Photo by Ng Han Guan: Yang Guoliang shows a March 12, 2024, photo of him lying in a hospital bed after police beat him with bricks, as he sits in his home in Changzhou in eastern China’s Jiangsu Province, Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025
Part of the AP’s photo essay: Those caught in the dragnet of China’s digital cage enabled by U.S. tech
More information available in accompanying article: US tech companies enabled the surveillance and detention of hundreds of thousands in China
My opinion: they are fanatics, there is no logic to it beyond just the feeling to belonging to a group, a counter-culture of sort. It’s not different from Facebook flatearthers, just a different fixation.
Tankies have a lot of reach here on Lemmy because the main developer is one of them and he also is the admin of lemmy.ml, which is one of the biggest and oldest Lemmy instance (server) with many active users and communities.
Got it - thanks for the detailed response. No one’s ever explained it in a way that made sense before. Appreciate it. I’m the owner of my instance, let me know if you ever need anything