I never really paid attention to just how massive Bytedance actually is until the article mentioned some of their products.
Makes sense how they had the resources to brute force TikTok into the American consciousness so quickly.
I built ByteDance's censorship machine
51–60 of 107 posts
Re: I built ByteDance's censorship machine
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Live streaming platforms literally detect and warn against "unauthorized foreigners" from appearing on the screen. TV channels like BBC (for high-end hotels) are being monitored real-time to black-out sensitive parts, books mailed or imported from overseas get pages ripped out, even entries in dictionaries get painted black. Don't underestimate the seriousness of the censorship, it's among the few things communists a…
Could you elaborate on the first point? Do they run live race detection on streams and cut off access?
The stream was cutoff after a white guy appeared for a minute. If it’s not race detection, I don’t know what it is.
Re: I built ByteDance's censorship machine
#53Anonymous source? Check. Unverifiable anecdotal evidence? Check. Somehow I’m not surprised that HN users don’t express the faintest bit of skepticism on topics that confirm their pre-existing biases. “Alarmingly, only 14 percent of American students were able to reliably distinguish fact from opinion in reading tests.” [0] [0] https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/pisa-test-chin...
>Unverifiable anecdotal evidence? Check.
i didn't see any evidence in comment post that contradicts the post.
the only link i see right now is for an article praising chinese kids, which is highly interesting given the contents of the original post.
Re: I built ByteDance's censorship machine
#54> At the time, I was a tech worker at ByteDance, where I helped develop tools and platforms for content moderation. In other words, I had helped build the system that censored accounts like mine.
What do you mean "in other words"? Are there other words? How does one get into this situation without realizing what they are really doing? It looks obvious in retrospect, but what is not obvious back then?
Re: I built ByteDance's censorship machine
#55> At the time, I was a tech worker at ByteDance, where I helped develop tools and platforms for content moderation. In other words, I had helped build the system that censored accounts like mine. What do you mean "in other words"? Are there other words? How does one get into this situation without realizing what they are really doing? It looks obvious in retrospect, but what is not obvious back then?
I don’t think the original source was in anyway unaware of what they were doing. They’re not making any attempt to excuse their behaviour, just describe and explain what it’s like to work at a Chinese tech company.
We shouldn’t admonish those failing to stand-up for our ideals, when they live in a world where those ideals get you at best censored, and at worst disappeared.
Re: I built ByteDance's censorship machine
#56Anonymous source? Check. Unverifiable anecdotal evidence? Check. Somehow I’m not surprised that HN users don’t express the faintest bit of skepticism on topics that confirm their pre-existing biases. “Alarmingly, only 14 percent of American students were able to reliably distinguish fact from opinion in reading tests.” [0] [0] https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/pisa-test-chin...
> Anonymous source? Check.
> Unverifiable anecdotal evidence? Check.
Have you ever wondered why there is no Edward Snowden of China, despite the fact the Chinese equivalence of NSA is undoubtedly as much aggressive, if not more? Such a person would have been suicidal, not to mention no news organizations would be willing to publish their information. In such an environment anonymous source is the norm. It has to be.
Unfortunately that also provides plausible deniability, as your post illustrates.
Re: I built ByteDance's censorship machine
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We do the same thing in the west. Look at the people you see in ads and on TV, it's always an idealized look at what the people in power WANT society to look like. The actual explanation is simpler and more crass: It's about what sells to the target audience. At least for large campaigns, these things are thoroughly vetted. If you're uncomfortable with some aspect of an ad, you aren't the target audience.
And you don't think the CCP's promotion of Han is the same thing?
Absolute not.
Even disregarding your false promotion comparison, what about the other side?
CCP 'promotes' (actually carries out) the brutal persecution of non-Han and specifically Uighurs in part facilitated propaganda ('ads')
US corporations are not forced by the government to include for instance only one community or exclude another in their communications.
Us corporations are not de facto owned by the government and do not have the same goal of consolidating power to maintain the CCP's (and increasingly just one man at the top's) grip over its own citizens.
In the US many spend lots of money lobbying to keep the government out of their business!
Re: I built ByteDance's censorship machine
#58> When I was at ByteDance, we received multiple requests from the bases to develop an algorithm that could automatically detect when a Douyin user spoke Uyghur, and then cut off the livestream session.
Disgusting.
Re: I built ByteDance's censorship machine
#59> As a young unicorn, ByteDance does not have strong government relationships like other tech giants do, so it's walking a tightrope every second. For those in free countries: when you build moderation tools and use them to silence political dissent "because you have to / to play the game" the game plays you. There is no one "too big" to be crushed by those with the material source of political power [1] and everyone…
The question is what should we, western nations, do about this?
Should we keep hiring, sponsoring and giving away residency to engineers who made the decision to help building these platforms? Or collectively decide not to reward these behaviors?
Re: I built ByteDance's censorship machine
#60While most of the post is what I would expect, the minority language censorship was unexpected. It’s another sign of China’s ethnocentrism/Han Supremacist culture play out. It’s a real shame to see this sort of enforced death of linguistic diversity.
Most speakers of minority languages in China are Han Chinese. The censors who interrupted live streams when a non-Mandarin language was spoken were most likely speakers of a minority language, just a different one, which is why they didn't understand anything. So I don't think describing it as "Han Supremacism" is accurate. Presumably they didn't interrupt the streams because they felt ethnically superior to the speaker, but because they're liable if something illegal gets said and they don't censor it.
And note their reason for not automatically blocking Uyghur content: "We eventually decided not to do it: We didn't have enough Uyghur language data points in our system, and the most popular livestream rooms were already closely monitored." Which I guess means they have a dedicated group of Uyghur speakers on staff to censor those streams.