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I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

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Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#91

Post by maxerickson »

throwaway8581 wrote: post #21
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…

That attitude is catching on in America. The censorship and consent apparatus is more privatized and not officially backed by state power (but see threats from politicians to tech companies to remove “disinformation” “or else”) but most people just put their heads down and toe the “official” line. You might even put on a little show about how woke you are to prove your loyalty. Such acting is common in all regimes. T…

Tell it to the slaves bud.

(I mean that we've regressed into repression)

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#92

Post by indeedmug »

nglengjai wrote: post #34
kypro wrote: post #4

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? Some of these arguments for censorship made in this article sound eerily similar to how we justify censorship in the West. > Our role was to make sure that low-level content moderators could find "harmful and dangerous content" as soon as poss…

I can comment as I grew up in China my entire life and came to the west just a few years ago, attending international school. People obviously know censorship exists and most believe is for the greater good, as China needs social stability above all. Most people just want to live their lives, have children receive a good education, make money, have safety, etc. There is no need to bad mouth the government after every…

I think most Westerns see pro China posts as propaganda. But I think there is more relatable concern about well fare and prosperity. People in American live their lives seperate from politics anyway. I don't really think of Trump all the time going to work and I frankly don't really want to either.

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#93

Post by legerdemain »

Krasnol wrote: post #50
AlexCoventry wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on that? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

My guess is: "having no conscience makes you rich".

No, you have it backwards. Having no conscience doesn't make you rich. But the rich do have no conscience worth speaking of.

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#94

Post by pca006132 »

Alupis wrote: post #16
kypro wrote: post #4

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? Some of these arguments for censorship made in this article sound eerily similar to how we justify censorship in the West. > Our role was to make sure that low-level content moderators could find "harmful and dangerous content" as soon as poss…

Part of the issue we often forget, here in countries without mass censorship, is what people under these regimes actually experience. If you are born into, grow up in, and continue to live in a society where all external information flowing into your society is filtered through government censors... would you even know it? If you did, would you think it's bad? Or is that just your government protecting you? It's lite…

No, people there are aware of the censorship, anti-censorship tools are actively developed and quite a lot of teenagers (to say the least) have access to them, although the tools are frequently replaced due to advancement in censorship technology.

Although they are annoyed by the censorship, some of them would think that the censorship may be good for the country as it prevents 'unintelligible' people from being 'brainwashed' by western ideas, and act against the government/society or whatsoever. They claim that the censorship is to filter out those 'unintelligible' people from accessing information that they should not know, although this can't really justify the efforts the state put into censorship technology.

Those people are pretty happy to recent cases in western countries, such as COVID, BLM, Trump, and claimed that this is the advantage of their system that prevents such problem... And they also think that the western media also censor information, such as Facebook and Twitter bans.

Also, the great firewall is also beneficial to the internet companies, as this helps them to avoid competition with foreign companies, and can often just build a knock-off of the products of foreign companies... So the government really have the economic incentives to keep it.

Edit:

I am not living in mainland, but I know quite a lot of friends from there and I often read the articles in mainland websites (although I can't really post/edit them, as I don't have my identity verified for those sites).

For me, I would say that censorship is essential in every country. It may be helpful to censor information as done by Facebook and Twitter, but what mainland does is not only censorship: they arrest people for posting information against them, and their censorship is mostly not regarding fake information (as claimed by them), but rather information against the government. Some of them think that maintaining a harmony is good for the people, but censorship can't really make harmony, everyone understand that it is fake, but well, our opinion don't really matter now anyway.

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#95

Post by throwaway_Vqs0 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #49
kypro wrote: post #4

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? Some of these arguments for censorship made in this article sound eerily similar to how we justify censorship in the West. > Our role was to make sure that low-level content moderators could find "harmful and dangerous content" as soon as poss…

Someone signed up to make this pro-CCP comment, which was then flagged within minutes - rather ironic given the context in which it was posted. Although I disagreed with several of the premises and the logic of the comment, I vouched for it as an interesting and valid contribution. However, the lack of transparency around flags and vouching on HN makes this meaningless, and I have never seen a flagged comment vouched…

> Social media censorship is not a big deal because we don't miss what we don't know. For example, people don't care they can't use google, facebook, instagram, because we have our own social networks. Also, people know not to talk about political subjects in these platforms because it is in bad taste and we know how to self-censor.

This is exactly why people don't even care about their words being censored. I live in China and 99.5% of my friends and family just use apps and platforms that "exist" in China. Those apps will even censor your private chats. They learned to self-censor and think it's good for them and their family. They just accept the censorship.

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#96

Post by frogcoder »

jsnk wrote: post #41
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways, you're right, but Americans feel most strongly about the freedom of speech when it comes to specifically political speech, and I think the biggest difference is that I, as an American, can choose to say "I think our President of the United States is a fascist and a criminal and he should be arrested for his crimes" and I am in no way worried that the government will track me down and punish me in any ma…

I'm not as sure if China or US is worse about political speech anymore. In US, the government may not come for you like China. But in US, there are multi-national corporations, NGOs, think tanks, activist groups, social media mob who can just as effectively and "humanely" strip your power, influence and livelihood just as well as Chinese government can. Also at least with China, rules are pretty black and white. Don'…

I am seeing this all the time. America is doing this too, why just blame China.

Yes, governments around the world have one thing in common, they are full of ASSHOLES. Actually, in general people are assholes. Bad things tend to happen.

You can have CNN and Fox broadcast different views somethings extreme, and many other media outlets expressing views somewhere between them. Try that in China, you would think twice if you are not even trying to PRAISE the government.

You cannot compare a demacracy to a authoritarian/dictatorship. They certainly always have something in common, the difference is level of oppression. The authoritarian are always on the extreme side, that's why they are called authoritarians.

Comparing demaracies to authoritarian is giving execuses to keep the oppressions going.

It's nice and necessary that you can criticize your government even in public. Don't give dictators execuses when your government pisses you off.

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#97

Post by GekkePrutser »

bordercases wrote: post #59
themacguffinman wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it's the peace of submission, the peace of silence, the worst kind of peace that hardly reflects any level of "happiness". It's quite disingenuous to compare Shenzhen to Hong Kong's molotovs. What's left unspoken, of course, is the fear of thinking, saying, and doing anything that disagrees with or simply embarrasses the state (like the Chinese doctor who alerted his community about this new virus that was spre…

Does happiness mean harmony or does happiness mean expression? Therein lies the philosophical difference between the US and China.

How harmonious is a society if that harmony is forced upon it?

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#98

Post by berdario »

kypro wrote: post #4

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? Some of these arguments for censorship made in this article sound eerily similar to how we justify censorship in the West. > Our role was to make sure that low-level content moderators could find "harmful and dangerous content" as soon as poss…

Btw, censorship in China is often misrepresented here in the western world... For example, we all "know" that Winnie the Pooh is banned...

The reality is a bit different:

https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/133971634103760076...

https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/134857871356311961...

I think that it boils down to: if you're obviously making fun of an head of state (i.e. you have a meme/image with both Winnie and Xi Jinping) it's going to be recognized as such, and taken down... But Winnie by itself (or the memes in foreign contexts) aren't really at risk of getting banned.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china-blog-40627855

It actually reminds me of something that happened in Italy 15 years ago:

https://www.repubblica.it/2006/11/sezioni/esteri/benedettoxv...

The police entered the newsroom of the Manifesto, from which a bunch of leaflets had been thrown. On it you could read "Pastore Tedesco", referring to the German Pope (a wordplay on him being a pastor, and the German Sheperd dog breed)

Authorities can seem really thin-skinned, given that in both cases it's an almost innocuous comparison that is being teased (to a cartoon bear, or a dog breed)... But given that these were targeted to an head of state, it's not too surprising.

Obviously, censorship is not only about memes...

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#99

Post by cataphract »

ehmmmmmmmm wrote: post #10
kypro wrote: post #4

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? Some of these arguments for censorship made in this article sound eerily similar to how we justify censorship in the West. > Our role was to make sure that low-level content moderators could find "harmful and dangerous content" as soon as poss…

> 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…

> Most people in Shenzhen were extremely happy they were in Shenzhen where you could walk around freely instead of "free" Hong Kong where you had to be in fear of idiot high school students throwing Molotov cocktails and beating up anyone who spoke Mandarin.

In a related matter, I wonder why mainland China came down so aggressively on Hong Kong's autonomy. Was the legal system in Hong Kong so lax that it was impossible to punish severely the main organizers of the illegal demonstrations? Why was the Hong Kong government so incapable of stopping the violence, but the mainland intervention so effective? I'm surprised China chose to abandon its international commitments and make it much harder to get Taiwan to agree with a similar or even more favorable arrangement.

Re: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

#100

Post by hungryhobo »

kypro wrote: post #4

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? Some of these arguments for censorship made in this article sound eerily similar to how we justify censorship in the West. > Our role was to make sure that low-level content moderators could find "harmful and dangerous content" as soon as poss…

Am chinese National. Personally I think it's a double edged sword. It's basically protectionism but for information.

On one hand censorship hinders internal transparency and makes it difficult to hold the government accountable. On the other hand information warfare is a thing, especially between geopolitical rivals, censorship is a cheap way to mitigate against them.

For what it's worth, there are increasing voices within the chinese government that are advocating for removing the great firewall because the new generation of chinese are more and more confident with their own political system.

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