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I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

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Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#71

Post by ls65536 »

ehsankia wrote: post #35
aaomidi wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not China, but in Iran, everyone fucking hates it.

To be fair, how well your country plays a big factor in how you view your countries policies. While life in China is far from perfect, China has been growing at a strong steady pace, and I'm sure people are much more likely to accept the way things are if things are getting better, whereas Iran has been stuck in a rut of sactions for a very long time, and especially once Iranian people compare themselves to the prosp…

This is it. Relative economic prosperity, at least as long as it's somewhat widely distributed among a large proportion of the population, usually seems to be quite helpful in smoothing over any roughness of the general political situation for most. In any place, one might disagree ideologically with the way certain things are unfolding politically, but people will usually be much more likely to accept it so long as their material situation is improving, be it real or perceived. Of course, if that economic prosperity or general perception of it goes into decline, the situation can suddenly become quite ugly politically.

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#72

Post by orisho »

chrischen wrote: post #54
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the US is actually better about freedom of speech than China in practice. To give you a negative example, a significant number of people organized a literal coup attempt, largely in the open, via social media, and nothing happened to them until they actually stormed the US Capitol building, after which some of them were arrested. Large media companies with massive audiences broadcast divisive lies accusing the c…

That coup attempted happened because the powers at hand missed it. In the aftermath Parlor is shut down, and the powers at hand would never allow such a thing to happen again. So at best you can say the censorship apparatus in the US is less effective, but still present. And yes, the US government didn't do the censorship, but rather the private platforms that wield the power did so.

But why did they miss it? I believe they did so because this kind of speech is not unusual. So even though it was out in the open, likely reported many times as people do on social platforms - it was missed because it was regarded as people saying extreme thngs but not going to act on them. In other words, there's a lot of this kind of speech in modern times, but it doesn't get censored and so actually dangerous speech gets missed.

And then they actually went through with it - so many private organizations took action. And yet, the government did not force their hand.

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#73

Post by xtian »

hong_kong wrote: post #25
ehmmmmmmmm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be interesting if someone from China could comment on censorship in China. Is there a fraction of people who agrees with it or is almost it universally disapproved of? In general people don't agree with it. However, for a lot of people, it's not actually on their radar. The reality is most people in China are so engrossed in their work and day-to-day life that censorship isn't really actually an issue for…

Any assertion of what 'most' Chinese citizens want is unprovable given the lack of any representation on any level of society. Plenty of China watchers are happy to claim that Chinese people all support their government - and yet the government is curiously unwilling to test this assertion in democratic polls. Tells you something about how strongly held these beliefs are (hint: not very).

Do you think the results of the Harvard Kennedy School's study were fraudulent? https://ash.harvard.edu/publications/understanding-ccp-resil...

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#74

Post by throwaway8581 »

int_19h wrote: post #57
throwaway8581 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 50s and 60s. It was in full swing by the 70s. If I had to point to one iconic development, it would be the Warren court, and in particular its free speech cases. Those marked the decisive defeat of traditional conservatism, which never again was a powerful force in national politics (unless you count some elements of the Trump coalition) despite occasional lip service and token concessions by Reagan and Bush 43.…

I feel like this overemphasizes the legal angle, while ignoring other aspects of censorship. It's true that the Warren court significantly liberalized things by setting very narrow constitutional boundaries in Brandenburg v. Ohio etc. But there's censorship by law, and then there's censorship by public opinion. When you complain about "wokeism", it's mostly the latter - but there was plenty of that in the 70s as well…

I don’t agree. You are suggesting that liberalism was just a mirage for a different underlying ideology. But I don’t think that’s what was happening. People really believed in liberalism. Live and let live is not a very profound philosophy—nor a very self-preserving one, which is why it fell so quickly—but it was real.

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#75

Post by leesalminen »

ericmay wrote: post #64
lambda_obrien wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a lot like everywhere else, like America. I bet if Americans and Chinese looked, we have more in common with each other than we have with our politicians.

I definitely agree that THE PEOPLE have a lot in common. Almost everyone all over the world just wants to enjoy life.

This is why the us vs them dichotomy is so important to those in power. Dividing us is the only thing that keeps them in power. Unfortunately there are so many values of “us” and “them” now that it’s obscured the only definition that really matters.

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#76

Post by c7DJTLrn »

thedudeabides5 wrote: post #36

“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... ...every audio clip would be automatically transcribed into text, allowing algorithms to compare the notes with a long and constantly-updated list of sensitive words, dates and names, as well as Natural Language Proce…

When people have suggested a Hippocratic oath for technology workers in the past I've laughed at the idea.

I think I've changed my mind.

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#78

Post by brauhaus »

"We didn't have enough Uyghur language data points in our system, and the most popular livestream rooms were already closely monitored."

This deeply saddened me. They reason why the Uyghur dialect wasn't banned wasn't for ethical reasons, but base operational ones.

It's like when the bloody Franco dictatorship forbade the Catalan dialect decades ago.

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#79

Post by ehmmmmmmmm »

hong_kong wrote: post #25
ehmmmmmmmm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be interesting if someone from China could comment on censorship in China. Is there a fraction of people who agrees with it or is almost it universally disapproved of? In general people don't agree with it. However, for a lot of people, it's not actually on their radar. The reality is most people in China are so engrossed in their work and day-to-day life that censorship isn't really actually an issue for…

Any assertion of what 'most' Chinese citizens want is unprovable given the lack of any representation on any level of society. Plenty of China watchers are happy to claim that Chinese people all support their government - and yet the government is curiously unwilling to test this assertion in democratic polls. Tells you something about how strongly held these beliefs are (hint: not very).

A big fallacy is that the "Chinese government" is this big monolithic entity. It's not. Supporting the Chinese government does not equal support censorship.

Do you support the National Park Service?

Do you support the Federal Aviation Administration?

Do you support the USDA?

Do you support Donald Trump?

Do you support the FDA?

Do you support NIST?

Do you support Joe Biden?

Do you support NIH?

Do you support public schools?

Do you support Guantanamo Bay?

Do you support the Environmental Protection Agency?

The Chinese government, although not democratically elected, is similar in one aspect, in that it is a very multi-faceted set of institutions that do a whole lot of things well that the majority of people support, and a few things that the majority of people secretly do not support but are unlikely to be vocal about.

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