I imagine it could be if you were a minority or a political dissident.
The fact that so many people went through sexual and gender self discovery on Tiktock, but such things are discouraged by the government in China says a lot that makes me uncomfortable.
Not being able to openly criticise the government and its policies also doesn't sit well with me.
It's not my government though, so that's where my criticism ends. If that's what the majority of people want, that's just democracy by another avenue. So long as people are allowed to leave if they choose, then that's fine.
Yeah that's the thing that a lot of Americans seem to gloss over the horror of. We've accepted the legality of execution without trial for running from the cops or looking threatening in their eyes. Doesn't matter if the cop thinks all black people look threatening. Failure to comply with verbal instructions? Death penalty, its not the cop's job to confirm that you're not deaf…
One thing I never understood with the US. With how they killed George Floyd on the street in front of everyone and they were set to get away with it - my first thought would have been that what would be different if they did that to me? I'd come up with nothing, and that's terrifying.
People are arguing about the legality of the death sentence, but a cop can kill you with impunity any day, even tomorrow, with no reason, even in your home. If you are reading this while you're trying to sleep in your bed, or sitting on the toilet, there are people who could kick down your door and murder you, legally without consequences.
How can you tune that out? How do you live like that? It wasn't like that even under communism, at least not after the 70s, and the period before left a collective trauma on half a continent.
What else would we do? Like it's not ok and we're obviously not ok. But any effort to improve things is met with state violence and further propaganda to convince half the country that we're the problem with America. I'm white, that makes me lucky when it comes to this.
You try explaining to your fellow Americans that it's horrifying that cops do this they'll say "everyone knows you need to do what the cops say and they were just a criminal anyways, and we need the cops to keep us safe." They also love to say "maybe you should experience violent crime and see how you feel about cops then." And let me say, I've experienced violent crime in the past year and my opinion of cops worsened.
But yeah huge swathes of Americans have problems with it. We marched over it in 2020, we've marched over it before and we'll do it again too. But this country is barely a democracy, we're bound between two parties, one that's pro cop but thinks they need slaps on the wrist and more training when they murder people and the other that thinks that doing that is an unacceptable level of punishment. Oh and the deck is stacked in the latter's favor.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if our nation collapses in the upcoming administration.
I do live in europe myself. The whole damn planet is like sinking ship and i'm just on the upper part of it, there is nowhere to run if it goes bad here.
The fact that so many people went through sexual and gender self discovery on Tiktock, but such things are discouraged by the government in China says a lot that makes me uncomfortable.
I guess it makes sense not to use one's psyops arsenal at one's own people.
oh, it is… notice no questions about suicide nets being installed on factories… or the tiananmen square massacre….
or people getting disappeared for speaking against the government….
or the Uyghur genocide that’s ongoing….
but hey, i trust a few screenshots of bots talking on an app though
Suicide nets installed by a company based in Taiwan that also operates in mainland China at a factory located in a special economic zone, one specially reknowned by people for its liberal policies. A company that China's own state funded propaganda said was bad, and that the situation was being assessed. If the company was not based in Taiwan it would be a little easier for them to handle because they wouldn't have to deal with a rabid dog breathing down their neck ready to declare war for even looking at the island. I'm not saying what happened wasn't terrible, but I am saying you should dig a little deeper than the headlines. I found all of this information on Wikipedia after like 40 minutes of research, but please respond and call me a tanky or CCP bot because it would be pretty funny.
AFAIK often on Chinese services you'll get an error like "your message could not be delivered". Posts managing to discuss forbidden topics might be removed without warning, or just be silently hidden so they don't reach new people.
The goal is not so much to prevent anyone from ever talking shit about the government, but to make those conversations difficult and to stop them from reaching a wide audience.