I thought people on HN weren’t supposed to change the headlines? The NYT headline is completely different and contains nothing saying that Weibo was backing down. Is HN just another fake China apologist now when it comes to changing headlines?
Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar
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Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar
#12That's what happens when you use a centralized service, especially if it's state approved.
Is it though? Does it happen in a centralised system in any democratic country? I feel you are letting them off the hook in a sense, centralisation != censorship, often it seems with western services the centralised system providers fight against censorship.
Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar
#13It's heartening to see that the Chinese public will not stand for homophobia. Countries that look to China as a model (looking at you Russia) should take note.
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Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar
#14Western media intends to portrait "china" as one single top-down entity, but as a matter of fact it's not. There are thousands of bureaucratic federal or local government branches can start an Internet crackdown. The whole "anti-gay" nonscence might came from a office clerk smashing his head for April KPI campaigns and baidu'd for random shit to block and passed through the chain of command. That's it.
That doesn't really make it better.
In fact i'd say it makes it worse.
Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar
#15Incidents like this are starting to make me feel that software engineers should have a code of ethics, similar to the Hippocratic Oath. So technologies aren't abused to marginalize individuals/groups.
Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar
#16> Even People’s Daily, a state-run newspaper, published an article online that included veiled criticism of Weibo’s announcement. The article said that being gay or bisexual was “not a disease,” but it added that gay people needed to “take on their own social responsibilities while advocating their rights.” I think this [1] is the People's Daily article referenced. If so, the quoted language has been scrubbed. [1] ht…
[1] says it is from Global Times (which is like a sidekick of People's Daily)
People's Daily [2]. Not sure if it has an English translation.
Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar
#17Incidents like this are starting to make me feel that software engineers should have a code of ethics, similar to the Hippocratic Oath. So technologies aren't abused to marginalize individuals/groups.
Not to put a damper on things, but it's not like the Hippocratic oath means anything as attested by[1]. It's only good if people heed it, otherwise it's meaningless.
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_...
Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar
#18Incidents like this are starting to make me feel that software engineers should have a code of ethics, similar to the Hippocratic Oath. So technologies aren't abused to marginalize individuals/groups.
Nuclear weapons simulations, drone AI, smart bombs - all good. But don't you dare abuse a marginalized group!
Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar
#19Where in the article does it say that Weibo is backing down? All it seems to say is "backlash happened".
Agreed. We changed the title to that of the actual article. Submitted title was "China's Weibo backs down from censoring gay content following backlash".
Submitters: rewriting titles like that is a violation of the site guidelines. If the facts have changed since the article was written, you can explain that by posting a comment about it to the thread, or by finding a more up-to-date article and submitting that.
Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar
#20I thought people on HN weren’t supposed to change the headlines? The NYT headline is completely different and contains nothing saying that Weibo was backing down. Is HN just another fake China apologist now when it comes to changing headlines?
We've changed the title. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16855849.
On another note: a username of the form "recognizable_person_is_evil" crosses into personal attack, which isn't allowed on HN. You may not owe better to billionaires, but you owe better to this community than to break its rules with every post. So I've banned this account. Account renaming, which we'll have soon, would be a more elegant solution, but it's not ready yet.