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Comment by FooBarWidget | Hacker News Reader

I think this is just a case of fighting low-quality comments rather than deliberate censoring of anti-CCP political speech.

Youtube is not supporting CCP. They regularly delete videos that are even mildly supportive of CCP, for example https://twitter.com/rachw82451432/status/1265308476034519040

Another example is the 'Fighting terrorism' documentary by CGTN, which has been deleted and reuploaded many times now.

Heck, I don't even call the above examples 'pro-CCP'. They just show a different point of view that isn't anti-CCP.

I see people here claiming something along the lines of: all anti-CCP comments are valuable examples of freedom of speech. But let's be honest here. Were it any nearly any other topic, people's usual opinion of Youtube comments is that it's a cesspool. While there is indeed valuable anti-CCP commentary out there, some really is not worth reading and just degrade the quality of the website.

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I don't think YouTube fights low-quality comments like that. Comment moderation is generally left up to channel owners. YouTube just provides tooling like their spam filter, word blacklists, and "pending approval" settings. However, channels can choose to enable those or not.

> I think this is just a case of fighting low-quality comments rather than deliberate censoring of anti-CCP political speech.

As opposed to what comments? I've never seen a non-low-quality comment on YouTube.

High-effort spam. I've seen URLs advertised by combining 3 accounts worth of ascii-art.

It's almost an art form in itself, like when World of Warcraft trials didn't allow chat and spammers would just sign in to a hundred accounts and die in the shape of the domain name with all the corpses.

I have. Ironically, in non-anti-CCP videos, which tend to attract people who are tired of western narratives of China.

Their comments still aren't Hacker News quality, but they are far above the Youtube average.

For example, check the comments at https://youtu.be/ufxfSJgQuSI

> deleted and reuploaded many times now.

I wonder, how many times did they go through their 3 strikes? With the amount of videos google banned on all of their channels should now go into hundreds.

An ordinary content makers may well be banned after 1. An evident velvet glove treatment.

I don't know, maybe as a journalistic organization they have a special deal with Youtube.

But if I read in between the lines of your comments, you appear to be saying that all of CGTN's videos are propaganda that should be dismissed out of hand. I don't agree with that notion. Whether you agree with their views is another story, but I do think it is valuable for their story to be at least heard.

From Wikipedia: CGTV "is an international English-language news channel based in Beijing and is also referred as a mouthpiece of Chinese government." [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGTN_(TV_channel)

Funded by the state is correct. Being a mouthpiece is an opinion.

I find most of their reports to be pretty balanced and factual, even if they have an obviously mainland Chinese perspective.

Before concluding that their content is propaganda that should be dismissed out of hand, why not verify for yourself whether it's that bad? Their video content speak for themselves. You don't even have to agree with them.

The content produced by Liu Xin in particular are pretty high quality. She regularly invites guests -- even western ones -- on her show, who provide non-Chinese perspectives. Sometimes their guests even disagree with her.

If you disagree, I would love to hear why.

Sometimes, when analyzing bias, it's more important to pay attention to what isn't said, but to what isn't ever mentioned.

For example, it's easy to be factual and accurate when you can pick subjects that don't touch anything in a list of sensitive spots.

Another thing to keep in mind is the intended audience. If they don't expect more than, say, 0.1% of the Chinese population to watch that content, they might relax the censors. There are half a dozen cases of Brazilian rock records sung in English where the international version wasn't censored, but he Brazilian version was very tamed down.

I will admit that I haven't watched their content, though, so feel free to give a rebuttal.

I agree that 'things that aren't said' is something one needs to look out for. This goes for both sides of the media. There is a lot of mainland Chinese perspective that the western media doesn't cover. That is why CGTN is valuable. Granted, they have their own omissions. Nothing we can do about it -- all journalists have their own biases. Still, I think watching both is more healthy than just watching one.

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