NY Times Uncritically Says Fake News Debate Supports Chinese Style Censorship

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It used to be a laughable claim: that the US should emulate the Great Firewall of China and support much greater internet censorship. Sure, you'd have people like the MPAA's Chris Dodd or U2 frontman Bono cheer on Chinese censorship as a good example of how to censor the internet (in their cases, to block infringing content), but most people still remained rightly horrified by the idea that the answer to "bad" content online is a massive censorship regime. But, apparently, that may be changing.Last year, right after the election, we directly warned that everyone freaking out about "fake news" on Facebook would eventually lead to calls to censor the internet a la China. And, now the NY Times has taken a big step in that direction, by posting a ridiculous article talking about how China has been "vindicated" by its approach to censoring the internet:

For years, the United States and others saw this sort of heavy-handed censorship as a sign of political vulnerability and a barrier to China's economic development. But as countries in the West discuss potential internet restrictions and wring their hands over fake news, hacking and foreign meddling, some in China see a powerful affirmation of the country's vision for the internet.This kind of thing would not happen here, Mr. Zhao said of the controversy over Russia's influence in the American presidential election last year.

In a restaurant called Europa, Mr. Zhao who declined to disclose details of where and how he works described China's system not as Big Brother so much as a younger brother, which he is, protecting children, like those of his sister, from harmful material.Even though the internet is virtual, it is still part of society, he added. So in any space I feel no one should create pornographic, illegal or violent posts.In his new capacity, he scours Weibo in search of the lurid and illicit. Some posts, he explained, are thinly veiled solicitations for pornography or prostitution, including one message he reported to the police the other day for using what he said was a euphemism for selling sex.When he reports abuse, it is the police who follow up. He excitedly displayed his smartphone to show the latest of his more than 3,000 followers on Weibo: the division of the Beijing police that monitors the internet.Normally, if you don't do bad things, you don't get followed by the police, he said. I think this for someone who has been online for so many years is really special.

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How Microsoft Delayed A Wildly Popular Xbox Feature To Clean Up Its Wildly Unpopular Always Online Plans

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The Xbox One has been back in the news recently as Microsoft has rolled out an update that makes the system backwards compatible with some original Xbox games. Much as with the backwards compatibility roll out for Xbox 360 games that Microsoft performed in 2015, fans of the system have been cheering this on. It's something a no-brainer, with this functionality making the system all the more appealing and increasing brand loyalty for the console as gamers will be conditioned to expect that the investments they've made in gaming titles won't go to waste once the shelf-life of a particular generation of systems runs its course.Which raises the obvious question: why in the world did Microsoft wait until 2015 to put backwards compatibility in place? The answer, it seems, is that Microsoft suddenly became too busy cleaning up after the backlash to its always-online plans for the Xbox One to roll it out.

That nugget comes from a wide-ranging behind-the-scenes look at Microsoft's backward compatibility efforts posted on IGN this morning. Amid quotes from an array of Microsoft employees involved in the backward-compatibility development and rollout, writer Ryan McCaffrey includes this tidbit (emphasis added):The fan-first feature has evolved from an experiment conducted by two separate Microsoft Research teams into a service planned for Xbox One's launch—complete with hardware hooks baked into the Durango silicon—until the well-publicized changes to the Xbox One policies (namely, stripping out the always-online requirement for the console) forced it to be pushed to the back burner.

And earlier this year, former Xbox Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi reflected in a LinkedIn posthow "it required great technical work" to change course and reverse "a few key decisions regarding connectivity requirements and how games would be purchased that didn't land well with fans."That kind of "great technical work" isn't free in terms of time or worker attention, and IGN's reporting suggests that Xbox 360 backward compatibility was an initial victim of that change in focus.

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