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Comment by sorryforthethro | Hacker News Reader

Can Google/Facebook/Twitter be considered "uncensored internet"? To what degree is a culture's view of moderate speech different than its influence of "soft power"?

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It's not seperable. The spread of one's cultural values by way of dominating media is a tried and true application of soft power.

That’s why films and TV shows are so powerful. Hollywood is the greatest weapon of American soft power.

And that's why you see so much Chinese influence in Hollywood.

Or they could, you know, be a neutral search engine.

Then people would complain that they aren't taking down the Christchurch shooting videos and are condoning hate.

Authoritarian policies thrive alongside tragedy.

> To what degree is a culture's view of moderate speech different than its influence of "soft power"?

Google/Facebook/Twitter are pretty darn conservative about what they censor. "Hate speech is bad" is technically a cultural statement, I guess, but one I feel wholly comfortable spreading everywhere.

Google are pretty hot on censoring copyright infringement. Which is arguably a pretty western value, and is a direct consequence of US government influence.

Generally speaking, this is a bit different in that violating copyright is illegal, not just in the US but in the foreign countries where Google operates. Sometimes in name only, true, but the government of those countries is still ostensibly saying that they want copyrighted works protected. Google is attempting to comply.

I was also under the impression that impression takedowns were not automatically applied worldwide, although I could be wrong. I know I can often view Youtube videos that were taken down for copyright by connecting to a Russian VPN.

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