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Where is Naomi Wu?

Archived version

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.

recursive_recursion ,
@recursive_recursion@programming.dev avatar

Losing Naomi Wu to the CCP was a catastrophic loss to the FOSS community, I remember that she once went directly to confront a company (I think located in China) to demand for the release of their modified version of a copyleft software

I hope she’s still alive and doing well

tardigrada OP ,

Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes (August 2023) — [Archived version]

When China’s prodigious tech influencer, Naomi Wu, found herself silenced, it wasn’t just the machinery of a surveillance state at play. Instead, it was a confluence of state repression and the sometimes capricious attention of a Western audience that, as she asserts, often views Chinese activists more as ideological tokens than as genuine human beings.

[…]

Naomi Wu’s devastating July 7th [2023] tweet alluded to a pressure that had long been feared by many, yet optimistically hoped she could manage to avoid indefinitely.

Ok for those of you that haven’t figured it out I got my wings clipped and they weren’t gentle about it- so there’s not going to be much posting on social media anymore and only on very specific subjects. I can leave but Kaidi can’t so we’re just going to follow the new rules and…

— Naomi Wu 机械妖姬 (@RealSexyCyborg) July 8, 2023

ExhibiCat ,

Yeah she’s ok but I miss her content too 😢

NaibofTabr ,

Is she OK? I’d like to believe that, but as far as I know nothing’s been heard from her for more than a year.

tardigrada OP ,

Yeah, I too hope she is well but there’s been no news in a long time.

jawa21 ,
@jawa21@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

She did release a book 8 months ago. It’s in the community tab of her YT page.

halm , (edited )
@halm@leminal.space avatar

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.

tiredofsametab ,

a sign of fickle Western users like myself before doing

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.

halm ,
@halm@leminal.space avatar

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.

renard_roux ,

Background on the Vice stuff for those interested 👍

tiredofsametab ,

I was never into her or her content (IIRC, she wasn't making anything that caught my attention), so this was more of a general question (hence 'person or thing' in my question) rather than specific to her situation.

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Fuck.

Godspeed, Naomi.

vzq ,

The “wings clipped” tweet still haunts me.

She is such a remarkable and genuine person, we are all worse off without her contributions.

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