Was this on your personal device? I'm just wondering how it activated your camera. I would love more details!
I've run into this a few times, now.
So what OP is saying is plausible, I just don't appreciate their added and probably incorrect conclusion that it's because the government of China wants to do something to them
You've run into a site you view on chrome/firefox/safari accessing your camera without granting access a few times now?
Can you give us an example of a site that does this so we can reproduce? Or could you retract your statement and clarify that you did grant camera permissions for that site previously?
Otherwise, you're saying very casually there's a huge bug and security issue that no one else has detected but you personally have seem multiple times.
I've run into people on the internet misremembering things or not understanding how the browser works more times than I've run into browsers allowing access to system devices like the camera without a permission prompt.
I never said anything about granting permissions. I can respond to your other points, in turn, but first I would like you to confirm that I am who you think you are responding to :) I am not OP.
In case you don't think I'm OP, then, well I was being imprecise. Yes, it requires browser/app/manifest permissions. Your paranoid and aggressive tone implies you're not giving me any benefit of the doubt, as I speak informally in a casual web forum discussion about understanding what happened.
China has more restrictions on what you can say than the U.S. but what you are describing is not reality. Some westerner asking Deepseek about Taiwan is completely uninteresting. Just as the government do not chase people over VPN usage.
China doesn’t try to hide that they are an authoritarian state. They don’t need to. Most people in China are no less happy with their government than westerners are with their governments. Governments reflect culture. And as for foreigners, our view of China is far worse than it actually is, China doesn’t need to hide anything, people who visit China will come away with a more positive view of the country than those who do not visit.
Not recognizing they were outputting wrongthink until after it was being streamed to the user is a known behavior with some Chinese chatbot apps. A quick search found an example of DeepSeek doing it: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1ic3kl6/deepseek_ce...
I don't think his story is genuine, but it showing the "wrong" answer before correcting itself is known behavior.
EDIT: Here's an example of it outputting a full response about Taiwan specifically before removing it: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1i7ceol/...
My wife grew up in Shanghai, and you'll have to go quite some distance to find someone more critical of the PRC and CCP than she is. And it's with good reason.
She grew up during the cultural revolution, and was largely raised by her grandmother because literally every other person in her extended family was in prison or work camp, not because of anything they had actually done wrong, but for political reasons because the whole family was blacklisted.
And that's not just the old days. Her father died as a direct result of Chinese Covid policy. During the pandemic her cousins still in the country would ask her (on Skype) "is X true?", and largely their perception of what was going on was false. She would exfiltrate encrypted news reports to them - until those started getting blocked. Her dad's estate still has affairs that need to be resolved, but we've decided not to return to China until Xi is gone, as it's just not safe. It doesn't get much airplay, but there are currently a couple of hundred Americans who are being illegally detained in China right now. It's not worth the risk.
My first trip to China was about 30 years ago, shortly after we got married. And back then, I would have said that you were right. Honestly, it felt like for the average person in their day-to-day-lives, the Chinese were less under the governmental thumb than we are. People from the countryside would bring their produce into the city to sell, or cook dumplings and buns to sell on the side of the street - stuff that in America we'd have to get permits for. It seemed that the oligarchy had an understanding with the people: let us control the big picture, and we'll look the other way for the little things. But Chinese politics is a pendulum swinging very widely. From Tienanmen Square and Tank Man, it had swung quite a bit the other way. But today, it's come back 180-degrees. Xi is really trying for a Cultural Revolution 2.0.
These impressions largely match what I hear from other Chinese immigrants - except for Party members, who tend not to want to talk about it at all. I'm afraid that you've been listening to too much propaganda.
Is it generally normal to hold countries accountable for every person that dies due to their COVID policies?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_by_country_a...
the sense i get from my chinese friends are that the CCP is an annoying parent but they understand the challenges both domestic and international and largely agree with the compromises
Do they either clam up or act like it's a mortal insult to suggest that an independent democratic nation should not live in fear of impending violent conquest?
Because that's the kind of reaction that makes the reports of "happy life, all's good" a little harder to digest.
Not saying that's a unanimous opinion / response, of course. But it certainly seems to be the default.
Are you saying you would've been neutral on an invasion of Taiwan before 1985 or so, since it wasn't a democracy?
Compared to the U.S. which currently has no foreign nationals detained illegally?
Pick any country and you will find political dissidents. The existence of angry emigrants is not evidence that a country is worse than we could ever imagine.
You haven't addressed at all the parts about blacklisting whole families for political reasons, or horrible return-to-normal policies for covid-19 three years ago, or the general pendulum-swing-back-to-evil trend.
Your wife feels a certain way and wanted to avoid a certain hypothetical. But since it didn't happen, we have no way of knowing how relevant these feelings are.
How can we address blacklisting and covid response if you are insisting that any comparison isn't relevant and that we should evaluate it with no baseline?
Sensationalizing claims then qualifying them later is inherently dishonest.
So is sealioning.
To the extent that's true, it's because they won't let you see the uyghur reeducation camps.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/85qihtvw6e/the-faces-from-c...
https://gijn.org/stories/interview-uyghur-victims-xinjiang-p...
How about the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights?
The Xinjiang Police Files: A 2022 leak of over 5,000 police photos, internal documents, and spreadsheets revealing the scale of detention, with images showing prisoners shackled, hooded, and under guard in 2018.
The China Cables (2019): Leaked, classified instructions on how to run the camps, including directives to ensure "no escapes" promote "repentance" and use full video surveillance.
Satellite Imagery Analysis: Researchers from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) identified over 380 suspected detention sites, including new construction and expansion, often featuring guard towers and razor wire.
Testimonies and Research: Former detainees have reported torture, rape, forced sterilization, and intense indoctrination to abandon their religious and cultural practices.
Government Documentation: The Karakax list, a leaked document, provided detailed, case-by-case justifications for detention, such as having too many children or wearing a veil.
Are you this incredulous when someone reports that the US locks up more Black people capita than White? Someone defending the US could make the same claims you are that everyone is out to make the US look bad. That multiple independent groups are fabricating evidence etc…
1. give links or one link to the collection of above "evidence" to let others to get conclusion by their own. BTW, I've seen some ("Leaked, classified instructions...) but easily get different interpretation.
2. Also using "I" is better than "We". That means you get your conclusion, not representing others.
Why should I take the denials of a pseudnonymous online account without evidence?
Would love to know how that works in a country that outlaws christian churches that aren't tied to the state.
https://gijn.org/stories/interview-uyghur-victims-xinjiang-p...
In addition to releasing the report she released a 131 page Chinese rebuttal simultaneously. Not the actions one would expect of a shadowy group at the UN out to get China.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/31/china-uyghur-m...
The organization’s human rights office delivered its much-delayed report minutes before Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, was to leave office.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/world/asia/un-china-xinji...
I was talking crap about china from the great wall.