Thursday, March 31, 2016

Final Ethics project part 1

I would like to discuss a computing case which China blocked Facebook on July 2009. The reason was that Xinjiang independence activists were using Facebook as part of their communications network. This case started from July 2009 Ürümqi riots. On that day Xinjiang Independents activists caused 197 people died and 1721 people got hurt. Therefore Chinese government took that case seriously. In China, Chinese government had right to ban any kind of post from social medias at any time because these social medias accepted some Chinese rules. However, FaceBook’s service providers did not comply with the rules because they emphasize freedom of speech for reason against that rules. However, China did not allowed any business ran under Chinese laws, so Facebook was block. In my opinion, I did not agree China block Facebook. On that time, blocking Facebook maybe useful. Now more than more people have good IT knowledge, so people have so many way to use Facebook in China. For example, they just need to change VPN, and they can use it. The principle of problem is that Chinese government want their country be safer. Blocking may not solve this problem efficiently. Also independents can use other social medias instead of Facebook. Blocking Facebook may not a useful strategy.

6 comments:

  1. The Chinese government closely monitors information on the internet. They do not want dissidents to be able to communicate or for their people to be able to get information that they feel threatens their power. This reminds me of when the Communist Eastern European countries had to rely on Radio Free Europe to get information about the outside world. An oppressive government thrives when its' people are ignorant.

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  2. China claimed that for security reasons and to fight against propaganda activities that oppose the party and the government they had to block Facebook. The moral issues involved in this case are morality of society, public order and national security.

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  3. A moral issue you could look into would be privacy. Not only does the Chinese government block and monitor websites they also monitor the internet access of individuals.

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  4. Any democratic country(?) (China included) should have right about what product to allow in their country and what not. Issue is whether majority of their people have their say on that product or not? If majority of people don't agree what their government is doing that should be considered as wrong. If people are in peace with that, let's say their government is doing just fine.

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  5. I agree any country should have the rights to choose what products are allowed to operate within their borders. In regards to the average Chinese citizen, they do not disagree with the government, they only comply. And for very good reason.

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  6. I agree with you, the country cannot be made safer by blocking facebook, as there are so many other ways. But this country does claim to be democratic, and i dont think that shutting down facebook and not letting people express themselves freely is "democratic." People should be allowed to use technology and

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