At the end of the day, media that doesn't turn society into idiots that undermine national interests has its virtues and maybe preferrable. That was once the case with tame free media before much of it turned into divisive reality TV. Similarly you can have dangerous state media that whip up nationalist frenzy, cause sectarian violence etc, or you could have boring ass state media and manage civic engagement for political serenity. All media are manipulated, all narratives shaped, blatantly manipulating media for serenity to a knowing population self-fulfilling properties. People stop giving a shit about politics, and politicians end up government instead of campaigning. Prerequisite is having a good system for selecting competent leadership in the first place.

This is not unambiguously endorsing state media as good, but decline of free media in many places is simply that bad. Some countries still have passable public broadcasting, but for how long, and whether commercial pivot for ads + anxiety is terminal transition.

For Uyghurs: under the most delusional estimates, Chinese Uyghurs still have less lifetime chance of being in a indoctrination camp than US blacks in US prison industrial complex. For much shorter sentences. After they'll be coerced to work in vocational program for more pay, even adjusted for exchange rate. Not US prison labour moving covid bodies tier coerced labour, but actual useful jobs designed to transition into society instead of recidivate back into for profit prisons. China actually wants to integrate minorities instead of exclude, even at extreme costs. So I suppose the answer is, it's better to be a Chinese Uyghur in a few generations after they've been sinicized and integrated than a Black American in 20 years who will still be getting executed on the street and fighting equal treatment.

Take the Hong Kong situation. If "highinfo/curious" chinese people in mainland China look at it and just repeat the Party line of "they are just troublemakers" instead of supporting them as loudly and as effectively as they can, then all this awareness of being fed propaganda is as good as nothing.

I mean, you are actually parroting the bullshit about concentration camps being about "integrating minorities". Minorities that are being tortured and brainwashed into submission are not "integrated", just destroyed while keeping a shell of the people to show around.

Maybe mainlanders don't deem HK worthy of protection. Mainlanders cared about pollution, they protested, government responded. They lost their shit at poor safety due to rapid development (aviation, high speed rail, food, medicine), the government responded. They were disgruntled over pork prices. The government responded. Chinese society skews old, conservative and anti LGBT. Government unfortunately responded. Unprecedented MeToo trials happening right now. Government responding. Sufficiently significant issues that elicit widespread attention gets addressed, Chinese people advocate for themselves all the time.

> fed propaganda

Fact is pork prices is literally a bigger problem to mainlanders than plight of privileged HKers with historic acrimonious relationship. This is a well understood dynamic, suggesting HKers would have ever got mainstream mainland support because of propaganda and not bad blood is exactly the kind of anglosphere illiteracy on China I'm talking about. ProHK / pro liberal reform voices exist but not much. Why? HK protestors from mainland perspective: young, nativist, disillusioned but privileged individuals who spread shit about mainlanders on social media for years... Yeah, I just described alt-right. Is it any surprise they got minimal support. Lots of mainland diaspora in the west with access to both side of the story, did meaningful numbers come out to support HK? No, they had access to both sides of the story, they just knew better.

>integration

Of course the goal is integration, CCP is not spending tremendous resources to be cruel for shits and giggles. If Han knew how much was going into XJ they'd protest, due to costs not human rights. Like people everywhere, the public would rather the minorities rot than take disproportionate resources. But unlike democracies, CCP can actually ignore public sentiment. Some in this generation will be a shell, their descendants will be integrated. It's ugly, but things move fast in Chinese 5 year plans. None of this long arc of justice nonsense. It's not right, but history will judge relative wrongness compared to locking up 1/4 of black Americans or trapping indigenous peoples in backwater reserves forever.

I don't know where you are from, but as someone who grew up in Brazil, lived in the US for ~5 years and now has 7 years in both Northern and Southern Europe and close relationships in the Middle East: globalization is real. Someone autistic like you may not notice due to subtle differences to adapt to local cultures and local flavors, but the message everywhere is to get people to measure themselves by what they consume and to stimulate consumption by creating needs where there are none.

It's, as the same implies, a spectrum.

I've lived in the US, New York, Los Angeles and Columbus Ohio for a brief period.

(I also lived in Berlin and Barcelona, but that doesn't really count as a radically different experience for an European)

I have strong northern African looks, but am still white and loved every moment in the US.

But the devil is in the details, I could not ignore that when my friends there told me that some neighborhood was dangerous it really was dangerous, not dangerous as we usually mean it when we say it in Italy.

I could not ignore the staggering amount of homicides reported in the news.

This year LA will surpass 300 homicides in a year, Italy has 12 times the population of LA and there were "only" 270 homicides last year.

I could not ignore that the police is scary there and you should not talk to them or engage in any way.

I swear I notice a difference when I see one.

Having said that.

Globalization is real, but the media here are not trying to exploit my weaknesses to sell me ads, they are putting ads on their products, generic ads, not "I know who you are and I know you're gonna like this" ads.

I'm ok with the first kind, not so much with the latter.

The point of decentralised web is a misguiding one.

The decentralised web is the web!

Everyone can build their own website and host it at home on a raspberry PI on their connection.

That's what made the web a novelty that could (hopefully) spread culture and knowledge.

The dicotomy between centralised and decentralised web was born because the web has been taken away from people and transformed in a targeted ads delivery machine by the same companies that sell ads (FB, Twitter, Instagram and most of all Google, they sell ads as a primary business)

They are fighting to get screen attention so that they can deliver even more ads to the people.

And when we say ads we are not simply talking about product advertisement, we are talking about political ads used to radicalise the debate, that the same companies selling ads control, thanks to the network effect.

And since the majority of companies doing it are American, I blame the USA that let them do it

As paradoxical as it might sound China doesn't need to sell ads to people to convince the people to support this or that position, because there is no alternative position.

They rely on good old State propaganda, which existed for centuries ans has been studied for decades and is a well understood topic.