Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 85 posts

Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar

#31

Post by darpa_escapee »

aplummer wrote: post #12
tomcooks wrote: post #2

That'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.

Yes. Listings are removed from Google, Bing etc all of the time. Recently, a subreddit dedicated to sharing beer was removed from Reddit. Youtube recently banned certain gun-related videos [1] on its platform.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43500714

Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar

#32

Post by jamesrcole »

ars wrote: post #26
westiseast wrote: post #8

I was in Fujian, China, two weeks ago and did a Bing web/image search for ‘gay men’ (unrelated to any of this news). Zero results returned, and a standard note about violent and sexually explicit content being censored. Thought that was odd.

Did you try to search for "straight men"? If there is no sexual content in the photo, what would be the difference in a picture of a gay or straight man? They would look the same. By specifying sexual orientation you are by definition requesting sexual content.

There's a difference between the very literal definition of "sexual content" that you mention and the notion of "sexually explicit content" that the person you're replying to mentioned.

Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar

#33

Post by est »

jamesrcole wrote: post #30
est wrote: post #5

Western 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.

> Western media intends to portrait "china" as one single top-down entity, but as a matter of fact it's not. Are you saying this article does that? I don't see anything in it that does. Can you quote me anything in it that does? > There are thousands of bureaucratic federal or local government branches can start an Internet crackdown. You seem to be wanting to imply that this precludes the existence of attempts that…

> precludes the existence of attempts that come from a higher level

They do exist, but 80% cases you see online is not. There's big rule is 属地原则 which topics online must be traced back to its geographical local agency to manage. Actions taken by central government exists but just rare. e.g. 严打.

Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar

#34

Post by jamesrcole »

lokopodium wrote: post #18
rectangletangle wrote: post #15

Incidents 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!

> Nuclear weapons simulations, drone AI, smart bombs - all good.

Why are you assuming people's positions on those topics? I've seen people bring them up.

Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar

#35

Post by lokopodium »

jamesrcole wrote: post #34
lokopodium wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear weapons simulations, drone AI, smart bombs - all good. But don't you dare abuse a marginalized group!

> Nuclear weapons simulations, drone AI, smart bombs - all good. Why are you assuming people's positions on those topics? I've seen people bring them up.

Mostly because there are way more programmers working on weaponry of every possible kind than oppressing minorities, and you could say it causes way more harm and suffering.

Also, unlike doctors, who are explicitly trusted with human health, programmers are not in any way different from anybody else and it's silly to try to impose a special moral code on them.

Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar

#36

Post by [deleted] »

lokopodium wrote: post #35
jamesrcole wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear weapons simulations, drone AI, smart bombs - all good. Why are you assuming people's positions on those topics? I've seen people bring them up.

Mostly because there are way more programmers working on weaponry of every possible kind than oppressing minorities, and you could say it causes way more harm and suffering. Also, unlike doctors, who are explicitly trusted with human health, programmers are not in any way different from anybody else and it's silly to try to impose a special moral code on them.

[deleted]

Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar

#37

Post by jamesrcole »

lokopodium wrote: post #35
jamesrcole wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear weapons simulations, drone AI, smart bombs - all good. Why are you assuming people's positions on those topics? I've seen people bring them up.

Mostly because there are way more programmers working on weaponry of every possible kind than oppressing minorities, and you could say it causes way more harm and suffering. Also, unlike doctors, who are explicitly trusted with human health, programmers are not in any way different from anybody else and it's silly to try to impose a special moral code on them.

None of that has to do with your original comment ("Nuclear weapons simulations, drone AI, smart bombs - all good. But don't you dare abuse a marginalized group!") and what I objected to in it.

Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar

#38

Post by aplummer »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #31
aplummer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes. Listings are removed from Google, Bing etc all of the time. Recently, a subreddit dedicated to sharing beer was removed from Reddit. Youtube recently banned certain gun-related videos [1] on its platform. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43500714

I don’t know how you can link to an article about banning killing machine video content as a comparison to banning gay content with a straight face.

This is an example of YouTube taking positive social responsibility which is fantastic. And no, “positive” is not subjective in this case at at all.

Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar

#39

Post by bkor »

dang wrote: post #20
bezosisevil wrote: post #11

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?

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 solu…

> Account renaming, which we'll have soon, would be a more elegant solution, but it's not ready yet.

That's awesome! Years ago the suggested solution was to create a new account, which I didn't want to do. I'm quite happy there's a nicer solution now.

Re: Chinese Social Media Site Reverses Gay Content Ban After Uproar

#40

Post by yorwba »

rectangletangle wrote: post #15

Incidents 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.

A code of ethics: https://www.acm.org/about-acm/acm-code-of-ethics-and-profess...

Just its existence is not enough to guarantee that anyone knows or cares about it.

Post reply on HN