Secondhand Liberalism: A Story of Microdosing Internet Freedom by Afra Zhao Wang | Devcon SEA

[Music] [Music] all right hello everyone how's everyone going how's everyone doing good okay uh let's cheer up okay today I'm going to talk about uh a title called secondhand liberalism story of micro doing internet Freedom has a little things to do with ethereum but has a lot of things to do with ethereum at the same time uh and this lighting talk also is going to contribute uh to a larger panel at 2 p.m. in the same room called from Western liberalism to World liberalism um okay so when I hear the word liberalism it really hits differently when I speak in my native language in Chinese liberalism translate as the literal meaning is freedom principles or Freedom doctrines this translation actually encapsulates a very brief but remarkable period of China's internet history which I was fortunate enough to live through to notice the story in the next five minutes I'm going to tell you is a very simplified version of the history of Chinese internet um to not acknowledge the nuance and the complexity uh due to the Restriction of time I'm going to tell very very nutshell version um of it so I want to take you back to the early 2000 it is a time when posting a meme like this Wai in the pool on the Chinese internet was still legal and it is Unthinkable right now because as soon as you post anything of win the poo on weo the Chinese Twitter the post will very likely to be deleted um in in a few seconds so during this period China experienced what I called secondhand liberalism what I mean by that is China didn't have democracy or election at the time and there wasn't this freedom of speech in a traditional sense but China has something really remarkable an internet that's relatively free that breast Freedom if you picture a millions of Chinese citizens gathering in those digital tongue squares I'm talking about sites and forums like Tenya bulock weo andan they were not just a social media sites but they were intellectual playgrounds Chinese netizens were diving into discussions about liberal democracy about human rights about social justices and this this is not thinkable today um and growing up in China I never actually learned about liberal ideologies from my textbooks but I absorbed liberalism online it was everywhere it was tangible in the cyber space but it was invisible in practice the internet at the time busted with heavy conversations about pretty much everything which is considered sensitive today we're talking about government corruption we're talking about Labor rights we're talking about environmental issues we're talking about the forest relocation before beijing's Olympic and we're also talking about the controversy regarding the vnon earthquake those are all red flags today when censorship being tightening the Chinese netizens became posting puzzles and codes they developed a very sophisticated system of communicating with each other and understanding in this hidden language it was about building a community with a shared hidden meanings if you're in crypto you're going to be really familiar with this building a community is all about inventing those metaphors inventing those images and shared memes so you guys can understand each other and this was Chinese internet in the early 2000s this brief period I'm talking about from 2000s and early 2000 T fostered what scholar yangin called contentious public spere it is this archipelago of critical discussions about political weakening and about intellectual exploration these spaces encouraged what researcher Angela W called reading disposition for changing political understanding and thus creating Sol it very briefly President Bill Clinton said in 200 uh March 8th saying China is trying to crack down the internet that's ridiculous because cracking down the internet is like trying to nail the jello to the wall it's impossible and President Clinton said good luck Chinese sensors it's impossible to censor the internet however guess what it was present Clinton's naivity of something a scholar might called technos solutionism it turns up you can nail a gel to the wall right there is something called the Great firewall today and the technology as someone would imagine that would inevitably bring China into Liberation proven to be just another infrastructure could be controlled and can be monitored this transformation has been very Stark the Golden Age of the Chinese internet Freedom only lasted I would calculate for 15 years today the Chinese is among the most censored and the most surveilled in the entire world as you can tell from the chart in the first picture and the grid firewall has been nearly impenetrable this vibrate intellectual discussion this vibrant discussion about civil rights and all the issues in the society have largely disappeared behind the layers of surveillance and censorship and the brief window that I lived through when I was a teenager when I was a child in China has permanently closed the term liberalism Freedom principle has became pretty much stigmatized in China if you ask a CI if you ask a Chinese citizen on the street what do you think about C what do you think about liberalism people be like this is Western evil Western infiltration this is a western ideology we do not like people think Western liberalization liberal liberalization is is hypocritical and it lost its meaning so the story is like this and I want us to to think about this story not just like a cautionary tale about technology and control but really reminds us that liberalism we're talking about freedom of expression and freedom of choice is very precious and precarious so the internet of the the technology and underne are not inherently liberating as the Chinese internet today is highly constructed and a lot of sensorship mechanisms are artificial features so to those of you who are Building Technology the story of the death of the China's free internet is really sad it really reminds us that technological aggression doesn't bring Liberation automatically but rather technology is a result of ideology based ideology based choices made by governments corporations organizations and eventually individuals thank you thank you AFA thank you very much please give a hand to Afra um we are already slightly overtime