How TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
https://developer.android.com/training/articles/user-data-id...
What's to be surprised about exactly? This sort of thing is the norm.
It still prohibits users from discussing topics the CCP doesn't want brought up. (e.g. Tiananman Square, Falun Gong, organ harvesting, and Xinjiang)
The main differences are that outside of China you're not bound by their laws requiring users to sign up using their legal name and provide identification to prove as such. In addition to which people aren't being disappeared or arrested for their posts.
I would not recommend talking about these subjects with the international app outside China and then going to China.
Maybe it is even a businesss strategy and not something the CCP actually has forced upon them.
games are fun and completive things arent they? there shouldn't be any politics around them, yet, China decides to censor references to a certain quadrilateral by removing players from a game
Use an app like talon if you want twitter ordered by time.
What if I unfurl a Free Tibet flag in my video (visual only)
This is different because it subjects all users to a Chinese "standard" which basically means any conspiracy crap about how evil America is and typical whataboutism videos can be prioritized via "algorithms" while a whole range of "sensitive" issues can be blocked. It gives the Chinese government tools that slowly enable it to "guide" discussions online. What is interesting about TikTok is that unlike WeChat, it seems to have users beyond the Chinese diaspora which gives Beijing far more "soft power" influence to craft a "positive image of China"
I have nothing but derision for employees who take part in implementing something so obviously horrible but do not make an attempt to move out of their job or even acknowledge what they are doing wrong.
It’s actually worked very well for them as now they have a huge number coming back after studying abroad. And as our immigration policy becomes more restrictive, China will be getting even more of their best and brightest right back.
Anyone with enough money to emigrate has a much stronger incentive to stay and play along with the system.
Moving to a foreign company in China may not actually solve the problem, and moving to a different country may not be an option at all, so they end up keep doing the bad things and pretend not to know. I have a friend there who seems to be like this.
The real solution is either find a way to reshape their value or conquer them.
There are people going to work every day in China doing the job of censor and they reckon they are doing something good and patriotic. Even at the level of policy makers, the censorship is there in the first place and continues to be there because many legitimately think it is good for the country.
Without being educated on a topic, you're unlikely to figure out most things about it on your own. Without an education in rights and civil liberties, you're unlikely to conclude on your own that censorship in principle is bad.
If you want to make a difference, get off your high horse and construct an argument against censorship for someone who wasn't educated in a Western country like you were.
The government is too busy hiding embarrassing mistakes like confusing 农 and 衣 to even think about benevolent uses of censorship.
Well, there are enough developers from Western companies like FAANG and alike on here, which do not acknowledge that they are doing something wrong, either. Why should Chinese developers be more to blame?
So the real blame doesn't fall upon developers, but on their encompassing societies / governments, and on us, because we have to decide what technological platforms we want to use, and which society's standards of morality to import.
Original allegations by Guardian [1].
>In every case, they are placed in a context designed to make the rules seem general purpose, rather than specific exceptions. A ban on criticism of China’s socialist system, for instance, comes under a general ban of “criticism/attack towards policies, social rules of any country, such as constitutional monarchy, monarchy, parliamentary system, separation of powers, socialism system, etc”.
>Another ban covers “demonisation or distortion of local or other countries’ history such as May 1998 riots of Indonesia, Cambodian genocide, Tiananmen Square incidents”.
>A more general purpose rule bans “highly controversial topics, such as separatism, religion sects conflicts, conflicts between ethnic groups, for instance exaggerating the Islamic sects conflicts, inciting the independence of Northern Ireland, Republic of Chechnya, Tibet and Taiwan and exaggerating the ethnic conflict between black and white”.
TikTok claims these are deprecated guidelines:
>The old guidelines in question are outdated and no longer in use. Today we take localised approaches, including local moderators, local content and moderation policies, local refinement of global policies, and more. We also consult with a number of independent local committees and are working to scale this at a global level, including forming an independent committee of leading industry organisations and experts to continually assess these policies.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...
I think this is a false dichotomy. You are mentioning two companies that play this game in bad faith. There is a middle-ground.
The controversy isn't as much that TikTok bans political speech or divisive content, it's that TikTok selectively enforces it based on whether or not it is in one particular country's self-interest.
Whether you choose to ignore it with carefully crafted "Community Guidelines"-based legalese or you choose to respect and acknowledge it, it doesn't change the fact that the responsibility exists.
Saying "you have a social responsibility to not do that" is only one step better than arguing "I don't think you should do that" as a reason someone shouldn't do something.
What? You don't like something? Is it legal? Then you'd better clam up, buddy!
As we all know, all things that are legal are just the way it is, and we have to just deal with them.
China is untrustworthy because they routinely break business deals.
They violate trade agreements: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fCAut_Gr-3E
They steal our IP: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-china-systematically-pries-...
They are waging war against us with Fentanyl: https://www.wsj.com/articles/despite-new-safeguards-fentanyl...
Chinese Fentanyl has killed hundreds of thousands of North Americans in the Third Opium War. It’s a no-brainer to pivot away from China.
Well I guess so much for the French or American Revolutions.
> except not at the behest of the gov
They have agendas, but they’re not dictated by the gov., although sometimes their respective agendas coincide.
It’s really not comparable.
Use of HN should be based in intellectual curiosity. That leaves room for discussing sensitive issues some of the time, just not all of the time. And of course the discussion should be thoughtful rather than flaming.