How do I block CCP + American right wing propaganda that wechat have been promoting on my parent’s phones?
If I block the domain, they just complain the “internet is broken” and then use data (their plan has unlimited high speed data).
(Kinda funny how they are consuming two contradictory propaganda)
The CCP is right wing, so they’re getting a double-scoop of red-hued authoritarian desert. Nothing contradictory there.
i think they mean how the us right makes china out to be their number one enemy
Setup an always on VPN that connects them to their home network where those sites are blocked.
Now it doesn’t work on cellular anymore either.
Shout out to the PiHole software that makes DNS black listing much easier for ad blocking .
Pihole plus Pi VPN. Best thing I’ve ever done for my sanity. At least until google domains sold to squarespace, which suspiciously doesn’t support dynamic DNS.
Time to move hosts
Does the propaganda cancel out or not
Nah, they want China to be “reunited” with Taiwan, and also doesn’t like Democrats because of the “migrant crisis”.
Only reason why my US Citizen mom didn’t vote trump is because I told my mom to vote Harris because I invoked their fear of deportation by citing the Chinese Exclusion act 100 years ago, and said it could happen again. (I watched my mom filled the mail-in ballot)
(Basically their mindset is: “Immigrant bad, unless its us” 🤦♂️)
Btw, they still say that the 2nd trump term is gonna be “fine” and “its just like the first term, nothing bad will happen”
The first term wasn’t fine. Some of Trump’s “accomplishments” include raising the national debt significantly despite being part of a party that constantly claims they will deal with it, and poor actions which results in many deaths in the US during the pandemic. He also had secret conversations with Putin and may have transferred our secrets to Russia. Also he told the big lie and supported storming the capitol during J6.
Here’s a non inclusive list of some the scandals during Trump’s first term: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/antisemitism-alphabetical-guide-trump-s-worst-moments-n1245795
The only reason his first term wasn’t even worse was because people stopped him. Now there are going to be less people to stop him. That’s why we must stay strong and vigilant and work towards getting as many Democrats elected locally in 2025 and nationally in 2026.
The man is literally a walking national security threat who has no problem blabbing state secrets for free because in his mind, it’s a way of showing how important he is.
When people say nothing bad happened I’m like “did everyone forget the huge amount of people who died needless deaths?”
I swear we live in different worlds
I swear we live in different worlds
I couldn’t agree more. A lot of my family are conservative and talk politics all the time, and whenever any scandal or poor decision is brought up from Trump’s first term, they always downplay it as if it was barely an issue. According to them, just about everything was outside of Trump and the Republican party’s control, taken out of context, or just outright didn’t happen. It doesn’t matter how much evidence you provide, they refuse to accept that someone they voted for may have done something bad.
I mean, they see it as mostly the virus’s fault, not really the government’s fault.
Just like how they view the famine during the Great Leap Forward, not Mao’s fault, its just natural disaster.
Also, my mom suggested that the virus could’ve possibly originated from the US as an engineered bioweapon against China…
(the same virus somehow got into the US? 🤦♂️ Idk anymore, this world is so absurd with the assasination attempts, a convicted felon being elected president, and CEO getting shot, coup attempt in South Korea out of nowhere… I’m wondering if I’m in a dream/nightmare, its just bizzare…)
I mean, they see it as *mostly* the virus’s fault, not really the government’s fault.
Which is funny since the Republican/conservative stance on the virus seemed to be “no big deal.”
Mao ordering the death of all sparrows, which then led to mass locust swarms eating all the crops, followed by mass starvation. Not his fault at all…
Um yea, tell that to my parents.
Their logic is:
Leader fuck up their leadership = Natural disaster
People with non-visible diseases (such as: Depression) not being able to fuctions properly = Laziness
Nah, they want China to be “reunited” with Taiwan
Under the KMT, not the CCP, right?
I know that you mean well, but you seeing your mother’s vote is exactly why mail in voting should be the exception. Voting booths exist so that votes are secret, which is how it should be.
My mom hates Trump since she thinks he’s crude, but I’m 99% sure that my dad voted for them both by mail in votes.
Oh, I mean, its not like I gave her an order to vote a certain way. I just convinced her to do it by invoking her fears (Just like the maga do by invoking xenophobia, but in my case, in reverse). Like if she wanted to vote trump, she could’ve just hidden it, or just be a proud maga and not even hide it. Like what was I gonna do? I still have to live with her, I have no leverage over her, and I’m definitely not gonna commit a crime and illegally tamper with votes.
Convincing someone to vote a certain way out of their own free will is not illegal.
Someone voluntarily not hiding their ballot is not illegal either. (It’s not like I forced her to show the ballot)
In the Virginia mail-in voting instructions it is very clear that you are not to show anyone who you voted for. I guess I’m not surprised if other states do not have that, since voting rules are so haphazard in the USA.
It may be illegal to show your vote, exactly to prevent people in an unequal power relationship from pressuring you to vote in a specific way.
I mean, I’m the one depending on my mom not kicking me out, so like, morally speaking, I didn’t do anything wrong.
Legally, ballot selfies are legal in Pennsylvania where I live. Ballot selfies are also legal in Virginia. Why would Virgina make ballot selfies legal, but make showing ballots illegal?
Are you sure its an actual law, and not just a suggestion of the ballot instructions?
Btw, even in the polling booth (in PA at least), you are allowed to have someone assist you vote.
And I’m not even assisting. I’m just giving advice and hope she doesn’t vote for a fascist.
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No, it just makes even weirder propaganda.
Never underestimate propaganda’s ability to make people believe contradictory messages simultaneously. They’ll just choose to believe whatever suits their immediate argument then flip without a single care of consistency. Don’t bother questioning it either because every excuse and justification and conspiracy theory in the book will come up and failing that, belligerence and aggression until you either back down or go away so as not to make them challenge their irrational beliefs.
I could list out dozens but just the most common: government is both weak and ineffective yet pulls the strings of society in the background, the west is both weak and should just appease Russia because they won’t win yet is propping up Ukraine and presents an existential threat to Russia that supposedly justifies invasion, states should decide their own laws but not on issues they want to force onto others like abortion among many.
This is fascinating to me because it might be evidence that China is promoting right wing content to undermine America. I’ve never used WeChat before but I know the app has a “news” feature. Is WeChat linking to external domains/IP addresses? I’m curious what kind of right wing propaganda are they seeing? Who is making it? Is it in English or Chinese or a combination?
If you cannot deal with the problem by network filtering and blocking these strategies might be helpful: https://old.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/wiki/index/good_posts
Also I will mention with other social media websites I’ve read about people using the not interested in this content (or similar wording) button and unfollowing right wing news sources and then following people who make positive content.
This answer is completely untested and something I came up with while poking through my phone’s options. But it should work as long as the app in question uses your phone’s DNS settings.
My Samsung phone has a private DNS setting. Settings > Connections > More Connection Settings > Private DNS. This doesn’t seem to be bound to a specific connection on my device so I assume this value is used for any. I don’t know if this is available on all modernish android devices or iOS.
One can set up a dns-over-https server such as https://github.com/m13253/dns-over-https/ and configure it to use a DNS server which is sinkholing those domains. Which it sounds like you already have setup.
You’d have to have that public facing with a reverse proxy and a valid cert so they could reach it while on mobile data, so I don’t know that the juice is worth the squeeze.
90 yr olds having finally kept america a hell-on-earth long enough to pass the torch to the new generation of racists who can’t operate a cable box:
I finally, after much cajoling (and more importantly, after much increase in the monthly bill) got my parents to finally cut cable TV entirely. I even made sure they got Netflix as their streaming service so that they wouldn’t be exposed to any commercials.
Now they sit around watching mostly OTA TV all day, with so many ads for medicine and mortgage scams and other old-people shit that I can’t fathom how they can even stand it, let alone prefer it.
The one small comfort is that at least the local news in my area isn’t owned by Sinclair.
In order to use Netflix, they have to choose what show they want to watch. People don’t like doing what they want. Making decisions about what they want is hard. People want to be told what to like, how to think, and how to live.
That’s some dystopiain stuff right there. Like a quote from the bad guy in a film who is both wrong and right.
It’s been like this for thousands of years. Have you heard of religion?
But yeah, it is not a pleasant thought that people love this way :/
That’s smart! Take advantage of the fact that cable keeps getting more and more expensive and urge them to cancel it. No need to sneak and block Fox News this way.
Just don’t make the mistake of installing OTA antennas for them like I did. Put all the old black-and-white movies they want to watch on a Jellyfin server instead.
You must have a “local” Sinclair-owned station I’m guessing.
I would’ve assumed so too, but nope! I even checked before posting to make sure.
Here in Atlanta, the “big four” local network affiliates are owned by Tegna, Meredith, Cox, and Fox, respectively. The nearest Sinclair station is apparently in Macon.
Look, if they still have a cable box, they haven’t paid the bill in 25 years.
Stop normalizing this and start normalizing filtering your parents internet with a Pi-Hole and blocking whole swaths of the right-wing ecosystem.
Everyone complains about people wanting them to be the computer guy in their family but no one ever uses that to protect their family from misinformation/disinformation and then blame it on their ISP.
…in Minecraft. (please don’t actually do this to your parents)
Nothing wrong with doing both. I fully support using a Pi-Hole to block right wing misinformation/disinformation if the situation is appropriate.
I should also mention in reality this is just a shitpost. In real life there is more nuance to these decisions. I have read stories about people who’s parents have been basically “gone” because of Fox News and other right wing disinformation sources and after blocking it they get their parents back usually within 6 months to a year. But it could also result in back lash. It all depends on the situation. I do feel strongly that Fox News should be blocked in hospitals and nursing homes (especially memory units) because it stresses out the patients and some of the content they run is directly contrary to a hospital’s mission.
Well I’d say the nuance here is that while it’s hard to break through when those ecosystems have a hold on them, and it’s hard to compete with them, being a censorial editor for the elderly really only makes sense if they really can be considered not in their right mind and not have the capacity to think or care for themselves.
I don’t really think censorship is the solution as much as finding a way to break the spell of whatever has overtaken right wing thought.
I think the public right wing response to both Luigi Mangione and to Musk promoting H1Bs shows that while they’ve sucked down racism, on some level they understand that the corporate world exists to harm workers. They just haven’t found solidarity with the workers of the rest of the world yet, and it’s finding a way to crack that barrier and get them to see themselves in others. I think it’s very hard but not impossible.
I think part of the problem is the nature of our media and how consolidated it is and how rare real independent news media is at the moment in this country. I think we’d do better to tackle that at a community level than we would to just outright censor it.
Like, an example… You have a child and you want to know what they’re watching on television for their mental health. Is it better to watch those things with them and discuss the themes and ideas with them and help them contextualize it all in a healthy way or censor the things you don’t like and never discuss them so the child enters the world wholly without the knowledge of these subjects. I’d say based on personal experience that the latter doesn’t work out so hot for the kid.
Censorship and control of information without discussion isn’t a good path, whereas openness and communication is.
EDIT: Also, in response to hospitals, I do agree, it should be nothing but like calming nature documentaries or chill kids cartoons. All family friendly stuff with nothing stressful to promote healthy recovery. In the context of hospitals I’d say its less censorship and more “genuinely people need fewer stressors so they can heal.” Removing stressful and divisive television solves that.
I totally get what you mean. If we can educate people it would be more powerful than just blocking it. But for some people maybe it’s hard to educate them. It’s for sure a complex issue.
Why shouldnt you ?
Plus they won’t notice.
Because they’ve already moved to Newsmax?
If you were to block Fox you should also block other more extreme channels like Newsmax and OANN.
It’s okay to admit that censorship is the last refuge of those who have no point.
It’s propaganda thats brainwashing people, not a legitimate news source. It belongs in the trash.
Idk if they want to watch that I’d let them. If you don’t want them to treat you like a child (assuming you aren’t one) then you probably shouldn’t treat them like one. Adults can make their own decisions and mistakes.
