To increase the cost of censorship.

If commies censor things, they will get worse IT technology, and thus become less rich and powerfull.

Maybe this hurts my argument, but Hillary agrees: https://youtu.be/d3dE_LDz_9E?t=1681 :-)

Since all they care about, like any other politicians, is power, the only way to make them stop censorship is to make the cost of censorship higher than not censoring.

The goal is to put them in a position where they have to choose between either:

• power
• censorship

but not both.

I prefer the term focused :-)

That being said, I take the agenda of information sources very seriously.

E.g. I try to clearly classify Communist Party and Falun Gong linked sources.

This is a good point, and one that does make me think.

1. The commies calculate their actions very well to stay in power.

   Why don't they just take down the entire Internet like they did in Xinjiang in 2010?

   Because that would hurt them:

   • people would go mad, and revolt
   • people would work less efficiently, making the country, and thus themselves, poorer

   So this puts pressure on them to take away the firewall.

2. Programmers are more likely to develop better Firewall climbing tools if SO is blocked

3. If we don't take any action to show our dissatisfaction, the dictatorship never ends.

   The commies exist like any other organization for a sole purpose: maintain their own power.

   If nothing is done to show dissatisfaction, they will never give up on that power.

   There are two extremes of action (both which I don't support):

   • everyone become a willing mindless slave of the leader: perfect stability
   • everyone take up arms and do terrorism: perfect instability

   But between those two extremes, what is the right measure? I think that saying nothing is too close to stability.

   I do see that one alternative scenario is that if we do nothing, maybe there will be more and more contact with Western countries, and the Chinese will see for themselves that we are not that bad, and eventually request democracy.

4. Even if programmers get very powerful, it is not very likely that they will succeed to undo the dictatorship, they simply don't have enough power.

   I'd rather have a less strong dictatorship, than one with good programmers.

I don't think this is below them, but:

• without censorship, you would be much richer and stronger, and more able to defend yourselves
• why does China also censor its own people in addition to foreign propaganda?
• maybe this fear is greatly emphacised by the Chinese government beyond truth just to help them keep control of the country by fear and maintain their own power. Can the Americans really have that much influence in your country?
• maybe the regions that want to split from China feel like China is not giving them anything back, and they are themselves looking for allies outside of China to help them split. With democracy, people are more likely to get what they want, and there will be split parties and votes.
• the same argument can be used to justify any action, no matter how bad. E.g.: we must put all who criticize the government in jail, or else they will make China less united and weaker against the USA!

Destroying diversity is the best way to reach a point where everyone can agree to start a new big war and destroy everything.

The CCP thrives on the excessive fear it instigate into its own people.

How can society improve, if we are never allowed to try new things out?

Change does not require violence. Violence happens because the government punishes any dissidence, even if pacific, to retain its own power.

In democracies, radical policy changes happen without dropping a single drop of blood.

What is the root of the harm: me or GFW?

We have to choose the one we think is the worst, and focus on it.

What is worse is a subjective choice. For me:

1. I love China and my Chinese GF
2. I hate dictatorships, and China is the largest one

My SO username and protest time are not infinite.

1. If I lived under a dictatorship, I would welcome foreign intervention.

   Even if you don't, I know several who do.

2. The commies say that all foreigners are bad.

   I disagree. There are good and bad ones.

   The commies do this because most foreign countries are telling the Chinese to get rid of the dictatorship.

3. We live in the same world.

   If China's economy is bad, my economy is worse.

   If China's environment is bad, my environment is worse.

   If China starts a war, I might have to fight it.

4. You can't do anything about it.

   I don't like this argument, but in the end, this is what all politics comes down to: power.

   I recognize that in that sense, I may be similar to the CCP and any other political party.

I don't doubt that you know more about China than me.

If you know something I don't, please tell me, I always want to learn.

But if you are Chinese, also consider that you have been brainwashed by the commies, and likely more than me since you live in a dictatorship.

My bad here, the precise term is "jail". I'm not talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labor Unfortunately I can't edit a Tweet.

I think I have the most to lose personally: no enterprise who wants to do business with China will ever hire me for a high position.

I also have an increased risk of being hacked.

Chinese programmers all know how to climb the wall.

We have to fight for justice for our fellows, or else when injustice happens to us, no one will fight for use either.

Every form of protest incurs some damage. E.g., if we manifest on the street, it generates a traffic jam.

I don't like it, but I think it is worth it.

That is true with high probability, just like any other individual which tries to influence 1B people.

Every action is statistical: I just push the balance a little bit towards freedom.

This FAQ and any talk is useless. You and I are wasting out times here.

The possibility of blocking Stack Overflow and GitHub is 1000x more useful than any talk, but it is still useless.

However, potentially blocking those websites takes 0 of my time, I just leave the content there, so it is worth my time.

To have an idea, in 2015 there are about:

• 20M developers in the world
• 2M in China : https://www.quora.com/Approximately-how-many-programmers-are-there-in-the-world http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/european-technology/there-are-185-million-software-developers-in-the-world-but-which-country-has-the-most/
• 5M Stack Overflow users http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/227868/select-count-from-users
• TODO I wonder what percentage of GDP those programmers control. I'll bet any programmer on Stack Overflow is 5x more powerful than the average Chinese.

And if we never start somewhere, nothing will ever happen.

This is somewhat true, and I don't like myself for it.

But I think freedom is worth it.

Any act of protest will use things in ways that it was not meant to be used.

For example, the street is not meant to showcase protest banners, it is meant to be a passageway for cars.

Making a statement where no one will ever see it, like a personal website, is sure to have no effect.

Finally, it is up to the Stack Overflow community to decide what is right or wrong, and so far the consensus is go ahead:

• http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/298950/are-political-profiles-that-could-possibly-affect-the-participations-of-other-us
• http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/267368/are-political-avatars-and-profiles-ok
• http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/299882/can-a-username-be-considered-spam
• http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/286082/does-the-be-nice-policy-require-se-users-to-be-nice-to-people-who-are-not-se-u/286090#286090, see public figure comments

Realy, I'm not. I just think that website is great, and want to push it to perfection, in particular with better Google keyword hits, and uniform gramatically correct titles.

If you think that any of my edits were harmful, please ping me and open a meta thread to discuss specific edits, and I will comply with consensus.

Sorry + street protest argument + I think freedom is worth it arguments again.

I've heard there are browser plugins for that as well, but I don't think it will work for pictures, and in any case it will make your web pages fuzzier.

When will they be ready? Who decides? What if they think that they are ready now?

On the contrary. China is my favorite country. It has many, many wonderful things. As Bjarne said:

There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses

I only focus here on negative things to provide content that will activate the Great Firewall.

Radical: I don't consider myself a radical because I actually have doubts about doing this sometimes.

Also I don't consider the Chinese Government Evil or anything like that. To me, it's just another non-democratic empire like the Qing Dynasty. 共产朝 as I call them. But alas, I'm not the inventor of the expression: http://web.archive.org/web/20161025220242/http://tieba.baidu.com/p/752094668

I never get mad. Only a slightly sad or annoyed sometimes.

But I do admit that I am hard headed like almost all humans, and it is very unlikely that anything anyone says will change my mind about subjective political matters.

In the end I just end up thinking about new replies to those arguments and adding them to this FAQ.

But maybe no radical ever considers himself radical? Hmmm...

SJW: there is a seed of SJW in me.

One major difference between me and the stereotypical SJW is that I never engage in lengthy discussions.

I believe that you cannot change people's mind's, and that learning tech is more worthy of my time.

I limit myself to listening as much as I can to learn new arguments.

So the rationale of my actions is not to convince anyone, but rather:

• increase the monetary cost of censorship by binding politics to tech
• group up like minded people who don't like censorship

My employer has nothing to do with this.

He doesn't approve or disapprove of the Chinese government or of my private actions.

The only thing that my employer does believe in is that employees can have their own political opinions, and that this should not affect hiring decisions.

Obviously, this action limits my ability to lead high profile deals with China.

Also I'm quite curios if this would limit my ability to go to China for business, but I haven't applied for a visa since I've started this.

But my employer believes that inclusion and non-discrimination is more valuable.

I will always do my best to not let my personal opinions affect my professional decisions, as that would be unfair to my employer.

Hitting the block button has of course no cost.

The cost of blocking Stack Overflow lies of course in the loss of information, and slower technological development.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cute_cat_theory_of_digital_activism

Nope, someone told me about it after a while, but it is basically what I'm doing.

By this logic, everyone should go to jail. The law should only punish individuals.

The communist party, which has had contiuous power since 1949, killed millions during the cultural revolution. Surely they must be banned, no?

For every desire of the masses, there will be amoral representants that will step to use that power.

Still, those representants cannot gain power if there is no backing desire from the society.

And at least the representants have to pretend and to things for that group to retain their power.

That's a valid belief.

I however believe society can be richer when people know that they can do their startups, get rich, and stay in the country without fear of being persecuted unfairly and losing everything.

Maybe China was poor because of Mao's crazy communist regime. Similar regimes also made Russia poor (yes, before that exploitation by the West was a reason).

Definitely, the current regime is better than Mao's, but just imagine how rich China could be if it had more freedom and justice.

Imperial China lost the race for the Industrial Revolution. Will another dictatorship be able to stay on top of the next revolution?

OK, shall we put that to an anonymous vote?

I don't support FLG specifically, only freedom of religion.

I use it in my usernames simply because it is the most banned and censored one in China today.

I believe that individuals should only be put in jail for what they do, not for what they believe.

I consider FLG a religion, and I am against its ban, as I am for all other religions.

Also I believe that freedom of speech and democracy imply that FLG and other religions will exist. If you want freedom, you have to accept other people's choices.

Otherwise, democracy and communism can also be considered as religions, and banned.

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/27529/have-many-falun-gong-practitioners-forgone-medical-treatment-and-died-of-treatab

This is a point that makes me worry, but consider:

• what matters are statistics. Maybe FLG people live longer than non FLG in average. But we will never have statistics because of censorship

• maybe people should be allowed to choose how they want to die, not to take medication if they don't want to

• maybe the number of people killed during persecution vastly outnumbers those who died because they would not take medication

• several religions, including Christianism have miraculous cure claims

• maybe the main reason why communists banned FLG is the political threat it posed, but that a ban was unjustified given the situation. Christian crosses are being taken down as of 2016, have they stopped taking their medications as well?

• maybe many of those people would also have died soon even if they had taken medication

• maybe not all Falun Gong believers thought that it was wise to stop taking medication. But their religion was banned anyways.

• all the following also reduce people's lifespan:

  • riding motorcycles vs cars / buses
  • smoking
  • moving to a poor country to do charity there
  • eating fast food

  Forbidding them also has huge humanitarian costs (more expensive vehicles, creation of a black market, ...). So why not forbid them as well?

I believe that it has changed.

But isn't that the case of every cultural religious movement that migrates to a completely new culture?

Main points which may have changed:

• It has become more organized.

  But why shouldn't they organize to defend themselves now that they have the chance without being put into prison?

  The CCP is highly organized and has way more resources.

• Less emphasis is given to the religious / mystical aspect, and more to the corporal exercises, and health aspect.

  This may be because people in the "West" are:

  • are "scientific-educated" atheists who wouldn't go for a "religion"
  • already have other religions, which would view FLG as a taboo

Also maybe only the richest and most educated believers managed to escape China, and thus the movement carried that bias outside China.

If you know more ways in which it may have changed, let me know.

But once again, we can know nothing for sure about the past in China because of censorship.

Even if you saw something yourself, how can you be sure that it is representative?

And if it has changed, now that it has changed, maybe China should unban it?

I agree that there is danger in every religion, and specially new religions.

However the same point can be made about political parties and in particular the CCP and its chairman.

Couldn't a charismatic leader chairman gain more and more power (like Xi seems to be doing), and eventually start a war and kill millions? Or just kill some minority which is not happy about the situation.

Similarly, any charismatic leader of a pro democracy movement could become the leader of a terrorist organization.

If you ever want democracy, you will have to learn to accept the beliefs of others, and only punish them when they actually break a law.

I think that most people in the West would classify FLG as a religion if they are told that it mentions higher intelligent beings, other dimensions, and have weekly meetings where they read from a sacred book.

Or a cult, which is nothing but a new / small religion with negative connotation, and thus meaningless.

But consider this: how to classify what a religion is?

Some would answer: science is what everyone can perceive with their own senses.

But FLG followers claim to feel FLG energies when doing the exercises, and a few of them have the power of seeing the other dimensions.

On the other hand, how many of your friends have experienced the laws of quantum field theory or general relativity in a very direct way?

Agreed, and it is a point that hurts more than helps their cause: e.g. New Tang Dynasty TV, Epoch Times and Shen Yun Dance group.

But are all media forced to state their affiliation?

If so, then we should force all newspapers start taking pools of how many employees follow which religion, and put that in their print.

This might be a bad law that should be changed.

It was perfectly legal for Nazis to kill Jews. Does it make that right?

Similar to the question: does God exist?

And thus unanswerable, and not interesting to me.

The Romans called Christianism the "Cult of Jesus".

If I tell a lie today, will it become true in a thousand years? Or a truth today become a lie?

Try sending an email to LHZ asking him to prove his powers to you :-)

Like most old religions.

Democracy dislikes dictators.

You and I dislike certain personality traits without any logical reason.

What matters is that we treat everyone with respect and without bias at work, even if we don't like them.

But the law can't force you to like everyone.

I know that, and that supporting FLG is "bad" for my public image with most Chinese, including those that are against censorship.

But without censorship, there will be democracy, and with democracy FLG followers will have voting rights, and FLG will become legal.

I think the situation is very similar to Scientology in the USA today: most people dislike it, but believe that you can believe whatever you want.

Democracy and Communism can also be considered as religions and persecuted.

Isn't it convenient when a dictatorship gets rid of those weirdos for you? But not so much when suddenly you or your family is the weirdo...

Heard this a few times, but I don't see how this is relevant at all:

• if they are not really FLG believers, this says nothing about the real FLG believers
• if they are, then why wouldn't they seek a VISA, since they are in constant threat of going to jail?

Because it also specifies irrational and fundamental aspects of how one should live, notably voting and freedom of speech.

Normally suicide.

First I'm sorry about that.

Next, your testimony is worthless unless you give the following:

• clear unique personal identification

  There are basically two ways to do that:

  1. Links between a notable social media presence that is hard to achieve, e.g. Twitter with many followers, Stack overflow with a lot of rep, and the account
  2. Your testimony is done in video form on YouTube clearly showing your face as you make it

  Either of those must contain / link to information that uniquely identifies you. Generally, full name, city and date of birth is enough.

• a precise testimony that states exactly what you saw happen with your own eyes, or heard from people that are very close to you.

  The testimony must include:

  • when the events happened
  • where they happened, in which city at the very least
  • the full names of who did what

Next consider this:

• are you sure that Falun Gong made the person do the bad thing, and that the person wouldn't have done it anyways?

  Did someone from Falun Gong told the person to do it?

  I bet that if you look into patients of psychiatrists, you will find more suicides than average. So should we ban psychiatry?

• are you sure that the order came from LHZ, and that it was not just some disgruntled local leader using Falun Gong for his personal madness and doing things he did not approve?

  Branch Davidians were inspired by Christianism. So should we ban Christianity? What about the majority of Christians who have never done anything bad?