Ontology:Q12,102

1. [S] (pronounced [S]) Taiwanese massage degrees going to Turkey 1:(-)1:(-)1

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[S] (pronounced [S]) Taiwanese massage degrees going to Turkey 1:(-)1:(-)1

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QID references [Item] 1:(-)1:(-)1

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Taiwan (2020s)

Turkey (2020s)

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share link

social.solarpunk.au

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[P] (pronounced [P]) Wavebuilder (pronounced Wavebuilder): forms result [Item]

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Prototype notes

12102. ... analyzing the motifs of spambots? of course. spambots tell some of the most interesting stories when you really, really look deep into them. look at how much history is behind Nigerian prince scams and "yahoos" alone. ...

• ads
  • If you have a Thai visa or Taiwanese citizenship application you can get Turkish citizenship
  • We have a lot of ads for Taiwanese businesses, highly suggesting that this thing is operated out of Taiwan
  • Generating a website with AI is "efficient". Only, it's not, when this terrible cluttered stream of consciousness potholed full of random links is one of the most inefficient things I've ever seen
• context
  • Labor costs went down in Cambodia relative to Vietnam. Investors had reservations about exploiting Cambodia because there weren't roads yet
  • tossing out Pol Pot as supposedly a Communist when Vietnam killed him
  • Mainland China building roads into Cambodia presumably to sell products? not to set up shady massage businesses
  • Vietnam allowed great swaths of foreign investment.

I think it would be good to retrieve that text about ten or so countries invading the Soviet Union. this is kind of like that in reverse, Taiwan seems to be carrying out this weird scheme to slowly "invade" ten countries with small businesses

Background

This is the motif of spambots posting semi-nonsensical advertisements about how easy it is to get Turkish citizenship once you get a massage degree, or something vaguely in that vein, substituting Turkey for various countries but often keeping the theme of "massage certificates" or "massage tools". The actual "meat" of the advertisements inside the links tends to be Chinese-language text generated by some kind of machine-learning model. Sometimes the spambot operation will advocate creating more of these generated pages, "using AI to grow your business" as the pages might put it. Other times the pages will be generated text entirely about a specific topic such as massage certificates, getting citizenship, or desirable real estate locations.

There are a few major themes that keep popping up in all of these pages. One is the goal of getting citizenship. Any number of countries may be mentioned, including Turkey, Jamaica, Romania, Hungary, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Dubai. Another is buying properties to get citizenship, or owning businesses to get citizenship. Sometimes the pages will mention technicalities that make it easier to get a visa, a certification, or citizenship: passing through China for less than 15 days supposedly does not require a visa, if your massage business gets suspended and a three-year period expires you won't be investigated. Sometimes the pages will mention different industries briefly, saying that if a person is not ready to invest in one particular industry belonging to one particular country they can invest in another. On most of these pages, it would strongly appear that all the stated information about opening a business or finding an industry is actually aimed directly at the task of getting citizenship, rather than the other way around. The sheer number of countries that are mentioned on these pages, sometimes within the same page, means that if the page is truly mainly about massage degrees as it claims, the information about massage degrees must apply to all eight countries mentioned. The mention of multiple industries then disrupts this theme, showing that the true connecting thread is less between massage degrees and Turkey and Jamaica than industries and Turkey and Jamaica. If the actual main topic of all the pages is industries, then the series of events looks like this: accumulating education or capital, choosing an industry, choosing a country, opening a business in the country, and lastly getting citizenship.

The final question then becomes: what would happen if thousands of people actually followed the spambots' instructions? And the likely answer is neocolonialism.

Step one is to persuade every country that capitalism is freedom (this is not mentioned on any spambot page). Step two is to attract a bunch of would-be capitalists from other countries to Turkey or Jamaica to generate businesses. Step three: the capitalists get citizenship. Step four: ten thousand Taiwanese capitalists dictate all the policies of Turkey based on what Taiwanese people would prefer, and insist that Turkey's people thinking up anything else is undemocratic. They remain connected to their families in Taiwan if they feel like it. They thoroughly disclaim that this is Taiwan conquering Turkey because they didn't hand Turkey to the government office of the island of Taiwan, thus it must be okay. If accused of settler-colonialism they shrug their shoulders and say they didn't violently claim all of Turkey in a war or kill its people, they just started businesses. And they don't know why living in a place doesn't entitle you to a government that serves you.

This scheme should really open people's eyes to how toothless the word "colonialism" is by itself at protecting anyone from empires. When all countries are chopped into pieces for sale, governments always serve the people that live in them.

[unfinished]