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Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

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251–260 of 311 posts

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#251
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't all Reddit subs driven by their own moderators? Or are there core subs that are Reddit-moderated? I had a lawyer friend who liked to post in a legal advice sub, moderated by someone in law enforcement, who banned him for posting information about your rights if you're arrested.

The lion share of subs are moderated by a relative few mods. There was a post showing the graph of control recently, I found it disturbing. Unfortunately Reddit has critical mass now, I think it can survive what ever it becomes. It could lose every user who wishes it was like the first 5 years and hardly notuce. There won't be a Digg moment for Reddit.

Does Reddit have a system to appeal mod decisionmaking for important (and not so important) subreddits?

I think Flickr had this back when they were a big property. You'd have site admins look at your complaint and follow up as necessary.

It's be nice to have and if they have it that it'd be more active to keep things from going off the rails --within reason.

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#252
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't all Reddit subs driven by their own moderators? Or are there core subs that are Reddit-moderated? I had a lawyer friend who liked to post in a legal advice sub, moderated by someone in law enforcement, who banned him for posting information about your rights if you're arrested.

The lion share of subs are moderated by a relative few mods. There was a post showing the graph of control recently, I found it disturbing. Unfortunately Reddit has critical mass now, I think it can survive what ever it becomes. It could lose every user who wishes it was like the first 5 years and hardly notuce. There won't be a Digg moment for Reddit.

Many dominate players on the internet have been kicked to the curve. It starts with complacency which lack of real competition seems to always create.

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#253
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that Reddit intentionally keeps the moderators of core subs a group of "normal users" (who will follow any requests by the admins) as a level of obfuscation for any corporate-driven censorship or vote-tampering.

I would agree with that, especially for their biggest and most influential subs like /r/news and /r/politics. Reddit's owners have shown they're not above selling out some of these subs to firms like ShareBlue. It would make sense as part of their contract, they'd ensure that the mods were 'suited' to their customers' goals.

Shareblue was banned from r/politics and a bunch of other popular subs long ago.

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#254
post #78

I'd be more concerned about Chinese financing of Hollywood. Nearly every big-budget production these days has Chinese co-producers. This leads to farcical episodes like the remake of Red Dawn featuring feeble North Korea as the villain rather than China as originally envisioned.

This is no different than what Hollywood already does. E.g. demonizing conservative values as antithetical to a stable government (abortion, gay and lesbian rights, income discrepancy). I recall Hillary Clinton being interviewed by Terry Gross, where she was essentially charged with bigotry in reversing positions on gay marriage. Public sentiment changes in one way as a result of social and media influences, and it's…

> All film and media is propagandistic in some way. Just because you swing the needle in a different direction doesn't change that fact.

To add to that, one of America's biggest exports is it's culture - see "Military Recruitment and Hollywood" https://youtu.be/N5xfBtD6rLY

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#255
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there are no current day U.S. equivalents to the Uyghur reeducation camps, the ethnic cleansing of Tibet, and the extreme censorship. What's more, there is no evidence that China is even capable of changing course on these matters, given that their reaction to all these is to deny that they're even real, even suppressing the merest mention of them. Notably, this is not what the US does with its own wrongdoing, as…

Starting the Iraq War, starting the (Still on-going, in case anyone forgot) Libyan Civil War, fanning the flames of the Syrian Civil War are all crimes against humanity, with a pretty horrendous body count. Is it internal repression? No, of course not. Did it add misery, death, and suffering to the world on an industrial scale? It absolutely did. And, notice that how regardless of whether team Red, or team Blue get e…

Just because we're incapable of course-correcting, doesn't mean we can't express our discontent and have a discourse about it.

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#256
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that this isn't a valid concern, but is there really any evidence that this is happening in Silicon Valley? Hong Kong's a different matter because of just how comparatively dominating and close by the mainland Chinese market is compared to the tiny city state. But in the US tech sector, the Chinese market is at best an after-thought. We're also living through probably the strongest seller's market in history when…

A reddit user from Hong Kong was recently banned from the /r/pics/ subreddit for posting about their support for the Hong Kong protests against https://www.reddit.com/r/chinareddits/comments/bz177v/got_ba... Tencent recently invested in Reddit. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-11/reddit-users-revolt-o...

https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/byjify/arial_view_of_...

A lot of comments still up are even more directly critical of Beijing than that post. Mods flagged it for "vote manipulation."

So I don't know what to make of this.

A sympathetic voting ring could have boosted the comment without the commenter knowing, confusing everyone here.

Or maybe Tencent really is picking specific posts to complain about to Reddit admins, or planting mods in high profile subs (but those mods can only catch so much).

Is there any way to sample which comments have been deleted by mods, to see if there's a consistent bias?

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The typical news cycle lasts about 48 hours. People have no problem remembering what 9/11 was all about because it was the top item for over a year. Now ask them in what year it was and see if you get the right answer. If YC has to stop doing business in China, it will be a very momentary blip and China will most definitely not change course because of a PG blogpost.

> Now ask them in what year... I know that. May I answer ? It's 2003... November 9, to be more precise.

Given the month/day joke I can't tell if the other part was intentional or not... but it was 2001, not 2003.

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of IP rights doesn't really exist in Chinese business culture. Your source code or any other proprietary technology is fair game. I know startup founders that have raised Chinese money and not regretted it, but it's important that it be "dumb money", i.e. they give you cash and go away while you write an occasional investor update and grow the business. Active Chinese investors (i.e. anything where you gi…

> You want to be in a position where if your investors ask you for something you can just ignore them. What reasonable investor would put themselves in that position? They're just going to give their money away and not have any say in what happens?

This is quite standard in my (limited) experience. We're raising a seed round and I've spoken to nearly 100 VC firms. The most any have asked for is an observer seat.

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#259

It's interesting: Chinese cash is welcome in real estate and the US treasury market. What is it about startups that makes the government concerned?

I think I know why: in the USA we require growth in housing and the stock market to keep things together, to keep the system running. Our government is worried about competition in tech, not investment in our equity markets. One is viewed as harmful, the other we depend on. I am disappointed by this entire affair. I like to see each country have its own culture and uniqueness, but I would like the world economic and…

China buys US debt so it can peg the Yuan to the dollar to keep volatility low and manage its export levels accordingly. China only owns 5% of outstanding US national debt, so even if they sold it off in a flash sale for some reason, someone else would buy it (other nations or more likely the Federal Reserve). Selling off US debt is not a credible economic threat for China. [1]

No powerful US entities have a vested interest in keeping foreign Chinese money out of US real estate, especially if it's due to wealthy individuals investing abroad. The real estate owners win, the developers win, construction companies win, the mortgage-underwriting banks win, the losers are the young/renters/non-capital owners seeking jobs in these hotspot areas because their rent just goes up and up per square meter. This segment of the population has no political power, they can only hope to make enough to put a down payment on a house and join the vested interests as capital owners - hopefully the bubble doesn't burst taking their job and leaving their mortgage underwater. The exception here would be if a Chinese government-owned investment vehicle tried to purchase large swathes of real estate, it could potentially use this large investment as a weapon to control cost of living/tank real estate values in that area if the government wanted to.

The real reason is because US technology (networking, telecom, A&D, automotive) companies have a huge vested interest in keeping their competitive advantage over Chinese technology companies which are on the cusp of transforming from cheaper/lower quality alternatives to preferred suppliers in building out information technology infrastructure globally, including in the US. The US government also has a huge vested interest in controlling this infrastructure, especially in the US, or at least being on good terms with the companies that build and manage it. It doesn't want partially government-owned and directed companies like Huawei supplying complicated and sometimes unvettable hardware and software over which Americans send each other vital information.

[1] China's central bank uses a modified version of a traditional fixed exchange rate. That's different from the floating exchange rate the United States and many other countries use. The People's Bank of China manages the yuan's value. It keeps it fixed to a basket of currencies reflecting its trading partners. The basket is weighted toward the dollar since the United States is China's largest trading partner. It keeps the yuan's value within a 2 percent range against that currency basket.

Why does China fix the yuan's value to the dollar? It manages its currency to control the prices of its exports. It wants to make sure its exports are reasonably priced when sold in the United States. Every country would like to do this, but few have China's ability to manage it so well. China's command economy allows it to control the central bank and many businesses. As a result, the Communist Party directs China's economy. The U.S. government regulates exchange rates instead of managing them.

https://www.thebalance.com/how-does-china-influence-the-u-s-...

Re: Chinese Cash Is Suddenly Toxic in Silicon Valley, Following U.S. Pressure

#260
post #6

Chinese investment means increased pressure on tech oligopolies* to increase censorship of media critical of China. They've been branching out to increase soft influence, keep news sites and Olympic committee from recognizing Taiwan as a separate nation. Then there's what is currently going on in Hong Kong. Chinese investor cash is effectively Chinese government investment. It's not a good thing. *edit

> keep news sites and Olympic committee from recognizing Taiwan as a separate nation No, they don't want to be a separate nation. It's a more complex situation than that. Taiwan considers itself as the Republic of China, where they consider the government in Beijing to be illegitimate, and reject communist rule. Note that the rest of the world has also moved on, when we say "China" we also mean the one ruled by the g…

>> keep news sites and Olympic committee from recognizing Taiwan as a separate nation

> No, they don't want to be a separate nation. It's a more complex situation than that. Taiwan considers itself as the Republic of China, where they consider the government in Beijing to be illegitimate, and reject communist rule.

Tell that to the currently-ruling Democratic Progressive Party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Progressive_Party#P...):

> The current official position of the party is that the "Republic of China (Taiwan)" is an independent and sovereign country whose territory consists of Taiwan and its surrounding smaller islands and whose sovereignty derives only from the ROC citizens living in Taiwan (similar philosophy of self-determination), based on the "Resolution on Taiwan's Future" in 1999. It considers Taiwan independence to be a current fact, making a formal declaration of independence unnecessary.

It is a more complex situation, but your view is dated. Taiwan has to maintain the fiction that it still supports a one-China policy, because to do otherwise and declare independence would invite Beijing's wrath: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#PRC...

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