Vietnamese Facebook Lures Users With Communist Videogames
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
- Start date
Maybe he's putting to good use that invisible cellphone? on second thought...it didn't do him much good during the world cup, so...Anarchemitis said:
That's hardly a fair comparson. For starters, guilds and citizens had no lobbyists; and second, they had nowher enear the same amount of resources at their disposal.
It really says a lot about communism when the leaders are trying their hardest to censor what other countries experience with capitalism (and a few other types of government), or expose them in a wholly negative light.
Tell ya what. Someone buy me a plane ticket. If they don't let me on the plane, I'll know the government has its hooks into Facebook, because I've often set my status as some variation of "Nuke DC, it's better in Fallout 3" or "let's kill all the politicians from both parties to fix America."Badger Kyre said:
I've got my Political Views in my profile set to "Kill 'em all. The gods will know their own." So if I'm on a watchlist, there's your conspiracy theory confirmed.
And if I'm not, you get to host me for a few days of fun and cookies. Yes, cookies.
As I said, I submit you have not thought it through... and if you aren't studying medieval history, I may get condescending - it was going to be my major.unabomberman said:
I will try to disagree respectfully, esp since I was agreeing with your tone in substance, i think.
Anyway, relatively, the Guilds and banks had GREATER resources ( relative to the nations of the time ), and in fact, some of today's multinationals ARE the old multinationals ( you can get into arguments over who and when and etc that get a little ... controversial, i'd rather stick to the "easy" stuff ).
the com-panis of Italian trade, and the old banks ( after the templars and, yes, Jews ) -
were the first multinationals.
Let's not discuss Switzerland, but understand, those multinationals had resources you simply aren't taking into consideration, and Lobbyists?
How about Popes? ( look up the Medici )
Alderman and all Guilds DID have representatives in levels of government - and if you happen to be english, i ask you to consider the house of commons.
ALL the european powers I am aware of ended up selling lordships to businessmen who had more money than them -
and last but not least, i wasn't joking - not just in Italian, but as commerce became important in Europe, burghers began to be able to field armies that could stand up to and handily defeat the feudal lords.
People talk about guns, but there's more to it than that. ( actually, guns SUCKED for quite a while - the key to defeating heavy cavalry was well-disciplined footmen, which require consider professionalism that implies $ )
* edit * and later, when guns sucked less, people started realizing they could stand up to national armies with conscripts and 1/2 the world revolted *
In fact, historically speaking, the nation-states of today are BETTER OFF economically than the medieval era states were relative to commercial interests - partially BECAUSE the fall of medieval powers created stronger nation-states by negating the distribution of power through feudalism ( magna charta ; for example, recognizes this ).
It wouldn't be much longer' til the actual kings became as disempowered as their lords had.
Anyway, forgive my pedantics;
the point is, and was, multinationals having considerable influence is no new thing.
* edit: India Trading Company vs. Emperor of China *
Where there's money, there tends to be evil...
I think you asked if it's any less evil if a gov't spies on us than a company; and that was the real point...
and my response was/is, here in the west, we expect our government to be protecting us from such dastardliness...
and i said it in italics, b/c I agree with your example sof how frightening our Gov't acts towards it's own citizens.
Are you by chance familiar with John Locke, not to mention Machiavelli?
Conspiracy theory?SimuLord said:
We know Echelon is real, and the existence of the NSA is no longer classified as well.
It becomes a matter of extent, and no one should claim to know that who isn't currently employed.
I have an old friend that's an FBI agent, and an ex-GF who is a local director for the ACLU.
I have friends who work IT & security, and I am pretty sure each of them has a different opinion on just how much is being watched.
There's an AWFUL lot of white noise, my understanding is "tagging" hasn't accomplished much.
On one hand, there's stories of abuse where someone said some stupid key-phrase and it got tagged - it's up to who investigates each tag to decide if it's serious.
There's a reason PGP ( pretty good privacy, an encryption program ) was controlled.
I would hope no one in their right mind would flag anything you've said - but whether or not YOU have been flagged isn't the issue, is it?
I'd host you for cookies and LAN parties of combat mission even if I think you're engaging in Reducto Ad Absurdum.
The reality is, the gov't has surveillance capabilities, and does use it, with or without facebook. How much, when, etc etc - and how much is desirable - is all up in the air.
You could always look up Fb's board of directors and see how many of those allegations are true, and while you're at is, look up NSA and confirm or deny this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office
This makes me think about all the people who said we shouldn't have been in Vietnam. It's because we pulled out and left them to their fate that the people over there have to put up with this kind of crappy government. Sorry Vietnam, our bad.
Facebook wishes it could data mine like Google. Android is a trojan horse to collect data that they hang onto indefinitely and sell to anyone (including the Department of Justice)
Try being an ethnic minority in interior China who doesn't like communism.Xan Krieger said:
Promote this handsome devil!SimuLord said:
@ Blindsight I concur. Communism isn't good for Vietnam so much as it is good for the Vietnamese government.
Communist videogames? I am thoroughly intrigued. Also oppressive government is oppressive. This didn't surprise me very much. I wonder if this videogame lure will work? Probably not as free online flashgames can be found pretty much everywhere and without the subtle "support your regime" overtones.
Heard something like that from a friend of mine, too. The only point being, FB seems to have been created at least partially for that purpose - or it's coincidence that all these ex-surveillance wonks ended up in it.Cryo84R said:
I remember reading the book about the Chinese Democratic protestors... broke my heart. Hiding books in walls, seriously.
More power to 'em. If they want to see five thousand posts per day about people visiting IKEA, a hundred thousand "OMG I love my babies" and about tweny million "I'm having such a tough day, my life sucks" posts they're welcome to it.Charli said:
I'd have thought they'd just issue free copies of the Soviets disc from Red Alert 2. Go communism, fuck America, it's the whole package!00slash00 said:
This is pretty funny. I myself live in Vietnam, but until now, I have never heard of this. I do know that the government has blocked Facebook in Vietnam. They applied some pressure on the network providers (most are state owned). They didn't do a very good job though. You just have to change your DNS to access Facebook.
There is one more SN site that is Vietnamese. I think that it is called Zing.vn It is quite ridiculous really. It even has a FarmVille knockoff.
To tell you the truth, most of the people don't care or are too afraid. After some activists got thrown into the slammer, no one dares to speak up anymore. If you say something bad about Ho Chi Minh or the government in front of the police, you will be beaten up immediately. So much for Liberty - Independence - Happiness.
There is one more SN site that is Vietnamese. I think that it is called Zing.vn It is quite ridiculous really. It even has a FarmVille knockoff.
To tell you the truth, most of the people don't care or are too afraid. After some activists got thrown into the slammer, no one dares to speak up anymore. If you say something bad about Ho Chi Minh or the government in front of the police, you will be beaten up immediately. So much for Liberty - Independence - Happiness.
