I didn’t miss the point, but this is a different topic. We need to provide housing, end homelessness and possibly the right to a bank account for everyone. These are different things.

Affordable housing and the threat by malicious actors to attack digital payment systems are two different things. Homelessness has to be addressed, of course, but we are dealing here with something else.

Addition:

TikTok Has Pushed Chinese Propaganda Ads To Millions Across Europe – ( July 2024, updated September 2024)

According to TikTok’s newly public advertising library, ads from China’s largest state media outlets touting everything from China Covid lockdowns to tourism in the troubled Xinjiang region have been broadcast to millions of the platform’s European users.

TikTok Ads Paid for by Chinese Media Target European Users – (August 2023)

Chinese media sponsored over a thousand ads on TikTok targeting European audiences. Additionally, accounts that carefully obscure their connections to China may pose further risks in coordinated information manipulation campaigns.

This are just two examples, there is much more across the web.

Let us not forget the people in Xinjiang who pay a harsh price for cheap Chinese EV cars. Unfortunately, forced labour and supply chain transparency wasn’t an issue here.

As an addition:

• In 2015, two years after kicking off its massive Belt and Road initiative, China launched its “Digital Silk Road” project to expand access to digital infrastructure such as submarine cables, satellites, 5G connectivity, etc. In a report published this year, the UK-based human rights group ‘Article 19’ argues that the project is about more than just expanding access to Chinese technology, but rather to export its brand of digital authoritarianism across the word. Here is a brief article about it where you can also download the 80-page report (April 2024): China: The rise of digital repression in the Indo-Pacific – (Archived link)

• There is also an interesting first-hand research about how Chinese people cope with constant surveillance in their country by Canadian researcher Professor Ariane Ollier-Malaterre (March 2024): Digital surveillance is omnipresent in China. Here’s how citizens are coping (in French: La surveillance numérique est omniprésente en Chine. Voici comment les citoyens y font face)

TLDR: Here you can support it: https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en

[…] called quantum technologies “potentially revolutionary and disruptive” and classed them as “an element of strategic competition” with rival states […] for components that can have military as well as civilian uses [and potentially] give China a scientific and military edge.

So the article is quite clear, just read it.

Basically, it is what China has always been doing, too. Many argue that China has even harsher rules regarding international collaboration -in both science and economy- and does not show any willingness for reciprocity.

Well, it’s probably a blend of many things. The ad industry (and the web in general?) is completely broken, but for disinformation to be spreading you need malicious actors exploiting the system and trying to benefit from this. It’s a human thing at its core imo.

https://feddit.org/u/sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz, thanks for this. I added an archived version now.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240709113414/https://molfar.com/en/blog/russians-who-shelled-okhmatdyt

Maybe this helps: https://x.com/bellingcat/status/1810952736264855916

Or just go to Bellingscat’s Twitter, there’s more about it: https://twitter.com/bellingcat

As tempting and reasonable as it may seem to counter disinformation with disinformation, it is the wrong path imo. It would play directly into the hands of authoritarian regimes and further undermine democracy in the long run. What we need is an educated, well-informed population and transparent political and economic processes so that leaders at all levels can be held accountable for what they do.

I have been thinking the same. Maybe ghost.org’s federation over ActivityPub can solve the problem?

Yeah, they work in a huge network mainly in Europe. As always, we should never trust blindly, but Epicenter appears to do a solid work. I have been disagreeing with what they said in the last years on some incidents, but all in all they do a good work. At least that’s my opinion.

Epicenter Works is a digital rights organizations based in Austria.

The ‘cyberspace’ is designed to be decentralized, exactly the opposite of what you describe. China is trying to ‘lead the way’ into an Orwellian dystopia, and that’s among the least things we need.

They must earn their 50 cents …

Sorry, it’s corrected now (and thanks@DocMcStuffin)