China's New Wave of Internet Censorship: Name Verification for Online Commenting
There are a dozen popular live streaming apps in China where one can simply just stream what you're doing to everyone on the site and people can just watch them for hours. You can think of it like Instagram stories or Snapchat per se. Or even Facebook live.<p>This isn't some western media propaganda. I tried one of them very recently (I don't want to give them any undeserved marketing), they allowed me to sign up and the moment I clicked on my camera button it took me to a page asking me to "verify" my profile as apparently it was Chinese government's new regulation. Guess what? They asked me for my passport before I could upload a damn thing on their app.<p>Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. Only the Chinese government can get away with something unbelievable like these regulations, while still gaining loyalty from their citizens to the point where these supporters will even defend the govt. everywhere online trying to explain how normal it is to submit your passport and your real identity to some random app company because you know, you just wanted to try it out and it's totally normal.