TikTok: Cheerfulness and censorship

Post by michalf6 » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 1:38 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #109

pgeorgi wrote: post #4

Their approach to moderation is unusual in that they don't even pretend to be a neutral platform and as such it's a powerful differentiator to businesses that are rooted in a "free speech" culture. Shadow-banning individual posts ("Visible to self") is relatively unusual and acts as a demotivator to publish controversial content because such content doesn't drive engagement, as is actively demoting entire classes of…

I mean I’m as much a fan of free speech as the next guy, but there are some pretty key differences between the concepts of “free speech in the culture” and “a giant collection of unmoderated user generated internet content”. I mean actual free speech would just be an endless collection of penis videos. Nobody is actually advocating for free speech. I don’t think every app has to be about political issues. Where did t…

Post by 12elephant » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 3:28 PM UTC

SebastianKra wrote: post #68

s9w wrote: post #6

I can't see how TikTik censors more than facebook or most other social platforms. This seems only to be a concern since it's the "other" side (Chinese in this case) doing it. > the search for keywords controversial from the point of view of the Chinese Government [...] did not yield any or only very few fitting content Yeah I could give you a nice list of words that results in an similar results page from Google, You…

> Yeah I could give you a nice list of words that results in an similar results page from Google, Youtube or Facebook. Could you give me some examples?

Post by jessaustin » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

kds3 wrote: post #114

jessaustin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is important on the level of individual users, but it's not important for this discussion. As TFA demonstrates, it's possible for diligent researchers to reveal unpublicized policies through their research. Users can assist researchers by pointing out what content they've had banned. I haven't seen a reason to suspect that TikTok have been any more open about their moderation policies than Facebook or…

> it's possible for diligent researchers to reveal unpublicized policies through their research It's possible to reveal __some__ policies (like trivial one with breastfeeding), but I think that reverse-engineering of non-trivial policies is really hard. Like moving some type of content to the bottom of the feed for some category of users. It may not look like a ban, but who is gonna scroll to the bottom of the feed?…

Post by wglb » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 8:05 PM UTC

madiathomas wrote: post #112

andrepd wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On HN, if you are from China, India, Russia, African country, the best thing you can do is to avoid articles about those geographical locations because comments will be mostly negative and any dissenting view will be downvoted until it becomes unreadable. I agree that downvoting for disagreement is bad, but have you considered you might simply be wrong? I strain to believe that anybody attacked you simply for being…

I feel a downvote must only be used for a comment that has vulgar, strong language or anything that isn’t in the good spirit of a good debate. Downvotes must be used only to flag comments violating guidelines, not as a way to silence those who share differing views. If you disagree, write a comment. I realised most people use downvotes powers to silence those who disagree with them.

Post by Fjolsvith » Tue, Nov 26, 2019, 1:16 AM UTC

madiathomas wrote: post #52

oefrha wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I excluded Hacker News from social networks I'm in the market for. HN is political as hell, and yes, whenever I make a niche (on HN) political comment I'm always prepared to burn karma.

Thanks for clarifying. I am in the same boat. Whenever I go against ideologies of HN, I am always prepared to lose some karma also. I refuse to use a throwaway account.