Naomi Wu has disappeared. Perhaps she has been disappeared. That’s not rare in China.
[...]
The proximate cause of her apparent disappearance, as Jackie Singh explains in detail here, was a discovery that Naomi Wu, an experienced coder, had made. It seemed that the cute little cellphone keyboard applications developed by the Chinese company Tencent, and used by just about everyone, were spyware. They could log keystrokes, and did it outside of even very secure applications such as Signal, so things that were sent securely could be “phoned home” by the keyboard app itself.
It seems, though the evidence is coincidental, that this was one too many cats let out of the bag, and the Chinese communist government of Winnie Xi Pooh acted quickly, with the results (probably understated) in the Tweet quoted above.
[...]
The silence has been deafening. People on the internet, especially young, enthusiastic websters, have long been thought unbelievably shallow, in it for whatever they could get out of it, and unwilling to take a stand on something important unless there was profit in it for them. We needn’t think that anymore — now we know it’s true.
What can be done? [...] Our government won’t lift a finger even for American citizens or very well known Chinese figures trapped under the thumb of the Disney-character’s evil lookalike, or the Uyghurs, unless there’s some political gain to be had, such as with the tattooed LGBT WNBA player who couldn’t be bothered to leave her dope at home during a visit to Russia.
[...]
China was afraid that silencing Naomi Wu would make the government there look bad. Let’s prove them right.
That's a chilling read. Wu was only ever on the periphery of my attention — some tech advice here, the odd flash of TMI there — so I thought nothing of it when she fell off the radar.
Realising that she had gotten so relatively big, despite her circumstances, that government agencies were only waiting for fickle Western users like myself showing signs of indifference, before doing ...whatever they've done to her... serves as a constant reminder that not everone online is here on an equal footing with, say, the average North American or European.
I'd love if some of the terminally online keyboard warriors (that didn't rally to support her last year) might at least do an investigation into her current situation.
Edited for clarity.
So if someone is into a person or thing at a point, they can never become not interested in that thing? I'm confused by the message here.
Person. We're talking about a person in a precarious situation who was basically doxxed by Vice, and more or less shrugged off by the general online public.
It's not like you deciding you're not into vaporwave anymore.
Background on the Vice stuff for those interested 👍
Vice has always been sleazy, exploitative, and imperial.
You’re talking about requiring fans to give a lifetime commitment to a figure.
No, I'm talking about people seeing past f—ng fandom to the reality that others they meet online, or whose content they consume, may live under less free circumstances than themselves.
She was outed by Vice, which seems to have been met with apathy by the online community, and it looks like the authorities cracked down on her as a consequence. The insistence of some commenters to see this through a "fan" or "taste" lens is pretty blinkered.