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"China's cyber watchdog" to stop "malicious mobile apps that infringe on users’ rights”.

Are the unelected chinese authorities and their various ministries really worried about users' rights or is it just cover to control what their citizens/subjects see, hear and read?

I find it interesting how our media portrays this as china's authorities trying to control the internet. But when our media, politicians, elites pressure tech companies to delete, censor, etc, they don't portray it as an attempt to control the internet.

Anyone know if the chinese press are as hypocritical as our press? Do they portray our censorship as an attempt to control the internet?

As a Chinese I'd say that Chinese people are already used to rely on the government to perform this kind of control with no business incentives. For example, they limit hours you can play continuously to fight against game additives.

On the other hand, government is not like what Reuters usually portrayed (full of police and agents). Many agencies try to solve all kinds of problems in many ways, some elegant while some stupid.

For this exact action, I think it's something the adminstration thinks it would work to solve the immediate problem. They just happened to have the tool.

> But when our media, politicians, elites pressure tech companies to delete, censor, etc, they don't portray it as an attempt to control the internet.

I don't know about the reuters but most of the media that I read do portray it as an attempt to restrict our freedom.

It’ll be interesting to see how society develops in this controlled environment.

>it had deleted more than 7 million pieces of online information as well as 9,382 mobile apps, and criticized a news app run by Tencent for spreading “vulgar and low-brow information.

It’s very fascistic, anc is reminiscent of early twentieth century movements to eliminate undesirable behavior and create ideal societies. So far it’s always resulted in misery, death and other horrible outcomes. Still a control/contrast to liberal societies will be interesting.

The (presumed) lack of due process on banning apps, and the centralized control on what users may install (corporate or governmental) are concerning. But, judging from the article, it sounds like calling those apps 'malicious' is warranted, and I wouldn't bat an eye if the developers behind them were charged with some sort of fraud (assuming a fair trial).

So I'd rather we not conflate Chinese human rights abuses with what just might be consumer protection.

What frightens me is that nearly all common mobile devices - that is android with google play services, or iOS - could do the same, technically speaking.
They already do, c.f. the "Apple banned my app" genre of blog post. In most cases, probably even this one in China, the apps are legitimately bad and users see aggregate benefit.

Obviously the important difference is that in this case it's a government agency and not a private company. With Android at least, it remains the case that a (reasonably adept) user can side-load any app she wants.

They do already. The difference is there it’s a government watchdog, over here it’s private companies, ToSs and public pressure as change mechanism.