• Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    There is something deeply fucking funny about him doing a sponsored bit for MyHeritage at the start of this video.

    They are not going to be happy at all lmaoooooooooo

  • LalSalaamComrade@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Why is this guy advertising a service by an Israeli company that creates family tree and possibly weaponizes that data? That ad is creepy as fuck, and as a privacy-freak, sends shivers down my spine.

    • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Yeah, I’ve heard reports from a person who is part of the Palestinian diaspora who took a genetic test and was unaware that the company they did it with was Israeli. They got back results stating that they were approximately 50% in a broad Arab category.

      They redid their genetic test with a non-Israeli company and got a much more accurate Levantine result.

      Make of that whatever you will. Maybe there’s differences in how they analyse the data but I would be wholly unsurprised if an Israeli genetic testing company was making a concerted effort to erase Palestinian identity by fudging results to skew the interpretation.

      • Sagittarii@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        Would be hilarious if they weren’t told what kind of video the sponsor section would be in. Doubt any of Hakim’s viewers will click on that.

    • Llituro [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      for me, it’s giving the same vibes as the military running ads on hasan’s twitch stream. that’s just a donation at that point, you don’t really have to worry about hakim’s audience being susceptible to this i think.

      • LalSalaamComrade@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        Without prior information about the company, one would consider it to be harmless, and not see for what it is: a mass-surveillance software. And look, fair point about ad revenue, but unfortunately, this could still cause real, irreversible damage.

        Most people over here - well, on the internet in general, are tech-illiterate. Sure, they may “know” how to use a mouse, or a keyboard, or use apps but they don’t understand or take software licenses seriously - I mean, there’s anarchist and leftist power-users and software devs, who enforce copy-farleft and hippocratic licenses in their software, but non-tech people don’t understand the significance of FSF-approved licenses.

        They also probably use operating systems, which run telemetry services behind the scene, as well as embed advertisement ids to track trends, collect and share them without the permission of the user. Everything is so fucked up.

    • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      He didn’t know it was an Israeli company and apologized in the comments

      @YaBoiHakim 1 hour ago

      I had no idea, I’ll cancel the planned integrations. The contact person that gets these ad integrations knows I don’t accept Israeli sponsors, so I assumed they checked. I’ll be sure to talk to them too, thanks for letting me know!

    • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml
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      3 months ago

      Bold isn’t the goal though, getting people to change their minds is the goal.

      This type of title sets us up to get lost in a semantic debate (is the incident a “massacre” or does a better word fit?) or argue a technicality (“no one died in the square itself”). These are the worst ways to convince people of anything: a skeptical person has endless outs, pinning down an objective answer to semantics is almost impossible, and by the time you get to more meaningful points you’ve wasted a lot of time, attention, and credibility.

  • bdonvrA
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    3 months ago

    I haven’t watched it yet but let me guess, it was a conflict and not a massacre, and the weird lib thing about people being squished and washed down drains is just absolute nonsense and insanity. Death rolls are far smaller than usually implied by westerners because again it clearly was not a “massacre” and the protesters were killing military personnel and destroying vehicles so some deaths would be expected.

    How’d I do?

    • Aquilae [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      3 months ago

      Got the gist yeah. Missed specifics like the liberal protestors being urban citizens and weirdly racist and pro-colonialist, US outlets spreading misinfo to escalate protests, the leaders of the student protests getting cushy jobs in the US afterwards, etc

    • Sleazy_Albanese [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gtt2JxmQtg

      Heres an ancient remanant of what libs used to think was a damning indictment of china. Before the myths about Tiananmen became parodies of themselves.

      There is an interesting fact to note about chai ling, though i am speculating. When she did the interview and admitted she wanted to provoke a violent crackdown she is following the principles of non violence as espoused by eugene sharp. Some Anti-imperialists have accused the AEI of being a cia/State Dept. front that serves to foment revolutions in unfriendly countries since it has been funded by the NED.

      What she said is still discrediting but there was a method to her madness.

  • Ericthescruffy [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    I like the way he ties it back to how the media is covering Gaza. The image of Tankman and his role as a propaganda symbol is genuinely fascinating to me.

    Somehow… without ever showing it or even stating it as a direct lie: they actually created a mandela effect which has multiple generations of people convinced to this day that he was viciously turned into hamburger without a second thought despite having video showing the exact opposite. Of course if you call this out there will be apologists who say “lol, we never said he was run over” and indeed that’s technically true…but clearly the idea he was is so heavily implied in so much discourse around it. Its enough to send you down a dangerous rabbit hole wondering how much of what you just assume is true everyday is all manufactured. Keeps me up at night.

    • JayTreeman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      I’ve only been learning a little bit here and there about how everything I’ve been told about china has been false. It’s actually really surprising to me

      • Aquilae [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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        3 months ago

        The “Redpill me on China” post over a year ago is pretty helpful

        @Awoo's answer

        child labor!

        More of that in america mate, illegal in China.

        internet/media censorship

        You need to view this in the context of protecting the revolution. Let’s say that you have a revolution in whatever country you’re in tomorrow, are you just going to let the internet be a free space to foster and create fascist dissidents? Are you going to let foreign (capitalist) countries run your social media for you? Or are you going to limit various things in order to ensure that only domestic companies run your internet-media so that you can police them appropriately if they try to weaponise those forms of media as tools to overthrow proletarian rule and install bourgeoise rule?

        I assume you’ve actually read some marx here, but if not, I want to just quote a small segment of chapter 2 of the communist manifesto at you.

        The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

        Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

        These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

        Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

        1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
        2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
        3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
        4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
        5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
        6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
        7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
        8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
        9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
        10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

        Pay special attention to what I’ve bolded here, the paragraph and bullet point 6. The point being that centralisation and control of all media is completely in-keeping with Marx’s (and the other writers) views on the matter. Media is a tool of the bourgeoisie that costs a significant amount of money, it functions as a means of power exerted through wealth to control and influence outcomes in a state. Removing these from the bourgeoisie and centralising them in the hands of proletarian control is part of overthrowing the bourgeoisie.

        The reason the bourgeoisie have propagandised you into disliking this is BECAUSE it massively harms and affects them. They wouldn’t give a shit about it if it harmed the proles, they only give a shit because it affects them.

        anti-LGBTQ

        China practices a bottom-up system of power. Starting at the mass line via committees and polling. This does result in slower progress on social change than a top-down approach. With that said however, lgbt issues are progressing as younger generations age up, and this more or less guarantees progress as long as the system does not change as the overall population will exert its power over time. Boomers are the thing holding it back. It is also I think fair to point out that lgbt issues are not going great in the west, with a large push for reversal well underway.

        uygher genocide

        Literally didn’t happen. An oppressive crackdown and re-education program? Yes sure. Genocide? No. A simple thought experiment that you should do here is to ask yourself how Israel, a country that is much much smaller with more resources to spend per population doesn’t manage to stop evidence of its crimes from occurring(see /r/israelexposed), yet what have you actually seen of China’s so-called genocide? Nothing. No refugees. No video evidence (in a country where people all have cameras). Fuck all.

        What did happen was that China cracked down on islamic extremism that was being fostered through cia connections across the border with afghanistan, which the US was occupying at the time. China combatted this by undertaking an absolutely massive re-education program to raise the quality of living, jobs and prospects of susceptible people in the region. It turns out that people with good jobs don’t want to do suicide bombings.

        This is obviously a topic that needs more than 2 paragraphs to dispel. Feel free to question and dig deeper. There are certainly images you’ll have seen without hearing the evidence against them, and there will be stories you’ve seen peddled from a false pov. I’m happy to go into them, I also recommend this report: https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang

        positive and pro war relations with russia! (because fuck putin)

        Geopolitically speaking it is essential for China to ensure Russia doesn’t collapse or fall into the Western sphere. If it did then the result would be 50 nato bases planted on the border and China would be utterly surrounded, isolated, and any future of it as an influential power seriously hampered. It would be fucked quite frankly.

        Not sure where you got the idea that they’re pro-war. They are brokering for peace. Have been the entire time.

        EDIT:

        OH wait I can’t believe I forgot to quote Lenin on freedom of the press

        “All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake “public opinion” for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.” – V I Lenin, 1921

        Freedom of media just means freedom of the bourgeoisie to buy and own all means of influence in society. None of them will be proletarian unless strictly controlled to be so, all of them will be owned by some fucking billionaire or fund that answers to many millionaires.

      • pooh [she/her, love/loves]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        I think I might have an old post somewhere with more info, but I remember the highlights on the protests being:

        • Multiple credible witnesses saw no massacre within the square
        • There are wikileaks cables that contradict what the US later claimed happened
        • There was violence happening elsewhere, but at least some of that violence was confirmed to have been done by rioters (not peaceful protestors) and casualty numbers are nowhere near what was later claimed
        • It was documented that the CIA was assisting the protestors. I believe I first saw this on the Qiao Collective page, then found the actual clipping from a newspaper archive website:

        • CIA also assisted in helping the protest leaders later flee China
        • This Qiao Collective page is by far the best single source I found on information related to the protests: https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/tiananmenreadinglist
        • US Army Psyops actually put out a recruitment video bragging about manipulating media coverage of the event: https://youtu.be/VA4e0NqyYMw Not sure if that particular group would have been involved back then but it is still interesting they chose to include that.
  • refolde [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    How do I expand and watch here so I don’t have youtube doing what it does best and suddenly deciding to recommend me a bunch of anti-China and chud videos

    Anyways oooooh very spicy title, might get under the right peoples’ skins.

  • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Just in the past week when I pointed out how the guy never got run over, and that it was always deceptively presented in a a thread about video manipulation using AI creating false narratives I had a bunch of .worlders jumping down my throat.

    At the time I had one claiming that it’s "just a symbol of defiance, nobody actually thinks that.

    Then like a few days later in an entirely different thread I had someone make a “lemmy.ml admins support running over protestors with tanks” 🙃 I’m going to get whiplash

  • grendahlgrendahlgen [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    Alright i feel like I have a good handle on the left counter-narrative about Tiananmen. But I’ve also seen a lot of content, including from scholars who don’t seem to be knee-jerk anti-China, that says that a shameful atrocity was committed.

    Can someone who knows more than me play Devil’s Advocate here? What nuance is missing from the left response to the standard lib narrative?

    • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      I’m sure that if the CPC could do it again, they would have handled it differently. I don’t think it’s a particularly proud moment, even if it wasn’t the 'massacre" it is portrayed as. The reason we can tell this is because they have clearly changed what their response to semi-large pro-colonialist Western-backed demonstrations are (see the Hong-Kong protests where there were only two confirmed deaths of protestors, which for the sake of argument we’ll attribute to the police).

      For one, there is clearly a lot more pre-emptive work going on from a surveillance level that didn’t go on before, especially tracking guns, and two, they are getting pretty good at isolating protestor demands and accommodating demands that are considered ‘reasonable’ (ones that were considered an ongoing issue in the party already), which fractures the protest movement, mostly leaving the truly ideologically radical sections, of whom the Western-backed ones aren’t actually willing to risk their skins, since they can make money as anti-China grifters in Western academia and Western media. That just leaves the ultra-leftists, who are broadly unpopular (because they are considered too Western-brained) in China and therefore do not really have any leverage.