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It's a bit telling when a media giant like CBS can't strike a happy medium by you know - both not censoring it in the US and censoring it in china - instead, ch

It's a bit telling when a media giant like CBS can't strike a happy medium by you know - both not censoring it in the US and censoring it in china - instead, choosing to censor the whole thing outright on the entire platform. It's almost like all these American companies are moving en masse to do business in China with the sole purpose of increasing profits every single quarter, irrespective of (and arguably, now encouraging) the numerous, controversial human rights and ethics violations that China is known for.

save_ferris 7y ago
Their decision to universally censor the content may have been contractually obligated by the Chinese. Not saying that's definitely the case, but it makes sense. If one version of the content appears on approved channels in China and another uncensored version can be seen via VPN, that certainly wouldn't make the government look good. As far as Americans using China as a means to increase profits, that's capitalism working exactly the way it was designed, unfortunately. The stock market doesn't care who was best-behaved last quarter, the market cares who made the most money last quarter. Our system is woefully incapable of factoring behavior and ethics into the equation.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  To be fair they should censor any content that would be subversive in India. Then why stop there? Make sure all media is vetted by all nations for moral and political purity.
  - derefr 7y ago
    They don’t care about fairness, they care about profit (or rather, they care about how much their share value would drop if they sacrificed a given source of profit.) If the American stock market would punish an American [public] corporation for reneging on being a lapdog to China, then said American corporation is basically constitutionally incapable of leaving China (if it’s structured in the usual way with a board whose positions are controlled by shareholder election.) And right now, it seems that China is the only market that traders see as large enough to make them short the stock when you do anything to mess with it. Private corporations, public corporations that are still founder-controlled, and “public-benefit” corporations might be immune to this effect, but your average traded C-Corp or S-Corp won’t be.
    - smsm42 7y ago
      > If the American stock market would punish an American [public] corporation for reneging on being a lapdog to China If.
  - save_ferris 7y ago
    I completely agree that this sets a bad precedent. I don't think CBS is in the right here. But as long as these companies have financial interests in abandoning values that we've come to rely on in the US, this is going to keep happening.
swebs 7y ago
It's also strange how quick people in this very thread are to brush it off and shift the blame. "An authoritarian communist regime is engaging in human rights violations? This is capitalism's fault :^)"
- save_ferris 7y ago
  OP posted an article on why an American company chose to accommodate said authoritarian communist regime, against the principles of our domestic media culture. What motivates a company to do such a thing, if not capitalism?
  - gambler 7y ago
    >What motivates a company to do such a thing, if not capitalism? You're just proving grand parent commenter's point. Saying that capitalism motivates censorship is like saying that money is what causes theft and robbery. It's a meaningless statement based on conflating motivation in one specific case with motivation for a class of actions in general. Not to mention that you're also conflating an economic system with what most people would simply call greed.
    - fzeroracer 7y ago
      Capitalism absolutely motivates censorship. Companies change their products to fit regional taste in order to appeal to the largest market possible. To say otherwise would be to ignore the entire history of the gaming industry. We can argue about whether or not certain changes are good or not, but it is undeniable that companies modify their products for maximum profit which is at the core what capitalism is about.
- lostgame 7y ago
  Um, no, this is about American censorship, not the actual issues in China.
  - dmix 7y ago
    This is a large American media company bowing to pressure from a totalitarian regime. Even Google bowed down after initially taking a stand. So many other's have as well. Same with the silly apology tour multiple companies did over merely including Taiwan and Hong Kong as separate countries from China...in a dropdown menu on their websites: https://www.businessinsider.com/zara-marriott-qantas-apologized-to-china-listing-taiwan-as-country-2018-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/zara-marriott-qantas-apologi... It's almost becoming a new-normal, which is concerning.
mikequinlan 7y ago
CBS said "This is the creative solution that we agreed upon with the producers". I have been wondering if the producers insisted that the segment be censored in all regions so that everyone would know about it. Otherwise Americans would never know about the censorship.
- fucking_tragedy 7y ago
  You don't fight censorship by doubling down on censorship. It's entirely possible to show the uncensored version in America and raise awareness that the segment was censored in other regions.
  - mgbmtl 7y ago
    But then it wouldn't be on the front page of HN or a NY Times article. I hope it's still available if you access some obscure torrent site using a VPN.
  - kbenson 7y ago
    It's entirely possible to fight censorship by selectively doubling down on censorship when you know or suspect the effect of that censorship will backfire and have the opposite result. It's not just about what you do, it's about the outcome you expect and aim for.
    - icelancer 7y ago
      This is absolutely true. However, I am not sure CBS deserves the benefit of the doubt here...
  - kitotik 7y ago
    Somehow this reminds me of the “Explicit Language” stickers on music packaging that Tipper Gore and the PMRC brought about in the 80s. Those stickers sold product!
  - deogeo 7y ago
    What better way to raise awareness that it was censored, than by showing the censored version in the US?
TomMckenny 7y ago
Absolutely. Most corporations have no more loyalty to one "side" or the other nor any more loyalty to an ideology than the Coke/Fanta hybrid-monstrosity of the 1940s. It took employees to force Google to reverse some of its policies, not its board of directors. At the same time, as the US withdraws from the world, China fills in. They zealously sell the surveillance state and its equipment world wide just as the US exported its form of capital constrained democracy. So it's not remotely just CBS nor just in the US. For those annoyed by the occasionally harmful American hegemony, just wait till you see what China is going to do.
- f5thesystem 7y ago
  The last couple of days I've been learning a little more about China's emerging surveillance state and while terrifying to think about and worse sad knowing they're building essentially concentration camps, I am wondering how effective are China's policies. i.e. does China's investment and push towards a controlled society actually come out ahead compared to if they didn't? Without looking at any figures, surely policing the internet, building large re-education camps, and employing a whole lot of social police gobbles up a lot of resources. The people employed could be doing something else productive right? So would the safety gained from their extreme surveillance state increase over all productivity due to less violence or lower productivity because the net gain from a safer society is less than what would be gained if the resources were distributed to other societal needs like healthcare and infrastructure?
  - ativzzz 7y ago
    I think it's less about building a productive China, and more about maintaining power for those in charge, but they could also honestly believe that the masses need to be controlled in order to have a productive China.
    - smolder 7y ago
      IMHO, the US also has an overreaching surveillance state, and it also exists to maintain power at the cost of overall productivity and quality of life, but it's to a lesser extent than China.
IIAOPSW 7y ago
The communists got one thing right. We really will sell them the rope they use to hang us.
- acct1771 7y ago
  These are the Globalists we were warned about, by the way.
j16sdiz 7y ago
RMB, is still not a freely convertible currency. If you factor that in, those "profit" are nothing but numbers.
tomohawk 7y ago
There is no happy medium to be found by compromising on basic human rights with the CCP

save_ferris 7y ago

Their decision to universally censor the content may have been contractually obligated by the Chinese. Not saying that's definitely the case, but it makes sense. If one version of the content appears on approved channels in China and another uncensored version can be seen via VPN, that certainly wouldn't make the government look good. As far as Americans using China as a means to increase profits, that's capitalism working exactly the way it was designed, unfortunately. The stock market doesn't care who was best-behaved last quarter, the market cares who made the most money last quarter. Our system is woefully incapable of factoring behavior and ethics into the equation.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
To be fair they should censor any content that would be subversive in India. Then why stop there? Make sure all media is vetted by all nations for moral and political purity.
- derefr 7y ago
  They don’t care about fairness, they care about profit (or rather, they care about how much their share value would drop if they sacrificed a given source of profit.) If the American stock market would punish an American [public] corporation for reneging on being a lapdog to China, then said American corporation is basically constitutionally incapable of leaving China (if it’s structured in the usual way with a board whose positions are controlled by shareholder election.) And right now, it seems that China is the only market that traders see as large enough to make them short the stock when you do anything to mess with it. Private corporations, public corporations that are still founder-controlled, and “public-benefit” corporations might be immune to this effect, but your average traded C-Corp or S-Corp won’t be.
  - smsm42 7y ago
    > If the American stock market would punish an American [public] corporation for reneging on being a lapdog to China If.
- save_ferris 7y ago
  I completely agree that this sets a bad precedent. I don't think CBS is in the right here. But as long as these companies have financial interests in abandoning values that we've come to rely on in the US, this is going to keep happening.

swebs 7y ago

It's also strange how quick people in this very thread are to brush it off and shift the blame. "An authoritarian communist regime is engaging in human rights violations? This is capitalism's fault :^)"

save_ferris 7y ago
OP posted an article on why an American company chose to accommodate said authoritarian communist regime, against the principles of our domestic media culture. What motivates a company to do such a thing, if not capitalism?
- gambler 7y ago
  >What motivates a company to do such a thing, if not capitalism? You're just proving grand parent commenter's point. Saying that capitalism motivates censorship is like saying that money is what causes theft and robbery. It's a meaningless statement based on conflating motivation in one specific case with motivation for a class of actions in general. Not to mention that you're also conflating an economic system with what most people would simply call greed.
  - fzeroracer 7y ago
    Capitalism absolutely motivates censorship. Companies change their products to fit regional taste in order to appeal to the largest market possible. To say otherwise would be to ignore the entire history of the gaming industry. We can argue about whether or not certain changes are good or not, but it is undeniable that companies modify their products for maximum profit which is at the core what capitalism is about.
lostgame 7y ago
Um, no, this is about American censorship, not the actual issues in China.
- dmix 7y ago
  This is a large American media company bowing to pressure from a totalitarian regime. Even Google bowed down after initially taking a stand. So many other's have as well. Same with the silly apology tour multiple companies did over merely including Taiwan and Hong Kong as separate countries from China...in a dropdown menu on their websites: https://www.businessinsider.com/zara-marriott-qantas-apologized-to-china-listing-taiwan-as-country-2018-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/zara-marriott-qantas-apologi... It's almost becoming a new-normal, which is concerning.

mikequinlan 7y ago

CBS said "This is the creative solution that we agreed upon with the producers". I have been wondering if the producers insisted that the segment be censored in all regions so that everyone would know about it. Otherwise Americans would never know about the censorship.

fucking_tragedy 7y ago
You don't fight censorship by doubling down on censorship. It's entirely possible to show the uncensored version in America and raise awareness that the segment was censored in other regions.
- mgbmtl 7y ago
  But then it wouldn't be on the front page of HN or a NY Times article. I hope it's still available if you access some obscure torrent site using a VPN.
- kbenson 7y ago
  It's entirely possible to fight censorship by selectively doubling down on censorship when you know or suspect the effect of that censorship will backfire and have the opposite result. It's not just about what you do, it's about the outcome you expect and aim for.
  - icelancer 7y ago
    This is absolutely true. However, I am not sure CBS deserves the benefit of the doubt here...
- kitotik 7y ago
  Somehow this reminds me of the “Explicit Language” stickers on music packaging that Tipper Gore and the PMRC brought about in the 80s. Those stickers sold product!
- deogeo 7y ago
  What better way to raise awareness that it was censored, than by showing the censored version in the US?

TomMckenny 7y ago

Absolutely. Most corporations have no more loyalty to one "side" or the other nor any more loyalty to an ideology than the Coke/Fanta hybrid-monstrosity of the 1940s. It took employees to force Google to reverse some of its policies, not its board of directors. At the same time, as the US withdraws from the world, China fills in. They zealously sell the surveillance state and its equipment world wide just as the US exported its form of capital constrained democracy. So it's not remotely just CBS nor just in the US. For those annoyed by the occasionally harmful American hegemony, just wait till you see what China is going to do.

f5thesystem 7y ago
The last couple of days I've been learning a little more about China's emerging surveillance state and while terrifying to think about and worse sad knowing they're building essentially concentration camps, I am wondering how effective are China's policies. i.e. does China's investment and push towards a controlled society actually come out ahead compared to if they didn't? Without looking at any figures, surely policing the internet, building large re-education camps, and employing a whole lot of social police gobbles up a lot of resources. The people employed could be doing something else productive right? So would the safety gained from their extreme surveillance state increase over all productivity due to less violence or lower productivity because the net gain from a safer society is less than what would be gained if the resources were distributed to other societal needs like healthcare and infrastructure?
- ativzzz 7y ago
  I think it's less about building a productive China, and more about maintaining power for those in charge, but they could also honestly believe that the masses need to be controlled in order to have a productive China.
  - smolder 7y ago
    IMHO, the US also has an overreaching surveillance state, and it also exists to maintain power at the cost of overall productivity and quality of life, but it's to a lesser extent than China.

IIAOPSW 7y ago

The communists got one thing right. We really will sell them the rope they use to hang us.

acct1771 7y ago
These are the Globalists we were warned about, by the way.

j16sdiz 7y ago

RMB, is still not a freely convertible currency. If you factor that in, those "profit" are nothing but numbers.

tomohawk 7y ago

There is no happy medium to be found by compromising on basic human rights with the CCP