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YouTube shuts down 210 Chinese channels posting about Hong Kong
- ddingus 7y agoThis is not OK with me. Nothing wrong with people in the world being informed. What the hell? Feeling like censorship is escalating too quickly here.
- andymoe 7y agoThis was state propaganda that was shut down.
- ddingus 7y agoYeah? Got details?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- johnisgood 7y agoEven if that is true, so? Who are we to make judgments for other people, or who are we to deprive them of the opportunity to make their own judgments? I know, YouTube can do as it pleases and they do not need to provide a reason either, but these answers make me think that they justify censorship as long as it is something "I believe is propaganda" or "I do not like" and the like.
- ansy 7y agoDid you read the article? This is a disinformation campaign by a nation state. This is information like literally made-up-for-clicks fake news articles on Facebook is information.
- abdulhaq 7y agoSo ban Fox news?
- winrid 7y agoHow do you know? Not being a jerk. Genuinely curious.
- indalo 7y agoThis smells like sealioning.
- johnisgood 7y ago> Sealioning is a type of trolling or harassment which consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions. The harasser who uses this tactic also uses fake civility so as to discredit their target. Where is the harassment? There was a question asked. No persistence. No repeated questions. You are also assuming the intent to be malicious. What is your goal?
- indalo 7y agoIts "or" harassment. The approach is to generally ask benign seeming questions that are very complex to answer. In the gp if of my comment there is already context and is a reply to something else. Bypassing all of that to ask how the entire thing works is likely a disingenuous attempt at using an asymmetrically simple question asking for a huge answer.
- winrid 7y agoNah
- serf 7y agoRidiculous effort to help avoid answering an honest question.
- 7y ago
- IloveHN84 7y agoThis still baffles me.. why not using YouReporter for this kind of things? Google is known to be bribed and corrupted by governments
- jazzyjackson 7y agoWould love a source for this "is known" business...
- serf 7y agoI don't think that it's correct to call Google corrupted, but I tend to believe that a corporation will sink as low as its' host government needs it to -- and the United States doesn't have too great a track record with regards to fair global politics and open/honest behavior. In other words : When your government asks your business to play ball, you'll more often than not do so. 'Irish Google' is only a nice tax evasion -- Google itself is at the beck and call of the US -- if only for how hard it'd be to operate without their support.
- tuberelay 7y agohttps://www.youtube.com/user/CCTVNEWSbeijing/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/CCTVNEWSbeijing/videos There are armies of weird looking accounts posting and upvoting obsessively in odd, non-organic patterns. Someone is obviously running a massive sockpuppet army.
- xster 7y agoWell it's the official state apparatus with 1.2 billion viewers with 10x the viewership of BBC. There's tons of ways you can criticize it but sockpuppetry is probably not the best one to go for.
- est 7y ago> Well it's the official state apparatus with 1.2 billion viewers with 10x the viewership of BBC. No it's not. Youtube is blocked from the 1.2b viewers. Also, not everyone in China watch CCTV. Young people don't even watch TV anymore.
- qtplatypus 7y agoGenuine exchange of views and information should be protected. However these where not genuine people. It just like stopping someone who is trying to sell magic crystals that cure cancer.
- serf 7y ago>However these where not genuine people. It just like stopping someone who is trying to sell magic crystals that cure cancer. My problem with that whole concept is that someone has to make that judgement about whether or not 'people are genuine', and that someone may get it wrong eventually.
- moksly 7y agoI really wish the cyberpunk novels I read in my youth would stop becoming reality. Especially Distraction by Bruce Sterling comes to mind. It’s just so crazy that political entities run false campaigns, and that the impact of these campaigns is so profound. I’m happy YouTube is fighting back, but at the same time I can’t help but wonder if our social media platforms are really geared to fight it. With so many hours of video uploaded, it seems impossible to regulate. I imagine that they are trying their best, but aren’t SEO people showing us every day, that it’s fairly easy to game the system? The worst part is the apparent lack of consequences. Does the Chinese government really care 210 of their propaganda channels were shut down?
- rdlecler1 7y agoThey’ll get better. They have to or someone will replace them. This kind of propaganda is a disease in a system that has not evolved to identify/combat it systematically.
- qtplatypus 7y agoI wonder if this is a trail run for many of these companies for the US presidential election.
- computerfriend 7y agoNot everything is about the US elections. Hong Kong's future is independently important.
- jazzyjackson 7y agoThere is conjecture floating around that Google/Facebook/Twitter are flexing their anti-propoganda muscles to avoid government regulation. ("See? We can block state actors all on our own")
- dirtyid 7y agoAre there any details released about FB/Twitter/Youtube removals other than we think these are state actors? I know twitter released a data dump but has there been any analysis? It's not that the problem isn't worth addressing, but non of these companies has had a good record with moderating political topics so far. There was complaints a few months back by Chinese YouTuber who cater to Chinese audiences that their subscriber and likes weren't comporting to like/vote/subscriber/dashboard statistics, most people just chalked it up to automatic VPN flagging. I'd like a little more transparency, otherwise it appears western social media is validating and devolving towards Great Fire Wall.
- winrid 7y agoStuff like this makes me feel like we're the suckers. 1. What if the law that's being opposed is legitimate? Should someone that commits murder in Taiwan be able to escape the law in HK? 2. All the accounts are created through VPNs. Well, YT is blocked in China. If Chinese people are trying to show us what the protesters are actually like (I don't know for real either way) they would have to use a VPN. And they would be inclined to work together to vote up related content for awareness. 3. If a state like let's say Texas in the US had a legal system where I could commit a crime in PA and escape to Texas, wouldn't we want to fix that? Of course there would be protests. Think of the recent protests we've had in France, just for tax reasons. You think if this kind of law changed in Texas you wouldn't see fires and overturned cars? My point is, maybe our view into that side of the world is not as clear as we think.
- dragonsh 7y agoI agree with you that there isn't any legal discourse on implications. It's immaterial in these protests as it is a manifestation of despair due to economic reality and worsening living conditions without a hope of revival. 1. Extradition treaty require local competent court to make a decision whether to extradite or not. But For majority of protestors it is immaterial because the perception is that Hong Kong do not have a decent judiciary or legal system, it works at the whims of China (again a perception created by few). So the actual discussion no one wants to discuss or hear. 2. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter does not like privacy. Because their basic business is to trade personal information and time for free service. So try using any of them through TOR or VPN they will block you or make it very difficult, independent from which country you belong. In this aspect so far only EU is trying to preserve some privacy but still not enough with many loopholes. 3. Again as I mentioned in no 1, here majority of the protestors do not even understand how extradition works. So this discussion is secondary the primary reason the protests are taking place is due to bleak future outlook and harsh economic reality and living conditions (as I mentioned in my previous comments living in a car parking size apartment space).
- xster 7y ago> perception is that Hong Kong do not have a decent judiciary or legal system, it works at the whims of China (again a perception created by few). So the actual discussion no one wants to discuss or hear. That's actually a bit surprising. I always had the opposite impression, at least in terms of judicial independence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_of_Final_Appeal_(Hong_Kong) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_of_Final_Appeal_(Hong_Ko... Most of the final appellate court judges aren't even Chinese which is remarkable (that it's mainly British, Australian and Canadian judges ruling in China).
- xster 7y agoNot sure there is much analysis to be done here besides interpretive fan fiction. The primary source https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/maintaining-integrity-our-platforms/ https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/m... is a lot more opaque than Twitter's announcement.
- hnsocks 7y agoLet's praise Google for censorship, we need Orwellian big brother everywhere. Bully tactics. Long live Google whistleblowers!! Please listen Zachary Vorhies, brave testimonies about Google..
- unnouinceput 7y agoQuote: "Protesters are demanding greater democracy and an inquiry into alleged police brutality during past demonstrations." Jesus, do Donie O'Sullivan and Kevin Collier, article authors even have a slight idea what HK protests are about? Those protests started to oppose a bill regarding extraditing to mainland China. Later on as the tension and police brutality escalated those points were added. Here is the 5 points the protesters are demanding now: 1- the bill must be withdrawn (this was the initial motive for protests) 2- the chief executive must resign (he ordered to police to start retaliatons) 3- the government must retract its characterisation of the violent clashes as “riots” 4- there must be a full independent inquiry into the actions of the police 5- everyone arrested in respect of the clashes must be unconditionally freed.
- cwkoss 7y agoCNN is no longer a reliable news source.
- joshuamorton 7y agoI'd consider the extradition bill not-very-democratic, doubly so in the HK is a somewhat autonomous zone, so forcing extradition reduces it's autonomy and therefore it's citizens' democracy. So how is this false?
- mytailorisrich 7y agoCurrently Hongkong has extradition treaties with many countries, but none with 'China' (Macao, Taiwan, mainland), which is a historical legacy but is now an oddity. Extradition treaties in general do not reduce autonomy and democracy. Extraditions under this bill would follow (I believe) similar procedures to extradition to other countries. The key worries, I believe, are that charges brought on the mainland might be fabricated and political because of the nature of the system there (absence of independent judiciary) and that pressure could also be applied on Hongkong authorities not to deny these requests, or simply that the procedure is such that Hongkong courts don't have much scope to refuse requests.
- CatsEyes 7y agoAh, I see China apologists are out in force. The CCP blocks and censors media entering the country and attempts to manipulate media beyond their borders, all while bitterly complaining that outside influences should butt out of their internal matters. If they actually respected the One Country, Two Systems deal, Hong Kong would not be in open revolt. But they've repeatedly demonstrated they don't, so here we are. You trolls are the online equivalent of the Yeun Long triads, disrupting rational discourse with empty claims. You've been treated with civility here, but you don't deserve it. Even someone with one eye can see that.