls with melons," but that took me in a whole different direction.
Ours used to be stamped in purple ink "Homo milk."
I had a carton ring up like that at 7-11 one time. The funny part was a line at the bottom saying "Your cashier today was Christian."
I would love to see what the entry next to someone's social credit score looks like for this - "Said it was 'none of your business' and made people laugh, extremely antisocial"
"China’s internet regulators have launched a campaign cracking down on puns and homophones"
Coming soon to a country near you!
"It's none of your business" is uncivilized and needs to be censored? Harsh.
I love the wordplay. How fun to write a nonsense phrase as an internet meme.
It’s amusing how creative humans can be at subverting the algorithms. The OnlyFans girls get good at staying one step ahead of them, hocking their wares on YouTube…
"It's none of your business." Looks like they're already coordinating their public service announcements and policies with comrade Walz.
Well that is good news. If China is censoring online jokes, memes and wordplay, then they aren't completely focused on invading Taiwan or flying drones over US military bases.
'Let's go, Brandon!'
It is the kind of speech control the Left salivates over.
If life hands you melons, make melonade.
Wordplay is only one letter from swordplay.
The future still looks good and you've got time to rectify all the things that you should.
"Its none of your business" isn't a homophone or a pun. Banning it is a clear tell that the point of the exercise is not to clarify language but to eliminate the ability to tell the government to leave you alone.
...if we focus on what can be, unburdened by what has been.
Nanoagressions? Inferred indecency? Minority majority report. #HateLovesAbortion
This sort of "benign" wordplay is how the Chinese people get around the censors.
Like talking about May 35th because they're not allowed to say "June 4." It would be easier to stop speech altogether than to root out hidden forbidden speech.
The best feature of criminalizing speech under government defined rules is that the rules can be changed to allow prosecution, and persecution, of anyone at any time. Today it might be OK to say, "Nice weather we're having." And tomorrow that phrase might be defined by government as a code for an -ism or anti-something, and you get jailed for saying it, retroactively, even though the phrase was perfectly OK to use when you used it. What a wonderful way to keep the government boot on the face, pushing down, forever! And if you don't say anything at all, you're obviously anti-government, you free thinker, you! So straight to jail with you, too.
Alas, my dear Yorick, he will have naan off that.
Unburdened h/t Obama entertains, celebrates abortive ideation exercised with liberal license in progressive sects established in the darkness... twilight of sanctuary states with Democratic jurisprudence.
Some religions (i.e. behavioral protocol or model) are more politically congruent than others. Some are downright progressive. Forward!
China has Diverse problems among its diversity.
"China’s internet regulators have launched a campaign cracking down on puns and homophones...."
Oh no! Homophonia!
China, forging brave new frontiers, for lesser nations to take instruction and follow.
"The People’s Daily noted the quick turnover for online memes, and urged authorities and social media platforms to not allow “obviously ambiguous” new words to spread quickly without “rectification.”
The Truth and Rectification Commission in action. I expect Robert Reich to adopt that as the new name for his Speech Stasi.
Wrekt.
All this means is that the Ministry of Truth can't figure out what's being said\ and people are starting to speak in the kind of codes that you have to use on The NY Post comment section to keep your comment from being deleted.
The Brits are putting people in jail for standing still and silently praying to themselves because that offends the abortionists.
Don't ever let them take your guns. You will need them to shoot the government in the face one day.
Use Japanese.
You'll get a lot of squid for some reason.
This story is literally still posted on the NBC News website:
Republicans Float Conspiracy Theory That Biden Will Be Replaced
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/republicans-float-conspiracy-theory-biden-wont-ballot-rcna121467
Cockney rhyming slang!
Tommyesq,
It IS a pun in Chinese! That's the entire point of the part quoted in the headline.
This is EXACTLY what the democrat party and the people pushing censorship expect and want to happen in the west. We must fight it tooth and nail.
Nunya Bidnezz is on LinkedIn, Facebook, and several city directories.
Unfortunately, with 1.4 billion people, they can multi-task.
"Rainy Girl Without Melons" sounds like the premise for an anime or manga.
Meanwhile, Britain's Labour Party are giving aid to the Harris campaign in hopes that her administration will bring down Elon Musk's Twitter/X.
I laugh, we all laugh at China! Even as we have to carefully phrase our comments here to get past the "spam filter." Yeah, I know, the comments eventually come back out of purgatory.
Right now Europe is planning to fine Musk 10% of his wealth, based not just on Twitter, but Tesla, Starlink, etc, etc, for facilitating free speech in Europe.
But those Chinese! You gotta hate them!
I wonder what the social credit score of a Canadian Trucker who didn't want anything to do with the vaccine is? Or that Canadian waitress who had her bank account frozen because she gave $15 dollars to their cause.
Ooh. But those Chinese!
Hey, tim in vermont: yes, we do have to hate the CCP. The Chinese people, no, we love them, they represent one of the great histories of peoples on this earth, and deserve a helluva lot better than the CCP. When the Chinese finally hang the last CCP member from a street lamp, then the world will have a much better chance at a future that includes the Chinese.
China's joyous progressive burdens of State. Losing your religion, your life, your voice.
THe UK Just put a woman in jail for 2.5 years for a tweet. A tweet that she voluntarily deleted after it was up for 12 hours. Meanwhile, the only social media platform that has anything approaching freedom of speech is twitter. On the others, you'd better not offend the ADL or the Democrats in charge of the FBI, DHS, or DOJ.
The Guardian, like the Labour Government, is on a Jihad to destroy musk and twitter. Too much free speech. Our totalitarian Leftists shouldn't sneer at the Chicoms. They are peas in a pod.
If our CIA didn't spend all of its time trying to foment regime change in every country that could possibly prove a rival to the United States in order for us to install a puppet there who will do as we say, these countries would be a lot freer and less paranoid.
The US is plainly planning to fight a war with China over a Chinese province that Imperial Japan took from them, and that we prevented them, using our military, from retaking at the close of WWII. An island that served as a launchpad for the Japanese invasion of the Chinese Mainland, and that would certainly work as a platform for a US naval blockade of China.
Why doesn't China trust us? It's a mystery.
I remember learning about the astonishing potential of a privatized Darpanet in the early 70s in a law school seminar. It seemed that we were on the threshold of huge gains in prosperity, knowledge, and human flourishing. I failed to anticipate the ways in which we would build a Benthamite Panopticon in which the worst of us would dominate the rest of us.
The US has a prison chock full of political prisoners convicted of "parading" who had been invited into the Capitol by the Capitol Police.
If Kamala wins the election process, "See you next Tuesday" will be banned.
Lol, my comment that mentioned you know who, and a certain English language pun that ends in "Tuesday" disappeared into our helpful Google "spam filter."
Yeah, me too. You had me at "rainy girl without melons". Or, maybe, you lost me at "rainy girl without melons". I mean, that's poetry. I'll be thinking about that all day.
Hmm… will saying she is a Jack and Danny pass muster.
I'll bet it looks really cool in Chinese calligraphy, too.
None of your beeswax.
/Democrats furiously taking notes...
Did you hear the one about the melon farmer's daughter?
CCP steals industrial tech from us. We steal censoring tech from them.
You commies will never defeat the Grass Mud Horse.
Is that like the pheasant plucker's mate?
China is where the idea of the Rectification of Names came from.
I could get bee hide banning homophones because they dew cause problems.
Some of us are able to hold multiple repressive regimes in disdain at the same time. Discussing China's repressive policies in no ways implies acceptance of Europe's anti-free speech initiatives.
Although this comment makes it clearer than ever that you are indeed an anti-American troll. If it's America's enemy, it's clearly your friend.
"I expect Robert Reich to adopt that as the new name for his Speech Stasi."
When will this be happening? Well- shortly, of course.
In the future, everyone will be a Benedictine monk forever.
No, I don't hate America. I just kind of wish I lived in a county that was as good as its propaganda, instead of a country that simply projects its faults on other countries so that the rubes living here can feel superior.
Chinese repression is not my problem. The repression going on right now here in America is.
Is silence still violence?
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