Their reasons for not exporting socialism is their reading that it was one of the main factors for soviet instability that eventually led to Gorbachev. One particular example would be the Afghan revolution and civil war.

If they were to invite instability, make mistakes and eventually end up losing ground or even being toppled like the USSR, it would be a much harsher blow to the global communist movement. They are a bulwark against global imperialism, not a frontal assault army. It's up to the communist parties of each nation to actually produce their revolutions.

Stalin : No, a comical one. Or, perhaps, tragicomic.

You see, we Marxists believe that a revolution will also take place in other countries. But it will take place only when the revolutionaries in those countries think it possible, or necessary. The export of revolution is nonsense. Every country will make its own revolution if it wants to, and if it does not want to, there will be no revolution. For example, our country wanted to make a revolution and made it, and now we are building a new, classless society.

But to assert that we want to make a revolution in other countries, to interfere in their lives, means saying what is untrue, and what we have never advocated.

Source

It's been reverted now but, honestly, any sort of wiki citing another wiki as a source is bad. The "Trotskyites are considered reactionary" section is really good though and should stay.

This is an age-old debate (see Luxembourg's "reform or revolution").

The Marxist-Leninist line holds that protecting or enhancing the material conditions of the proletariat before the revolution can both increase the number of prospective party-members or militants (i.e. you can't organise rallies if you're starving) and gain the confidence of the working class by representing their immediate interests (i.e. protecting workers rights) unlike bourgeois parties.

Smaller more tangible reform fights are also ripe ground for recruitment of militants, as inexperienced comrades can get a lot of first hand experience organising for, for example, solutions for food security (Black Panther Party's free breakfasts).

However those reforms are means to an end, and that end is revolution. So reforms should not be a one-and-done thing (see the UK's NHS) but rather a front in heightening class war and highlighting capital as the enemy and their resistance to reform as evidence. I once saw a comment in another Lemmy instance that said something like "we tried to implement public healthcare, but capital resisted too hard so there's no hope". That is due to social-democrat and reformist monopoly over the discourse about public healthcare, which needs to be challenged by communists.

The term "class war" is not hyperbole. In a war, you should settle only for defeating your opponent, hopefully forcing them to capitulate or maybe even eradicating them. You don't take your single victory in a battlefield and pack your bags to go home, that's the reformist line represented by Jeremy Corbyn and in a more aesthetic sense, Bernie Sanders. But you also don't wait while your enemy marches into your territory hoping that their cruelty will materialise an uprising to defeat your opponent in a single blow, that is the spontaneists line held by every other Trotskyist splinter party or academicist communists.

The foreign secretary, David Cameron, is finishing a trip to the Middle East, in a diplomatic bid to reduce tensions as the Israeli bombardment of Gaza continues.

I think it's safe to assume tensions will continue. Somebody should float him the idea for a Isrexit referendum.

The phase-out timeline

We will begin disabling Manifest V2 extensions in pre-stable versions of Chrome (Dev, Canary, and Beta) as early as June 2024, in Chrome 127 and later. Users impacted by the rollout will see Manifest V2 extensions automatically disabled in their browser and will no longer be able to install Manifest V2 extensions from the Chrome Web Store. Also in June 2024, Manifest V2 extensions will lose their Featured badge in the Chrome Web Store if they currently have one.

from google

What Manifest V3 Means for You

That said, our team has had to make some changes to the uBlock extension in order to comply with the new requirements of Manifest V3. These changes are detailed below.

Allow List Limits

With Manifest V3, uBlock is required to limit how many websites our users are able to add to their allow lists. Going forward, you'll only be able to add up to 5,000 websites to your allow lists.

Ad Blocking Quality

Currently, our filter lists are updated automatically—often on a daily basis. So if you see an ad that has managed to get around the ad blocking filter, it’s typically taken care of right away because of these updates. Moving forward, we’ll no longer be able to enable automatic daily updates to filter lists. Instead, our developers will be frequently releasing new versions of the extension to address any ads that are circumventing our filters and still showing to users. Our goal is to ensure most users won’t notice a difference, as we plan to increase how much we release the extension to keep up with changing ads and filter lists.

from ublock

Manifest V3, or Mv3 for short, is outright harmful to privacy efforts. It will restrict the capabilities of web extensions—especially those that are designed to monitor, modify, and compute alongside the conversation your browser has with the websites you visit. Under the new specifications, extensions like these– like some privacy-protective tracker blockers– will have greatly reduced capabilities. Google’s efforts to limit that access is concerning, especially considering that Google has trackers installed on 75% of the top one million websites.

It’s also doubtful Mv3 will do much for security. Firefox maintains the largest extension market that’s not based on Chrome, and the company has said it will adopt Mv3 in the interest of cross-browser compatibility. Yet, at the 2020 AdBlocker Dev Summit, Firefox’s Add-On Operations Manager said about the extensions security review process: “For malicious add-ons, we feel that for Firefox it has been at a manageable level....since the add-ons are mostly interested in grabbing bad data, they can still do that with the current webRequest API that is not blocking.”

from the eff

What are we doing differently in Firefox?

WebRequest

One of the most controversial changes of Chrome’s MV3 approach is the removal of blocking WebRequest, which provides a level of power and flexibility that is critical to enabling advanced privacy and content blocking features. Unfortunately, that power has also been used to harm users in a variety of ways. Chrome’s solution in MV3 was to define a more narrowly scoped API (declarativeNetRequest) as a replacement. However, this will limit the capabilities of certain types of privacy extensions without adequate replacement.

Mozilla will maintain support for blocking WebRequest in MV3. To maximize compatibility with other browsers, we will also ship support for declarativeNetRequest. We will continue to work with content blockers and other key consumers of this API to identify current and future alternatives where appropriate. Content blocking is one of the most important use cases for extensions, and we are committed to ensuring that Firefox users have access to the best privacy tools available.

from mozilla's blog

Google has removed ad blocking and privacy extension AdNauseam from its Chrome Web Store, and has taken the unusual step of flagging the extension as malware, thereby preventing AdNauseam from being used by those who have installed the software via Chrome's developer mode.

[...] Google in 2013 banned ad blocking for Android apps in the Google Play Store, for violating its prohibition on interfering with the function of other apps. It conducted another purge in early 2016, banning stand-alone ad blocking apps like Adblock Fast and Crystal. It subsequently formalized its stance with a Play Store policy update, allowing browsers with built-in content blocking support to remain.

from a completely unrelated theregister article

Google has “a dominant, near chokehold position on the market,” said Joanna O’Connell, an analyst who specializes in online advertising for the market research firm Forrester. “They don’t just have a buying platform, or the ad-serving market, or a content asset in YouTube, or the search market. They have all of those things.

[...] For the first time in 2019, U.S. digital ad spending surpassed traditional print and television advertising, according to market research firm eMarketer. By 2023, it is projected to account for two-thirds of all money spent on advertising. Last year, advertisers spent $124.6 billion on all U.S. digital advertising, including both search and display ads, said the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which measures digital ad spending.

[...] A large chunk of U.S. digital advertising, $54.7 billion or about 44 percent, is search advertising, for which Google is the undisputed market leader, according to the IAB. But the bigger piece — and where the antitrust regulators are focused — involves display advertising, the images, text and videos that often pay for websites like news, sports, blogs and smaller e-commerce sites.

[...] The Omidyar report doesn’t make any recommendations for how to bring competition back to the ad-technology market that Google dominates. But one option highlighted by U.K. authorities would be to break up some of Google by requiring it to sell off businesses within the stack so that it operates either only on behalf of ad-buyers or on behalf of ad-sellers.

from another unrelated article from politico

In yet another case of broken promises – or maybe fraud? – Google failed to honor agreements governing ad placements on third-party sites 80% of the time. The scandal was uncovered by ad-tracking firm Adalytics, which examined ad impressions from over 1100 brands from 2020-2023. Advertisers paid premium rates, typically higher by a factor of 20, to ensure their video ads would appear prominently on reputable sites. However, Google actually gave the ads substandard placements on numerous misinformation and piracy sites. Advertisers affected include not only companies like American Express and Macy’s but also government entities like Medicare, the Social Security Administration, and the U.S. Army. Now, advertisers are knocking on Google’s door demanding refunds – and Google is pretending not to hear them.

from creativefuture

The agreement between Facebook and Google, code-named “Jedi Blue” inside Google, pertains to a growing segment of the online advertising market called programmatic advertising. Online advertising pulls in hundreds of billions of dollars in global revenue each year, and the automated buying and selling of ad space accounts for more than 60 percent of the total, according to researchers.

[...] Adam Heimlich, the chief executive of Chalice Custom Algorithms, a marketing and data science consulting company, said the deal gave Facebook so much advantage that it was like allowing the social network to “start every tournament in the finals.”

Facebook promised to bid on at least 90 percent of auctions when it could identify the end user and committed to spending a certain amount of money — as much as $500 million a year by the fourth year of the agreement, according to the draft of the complaint. Facebook also demanded that data about its bids not be used by Google to manipulate auctions in its own favor, a level playing field not explicitly promised to other Open Bidding partners.

Perhaps the most serious claim in the draft complaint was that the two companies had predetermined that Facebook would win a fixed percentage of auctions that it bid on.

“Unbeknown to other market participants, no matter how high others might bid, the parties have agreed that the gavel will come down in Facebook’s favor a set number of times,” the draft complaint said. A Google spokeswoman said Facebook must make the highest bid to win an auction, just like its other exchange and ad network partners.

from the new york times

Uninstall your chrome.

I got a bit carried away, maybe I should make this a thread?

Finally a claim and a source. I recommend you rewatch that BBC video and try to separate the claims from the evidence. The BBC has this great technique where they mix claims backed by some evidence (which might not be good) with a bunch of claims from interviewees backed only by sounding authoritative. You'll probably notice the "evidence" provided is basically:

• A man claims he was arrested.

• The main thing, the (racistly named) China Cables, and a bunch of reactions to those documents. You can check the documents themselves here, though you have to weigh the possibility of them being forged or the translation being doctored. Though you'll notice that even this dubious document does not describe anything that looks like a genocide.

• A woman says she got arrested.

• Another woman saying her husband got arrested.

• Yet another claims that she was forced to teach there.

• That's it really.

Now, if you pay attention you'll notice the BBC horribly obfuscates their sources, but reading the main document (which they claim to be a concentration camp manual), it reads like a very heavy-handed manual for what they're actually advertised as: vocational training and de-radicalising centres.

Then later on they say a man was arrested for using WhatsApp, and show some hacker aesthetics version of bulletin 20, but that one describes people who use 快呀 (kuaiya) software (apparently a file sharing app) to spread violent material.

After that, they do the same thing with bulletin 2, framing the notion that people with passports who can't be ruled out as terrorists needing security checks as a bad thing. Specially considering some of the countries listed have a history of financing terrorist groups abroad. Note that none of the claims by the previous interviewees (cameras checking even which doors you use) are in this source.

Skipping over all the interviewees again they cite the telegram to say that inmates have to stay at least 1 years and there are some conditions for leaving, such as good scores and less terrorist behaviours. If you ignore the sad music, sounds like a pretty normal thing for a de-radicalisation centre. Then they randomly add that "after that students may have to do forced labour" but cite something else entirely that says that they should be aided and monitored for one year. Weird.

Then they interview the "Washington-based Uyghur group guy" lol. That's all, really, but with a lot of fancy music and cinematography. I purposefully ignored the interviewees because each of them would be a can of worms that only pad for time in this one, but you can look them up too.

So to sum it up, their brand new evidence is a purposefully misinterpreted set of leaked documents, which may or may not be real, and which support the narrative of genocide less than it does the official one of de-radicalisation centres. In fact notice that the BBC guy doesn't use the word "genocide" once, but launders his argument through the interviewees. Since you mentioned the scientific method, consider the null hypothesis as China's official narrative being true and the genocide narrative being your hypothesis. This does not make the genocide hypothesis more likely.

See how much easier it is to examine claims when you provide them clearly and with sources? I may sound snarky but I'm actually glad you did, since this documentary (back when it was hosted on BBC proper, don't know what happened there) was when I started seriously questioning the mainstream narrative.

Now as a sidenote, note some absences. You have complained about impartiality in this thread, but throughout this whole documentary the Beeb guy does not interview a single Chinese official in good faith, only that shouting interruption with the diplomat. Every single interviewee is of the same position, there aren't even people from the other Muslim countries who have visited and disagree. Are we supposed to believe that this is impartial just because they bring a lot of people but with the same opinions?

Besides that there is no official number cited from their sources. The guy shouts at the diplomat "hundreds of thousands" but such a number never pops up in the documents. At another point somebody else says "a million" which famously comes from Adrian Zenz.

Also I think it's cute one of the biggest point in the main document back in 2017 was "prevent epidemics." And point 13 is explicitly saying inmates should be able to contact family to "keep family at the ease" and "make students feel safe." Horrifying.

And lastly, have this uncited court document that spells CPC wrong and lists as smoking gun a guy being arrested for actual clear-cut religious intolerance. "All people who do not pray are Han Chinese kafirs."

This was fun.

There's no winning, either he's the presidential equivalent to a elder home scam, or he actually believes the shit he says. But I still think the smarter and "saner" party Democrats are trying to lose the election with some plausible deniability. They can't keep distracting people from their shittiness with their underdog "battles for the soul of our nation" if they fully control the government.

Not to spoil it, but it starts out very strong but the political quality goes down exponentially over time after the first season. I couldn't bring myself to finish the last season because I was pretty bored.

Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of [memes], a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.

Yet another interesting movement to be crushed by third world infighting led by the USA and their puppet UN. I can't even see a positive outcome out of this, let's just hope this isn't as brutal as the Brazilian one. Maybe the Bwa Kale movement and FRG9 can pull out an actual revolution even then, but that'd probably only prompt an even worse intervention.

Not a single time. There was this exact one mass shooting in another far away state when I was a kid and I remember how irrationally on edge everybody was for a couple weeks, so I can't even imagine what it would be to have those happening regularly like that. I understand training kids to do it if you already have a school shooting problem, but those are really rare over here.

I've even heard from colleagues from gang-controlled regions that, in the case of a shoot out, they usually purposefully avoid having those near schools to avoid collateral child deaths.

Pointless foreign war going badly? ✔

Worsening internal proletarian conditions? ✔

Popular distrust in government and its fundamental philosophy? ✔

Encroaching police state and murdering of protesters? ✔

I could see the USA going the way of either 1905 or 1932 sometime soon. Obviously I prefer first, but it's the Yankees, they probably will go for the latter. But it's not like this hasn't happened at least once every decade for the past 70 years and no revolution materialised. The true sack of potatoes were the American Tubers all along.

Honestly a general strike might be a cool idea at least for basic things like healthcare, rent control, guaranteed sick leave and other things like that, that basically every other stable country already has. Socialist parties are missing out on the opportunity.