No.

This is not a revenge of any kind.

I know I am harming you on the short term, and I don’t like myself for it.

But I believe that this harm is a necessary means to reach my real goal, which is to destroy the firewall, and the dictatorship.

Don’t you think it is worth a try? Destroying the firewall, would enormously benefit not only Chinese programmers, but every single other Chinese person too.

Once the firewall is destroyed, which may to destroy the dictatorship, I want China to develop the best science and technology in the world. I would even migrate there if given a good job.

And by the way, by contributing to open source, I am already helping China, and all underdeveloped countries become stronger.

There is infinite debate about this out there, some examples:

• http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/05/can-poor-countries-afford-democracy-becker.html

• https://www.quora.com/Is-democracy-or-authoritarianism-better-for-developing-countries

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. And yes, before that exploitation by the West may have been a factor.

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 technological revolution?

This has been discussed to death:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_Peace:_A_Philosophical_Sketch

Some arguments include:

• the people who will actually fight and die on the front can’t vote against it

• dictators have huge power, so if they put it in their heads that they want to start a war, it is much harder for sensible people to stop them

• dictators need to keep the people in fear all the time to keep their power, and a war is a great way to achieve that

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 emphasised 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!

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

In other words, if programming websites get blocked, there will be less good programmers to fight against the dictatorship

The keyword attack is basically an embargo

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.

There is already a lot of literature about this, specially in the cases of Cuba and North Korea. It is basically a libertarian vs conservative / Cato vs Heritage thing in the US:

• https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/no-embargo-harms-cubans-gives-castro-excuse-policy-failures-regime

• https://www.heritage.org/trade/report/why-the-cuban-trade-embargo-should-be-maintained

• http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_big_idea/2006/08/thanks_for_the_sanctions.html

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.

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.

It is a risk, but it would make China drastically less powerful, so at least they wouldn’t be able to start or sustain [WW3]. So I don’t think it will go that way.

Eveyone is "brainwashed" by their environment.

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.

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.

No.

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.

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

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.

If it wasn’t for the dictatorship, I would seriously consider living there.

Of course not. I am, just like you, a completely selfless being, who only cares about what is best for the world as a whole.

No, I am a selfless human being, only concerned with the well being of humankind.

Not with my real name attached to it.

No.

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 curious 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.

In 1989, a beautiful thing called the World Wide Web was invented.

The Internet gives everyone the magic power of writing something, and having million people read it for free!

This is how much time I spend on this to give you an idea:

• every week or two, someone sends me a message, I reply with "read the FAQ", and usually update

• I follow https://www.reddit.com/r/China amongst many other programming subs, and all major bad news show up there

• when something bad enough comes up, I go to https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/sensitive-words-series/ and update my keyword attack. I’ve only been updating it on Stack Overflow these days, since GitHub does not show my profile name prominently.

Then I just contribute to programming websites exactly as I would if I weren’t making this campaign.

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.

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?

1.5M USD in 2010 for a FLG controlled internet freedom group http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8678760.stm

But well, if you are going to do something anyways, and someone offers you money, why wouldn’t you take it?

Taking the money does of course give a "bad impression" that someone is trying to buy influence, but does it in itself imply that you are doing something bad?

But do you really think that the US government paid that to buy influence in FLG? What would they force upon that FLG group that they didn’t already want to do? Isn’t it more likely that the US government wanted them to continue doing exactly what they were doing?

Every government funds groups it supports, it is an all out war I suppose. Compare that to the propaganda funds of the CCP.

What about the funding of political campaigns, which vastly outnumbers 1.5M USD every year?

This might be a bad law that should be changed.

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

The same can be argued about any other religion or political belief of type: it is better if we organize society in this or that way.

How can you disprove their belief, when as in any other religion, every affirmation made hinges on "miracles only happen around when true believers are around" or "only true believers can perceive evidence in their hearts / minds directly". He died of cancer? Not a true believer.

Conversely, do you understand the full sequence of experiments that imply quantum field theory? Have you seen videos of those experiments? Have you attended live demonstrations? Do you understand the construction of the experimentation apparatus? Yet, why do you believe it?

More importantly: what do you propose that should be done about it?

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.

Either direct suicide or dying because of not taking medication.

First, I’m not saying I don’t believe you, and I’m sorry about what happened.

But your testimony is worthless unless you give the following:

• clear unique personal identification

  There are basically two ways to do that: . 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 . 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

If you do provide all of the above, I add your report to a list of reports that I will maintain. This list does not exist yet because there were no valid reports yet.

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?

• only statistics has any meaning, and it would require a very large number of reports to make up statistics, so you will likely be wasting your time. I will do my part and maintain a list however.

How much proof do you think they would be able to get when there is no freedom of press?

Do you think that forbidding a 70 million person religion could have gone smoothly?

Do you think the thousands of personal of accounts of human rights violations that exist are all fake, and don’t indicate that many, many more have taken place but fallen under censorship?

Conversely, there is no reliable proof that FLG is bad as claimed by CCP that has been verified by international media.

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

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

But the CCP has changed so much since those days, I hear you say.

I agree. And so has FLG.

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

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

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

Possibly true, but which reports are you talking about specifically?

All that I care about is:

• it is censored today

• if you do it you go to jail

• there were tens of millions of followers at the time of the ban

which I think are undeniable.

The only question that matters is: should it be banned or not?

But also as explaining why I don’t think it justifies the ban.

This section also gives me more credibility as a balanced critic >:-)