Why Did the Hong Kong Police Subscribe to Me?
Their National Security Department, no less! (Plus, a search engine update.)
I have gotten a lot of new subscribers lately, which is lovely. Welcome!
But yesterday, I got one that is maybe not so welcome. The email address in question: nsd-public~at~police~dot~gov~dot~hk.
I looked up the email address immediately. It is not just a Hong Kong Police Force address—it is specifically their shiny new “National Security Department”:
The Force is dedicated to safeguarding national security. With the implementation of the Law of the People's Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (NSL), 'National Security' has been incorporated into the Commissioner's Operational Priorities.
Apparently, “As of December 31, 2021, the NSD had arrested 162 people who allegedly engaged in acts and activities endangering national security since the NSL came into force on June 30, 2020.”
Surely I cannot be one of those people. I don’t write about China. I don’t talk about China. I do not believe I have mentioned Hong Kong once on this stack.
Sure, I am stridently anti-communist. Lots of people are. But I have not made a point of specifically ranting about Chinese communism. So why do they care about me? Why would they sub me?
I don’t know. It’s not an especially big deal, I suppose. But it is odd.
I spoke with
to see if we could figure out how Substack deemed the recommendation to have come from his stack. The only clue was that YourLastLife had recently had a flurry of strange subscriptions from a link on a site in Ireland, and the Hong Kong Police Force was among them.But why would they subscribe to him, and then to me? As far as I know, he is only slightly more interested in China than I, and that minor interest is only focused on China’s financial activities. (
can correct me if I am wrong about that.)Okay, it just got weirder. Ten seconds ago, while writing the graf above, this ad popped up on my Brave browser’s “rewards” notifications:
Coincidence? Maybe. Still kind of strange timing.
Well, what are ya gonna do? I deleted nsd-public~at~police~dot~gov~dot~hk from my list of subscribers, and that will probably be the end of it. Of course, I support, and will continue to support, the right of the people of Hong Kong to be free.
Then again, I support the right of every human being on Earth to be free.
PS…
A lot of people have expressed agreement that Duck Duck Go is no longer a viable option, and have asked what other good search engine choices might be out there.
FWIW, on the advice of
, I am trying Mojeek.com.So far, it has certain advantages:
Textual searches produce results beyond the regime-compliant and leftward-oriented garbage of other engines,
It is a crawler, so it is finding and producing results, rather than just getting its results from Bing, Google, or Yandex,
It has a lot more sites indexed than most,
Its owners claim to be politically neutral.
And it has certain disadvantages:
In spite of being the fourth largest crawler, it does not have as many results as Google and Bing,
Its image searches aren’t great.
But all of that is just after one day of looking. I will do more experimentation in the weeks ahead. Also, I believe
may be planning an article on the subject.More soon!
UPDATE:
Per
’s recommendation, I am also testing out Swisscows. So far, it’s pretty good!
You are the 180-degree opposite and inverse of the CCP -- individual freedom vs maxed-out Big Govt collectivism and obedience -- they are trying to know their enemy better by reading the works of their enemy's thought leaders. It's a left-handed compliment!
Well...that kind of thing is something to note. I don't know how the algorithms are becoming more sensitive or aware, but they are.
I was reading through some comments a few days ago and liked a comment that was about a very particular subject. Within an hour or so, an article I hadn't solicited from a site I'd never been, was delivered in my email inbox on this very same specific subject.
It is worth paying attention to. Obviously some effort is being invested in ramping up the subtlety of the algorithms.
And, of course, all of us on here and elsewhere are contributing to it.
Thanks for your article. God Bless.