> Clearly, a bit of a different story than what's implied in this article.
Is it?
I would classify both of those as satirical comments (albeit offensive ones). I'm not sure how familiar you are with the US, but it would not be considered socially acceptable here for the police to question you about comments like this made in, say, a private Facebook message.
It definitely would not be acceptable for police in the US to arrest someone over this; that would be a very clear 1st Amendment violation.
They were exposed on social media by an unauthorized 3rd party after they were uttered in private, right? That certainly sounds like someone was arrested for something they said in private.
Maybe there's additional context I'm not understanding?
yes? The initial implication was that the police were monitoring the private chat, whereas the second article suggests that the police only became aware after the message was circulated. Surely you can see that these two situations paint different pictures regarding the Chinese surveillance apparatus.
So if I'm understanding correctly, it's not that the arrests didn't happen, or that they happened for a different reason, it's that the government isn't actively soliciting businesses for those kinds of tips. Their attitude is, "we'll arrest you if we hear about it."
Again, different cultures. In the US, this kind of satire is legal. Despicable, but legal.
If Facebook leaked a private message of this nature to the police in the US, Facebook (or whomever contacted the police) would be criticized as well. Banned from the platform? Go right ahead. Involve law enforcement? There would be a lot of criticism for that.
Regardless, it still seems to me that the reporting in this article seems accurate:
> People are regularly arrested for messages they send in supposedly “private” group chats. In 2017, two people were arrested in Nanjing for separate instances of making satirical comments referring the massacre in the city by the Japanese in 1937.5
I'm seeing arguments that this is reasonable, I'm not seeing arguments that this didn't happen. The conflict seems to be that different cultures have different attitudes towards inflicting legal repercussions on private hate speech.
Is it?
I would classify both of those as satirical comments (albeit offensive ones). I'm not sure how familiar you are with the US, but it would not be considered socially acceptable here for the police to question you about comments like this made in, say, a private Facebook message.
It definitely would not be acceptable for police in the US to arrest someone over this; that would be a very clear 1st Amendment violation.