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I highly recommend folks listen to recent episodes of Ben Thompson’s exponent podcast where he discusses TikTok and its influence in the USA. He makes the poin
by nknealk 7y ago
I highly recommend folks listen to recent episodes of Ben Thompson’s exponent podcast where he discusses TikTok and its influence in the USA.
He makes the point that US consumers become subject to Chinese censorship policies when using the platform while China outright bans or heavily restricts American companies from operating (eg google search, Facebook).
- duxup 7y agoI wonder too if say you tried to advertise on TikTok but your company was not complying with Chinese censorship requests, or you employed an outspoken advocate, or you employed some folks who posted something about Uyghurs on social media elsewhere ... what would TikTok's response be?
- stevenhubertron 7y agoI tried to find it but failed. Do you happen to remember the date it aired?
- bamboozled 7y agoWhat’s the point here though? America et al also don’t like certain things being published on social media and try stop it from existing on those platforms too.
- servercobra 7y agoDo you have an example? The only things I can think of are illegal (like child porn) which everyone should be able to agree should be banned.
- wongarsu 7y agoEurope is much more relaxed about nudity (exposed breasts in prime time TV are fine) but much more restrictive about violence and gore. Instead US companies enforce US standards on us. Even child porn isn't an easy subject. Everyone can agree that liking 12 year olds sexually is pedophilia and images about that are child porn. But when we are taking about 16 year olds it's muddier since we are taking about child porn outside of pedophilia. And that's just (north western) Europe who are culturally very similar to the US.
- unlinked_dll 7y ago>But when we are taking about 16 year olds it's muddier since we are taking about child porn outside of pedophilia. It's not muddier. The issue isn't the nature of the people viewing the content, but the ability of the victim to consent to the creation of the content. There's no muddiness involved here - sexual exploitation of minors for the production of media is not ok.
- wongarsu 7y ago"Minor" is a very cultural term, the US steps of adulthood at 18 and 21 are more comparable with 16 and 18 in Europe. Also a 16 year old can consent to sex, so why not to images (particularly ones they made themselves and distribute to single persons). For 12 year olds it's much easier with the "we don't support pedophilia" argument (which has wide support)
- plurple 7y agoAnd yet you can’t say anything negative about Muhamed in Europe without fearing punishment from the government.
- plurple 7y ago
- spectramax 7y agoI can post on Facebook that I disagree with president Trump and he is a liar, try doing the same in China. (Please don't take my comment as a suggestion about President Trump, just trying to make a point).
- the-dude 7y agoI bet nobody in China would bat an eye if you called Trump a liar. There is even an old soviet joke about this.
- smhenderson 7y agoWas going to reply to the parent with the joke and then didn't bother. Since you mentioned it though... An American tells a Russian that the United States is so free he can stand in front of the White House and yell, “To hell with Ronald Reagan.” The Russian replies, “That’s nothing. I can stand in front of the Kremlin and yell, ‘To hell with Ronald Reagan,’ too.”
- fma 7y agoNot sure why you're being downvoted, but in my recent trip to China, I discussed Trump with many local Chinese. Obviously the tradewar is a major topic. I said I share and comment on articles that criticize Trump all the time on Facebook. They were surprised you could do that...
- marcos123 7y agoTry posting that you don't think he is a liar and see if any of your faceberg friends see your post. We're not far off from china levels of censorship. Look at the NBA as of late.
- fruzz 7y agoI mean, as a Canadian consumer using American social media platforms, we're subject to American censorship policies. Tumblr / Facebook / YouTube being most notable in their filtering of LGBT content and suspending accounts of LGBT users, because of the American governments stance on human sexuality. This argument of who censors makes sense for Americans, but it's more about picking your poison for people from other countries.
- pdabbadabba 7y agoWhat are you referring to, exactly? There certainly is no enforceable law in the United States against LGBT content. There theoretically are restrictions on "obscenity," but they are virtually nonexistent in practice. The only law I can think of that resembles what you're describing in any way is our, indeed, quite aggressive ban on child pornography. And I'm no expert on Canadian child pornography laws, but I'll bet Canada isn't too friendly to that content either. The theoretical point is true enough, that American content restrictions would generally wind up being exported abroad. The key difference is, however, that we do not actually have Chinese-style content restrictions.
- rrix2 7y agoSESTA/FOSTA led to large changes in content moderation strategies for a bunch of sites outsizedly effecting the edges of LGBTQ communities ... EDIT: Sources in-text since i'm already being downvoted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Enabling_Sex_Traffickers_Act#Response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Enabling_Sex_Traffickers_...
- kart23 7y agoPretty much all hate speech is censored on social media platforms. So is calling for or promoting violence against certain groups. Harrassment is also prohibited on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. All American social media censors their users, most people just arent producing that type of content.
- hk__2 7y ago
- dv_dt 7y agoUS consumers become subject to Chinese censorship policies under services, media, and entertainment provided by US companies too.
- vkou 7y agoThe same is said for non-US consumers, who consume US-made media (Which is consumed world-wide, and has in many places, displaced local media.)
- dv_dt 7y agoWhile the US doesn't hard censor media like China, I'd agree there is something of a soft censorship/ignoring of many topics. And, if you think about US based hard restraints, there are certainly onerous restrictions with rules attached to financial services imposed by the US into foreign nations.
- kmonsen 7y agoThe censorship is completely different though, if you want to write "Fuck Donald Trump", or give a detailed account of his crimes on a US platform, it will not be censored. Try the same in a Chinese owned platform about f.ex. something as obvious as Tianmen. There are some things such as porn that is censored in many areas.
- dv_dt 7y agoIt is certainly different, that's why I was drawing a distinction between hard and soft censorship. No hard censorship in the US, but the soft censorship is maybe more pervasive then you first realize. E.g. I think of the MPAA as a form of soft censorship, and one whose rating system was constrained at times by fairly conservative groups. Are there ways around it, yes, especially today, but not not as much historically. Major media coverage in the US also practices a soft censorship of attention and depth of coverage of certain topics too.
- sol_remmy2 7y ago
- TheMinorityGuy 7y agoPeople need to be more skeptical about governments (both murican and chinese) and have more faith in fellow human beings. Why is it that US government gets it panties wet at the thought of Tiktok having influence in USA but somehow is proud of he fact that Google or Facebook are global companies ? What is that Tiktok would do to american that Google or Facebook won't do to Indians ? Google and Facebook not being in China is not necessarily a bad thing. Both the companies are massively popular in India but make no profits off Indians yet. On other than their popularity has made Indians value these companies a lot as employers and every third Google/Facebook engineer in Mountain View is an Indian person. Google or Facebooks adventures in India (and China) if at all are nothing but a huge subsidy being delivered to these upcoming markets at the expense of American consumers. Say China opens up its markets for Google and Facebook like tomorrow would you be fine with that ? Both Google and Facebook are then going to borrow money from american to build massive data center networks in China spending billions of dollars which may or may not be recovered in near future. Xenophobia and divergence from free market principles in USA have made other countries better potential successors to Silicon Valley. In near future we will see more and more companies coming up from China. What USA has done with Tiktok is essentially a child like tantrum to scare other investors and chinese companies but very likely US government will end up with an egg on its face.
- frequentnapper 7y agoOn one hand you're saying that Xenophobia and divergence from free market principles will make USA lose its edge, but at the same time you are saying China, which is a lot more xenophobic and less adherent to free market principles, will have an advantage...
- avanti 7y agoChina doesn't ban or restrict heavily only to American companies. All companies are subject to the same laws. It's whether to comply or not. It must be hard for Americans to understand the need for censorship and thus feel angry when they are subject to such policies. But there are deep historical reasons. And I think ByteDance doesn't really care about whether or not censoring their product in the US. My guess is that it's easy for them to just manage one content review team than multiple.
- debt 7y agoYet we got Lil Nas X out of it. Their censorship algorithm must be broken.