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Facebook Said to Create Censorship Tool to Get Back into China
- virtuabhi 10y ago"It’s better for Facebook to be a part of enabling conversation, even if it's not yet the full conversation," Mr. Zuckerberg said, according to employees. Larry Page (or, Eric Schmidt?) made a similar comment, before Google closed China office after Chinese officials were found to be monitoring dissidents through their internal tools, that censored Google is better than no Google.
- dorianm 10y agoProbably Eric Schmidt because he was the only one who wanted to stay in China after the censorship (in How Google Works, he explains it in details: https://www.amazon.com/How-Google-Works-Eric-Schmidt/dp/1455582344 https://www.amazon.com/How-Google-Works-Eric-Schmidt/dp/1455...)
- Zarel 10y ago> Larry Page (or, Eric Schmidt?) made a similar comment, before Google closed China office For the record, I agreed with Google that a censored Google was better than no Google, and one of my biggest frustrations at the time was that sanctimonious Americans seemed to think they knew better than me, someone who would actually lose access to Google if they pulled out of China. Google would tell me if search results were censored, and wouldn't shut down my internet for a few hours if I accidentally typed the wrong thing, which was much much better than anything else I had access to. Then Google did pull out of China and it did suck and meanwhile Americans celebrated it because it didn't affect them at all. Ugh. > after Chinese officials were found to be monitoring dissidents through their internal tools Google pulled out of China because Gmail got hacked and Google assumed the hackers were affiliated with the Chinese government. I think the evidence pointed in that direction but wasn't conclusive, but either way, I haven't heard anything about monitoring dissidents through internal tools. Anyway, I feel the same way about Facebook. It'd be nice to be able to access Facebook and talk to my friends while in China, and having censored communication is better than nothing.
- dvcrn 10y ago> and wouldn't shut down my internet for a few hours if I accidentally typed the wrong thing that is actually happening?
- snnn 10y agoNot shutdown his internet, shutdown his connection to Google for a while. In that time, he can still use Yahoo,Bing,Baidu...
- Zarel 10y agoWell, that was way back in I think around 2005? So I don't remember it too clearly. But I remember a few times where I suddenly lost internet and the people around me said "oh, you probably tried to go to a site you're not allowed to, it'll come back in an hourish." I haven't had that experience more recently, but I think that's partially because HTTPS is everywhere these days and partially because I use VPNs a lot more because I do need that Google/Facebook access.
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoIt would basically put you in a penalty box if you searched for the wrong thing, with your internet not working very well for a couple of minutes. I'm not sure how they did it, but it was a real thing. It doesn't really happen very much anymore, but mainly because most sites moved to https and can only be blocked completely ATM.
- orf 10y agoIt knew the hackers where the Chinese government. And they where. What other highly skilled state sponsored attackers would break into Google China to steal information about people the Chinese government deemed dissidents?
- 75j 10y ago> Google pulled out of China because Gmail got hacked and Google assumed the hackers were affiliated with the Chinese government. Then it seems pulling out was the right move. If Chinese citizens trusted that Google could secure their communications, and Google was then unable to, that put certain citizens at risk of persecution. Better to have them using a Chinese email provider where the default assumption is that everything is monitored, and then use the proper tools for actual private communication.
- snnn 10y agoYahoo closed their Beijing office but Google never did it. Google has 100+ engineers in Beijing and Shanghai. Google also has a lot of servers in Beijing, to serve dl.google.com etc.
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoNote, google didn't close down their office, they just shutdown operations. There were and are still engineers and sales people employed in china, and specifically the wudaokou headquarters.
- panarky 10y agoRecall that even when Google was censoring, they displayed a prominent message on each page showing that results were removed by government diktat. But even that went against Google's ethics, so rather than comply with the censorship regime, they withdrew from the market. Will Facebook prominently disclose when posts are censored?
- devoply 10y agoWhat part of the business' only imperative is to make money for its shareholders did you not understand? Do you really think any of these people care about any of the values that you hold dear? Maybe in the back of their minds. Maybe. But business as usual means that you do whatever to make money, and to make more money and increase your social and political power and market share. Sell secrets to governments? Sure. Unless it gets out and causes bad P/R. Then you do damage control, that usually involves scapegoating a someone, but that's just an opportunity for another company to exploit, and there are an infinite number of those and a limited number of consumers.
- idlewords 10y agoThere is not an infinite number of companies like Facebook.
- devoply 10y agoNo there are an infinite number of companies that can be created that service government needs. So someone will. Recently a company cut its staff in half because Twitter and FB cut them out of their streaming service after the media and ACLU reported that they were using to monitor protesters. But what do you want to bet that another company will not take its place? Supply and demand.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- idlewords 10y agoThere is also not an infinite number of other companies.
- MorePowerToYou 10y agoThe news is fake, but the money is real!
- bertiewhykovich 10y agoAre you arguing that it's /ethical/ for businesses to behave in these ways, or that it's /unsurprising/ that they do so? I'm confused.
- dkarapetyan 10y agoDon't they own all that content according to their TOS? So what exactly is being censored when the content is owned by the same company that is choosing whether to show or not show certain content? Edit: I stand corrected. They don't own the content. They can just do whatever they want with it. Muddied thinking when it comes to these things doesn't help anyone. Facebook is not a champion of democracy or human rights. They're a business. No one should expect their core value system to be aligned with anything more than making more money and we should use the proper words. When they virtually own the content by asking you to allow them to do what they want with it we shouldn't call it censorship when it is suppressed. It's not like facebook went to the library and burned all the books that said bad things about China. It's more like the book was never put on a shelf to be accessible to begin with.
- detaro 10y ago> Don't they own all that content according to their TOS? No they don't. They have extensive usage rights to it, but they don't own it.
- kapitza 10y agoMr. Zuckerberg was even more optimistic about the possibility of using the same tool to suppress fake news in the US. "China is a beta-test with a billion users," he said.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- barsonme 10y agoFunny. Almost reads like an Onion article :-)
- Zooper 10y agoNot since it was bought by a Clinton super-PAC.
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoSource?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- leesalminen 10y agoThe Onion was acquired by Univision [0], which has an interesting relationship with the Clintons [1,2]. [0] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/19/463535648/area-satiric-publication-the-onion-sold-to-univision-seriously http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/19/463535648/... [1] http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/univision-hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-117851 http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/univision-hillary-clin... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/univision-chair-a-clinton-donor-urged-campaign-to-hit-trump-on-immigration/2016/10/10/be1d5e44-8f14-11e6-9c52-0b10449e33c4_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/univision-chair-a-cl...
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- Jerry2 10y agoFacebook sold out. So sad. Time to rm my account.
- est 10y agoPreviously > Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation on its platform That is exactly what censorship is.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- _rpd 10y agoPerhaps if the definition of 'misinformation' is expanded to include legitimate but politically inconvenient information.
- leesalminen 10y agoThere is currently a subset of the internet talking about how the Earth is flat. While that may seem to be "misinformation" to you or I, why is it "wrong" for it to be shared/discussed/thought about on Facebook?
- _rpd 10y agoYou're probably posing this question to HN as a whole, rather than me, however, my comment was focusing on the term 'exactly' in the comment to which I was replying. I personally think that there is legitimate censorship (child porn, detailed instructions for constructing weapons of mass destruction, etc), but that the vast majority of 'fake news' and even outright false information doesn't fall into that scope. Even there I have to hedge though, since some false information can cause very harmful panic.
- leesalminen 10y agoAh, you are correct. My apologies, and it was not meant as an attack on you personally. I agree with your examples, of course. I'm not against common sense restrictions. But, I think these should be decided upon up front with a transparent review process for adding new categories. To leave that open ended would inevitably lead to abuse.
- olalonde 10y agoI know it's not a popular opinion here but there's an argument to be made that a censored Facebook would do more good than no Facebook at all. It's not like Facebook being blocked in China is going to spark a popular revolt or reduce government censorship/spying. It could help, for one, expose more Chinese to Western culture and vice versa. For me however, the strongest argument is that nearly everyone in China would prefer a censored Facebook to no Facebook at all and I'm humble enough to accept that they know, better than me, what's best for them.
- _rpd 10y agoI think the concern is that if Facebook builds sophisticated censorship tools for China, the temptation for other nations to adopt them will become overwhelming. The Chinese level of censorship could become a defacto standard without a robust conversation about what that means for society. Even those enthusiastically calling for censorship of 'fake news' may be given pause for thought when considering how those tools might be used by political opponents.
- drdaeman 10y agoThis. I'm sure our Russian government would absolutely love to have the similar level of control. Currently, Facebook's too big for them (although they test the water with LinkedIn), but this is a clear signal. And more countries (e.g. Kazakhstan) will likely follow the suit.
- kbart 10y agoFacebook is not very big in Russia and I wouldn't be surprised if it is banned as LinkedIn soon. Most of ordinary Russians use VKontakte.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- JoshTriplett 10y ago> It could help, for one, expose more Chinese to Western culture and vice versa. "Western culture" is a large part of what that censorship would be aimed at suppressing.
- supernintendo 10y agoReally puts the idea of "fake news" in a new perspective.
- leesalminen 10y agoAll this talk of "fake news" recently has been scaring the crap out of me. I consume all types of "news" from the whole spectrum; left, right, center, lunatic fringe, everything. I've come to the conclusion that anything called "news" is roughly 80% bullshit, 15% ads, 5% truth. Sometimes you swap the bullshit to ads ratio.
- vanattab 10y agoI agree 100%. I mostly lean left on most issues but I am growing more and more unconformable with the tactics and the attitudes of lots of liberals.
- CaptSpify 10y agoThis election really bugged me. A lot of people are complaining about right-wing news right now, but the left was spouting off some terrible stuff and presenting complex issues as clearly one-sided.
- tomcam 10y agoIt is not 80% bullshit. It's 80% press releases.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI.e. bullshit. Press releases are not written to be honest.
- caseysoftware 10y ago> Facebook does not intend to suppress the posts itself. Instead, it would offer the software to enable a third party — in this case, most likely a partner Chinese company — to monitor popular stories and topics that bubble up as users share them across the social network, the people said. Facebook’s partner would then have full control to decide whether those posts should show up in users’ feeds. This looks like a shadowban at scale. So you share something - potentially putting yourself at risk to do so - but with the hope that others will see it. The "local partner" decides that it doesn't show up in anyone's feeds but still knows you posted it, so now you're a target. Damn, that's evil.
- dilemma 10y agoSounds like the same system Facebook is implementing in response to the fake "fake news" stories.
- wosos 10y agoToo convenient and the term can be way subjective. "fake news" for who? For the Chinese government? For the company that denies that their new phone explodes? This is getting very ugly
- tn13 10y agoHere is the definition of Fake news for you: 1. Any news that shows guns in good light. 2. Any news that might question global warming 3. Any news that might question Islam ... You get the idea. Prior to Trump's victory everything he said was racist, sexist, bigoted. All this supporters were labeled racists and fascists. The fake news debate is nothing but putting first amendment at risk.
- diyorgasms 10y agoThis is clearly bad faith flamebait. Downvoted and flagged.
- vermontdevil 10y agoAre there any competition that is similar to Facebook in China? Like Weibo to Twitter, etc.
- olalonde 10y agoRenRen and Qzone come to mind.
- paradite 10y agoThey were dead about 3-4 years ago. Weibo and WeChat (successor of Qzone) are the only players now.
- yvsong 10y agoChina's social network is WeChat. I suspect it's too late for Facebook to enter. With censored contents, what's Facebook's attraction to ordinary Chinese people? Without censorship, it would be a huge attraction.
- blahi 10y agoYou severely underestimate the "western" appeal in communist countries, I think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amx-JHhtsHw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amx-JHhtsHw
- perseusprime11 10y agoShit some people do to make money. That's all I have to say.
- danielmorozoff 10y agoThe cyberpunk future we were warned about is really coming to fruition.
- eva1984 10y agoLaugh aloud, so long ideological America, welcome to the era of pragmatism!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ryenus 10y agoYeah, censorship is really bad, but one positive aspect of FB available in China is that someone can now challenge the sole monopoly of WeChat, which Alibaba has been trying very hard but hasn't got much real outcome. Talking about Google, as one living here, I really want Google to stay in China, for me I know Google from its early days when there was no censorship and the whole internet is freely (in terms of freedom) available, but looking at the kids these days, within 10 years, they live in a kinda dark age that it seems Google never existed. For me and people at my age, we can use whatever tools/costs to be able to access the whole internet, but for most of the young kids, their internet is much smaller than the real one, and I really feel sorry when they have to rely on the EVIL baidu to search for things, and baidu is infamous for all kinds of scams it relies on for its huge cash flow, which it pursues without any ethical bottom line. The existence of Bing makes things a little better, but far from what Google can (or used to) bring if it's available in China, that probably will also relief the monopoly issue of WeChat, which is much worse than the similar issue with FB in US and other counties due to the absence of Google and related medias.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- fiatpandas 10y agoKnowing that the reality of censorship is the same as existing networks (e.g. WeChat), what appeal does a Chinese Facebook have for Chinese?
- rfolstad 10y agoI think for fb to enter china it would first need to allow china to spy on its citizens. This censorship tool is just something they can publicly say they changed to allow them in.
- emodendroket 10y agoThey can hit two birds with one stone since they keep talking about wanting to filter the things people share in the US too.
- morgante 10y agoI'm flagging this article because while the topic itself is totally on-topic, the discussion has devolved into ridiculous discussions of "censorship of fake news" which is a totally different problem.
- hartator 10y agoOr maybe not. I am pretty sure dissident views in China are or can be labeled as something close to what we mean by "fake news". Having a big beta test for Facebook in China can also facilitate the expansion of a similar tech to the U.S.
- morgante 10y agoNobody is proposing that the government decide what is "fake news" in the US. Thinking that developing such an algorithm for China (a massive market where censorship is a requirement) is a beta test for a similar tool in the US (where attacking "fake news" is a minor problem) has their priorities out of whack.
- known 10y ago"Media does not spread free opinion; It generates opinion" --Oswald, 1918 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West
- blahi 10y agoThe decline of the West? Published in 1918 and followed by the best 100 years in human history? I like the quote but the irony is just too big for me.
- jon-wood 10y agoYup, World War II was a ball. Everyone loved that, thought it was a highlight of human history (I'll concede the following fifty years have been pretty good if you live in the right part of the world with the right descendants).
- blahi 10y agoThey have been good for every part of the world. And wars are a fact for the entirety of human civilization. I'll take doubling the life expectancy of people China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, other Asian counties, as well as most of Africa as a "concession". Thank you very much!
- anondon 10y agoA censored [favorite service] with state surveillance is better than no [favorite service] is the new normal. Really? It's kind of depressing to see where the world is going,, where the world bends to the will of state actors eventually. Given a long enough timeframe any draconian law can be made the new normal and I think that is what is happening. It's also sad to see the internet become a tool to control entire populations and have them see and experience the world in a way that is convenient for state actors. And every effort to circumvent state control gets regulated before going mainstream. Eg- Look at Bitcoin, the calls for KYC norms, asking customer data. Another example is Tor, numerous attempts to unmask users.
- notliketherest 10y agoWell people do have a choice. But most people don't know how or don't care. That's the real problem.
- gscott 10y agoThe people in China do not really have a choice. Those that disagree or hold a contrary opinion disappear, are held under house arrest, or go on a show trial. Even if you agree 100% with the State but you have a faith or a belief system then you are harassed.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- brianwawok 10y agoHow do you propose we change the laws in China? Lead a revolution?
- gnaritas 10y agoYou've got it a bit backwards, the state is in control, always has been; the world isn't going that way, it's been that way. The Internet is not immune to laws or nations. > And every effort to circumvent state control gets regulated before going mainstream. So efforts to break laws are circumvented by the state who's laws are being broken, hardly surprising or unusual. This is what's expected to happen.
- ljk 10y agowhat are the chances this story will be considered as "fake news" and end up getting buried by facebook?
- codeisawesome 10y agoThe world is eating software.
- amckinlay 10y agoAre there any open source alternatives to Facebook similar to what GNU Social is to Twitter?
- ctrl_freak 10y agoYeah, if you're referring to a mediocre replacement which no one uses, I guess there's diaspora: https://www.joindiaspora.com/ https://www.joindiaspora.com/
- bbarn 10y agoI feel like anyone reading this, on this news site, should be telling every friend and family member they have to abandon facebook, if they aren't already. We, the "guy/gal I know who's really good at tech stuff" need to be the example here, and show in very simple terms why facebook should not be trusted with our information.
- kbart 10y agoAnd what do you say them when they ask: "where do we go then"? The real problem is, that there's no good enough alternative.
- bbarn 10y agoI've enjoyed having no alternative for several years. Not being constantly tied to status updates from others is very freeing, I'd suggest trying that for a while.
- kbart 10y agoYou might, but we are talking about broad circle of ordinary people here, most of whom spend considerable time on Facebook and will not leave it unless you give them a very good reason (privacy concerns, ethical reasons won't fly here, trust me) to do that or offer an attractive alternative. Good luck trying to convince some teenage girl to live at least a day without social media.
- bbarn 10y ago"It got trump elected" worked on my 17 year old daughter :)
- balls187 10y ago> We, the "guy/gal I know who's really good at tech stuff" Being good at tech doesn't necessarily correlate with trend setting and being an influencer.
- schuke 10y agoWithout the censored Google, search experience in China, monopolized by Baidu, has been stalling, even deterioratig for years. Lack of competition does so much more harm than censorship. I as an internet user in China applaud Facebook's rational effort to bring more competition and social connectivity with the world to China.
- kristopolous 10y agoIf you're in china, create a forest of information.
- clusmore 10y agoFunnily enough, I'm in China right now and it appears NYT is blocked here because I can't load the article.
- kristianov 10y agoBreaking news: CEO of Fortune 500 company is a hypocrite. /s
- boredpudding 10y agoWhy hypocrite? It's way better for Facebook to do business in China with censorship, than do no business in China at all. Otherwise other companies will just take that role and do the same Facebook would do.
- jsli 10y agoI think some already did. Say Sina Weibo.
- netsharc 10y ago"It's better for us to cooperate with this regime which goes against our core values of enabling speech, rather than not make money." Oh wait, that's not their core value is it. Their core value is... MONEY!
- ManlyBread 10y agoHail corporate!
- NumberCruncher 10y agoAnd you can give x% of your earnings to charity and talk in TV shows about how does it feel not being a [self-censored negative attribute]. That is why.
- gnipgnip 10y agoThis is very similar to what Soros has said in the past. It's not a very Black & White issue, to be honest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Ux5b6YM9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Ux5b6YM9A
- randiantech 10y agoI dont know why you got downvoted, from a strict business point of view makes sense. Facebook is still a company looking for profit, and China market provides that. I hate gov and corps doing this evil things, but thats a different story.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- trub 10y agotight
- trub 10y agotight. compromising human rights values for capital gains! nice!
- russdill 10y ago"If you work for Facebook, quit. It is morally indefensible for you to use your skills to make that company more powerful. By working there, you are making the world an objectively worse place. I'm sure you can find a job working for a company that you don't have to apologize for all the time. You can do it. I believe in you." -- jwz
- BinaryIdiot 10y agoAlternatively don't quit and work hard to enact change within the organization because it isn't going to happen all by itself. I can understanding wanting to quit and wanting others to quit when a company is doing something morally questionable but this simply means the people who object are leaving while the ones fine with it gain a larger mind share within the company. It's my opinion that an inside dissenter has more power than a quit-in-protest when it ultimately comes down to changing things.
- rubberstamp 10y agoMajority of employees often don't have much say in policy. Quitting is the right thing to do. If no one quits everyone, both leadership and employees, thinks "It must be me as no one else has a problem with it". It applies to customers as well.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago> Majority of employees often don't have much say in policy. Going to have to disagree with you there. I think you'd be surprised how far you can take your ideas and concerns if you're willing to be assertive enough. I've worked in start-ups and companies with over 100,000 employees and if I've found something I felt needed to be changed I was able to find someone in the right place to talk about it with. This isn't a retail employee trying to talk to corporate scenario (which, let's face it, good luck enacting change company wide when you're in retail). This is a technology company. Almost everyone I know at the major tech companies have at least chatted with the CEOs and other executives from time to time. > Quitting is the right thing to do. If no one quits everyone, both leadership and employees, thinks "It must be me as no one else has a problem with it". It applies to customers as well. I've been in a scenario where 7 out of 10 people on a team quit within weeks due to ethical concerns. I can assure you management had zero thoughts about anything being wrong, etc. They all thought it was simply a coincidence. Now this is anecdotal but I was part of a large group who also quit in a similar fashion (approx 70 of 130 quit within 3 months IIRC). As far as everyone who was left could find out, their management felt almost exactly the same way. Maybe Facebook and others would "get it" if people quit I'm just not convinced.
- toodlebunions 10y agoIsn't everyone going to want access to this same tool?
- bootload 10y ago"The social network has quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas" Censorship, suppression tools, fake news, Fb is moving into dystopian Sterling, Stephenson and Gibson territory. “It’s better for Facebook to be a part of enabling conversation, even if it’s not yet the full conversation,” Is the mission statement changing here? In 2010 I remember ploughing through "The Facebook Effect" on a plane to Singapore, reading about ^glowing reports^ of dissidents using Fb to organise themselves. The winds have changed. I'm more inclined to agree with Eben Moglens description of Fb as "PHP do-dads where you get spying for free". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Facebook_Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Facebook_Effect [1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/17/eben_moglen_freedom_box/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/17/eben_moglen_freedom_...
- betolink 10y ago"Making the world a better place"(tm) The hypocrisy of Silicon Valley is off the charts.
- superquest 10y agoI'm traveling in Vietnam and the local friends that I've made all agree that the most liberalizing / westernizing force is Vietnamese-American Facebook friends. It seems like just the passive influence of friends living in a different culture can have an impact. I wonder if the same thing would happen over time in China? As it stands it's kinda tough to maintain past friendships that I've made traveling in China. As soon as I stopped using WeChat, all those friendships died.
- olalonde 10y agoI think you're being a bit hyperbolic, HN uses the same mechanism (shadow banning) for moderation.
- codedokode 10y agoI think banning a spammer and removing a truthful post because the government did not like it are clearly different things.
- jacobolus 10y agoHN is a small self-contained community of semi-anonymous strangers. If it instead aspired to be the social network for a whole country, full of real names and faces and street addresses, it would be deeply troubling to have government censors tracking the actions of every person on the site and shadow-banning anyone matching some undisclosed criteria (but keeping evidence of their comments for potential uses in later crack-down).
- olalonde 10y agoIt wouldn't be deeply troubling, it is deeply troubling. The Chinese government has been at it for many years, on WeChat, Weibo, Renren, Qzone, QQ, etc. Having lived in China for ~5 years, it sucks but it is absolutely better than nothing. It also is not remotely like being "blindfolded, speaking to a room you don't know is empty or not". I don't feel that way on HN either though I know getting shadow banned is a possibility. The fact is, there is some censorship and surveillance in China, and Facebook can't do anything about it nor is it exerting any sort of pressure by staying out. I understand that it is scary for us, westerners, to watch this unfold, but for the Chinese people, gaining access to a censored Facebook would be a step forward overall (right now, Facebook it is essentially 100% censored).
- jacobolus 10y agoBuilding these tools for the Chinese government would give every other government grounds to demand that Facebook provide the same. It’s a step down a slippery slope toward worldwide total surveillance and censorship. These tools can and will be used against activists, members of minority political parties, dissidents, business rivals, etc. When some African dictatorship jails some journalist’s whole family without charges, the engineers at Facebook who built the surveillance software will be complicit.
- yzh 10y agoThe question is, do people in China really need Facebook now? I used to live in China and I still have lots of connections there, none of my friends are using Facebook-like social network services. People are using Wechat (a mobile-based semi-private social network), weibo (a Twitter clone with more features), and Zhihu (a Quora clone), and a zillion live streaming share sites. All the Facebook clone sites in China are dying. That being said, I agree that this is still an evil move for Facebook.
- api 10y agoThis will almost certainly be used everywhere, not just China. Us crypto cyber libertarian geeks have been warning about the problem of closed silos and Internet centralization for over a decade. I kind of hate being right, given that the reality is turning out to actually be a lot worse than what I feared. I mostly was concerned in the past with loss of ability to innovate and surveillance, but the collision of deep learning, big data, and closed communication platforms is making those concerns seem petty. The potential for massive scale propaganda and discourse shaping bordering on outright mind control is unbelievable. Imagine an invisible automated agent participating in every human conversation and quietly steering it toward desired topics and outcomes and away from undesirable ones. It's intimate influence at scale.
- Double_Cast 10y ago"Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend."
- amasad 10y agoIt'd be interesting to read if Chine has any good reasons for censorship. This is mostly likely a taboo question to ask in hacker communities but I wouldn't rule out that there are good reasons for censoring. In fact, I have an anecdotal story about where censorship might make sense. In Jordan, we had Islamists subtly inciting jihad using online news outlets on benign things like Halloween parties. Calling them "satanist rituals" and in at least one case that incited violence against a group of people at a Halloween party. In the West free speech is better understood, however, it's not the case in many parts of the world. The concept might not even exist.
- guscost 10y agoFree speech doesn't work without lots of culture to support it. The enthusiastic defenses of free speech in the West are also intended to promote that culture (and claim that it can continue to coexist with free speech). If you have people organizing violence regularly using their freedom of speech, to the point where it is a serious problem, something of that culture has got to be missing. At least that's how I understand it.
- seatonsanon 10y agoIn my opinion it's because China is a big target for Western propaganda. The truth is that Western nations are still quite sophisticated in how their propaganda is spread. You can see this with the type of colonial mentality that some Asian nations have, where they inherently believe that anything from the West is "better." It's quite insidious when you have a group of self-loathing people because they grew up feeling inferior. So I can definitely see why China wants to fight against this.
- paradite 10y agoI have commented on this issue several times here on HN. I have 3 main points on why censorship can be justified in the context of China: preventing spread of rumours, unique culture background which values stability more than anything else, and different stage of development as other countries hence different priorities. Here you can see my comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12934732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12934732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11405320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11405320 I wouldn't go into the realm of conspiracies where you have the Western propaganda deliberately destabilizing China for their strategic interests, since they are not backed up with facts.
- imaginenore 10y ago"Social" Network.
- cmdrfred 10y agoFacebooks new business model CAAS Censorship as a service, at home and abroad. William Randolf Hurst would be proud. Time for me to cancel my account.
- jakobegger 10y agohere's the thing: Facebook has always censored posts. Try posting a picture of a nipple -- will be removed instantly. It's just that this is a form of censorship that most Americans find acceptable. For example in Austria, where I live, most people have other standards, and Facebooks policies seem arbitrary. Recently, a story made the news where Facebook repeatedly refused to remove a harassing video of a girl being beaten by peers; we Austrians don't understand how Americans consider violent videos "free speech" while being super strict about policing anything related to sex. Some things like Nazi symbolism that are considered free speech in the US are forbidden in most of Europe --- for a good reason! It took us a long time to get rid of the old ideologies, we don't want them coming back!
- jstanley 10y ago> Some things like Nazi symbolism that are considered free speech in the US are forbidden in most of Europe --- for a good reason! It took us a long time to get rid of the old ideologies, we don't want them coming back! Sorry, that's not a good reason.
- rmc 10y agoStopping another Holocaust or Nazi regime is not a good reason?
- Crespyl 10y agoBanning a symbol does nothing to prevent human evil.
- dennisgorelik 10y agoBanning Nazi symbols does not stop Nazi-like regime.
- SkyMarshal 10y agoThe risk you run with banning stuff is making people want it even more. Human nature.
- 10y ago
- codedokode 10y agoFacebook would not be the first american company cooperating with chinese government. I remember Skype has a special version for China with censorship module built in. You can even find a list of censored words on the Internet. Chinese government made it so that they win anyway: either Facebook cooperates or it is blocked and people use some local censored social network.
- natural219 10y agoNow that fervor over "fake news" is reaching a boiling point, and people are now paying attention to the fact that information (particularly that from social media) shapes their entire material, even political, lives... ...makes totally sense for them to go full bore & embrace philosophies of more central control over who gets access to what information. After all, isn't that what everyone is clamoring for?
- agumonkey 10y agoSo much for fixing fake news. Or maybe Zuck is getting into Minsky semantics territory.
- amelius 10y agoWhy don't the Chinese use VPNs or Tor on a larger scale to circumvent all of this? Is it a matter of convenience?
- venomsnake 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall
- idra 10y agoThe majority don't care. Those who do use VPNs, they are common knowledge there.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- odammit 10y agoI've always been curious if China's censorship of content included examining files for steganography. I could imagine a tumblog of cat pics packed with all things you aren't supposed to know.
- DominikR 10y agoWho is "we Austrians"? I'm an Austrian and I have no problem with Facebook not censoring that video! Just so everybody here knows why the Austrian government wanted it banned: It showed how Muslim immigrants beat up a 16 year old girl and broke her jaw, reportedly as punishment because she dared to pull the veil off a Muslim girl. That doesn't sit well with our government that wants to invite all of the Middle East here! And probably the same is true for jakobegger, who enjoys freedom of speech only when it is an opinion that he isn't offended by, otherwise censorship is very much appreciated.
- herbst 10y agoAgreed. He does not sound like the austrians i know. Except the sex thing, i really dont get that ether.
- dang 10y agoI have no opinion about Austrian politics but you can't post like this here, and we've asked you so many times not to, that I'm banning your account. It's one thing if people intend to use HN in good faith and don't know what the rules are; quite another to just keep flouting them. The personal attack in your comment was also egregious. Using HN primarily for political or ideological battle is poison here. Regardless of what your politics or ideology are, this site exists to gratify intellectual curiosity, not weaponized conversation. This is particularly critical, because we can't have both: the one simply tramples the other, and that's not ok. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13020908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13020908 and marked it off-topic.
- Keverw 10y ago> The social network has quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas Sounds like it's just censoring in China then. As long as they don't start censoring US content, I'm happy. Facebook is probably doing censorship anyways without this China tool. I talk to a friend in Germany and he was telling me how the German government is mad at Facebook. There's some law that makes Facebook censorship Holocaust denial and hate speech posts. Which I guess if they have an office in Germany or even the maybe EU I guess they have to follow it but there's news story of there justice minster saying they have to do it. http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Germany-warns-Facebook-Clamp-down-on-Holocaust-denial-or-else-413595 http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Germany-warns-Facebook-Clamp-d... But from my understanding, all censoring is geo-located as is. So they could block those posts in Germany only, but in the US they'd still show up. I don't really support a government censoring speech even if I agree or didn't agree with the speech but I guess it doesn't really effect me so I don't really care. Germany or China isn't my government. Plus I grew up with American ideologies. America is one of the few nations left with free speech it seems.
- yAnonymous 10y agoGerman here. Facebook gave a private company (Bertelsmann/Arvato) that works directly for the government free reign to delete/censor as they see fit. The laws regarding hate speech are so blurry that it practically gives them permission to remove anything they want and that's exactly what they do. They don't only delete content that is strictly against the law, but also content that is government critical, because it "incites public unrest". They also remove content that promotes other political parties.
- Keverw 10y agoInteresting. So possibly even the same tool the article mentions, but different rules/config/people setup with access then for China. Also interesting they have a private company working directly for the government. I figured in those cases someone from the German gov would have to mail or fax a letter to Facebook for every individual request, sorta like how DMCA works. Super spooky sounding they'd just outsource it to another company. Does sound it like's ripe for abuse then since you mention censoring content promoting other political parties. Seems like once the tool is setup, Facebook is then no longer directly involved beyond that point. On another note, I am super surprised how many political parties Germany has compared to here in America. Seems like more choices, the better.
- mheiler 10y agoIt's an improvement for the people in China.
- seertaak 10y agoI came here to point out the hypocrisy of condemning Facebook's censorship tool while at the same time demanding something be done about "hate speech" and "fake news". Apparently, it's only censorship when the others do it. When we do it, it's to promote love, freedom, democracy, and "safety".
- will_pseudonym 10y agoExactly. To take the discussion to its logical (to me) conclusion, fake news is in the eyes of the beholder. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/Tianasquare.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/Tianasquare.j...
- eveningcoffee 10y agoNews can be objectively fake - that is made up or staged. But there are of course many subtleties between this and objective news. One has to know the specific bias of the reporter, editor and the owner.
- akerro 10y agoIt's only a matter of time how long before that tool is used by any other "human-right-respecting" country, like UK or US.
- Mikushi 10y agoWhat hypocrisy? I reject both, many do. I legitimately hate most western values (I am French of German & Portuguese descent to give some context) for those reasons, hypocrisy central. When I hear the French PM talk about our values, I want to go and ask him about ravaging countries who have not asked for anything, about lying to the general population, about helping entities getting away with ravaging our planet, about helping regimes that are an open disgrace to these so called value. And also, where are our values when we support regimes such as the UK or US who are stomping on them on a daily basis. The only freedom western society tolerates is the freedom to agree with their views. There is an illusion of freedom and democracy, we are only allowed to operate and debate on a small spectrum, any deviation is squashed violently and incorporated in the next generation teachings to make sure we format proper citizen who support "our values" and don't go on a thinking spree.
- EJTH 10y agoWhy create a new one? Who not just use the one they use for Europeans and Americans?
- mSparks 10y agoAnd then one day. By accident or design. It stops working.
- akerro 10y agoFor a moment I thought that Facebook might be a good guy when they launched facebookcorewwwi.onion, to let users from China and other unfriendly governments access Facebook and bypass local censorship.
- lgxz 10y ago1. They order you to censor contents; 2. They order you to give them the account of censored contents; 3. They find real person of the accounts and put them into prison.
- paradite 10y ago1. They do not order you to censor contents. 2. They kill the real person on the streets.
- pasta 10y agoI see a lot of people complaining about what Facebook does. Censorship, fake news, manipulating your mood by changing what you see. Apparently nobody cares because they are still using Facebook. But why even use a tool that can misguide you, can manipulate you, you cannot trust? I can't understand this. Dropping Facebook years ago didn't make me a loner or a stranger. Dropping LinkedIn didn't make me jobless. Dropping Google didn't make me miserable.
- markharris99 10y agoSo there have been other posts discussing ethics. About how developers should stand up and rail against their managers/CEOs when the company has asked them to build something unethical. Where are all the developers now? That's right, underneath their desks coding away. The great ZUCK has spoken and as true CUCKs they bowed down and did his bidding. No one on the development team is going to speak out. They need their lifestyle maintained. The hipocrasy is not unexpected. To the world, developers will scream ethics. In private, they will cave, back to their safe spaces no doubt!
- meira 10y agoHello, Uber 2.0. WeChat greets you.
- zecg 10y ago> “It’s better for Facebook to be a part of enabling conversation, even if it’s not yet the full conversation,” It's also nice to be surrounded by people, even if you're hitting them on the head one by one as they drop into a mass grave.
- ryao 10y agoThis is the opinion of an a US citizen who has family in China. In fact, I just spent a month there visiting. My relatives are missing out on plenty because various US companies will not compromise with the censors. Rather than have crippled foreign options that are better than what they have now, they get no foreign options at all. The lack of participation from foreign companies encourages the development of domestic companies that are far better at cooperating with censors than foreign companies ever could be. It also decreases the strain on the censors, making censorship even more effective. After all, there is no need to pay people to review foreign language content on YouTube when it is blocked entirely. Downvote me if you want, but the reality is that refusing to cooperate with censors on things for Chinese IP addresses actually increases censorship. Cooperation does not mean that those cooperating support the censors. However, failure to cooperate does far more to support the censors than cooperation ever could. I could say more, but I probably have said too much already. Concern for my family in China means that I can never truly speak freely on this topic in public.
- herbst 10y agoI see your point but not how it increases censorship. If this platforms would show up then only because they are heavily censored. So what would change on that front?
- ryao 10y agoThe censorship is a blacklist, not a whitelist. You try reviewing all content added to YouTube in realtime and then decide what effect cooperation has on censorship via black listing. Even media companies armed with the DMCA cannot fully censor YouTube via blacklists in the form of DMCA takedown notices. Furthermore, YouTube is just one example. However, it makes for a fantastic analogy. The MPAA would be thrilled if YouTube and every other video sharing site on the internet would just shut down. That is effectively what the Chinese censors experienced when foreign companies refused to cooperate. That is not just true for videos either, but that is where the MPAA analogy breaks down. By the way, I had edited my post for clarity before I saw your reply. Your question might have already been answered by my clarifications.
- meshr 10y agoWhat's a shame. So all facebook users will sponsor worlds biggest censorship. Next step, facebook will sell censorship rights to anyone.
- bitL 10y agoThis is necessary as a salami method of bringing changes to China's policies in a generation or two when the old guards die out, a usual exercise in social engineering, given West is still relevant by then. Having said that, I am glad I am gone off Facebook and have means to block their tracking over unrelated Internet sites.
- return0 10y agoAt some point not far from today the western governments should legislate freedom of speech in social media. We are now at 40% of people getting their news from them. Is that not a big enough number to stop pretending they are "just private companies"?
- cryoshon 10y agoZuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks
- bogomipz 10y agoFrom a Guardian article a couple of weeks ago: 'He also rejected the idea that people’s news feeds are becoming increasingly personalized to the point that opposing views are no longer visible – a phenomenon known as the filter bubble.' “We’ve studied it a lot. I really care about this,” he said, adding that in order to have a good impact on the world he wants people to have a “diversity of information”. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/10/facebook-fake-news-us-election-mark-zuckerberg-donald-trump https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/10/facebook-...
- aedron 10y agoA million users isn't cool. A billion users though...
- paki123 10y agoHow about you just don't use facebook?
- ambicapter 10y agoI wish for a dream world where every company faced with trying to drum up business in countries known for human rights violation instead focus on putting their own countries so far ahead economically that those latter countries have no choice but to 'play nice'. I'm aware a lot of people aren't fans of cultural exportation but this is just a half-formed thought.
- siculars 10y agoRemember when Apple was like na, we're not gonna build that feature for you Uncle Sam cause then you and every other government will abuse it. They must have allowed China to backdoor the iPhone. Also, this is evil. Forget China and forget doing things they want them done. There are more people in the world not in China than in China. Would you rather the world be more like the USA or more like China? For better or worse I say USA. This is how manufacturing left the US. We allowed it to happen. Why is there no regulation that says if you build stuff anywhere it has to be to US labor standards? I think that's what Bernie and Trump were getting at. Fair trade. I would put this Facebook debacle in that bucket. Downvote away!
- devy 10y agoDisclaimer: I was born and grew up in China in the first half of my life and been calling USA home the second half. And I am fortunate enough to be the first generation who grow up during the PC era and Internet era. With the high likelihood of getting massively down voted given the predominant sentiments here, I am still going to to play the devil's advocate. So here it is: I am applauding Facebook's plan to enter China to connect 721+ million people(netizen count is not 1 billion as some of you claimed, see [1]. Population is 1.4 billion and a little over half of that have access to Internet.) and their pragmatic approach to get to that goal. So you may ask why I am applauding FB bending over backwards to the censorship (which btw I don't agree to). Considering these: 1. Majority of the rules people here disputes in Chinese media censorship laws are political related[2]. But Facebook is NOT a political platform per se. So to me, by entering the Chinese market, it makes sense to put aside some ideology disagreements as a trade off to serve and connect the 721 million people who otherwise wouldn't have for a slew of FB services. And it's probably making a lot of economic sense for FB as well. 2. The tech-savvy few who will always be able to access the uncensored Internet anyway, so by agreeing to the local laws of censoring on one social platform does not significantly impact the freedom of speech. In fact, VPNs are popular and becoming the norm for younger generation who access information, which was dubbed as "climbing over the wall"[3] 3. Any company or mission claiming "organize the world's information" or "connecting the world" but fail to service half of the world is a joke. And yes, Chinese Internet users are accounted for that half[1] of the Internet world. By retreating or not entering(or getting involuntarily banned for that matter), they are doing a dis-service to the Chinese Internet users due to lack of absence[4]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of... [2] http://www.hrichina.org/sites/default/files/PDFs/State-Secrets-Report/HRIC_StateSecrets_02.pdf http://www.hrichina.org/sites/default/files/PDFs/State-Secre... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_circumvention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_circumvent... [4] https://books.google.com/books?id=V1u1f8sv3k8C&pg=PA313#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=V1u1f8sv3k8C&pg=PA313#v=on...
- SZJX 10y agoI simply find it ironic as hell that people demand Facebook "ban fake news" on one hand and then bash it for developing "censorship tools" on the other. Come on, what's the difference between the two at all? So what kind of authority is Facebook to decide whether a piece of news is "fake" or not? This is very, very dangerous and stupid if you are truly trying to hold on to your proclaimed "freedom of speech" or whatnot. As Greenwald very well put it, the Democratic Party are just scrambling to find every kind of scapegoat they can find, without ever admitting they themselves are the problem. Come on, people didn't vote for Trump because they were misguided by "fake" news, or to put it another way, news that don't work in the Democrats' favor. People did so because the alternative is simply too horrible/hopeless for them to contemplate. Simple as that. So either you admit that what China has been doing is essentially not anything different from what you're demanding all over the place now (actually, the majority of the "censorship" in China is against smearing campaigns which entail totally false accusations against the Communist Party, which could be potentially very socially unsettling in their eyes), or you admit that what you've been demanding is some absolutely stupid and dangerous nonsense. Otherwise it's just another example of western hypocrisy, bias and double standards against China at its finest.