Big difference
US and five eyes didn't care about...
I've been guilty of making a number of off-topic discussion posts here, but just to finish up my thought -- check out statistics on incarcerations in both these two we've been discussing primarily. Nominally speaking, China has more prisoners than USA by several hundred thousand. Some counts will say USA leads China in total prisoners but I think when we add up all the exceptions from some of these, china has some percentage more total prisoners, or prisoner-like people, maybe even as high as 50% more than USA (generally the various orgs that track such don't put it
that high). But nominal counts aside, the
rates are way outta whack: USA's incarceration
rate is way higher, there's no reasonable assumption that puts China's incarceration
rate as somehow ahead of USA's. While not all prisoners were subject to electronic surveillance in arriving there, its a rather ubiquitous practice for law enforcement in either jurisdiction, and the incarceration rates are an objective indicator of the result that actually matters from this practice.
This doesn't seem to be a threat to non-Chinese user, but who knows?
I think the general topic of surveillance is very much a threat to all users of technology and internet, everyone
should indeed have these things in mind, with some segments of population at more significant risk than others, depending where you are. Canada, as another five eyes example, has something like 1/3 of their prison population made up of Indigenous people -- Canadian Indigenous people are not infrequently granted refugee status in USA of all places, due to common findings of "testilying" by law enforcement up there, or unlawful use of surveillance. Uyghurs of course being China's equivalents, but again incarceration rates of each group wash away the claim of any "big difference" -- the difference is really quite small and subtle.
As someone above pointed out, what China tracks within social credit system, north americans track via a combo of insurance, criminal, financial credit record systems etc. IP logging happens with every service everywhere in 2023, unless you're willing to route everything you do through some kind of layered VPN into tor network, thats just public info, its collection doesn't mean spying or any other undue surveillance is occurring.
Anyway, to tie this all back to the topic at hand one last time, the quote from the new civ mobile game's code of conduct is neither here nor there on any of this -- surveillance will happen, or not, regardless of this clause, or that of any other video game -- its purpose on 2k's page is to mitigate liability arising in the context of civil claim from anyone that gets their account banned for whatever reason. I'd be
much more concerned about limiting my micro-spending if I were to pick this one up, but I just won't. Hoping y'all are right about some other title in the works at Firaxis, but I have my doubts there too.
<sigh> It's happened before:
"In 2007, Disney Online released
Pirates of the Caribbean Online. It was an MMO set in the world of
Pirates of the Caribbean, which was at the height of its popularity. It let players live in Jack Sparrow's world and go on adventures alongside iconic characters.
However, the servers were shut down six years after launch and players were left without a pirate MMO to fill the time. There have been some fan revivals since, but the original title has been shuttered for good. In the age of revivals and reboots, maybe
Pirates of the Caribbean Online deserves a comeback."
I never got a chance to try that one before it went away, but I do love the pirate theme. Have dabbled in 'sea of thieves' occasionally, its really well done, and I hear they added some kind of PvE mode recently. Gonna probably revisit it soon.
www.frontporchrepublic.com
)
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