TikTok: Cheerfulness and censorship
netzpolitik.org
netzpolitik.org
Shadow-banning individual posts ("Visible to self") is relatively unusual and acts as a demotivator to publish controversial content because such content doesn't drive engagement, as is actively demoting entire classes of content (like critical commentary on politics) from the start.
This approach seems to help ensure that there won't ever be a subculture on their platform that grows, becomes controversial and at some point considers it their right to use the platform for their controversial content, avoiding all the outrage that late introduction of moderation brings with it. (see Twitter)
Free people from choice and enable passivity, but provide them short social interaction. Less stress, more fun.
Step 2: create tools to enable user control and configuration
Step 3: update your will to require that this work-in-progress be left to someone who will continue your attempt after you die.
Step 3 is an interesting thought experiment for sure though. Can't say I've thought too much about data structures and algorithsm that might survive me.
The closest app TikTok is comparable to is Vine. What kind of critical commentary on politics are you expecting on these apps?
People watch these apps for the memes and hot girls.
TikTok seems easy to defeat if you were to use the law to ban it.
It’s when a site/company only pretends to be a platform that I take issue with.
I mean actual free speech would just be an endless collection of penis videos. Nobody is actually advocating for free speech.
I don’t think every app has to be about political issues. Where did that premise come from, just because it has Chinese origins?
It’s ok for there to be an app for kids to make dance videos, and to keep it light and positive.
I agree with the main thrust of your post, but to nitpick, American free speech jurisprudence is not so daft. Where some restrictions are necessary, the principle of “viewpoint neutrality” still works to prohibit censorship. So, where the government allows pro-abortion expression, it must also allow anti-abortion expression. And this applies even where its more general obligation to allow all expression does not hold.
But like it’s fine for Flyertalk.com to be about frequent flier programs, and for Woodweb.com to stick to discussions of router bits and edge banding.
It seems to me that the reason people are applying some kind of double standard to Tik Tok is because it’s Chinese. But like it’s fine to make an app for kids to share only positive light hearted videos and keep it focused on that.
But of course the more interesting question being raised here is if the other model —- the extremely moderated some kinds of “free speech” but not others Facebook model — is in fact better.
That’s not clear at all.
But then, I also think the free world shouldn't do business with the Communist Chinese. So that's just my opinion.
It is the oldest problem in the book; how do i get free expression, while forcing everyone one else to agree with me?
I mean, unmoderated, anonymous contents might have more penis vids than you want, but it doesn't mean that you have to watch them; a user sponsored moderation / rating would ensure that.
If that wasn't possible, who would use the app except for penis enthusiasts?
Nah I’ve just been hanging around the internet a lot longer than most people.
I can’t take credit for the concept of infinite penises though, that honor goes to my friend Pud:
https://askpud.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/pageviews-and-unique...
I think that would be good, as long as nobody is forced to use it who does not want to use it. Other things also help such as categorization, meta-moderation, etc, but all such things should be ignorable by users who do not want it.
I disagree. There may be some such videos, but if anyone will write anything, then there will also be a lot of other stuff too, including other videos, and also stuff that isn't videos. There might also be worthless messages such as "kljsdljlaregj lkejgl ekjrg", but there will also be some good stuff too.
I disagree.
*chans are some of the best places for discussion, especially regarding unpopular topics, as the posters reputation isn't on the line when expressing an opinion, and (I think more importantly) every post is weighted the same - there's no upvotes to tell you what you're supposed to think.
There is a downside of sifting through pornography, but it's not a big issue to not click links you don't like. Minimal moderation on SFW boards also works pretty well.
The real concern I have is in the fact that things below 50 views don’t get much moderation attention, which is the same across all platforms, and where we see the most risk for these platforms to be used to bully people within small social groups (such as at school).
Anyone who thinks Facebook doesn’t similarly optimize the content within Explore etc is delusional. It would be interesting to compare the information these companies offer national security organizations.
I'd go as far as describing their behavior as "sexually Grooming" children.
Not a fan here as I guess you can tell.
"America's got talent" is a great show too, and they certainly select who gets onstage from all the people they audition. Is that censorship? I don't expect that TV show to give me info about protests any more than Tiktok.
Censorship is when the powers of government or the marketplace are such that nobody could, if they wanted, get their message out. Yes there is actual censorship in China that filters anything from group messaging apps to movies, but isn't Tiktok here just defining an editorial line of non-controversial content?
No, that's not the definition of censorship.
>censorship: the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
It's funny how many people are trying to redefine the definition of censorship in recent times; since Big Tech has grown more powerful than governments in their ability to control information flow. Though I'm glad it seems we have moved past the "only the government can do censorship" psuedo definition that many on HN were so frequently asserting.
The latter is very Brave New World-esque in that it both “keeps the app fun” and acts as a means to suppress dissent. If they have the capability to identify political/protest content, why not label and allow filtering instead of blanket removing all of it from the app?
I don’t judge it as worthwhile to get rid of such a platform for capitalistic soma reasons. I’m even more suspicious when the company is from a country with close government-business ties where the government has openly demonstrated it uses such apps to suppress political dissent.
> I’m even more suspicious when the company is from a country with close government-business ties where the government has openly demonstrated it uses such apps to suppress political dissent.
I agree it's a reason for heightened suspicion but I feel like in this and a lot of stories around Tiktok, the suspicion is close to the only thing there is.
What I don't like about this argument that all platforms, even privately-owned, should be open to political or protest speech, is that the same argument can be used to criticize the moderation of hate speech, conspiracy theories, recruitment for fundamentalist religious terrorism networks, and other toxic social forces. In the US, the law prevents the government from getting involved, so we are dependent on private actors to moderate speech online.
Now if there's something in these policies about Tiktok censoring differently videos of HK protests or criticism of the Chinese communist party vs those of unrelated protests in the US, that would be different. It's not what I've seen though....
> the search for keywords controversial from the point of view of the Chinese Government [...] did not yield any or only very few fitting content
Yeah I could give you a nice list of words that results in an similar results page from Google, Youtube or Facebook.
The sensibilities are different but they exist.
That's wrong question. It usually doesn't matter what is banned, but what is "shadow-banned" really matters.
You can't see what is shadow-banned on Facebook because they don't tell us how they do moderation on their news feed.
I haven't seen a reason to suspect that TikTok have been any more open about their moderation policies than Facebook or indeed any other social media platform have been.
It's possible to reveal __some__ policies (like trivial one with breastfeeding), but I think that reverse-engineering of non-trivial policies is really hard.
Like moving some type of content to the bottom of the feed for some category of users. It may not look like a ban, but who is gonna scroll to the bottom of the feed? Or 25% bias in news priorities of one political party over another for some users.
Their non-trivial policies may also change over time, so it would be hard to prove any of them. They had years to optimize their news feed.
And who will have time and knowledge to do statistics? With millions of eyeballs we still have tons of trivial bugs in open source software.
> I haven't seen a reason to suspect that TikTok have been any more open about their moderation policies than Facebook or indeed any other social media platform have been.
I don't know any of big news players who have open editorial policy, but TikTok is new in the industry and I think they don't have knowledge and technologies to develop non-trivial policies like Facebook, Twitter, NYT or any other big player.
Could you give me some examples?
The parent comment is suggesting that there are topics that there are topics wich would get him banned just for mentioning them.
It's become impossible to say things you're legally allowed to anywhere but very fringe places on the web. [inb4 "private company etc etc": Sites can police speech as they want. Still it's a shame.]
It's already very interesting seeing how this is playing out.
I really think this is the right way to think about what facebook are and what they do.
Other large social medias gonna copy what they do (like what Instagram did to SnapChat) will be interesting to see them surviving it
It'll be very interesting to see if these other big players can catch up though, given TikTok's massive numbers.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/12/20960916/instagram-faceb...
Twitter has got to be kicking themselves that they had Vine and didn't do anything with it.
Ferrets are a weirdly political issue in some areas of the USA.
It's pretty hard to have anything be politics free when the world we live in is political
They're not political except for a select group people who want to make it political. They should not be encouraged or appreciated for trying to push that outlook on others.
You could replace [ferrets are] with [gay marriage is] and get the description for any political argument ever. People argue X is political, others argue it isn't political and create a political argument trying to argue it is/is not political. Repeat as nauseam for topic of your choice.
Saying this is on the same level as protest videos or political commentary is absurd.
Now, I don’t deny that some people would try to make political statements with plausible deniability. However, if it’s not their intent and their one video gets shadow banned, who cares? If it is, well, they deserved it.
Unless you believe in the bullshit that is the absence of X == automatically siding what whatever X considers its opponent (usually “the establishment” or “the status quo”) at that moment in time.
What happens when a prominent user experiences something negative? Like for example they die, or face harassment from people either inside or outside the community. Do you ban them for breaking the cardinal rule, or allow your forum to become political?
It's not at all easy to create a forum that bans all off topic discussion. I've ran smaller forums before. If you honestly think you can do better then by all means, give it a try. You'll quickly realize that your users are human, and you'll be forced to make decisions that are intrinsically political.
Thee is no such thing as a forum that can avoid political discussion. Just one that aligns with your beliefs.
You can disagree with having cats as pets and still post pictures of cats standing up
> they die, or face harassment from people either inside or outside the community.
I fail to see why some online admins can stop any of these.
Every single forum is going to grow a culture around it consisting of memes, ways of talking, interacting with others etc which are all very political in nature. The fact that you've seen conflicts and have had to resolve them is proof of this. It's just human nature and fits the very definition of politics.
Yeah, we select users who can stay on topic and who can contain anger and resolve conflicts like adults (or rather, like decent human beings; we did have teenage users). Not a tough ask, and neither outrageous nor outlandish for a topical forum.
And the definition of politics is the art or science of governing. Forums operate much like miniature societies with their own laws and best conduct. Forums might be entities targetted towards very specific subjects but that doesn't free them from being political. It just means that the forum is aligned to your specific beliefs.
> It just means that the forum is aligned to your specific beliefs.
Those two statements are using different definitions of the word politics. Carefully enforcing a reasonably bland and objective set of rules is not political by any definition of the term in use by the people you're arguing with here. It only becomes political if the rules themselves take a stance on current social issues.
Of course, using the other definition, the rules themselves are political because somebody could debate them and that would be a form of political action. So you could claim it's not politics free under that definition. But that's not what was actually being discussed here, so it isn't useful in this context.
But what you're doing is conflating 'political' with 'current social issues'. Those are two entirely separate things and while current social issues are political, not everything political relates to current social issues. Forums fit the use of the word political to a tee no matter the definition you use.
Which is really the greater issue I see here on HN and across the various tech communities. As I've mentioned it is impossible for your group to be apolitical because at best that just means you agree with the status quo which is a political stance in itself.
Many food related discussions on reddit ignore both health and animal rights considerations. Would it be appropriate to bring these topics up each time someone posts their burger? Likely not
Control will always exist, so I think it just needs to be integrated into a small order that can be managed, rather than jump into one of the always/never/any categories to stonewall it.
IMO if you have rules that current politics is off topic and moderators that can enforce the rules, a community that respects the rules and polices them themselves you can get a clean , on topic, meme free forum.
To expound: everything is political in the sense that any action we take or decision we make or conclusion we reach rests on assumptions, norms, and values not everyone would affirm. That is, everything we do is rooted in a contestable point of origin; and since the realm of the contestable is the realm of politics, everything is political.
The theory that everything is political may be right on a global scale but it only works locally if you let it: Have house rules that ban contesting and the contestable realm is elsewhere (even if it might debate what's going on at your place) and with it the political.
Seems like TikTok is aiming for precisely that. Let's see how it goes.
But creating a general virtual spaces for people to "live" in while banning discussing on one of the most important aspect of coexisting? This will hardly result in a free society of equally empowered individuals.
The only thing I am against is if a group creates a forum and they ban of topic and inflammatory topics to be accused of censorship if we down vote or ban off topic politics comments.
Think of it this way: under this view, McDonald's is supporting the status quo on $whatever-issue, because it does not give out political pamphlets with Big Macs. Sitting in a toilet alone and thinking is supporting the status quo, because it does not enable others to voice their view. Etc.
For example, selling a hamburger would have been an obviously political act in the Soviet Union. We don't see it as such because vanishingly few people believe that commercial transactions between private parties should be forbidden. But whenever someone advertises a hamburger, depicts the purchase of one, or leaves a review of one on a website, they are engaging in an act that we only view as apolitical because of the status quo that we inhabit.
RE your hamburger example, yes, it's apolitical within the context of society where hamburgers aren't political. Free trade or democracy isn't required, a hypothetical restaurant in the Soviet Union wouldn't have a problem selling grilled chicken breast. And if ever the Party decided that grilled chicken is a symbol of capitalism and therefore banned, the restaurant would just switch to serving fried chicken, or something else. Living in the status quo is not the same as endorsing it.
To me, the "not fighting status quo = supporting status quo" view is anathema to civilization. It's the peace-time equivalent of treating civilians as enemy combatants just because they live in the country you're at war with. It's an attempt to get other people to fight in your war, and suffer the collateral damage for you, and most people rightfully oppose it. If you want someone to support your cause, your strategy should be arguing that your cause is just - and not trying to get them to switch by making them believe not supporting you means supporting the enemy.
Yes, being politically active all the time is not something we generally expect from most people / companies. Especially of the latter, since after all, their primary reason of existence is to make money for the investors.
> don't care which side wins
This is a valid political position. Probably the one I'd take for most realpolitik of small incremental changes based on occurring issues. But also one hard to justify in divisive times with diametrically opposed sides becoming highly popular, thus those extremes having an increasing chance to actually & drastically affect our lives.
That is, obviously, only if you live in a democracy were shaping politics is one of our civic duties. By the way, that doesn't mean everyone has to become experts in lots of topics. Delegating this is quite the responsibility as well.
I think it's especially easy to justify in our times, and it's arguably the sane position to take. Polarization and extremism we see in politics today is dangerous to society and democracy itself. Disengaging from various small changes that are orthogonal to you and your community is advisable, because the cost of engaging is increasingly the deterioration of individual relations with people. It's blowing up your own country from the inside.
A lot of political disengagement, including my own, boils down to this: we don't want to fight someone else's war, and we'd preferably like they didn't fight that war, because all this fighting claims a lot of collateral damage.
> By the way, that doesn't mean everyone has to become experts in lots of topics. Delegating this is quite the responsibility as well.
Delegating in modern democracies is actually one of the reasons people disengage even when they do have a stake or opinion on the topic. It's very hard to make any impact on an individual issue (not "it takes some effort hard", but closer to "winning gold on national championship" hard).
Say, for example, that I want my country to invest in nuclear power, or institute carbon taxes (both are things I currently believe in, and to make it less difficult, I'll use "or" in this example, even though I want "and"). There's literally no party in my country I could in good conscience vote for, or work to support. Not a single one. With the one party that seems to share my views on those two topics I have enough disagreements on other things that I feel reluctant to vote for them. And even if I were to put aside our differences for the sake of pushing the two issues I care about, and even if they magically won the next election, I'm very sure (based on historical experience) that they'd successfully change one or two things for the worse (from my POV), while making exactly zero headway on the issues I voted on them for.
I think more people realize this than not, hence the bad election turnouts in most established democracies worldwide. People don't believe their voices will be heard, because there's enough distortion in the middle.
Sure, we can hope this will all blow over, but I don't see reliable mechanisms encouraging this outcome while I really don't want to risk another 1930s germany to repeat itself. Thus I don't see any other way than fighting for (the important parts of) the status quo. Even if it won't be easy.
> Delegating in modern democracies is actually one of the reasons people disengage even when they do have a stake or opinion on the topic.
I was rather talking about using appeals to authority/expertise when forming & defending your opinion. "I'm a for Positions A, B & C cause Person X I respect on some podcast is for it" is fine as defense. You now only have to defend choosing X instead of A, B & C individually.
Yeah, the US two party system seems especially bad. But I'd also look for other factors, since divisiveness seems to generally be on the rise. At least here in germany, with a fresh neo-nazi party worryingly drastically, even with more options available, some of them fitting e.g. your position a lot better than just "left vs right" of the US. Non the less do people still feel ignored and left behind.
Though while looking for more direct counter-examples, the 2019 swiss election does look very similar to their 2007 one. I don't feel confident to form an opinion on that datum alone without knowing the broader context. At the same time, articles about "these places manage to keep their divisiveness in check" would probably not do very well in current media and thus I'd probably not notice them in the first place.
If you don't want to take a stand, make something yourself.
That is, itself, a political stance (and arguably a rather dangerous one; low political engagement tends to be a sign of sick democracies).
99% of what I tweet is completely technical. 1% gets me banned, no matter how reasonable or unemotional language is used.
Like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiyfwZVAzGw
On HN, if you are from China, India, Russia, African country, the best thing you can do is to avoid articles about those geographical locations because comments will be mostly negative and any dissenting view will be downvoted until it becomes unreadable. It doesn’t matter if the view was free from strong language, it will be treated like it contains strong language.
At least on Reddit you can find a subreddit that aligns with your political and ideological views. Unlike here where you have to understand that your political views will be suppressed if it doesn’t align to the majority.
Every social network has a political agenda. If you don’t notice that agenda, know that it is because it aligns with your own political agenda.
I don’t think he did, at least what he wrote makes no judgement either way
What I like on HN is that, unlike some other communities I've observed, you can still gain votes when reasonably arguing on either side of the issue. The hive mind isn't as strong yet to defy all reason.
Are those downvoters expressing a reasoned belief that Chinese people aren't people? Or are they just reduced to a set of tribal motor reflexes with up and down arrows?
I'm actually kinda hoping it's the 2nd one rather than the first.
Either it's the most mild, milquetoast statement possible or it's a declaration of war against Human Rights, Mom and Apple Pie.
I've noticed that anything indicating a negative regarding China is squashed hard anymore on HN.
A few years ago I felt that I can speak freely, and in the worst case I wasn't upvoted.
Nowdays I feel much more like I need to choose my words very carefully.
If it's against the rules, flag it. If it's against your view of the facts, refute it.
Comments on most topics skew negative. If you agree with something, that's not much reason to comment, but if you disagree, one angry comment coming straight up. That's not limited to the geographical regions you list; most threads on those have a subthread devolve into a discussion of US politics at some point.
> and any dissenting view will be downvoted until it becomes unreadable.
The comments that get downvoted until they become unreadable are mostly dissenting, but that doesn't mean dissenting views collect more downvotes than upvotes on average. When dang bans someone for making a single-purpose account for ideological battle, they usually have positive karma, often in the hundreds: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
The subreddit tyranny of anonymous moderators and punishingly overwrought hivemind is a less pleasant experience. Combine that with more extreme content in general than HN and it feels fundamentally less trustworthy and more manipulative.
IMHO that makes Reddit worse for politics, not better.
I agree that downvoting for disagreement is bad, but have you considered you might simply be wrong? I strain to believe that anybody attacked you simply for being from Russia/China/Africa/whatever. They are attacking the regimes of those countries, not their population. These are two distinct things, and it's ridiculous to think that disliking a dictatorial government somehow means hostility towards the people themselves.
You don't have to be wrong to be downvoted, most of HN just has to feel you're wrong, and boy oh boy - can the HN group-think be wrong (even on facts)
With regard to african countries, it kinda matters which ones you're talking about: there's a world of difference between the DRC and Ghana.
My comment is "new" in that, in this thread, what I've said was not yet said in response to this specific complaint. My comment is related to the thread, and not generic (it mentions the characters introduced by the parent thread [China, Africa, criticism thereof] by name). My basic point is that it's not surprising that HNers recall an apparent genocide in progress when talking about its location.
I have read those guidelines front to back at least ten times, Dan. I still can't predict how to predict what passes and what doesn't.
When people hurl personal abuse at me; they emerge unscathed.
When I criticize a political party's policy of genocidal prison camps, without criticizing any nation/people; it's deemed to contribute to "nationalistic flamewar". I take special care not to make a value judgement about any nations, and it's deemed to contribute to "nationalistic flamewar".
Strictly speaking, given that most things that people do occur inside, or relating to, nations: what criticism or affirmation of anything doesn't contribute to "nationalistic flamewar"?
In what universe does those views not mean hostility towards the people themselves. If you say that to any Native Chinese they’ll tell you it’s bullshit.
Maybe I'm seeing different things than you are, but when I see "alternative" view points being downvoted, it's not because their viewpoints are "wrong" it's cause the comment is pure shit, and contains logical fallacies and personal attacks out the wazoo.
This particular comment wags a finger at the community, and is essentially making the point that "nobody here listens to alternative viewpoints, and if you disagree with my comment, it's cause your own political agenda is biasing you." It basically dismisses offhand anyone who isn't completely on board with its ideology:
>Unlike here where you have to understand that your political views will be suppressed if it doesn’t align to the majority... If you don’t notice that agenda, know that it is because it aligns with your own political agenda.
I mean look at how the comment starts:
>Did you just call Hacker News apolitical?
Yes. We all read it. This whole, "your comment is so absurd that I have to question it," is condescending bullshit. Not everyone comes into the discussion with the same context as you, and condescending to people who may not see the world the same as you in this way turns off a lot of people here who are trying to be open minded to other view points.
You definitely get dinged a _point or two_ of karma when you have radical viewpoints (anyone who comments here knows this). But huge downvotes turning the comment invisible come when the comment is trash, not when the message is just so offensive to the community that everyone has to silence it.
I’ve definitely seen people trying to share context, and they are called government-sponsored trolls by some and downvoted to oblivion. Then they get frustrated and make more sour/coarse comments and now they’re accused of not sharing context. It’s a negative feedback loop.
Just because you may not have engaged in it doesn’t mean certain opinions aren’t suppressed. (Now some will tell me those opinions are simply wrong and deserve to be suppressed. To which I have no answer. You can’t convince someone who’s already made up their mind.)