10 ms·

I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine

199 points by hker 6y ago

yorwba 6y ago
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26192988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26192988
arbitrage 6y ago
Well, thanks, buddy.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kypro 6y ago
It would be interesting if someone from China could comment on censorship in China. Is there a fraction of people who agrees with it or is almost it universally disapproved of? Some of these arguments for censorship made in this article sound eerily similar to how we justify censorship in the West. > Our role was to make sure that low-level content moderators could find "harmful and dangerous content" as soon as possible. Without context this could apply to any Western social media platform. Of course in the West its companies not politicians who call the shots, but the language to justify the actions is certainly similar. I'm not trying to equate Western censorship to Chinese censorship, but in the West it's certainly fair to say many people are happy and even welcoming of censorship – is the same in China?
- aaomidi 6y ago
  Not China, but in Iran, everyone fucking hates it.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    To be fair, how well your country plays a big factor in how you view your countries policies. While life in China is far from perfect, China has been growing at a strong steady pace, and I'm sure people are much more likely to accept the way things are if things are getting better, whereas Iran has been stuck in a rut of sactions for a very long time, and especially once Iranian people compare themselves to the prosperity they had before, it's a hard pill to swallow.
    - ls65536 6y ago
      This is it. Relative economic prosperity, at least as long as it's somewhat widely distributed among a large proportion of the population, usually seems to be quite helpful in smoothing over any roughness of the general political situation for most. In any place, one might disagree ideologically with the way certain things are unfolding politically, but people will usually be much more likely to accept it so long as their material situation is improving, be it real or perceived. Of course, if that economic prosperity or general perception of it goes into decline, the situation can suddenly become quite ugly politically.
    - aaomidi 6y ago
      Definitely true, not something that can be applied elsewhere. There's also a silencing effect if you're in a good quality of life that you don't want to potentially risk that by being annoyed about some aspects of society. I think that applies to China and it applies to Iran. And you can see it in other countries where they have no policy change, but due to outside reasons the quality of life decreases and people start demanding policy and regime change.
- punnerud 6y ago
  Isn’t one of the problem the risk of retaliation towards family and friends in China? With speech and face recognition this can also be done for everyone commenting on China even in the West?
- ehmmmmmmmm 6y ago
  > It would be interesting if someone from China could comment on censorship in China. Is there a fraction of people who agrees with it or is almost it universally disapproved of? In general people don't agree with it. However, for a lot of people, it's not actually on their radar. The reality is most people in China are so engrossed in their work and day-to-day life that censorship isn't really actually an issue for them, and taking political action is not something that an average citizen would do considering the grave risks to your career. Also, it's worth noting that most citizens prioritize safety over free speech. If changes in the law indirectly mean that there will be riots on the streets, most citizens would rather have whatever it takes to have no riots. That isn't to say people agree with censorship, but for what it's worth, people are happy that you can more or less walk around anywhere in China without much fear of your personal safety. Most people in Shenzhen were extremely happy they were in Shenzhen where you could walk around freely instead of "free" Hong Kong where you had to be in fear of idiot high school students throwing Molotov cocktails and beating up anyone who spoke Mandarin.
  - Fauntleroy 6y ago
    You're really conflating a couple other issues in with the original idea here.
  - throwaway8581 6y ago
    That attitude is catching on in America. The censorship and consent apparatus is more privatized and not officially backed by state power (but see threats from politicians to tech companies to remove “disinformation” “or else”) but most people just put their heads down and toe the “official” line. You might even put on a little show about how woke you are to prove your loyalty. Such acting is common in all regimes. This happens in every society. There is an official ideology and whether through central direction or self-organizing systems, that ideology is enforced. Occasional periods of lighter repression (when the official ideology is something like classical or Rawlsian liberalism) end up just being openings for more assertive ideologies to take control. America recently exited such a period.
    - int_19h 6y ago
- throwaway2474 6y ago
  It’s very different. The West begins with privacy as a basic expectation, and is surprised when it doesn’t exist. In China it is never assumed in the first place (between individuals and the state). People accept the surveillance and mostly trust the state to act responsibly, or at least don’t see it as a major problem the way it’s seen in the US. Companies proudly display this kind of censorship and surveillance tech, and get very little social pushback.
  - cirenehc 6y ago
    I think the concept of privacy directly conflicts with anti-censorship. The most private system is also 100% censored.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      By its owner, which is as it should be.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- Alupis 6y ago
  Part of the issue we often forget, here in countries without mass censorship, is what people under these regimes actually experience. If you are born into, grow up in, and continue to live in a society where all external information flowing into your society is filtered through government censors... would you even know it? If you did, would you think it's bad? Or is that just your government protecting you? It's literally all you would know. To understand that it's not that way everywhere... to understand there is a better way of life outside what you've experienced... to understand unfettered access to raw information is a good thing even if it makes your government/country look bad - takes experiencing it first-hand to contrast it against what you've got.
  - pca006132 6y ago
    No, people there are aware of the censorship, anti-censorship tools are actively developed and quite a lot of teenagers (to say the least) have access to them, although the tools are frequently replaced due to advancement in censorship technology. Although they are annoyed by the censorship, some of them would think that the censorship may be good for the country as it prevents 'unintelligible' people from being 'brainwashed' by western ideas, and act against the government/society or whatsoever. They claim that the censorship is to filter out those 'unintelligible' people from accessing information that they should not know, although this can't really justify the efforts the state put into censorship technology. Those people are pretty happy to recent cases in western countries, such as COVID, BLM, Trump, and claimed that this is the advantage of their system that prevents such problem... And they also think that the western media also censor information, such as Facebook and Twitter bans. Also, the great firewall is also beneficial to the internet companies, as this helps them to avoid competition with foreign companies, and can often just build a knock-off of the products of foreign companies... So the government really have the economic incentives to keep it. Edit: I am not living in mainland, but I know quite a lot of friends from there and I often read the articles in mainland websites (although I can't really post/edit them, as I don't have my identity verified for those sites). For me, I would say that censorship is essential in every country. It may be helpful to censor information as done by Facebook and Twitter, but what mainland does is not only censorship: they arrest people for posting information against them, and their censorship is mostly not regarding fake information (as claimed by them), but rather information against the government. Some of them think that maintaining a harmony is good for the people, but censorship can't really make harmony, everyone understand that it is fake, but well, our opinion don't really matter now anyway.
- chrischen 6y ago
  I would characterize the biggest difference is that Chinese people are actually aware they are being massively censored, while Americans think they have no censorship.
  - CobrastanJorji 6y ago
    In some ways, you're right, but Americans feel most strongly about the freedom of speech when it comes to specifically political speech, and I think the biggest difference is that I, as an American, can choose to say "I think our President of the United States is a fascist and a criminal and he should be arrested for his crimes" and I am in no way worried that the government will track me down and punish me in any manner, nor will they pressure Hacker News to strike my post. Meanwhile, the Chinese government will literally disappear a billionaire celebrity for saying something mildly critical of the government. That's a prospect that's pretty much anathema to an American way of thinking about freedom. That's not to say that America doesn't have LOTS of problems with censorship. We do. Oodles. Some of it's secret and some if it's blatant and in the open. But China is orders of magnitude worse for political speech.
    - chrischen 6y ago
      If you speak freely, and it is not powerful enough to cause any consequences, then are you freely speaking at all? Sounds like a great way to make us feel like we have political power and that our speech has power, when in reality the moment our speech can disrupt the establishment it gets clamped down. One big difference here vs China is that the establishment is a bit more distributed. The people in power here are just as eager to censor as the people in power in China. The only difference is the people in power in China are mostly the people in control of the government. But the one bigger difference is that we only seem to think the government is capable of censorship, when really it's a matter of the people in power.
      - mef 6y ago
        yes, that’s speaking freely without convincing anyone of anything.
- int_19h 6y ago
  > Some of these arguments for censorship made in this article sound eerily similar to how we justify censorship in the West. The gist of any centralized top-down censorship is that some ideas are just too dangerous to allow them in public discourse. It can be dressed up in slightly different terms - "social harmony" or "threat to democracy" etc - but it's fundamentally about the same thing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway_ruok 6y ago
  Chinese national here. > Is there a fraction of people who agrees with it or is almost it universally disapproved of? There is a fraction of people who agrees with it. Otherwise it wouldn't be there. But most people dislike, or at least are annoyed by, the censorship. There are several different kind of dislike. There are people who are opposed to censorship in principle. There are people who find certain rules or mechanisms too ridiculous. There are people who only complain when it inconvenience them. There are several types of supports. There are a small fraction of people who think that whatever the government does is for the greater good of the country. There are people who are happy when the fist hammers down on contents that they don't like, e.g. porn, anti-patriotic speech. I'd say, anecdotally, most people find the current state of censorship somewhat unreasonable, but at the same time, have accepted it as a trait of the Chinese society that isn't going away in the forseeable future.
  - lambda_obrien 6y ago
    Sounds a lot like everywhere else, like America. I bet if Americans and Chinese looked, we have more in common with each other than we have with our politicians.
    - ericmay 6y ago
      I definitely agree that THE PEOPLE have a lot in common. Almost everyone all over the world just wants to enjoy life.
      - leesalminen 6y ago
        This is why the us vs them dichotomy is so important to those in power. Dividing us is the only thing that keeps them in power. Unfortunately there are so many values of “us” and “them” now that it’s obscured the only definition that really matters.
        Gene_Parmesan 6y ago
        I agree 1000x. Noam Chomsky has a great quote about this from The Common Good: "Now that ... workers are superfluous, what do you do with them? First of all, you have to make sure they don't notice that society is unfair and try to change that, and the best way to distract them is to get them to hate and fear one another."
- nglengjai 6y ago
  I can comment as I grew up in China my entire life and came to the west just a few years ago, attending international school. People obviously know censorship exists and most believe is for the greater good, as China needs social stability above all. Most people just want to live their lives, have children receive a good education, make money, have safety, etc. There is no need to bad mouth the government after everything they do for the people. So many families are now wealthy, business is booming, people can afford nicer houses, and the economy is doing better than ever. Crime and danger pretty much does not exist, cities are walkable, life is safe. My family and friends families were low-middle class when I was a kid and are now in the upper class by western standards. Also, you have to understand that Chinese culture, especially Han culture, is very united and shares a lot of patriotism. Family values are very strong, cultural morals I think are very homogenous. This makes it very easy for everyone to agree with government decisions. Contrary to the west, we have very high faith the the government is always doing the most efficient and safe decisions for the general public, and people are happy about it because this has been shown to be true with how it has concretely affected hundreds of millions of people's lives. So many people taken out of poverty within a short span of time. Social media censorship is not a big deal because we don't miss what we don't know. For example, people don't care they can't use google, facebook, instagram, because we have our own social networks. Also, people know not to talk about political subjects in these platforms because it is in bad taste and we know how to self-censor. Also, we Chinese see the chaos and mess from the news coming from the west regarding polarization, fighting between political parties, and social unrest and we don't want that. Contrary to the middle east, I would say most Chinese do not believe they are oppressed at all. They are happy with how the government handles things. I'd say people are happy with the censorship because they believe it brings stronger national security, social stability, and reinforces shared cultural values most Chinese have with each other. Please keep in mind that we have different social values in the east than the west. Our perception of freedom and values that matter to society are quite different. Although this may seem extreme to you, your views sometimes seem extreme to us. Thank you for your time.
  - indeedmug 6y ago
    I think most Westerns see pro China posts as propaganda. But I think there is more relatable concern about well fare and prosperity. People in American live their lives seperate from politics anyway. I don't really think of Trump all the time going to work and I frankly don't really want to either.
- illuminati1911 6y ago
  I've lived in China for few years. I haven't asked everyone I know, but based on my feeling most people don't like it. That being said, for most Chinese not liking the censorship is kind of like not liking a bad weather. You don't like it, but you accept it and move on. Also based on my experience, most white collars (or at least ones working for international companies) in China have either direct or indirect access to the uncensored internet. Companies are allowed to purchase access to VPNs (legal, government approved) to bypass the censorship. This is so that they can access Google, YouTube, banned social media etc. to help them to do international business. Lot of companies integrate these VPNs directly into their corporate wifis meaning that all employees in the company network can bypass the censorship. Despite having the unblocked access, I've noticed that only very few Chinese are interested in reading foreign news sources or using foreign social media/video platforms.
  - bsder 6y ago
    > Despite having the unblocked access, I've noticed that only very few Chinese are interested in reading foreign news sources or using foreign social media/video platforms. To be fair, I assume language is also a barrier. I'm sure not going out of my way to learn Chinese to access Chinese language information sources. I would hardly expect the inverse.
    - GekkePrutser 6y ago
      But many Chinese speak English because they deal with international trade. So this doesn't really work the same both ways.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      A significant number of Chinese can understand English if not speak it. 1% of China is still 20% of the UK.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    It is the same pattern in most autocracies I've been to. As long as people are getting food, jobs, education and some form of the erstwhile American dream, nobody complains anywhere, or outwardly supports it. People don't care much for the big international news in any of those places, but rather the local tabloidy content. An article about a local food market taking place will get far more hits than an international piece on a COVID vaccine. Government workings are barely reported, unless it's for some "glorious" achievement. This is the model in China, Singapore, UAE, Saudi Arabia, etc. Of course, for dictatorships that don't manage to achieve the dream for their citizens, you'll see a lot of cursing, name calling politicians, and even outright revolutions. People are essentially politically charged and actively involved with spreading news. This is seen in places such as Egypt and Venezuela, where the governments are only surviving because of being propped up by external agents, usually from the former type of autocracies. This mentality is also seen in quite a few flawed democracies. And then there are the third type of autocracies, where people are simply desensitized to any news whatsoever. Places such as pseudo-democratic Afghanistan or autocratic Syria. People there only care about wanting to move away from that hell hole.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  > Is there a fraction of people who agrees with it or is almost it universally disapproved of? That seems like a loaded question. To be clear I don't live there and am not speaking for them, but from my perspective, as long as the country is getting more prosperous, people will overlook quite a lot. The same is true in the US, how well the economy does is what matters most in elections. Considering the strong steady growth [0] they've had, I'm sure people are much more likely to overlook things like censorship if they think it will lead to better lives. And honestly, it may. I'm not promoting their censorship, but look how much better of a job they did handling COVID (after the initial cover up), while on the other hand look at the whole mess that the US had with the election and Capitol riot. The US makes it very easy for China to sell its way of government to its people. [0] https://i.imgur.com/YRTBrlx.png https://i.imgur.com/YRTBrlx.png
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  Someone signed up to make this pro-CCP comment, which was then flagged within minutes - rather ironic given the context in which it was posted. Although I disagreed with several of the premises and the logic of the comment, I vouched for it as an interesting and valid contribution. However, the lack of transparency around flags and vouching on HN makes this meaningless, and I have never seen a flagged comment vouched back to visibility. Accordingly, I have reposted it below, although I would like to emphasize again that this is not an endorsement of its claims.. ---- nglengjai 10 minutes ago [dead] | parent | unvouch | favorite | on: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine I can comment as I grew up in China my entire life and came to the west just a few years ago, attending international school. People obviously know censorship exists and most believe is for the greater good, as China needs social stability above all. Most people just want to live their lives, have children receive a good education, make money, have safety, etc. There is no need to bad mouth the government after everything they do for the people. So many families are now wealthy, business is booming, people can afford nicer houses, and the economy is doing better than ever. Crime and danger pretty much does not exist, cities are walkable, life is safe. My family and friends families were low-middle class when I was a kid and are now in the upper class by western standards. Also, you have to understand that Chinese culture, especially Han culture, is very united and shares a lot of patriotism. Family values are very strong, cultural morals I think are very homogenous. This makes it very easy for everyone to agree with government decisions. Contrary to the west, we have very high faith the the government is always doing the most efficient and safe decisions for the general public, and people are happy about it because this has been shown to be true with how it has concretely affected hundreds of millions of people's lives. So many people taken out of poverty within a short span of time. Social media censorship is not a big deal because we don't miss what we don't know. For example, people don't care they can't use google, facebook, instagram, because we have our own social networks. Also, people know not to talk about political subjects in these platforms because it is in bad taste and we know how to self-censor. Also, we Chinese see the chaos and mess from the news coming from the west regarding polarization, fighting between political parties, and social unrest and we don't want that. Contrary to the middle east, I would say most Chinese do not believe they are oppressed at all. They are happy with how the government handles things. I'd say people are happy with the censorship because they believe it brings stronger national security, social stability, and reinforces shared cultural values most Chinese have with each other. Please keep in mind that we have different social values in the east than the west. Our perception of freedom and values that matter to society are quite different. Although this may seem extreme to you, your views sometimes seem extreme to us. Thank you for your time.
- m3at 6y ago
  If you're interested in a long read, I found this article informative (though it's not focused only censorship): "Why do Chinese people like their government" https://supchina.com/2019/07/22/why-do-chinese-people-like-their-government/ https://supchina.com/2019/07/22/why-do-chinese-people-like-t...
- bigpumpkin 6y ago
  Most people (60%) don't care because they find everything they need on the Chinese internet anyways. 25% of the people find it a nuisance, but don't speak out against it. 5% of the people actively use a VPN to circumvent it. 5% of the people oppose it out of principle. 5% of the people actively support it because they think it's a way to prevent "information warfare" from the West.
- concordDance 6y ago
  > Of course in the West its companies not politicians who call the shots, but the language to justify the actions is certainly similar. Almost identical. "Terrorist" viewpoints/content and "hate speech" are banned and censored in most Western countries.
- berdario 6y ago
  Btw, censorship in China is often misrepresented here in the western world... For example, we all "know" that Winnie the Pooh is banned... The reality is a bit different: https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1339716341037600769 https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/133971634103760076... https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1348578713563119616 https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/134857871356311961... I think that it boils down to: if you're obviously making fun of an head of state (i.e. you have a meme/image with both Winnie and Xi Jinping) it's going to be recognized as such, and taken down... But Winnie by itself (or the memes in foreign contexts) aren't really at risk of getting banned. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china-blog-40627855 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china-blog-40627855 It actually reminds me of something that happened in Italy 15 years ago: https://www.repubblica.it/2006/11/sezioni/esteri/benedettoxvi-10/volantini-manifesto/volantini-manifesto.html https://www.repubblica.it/2006/11/sezioni/esteri/benedettoxv... The police entered the newsroom of the Manifesto, from which a bunch of leaflets had been thrown. On it you could read "Pastore Tedesco", referring to the German Pope (a wordplay on him being a pastor, and the German Sheperd dog breed) Authorities can seem really thin-skinned, given that in both cases it's an almost innocuous comparison that is being teased (to a cartoon bear, or a dog breed)... But given that these were targeted to an head of state, it's not too surprising. Obviously, censorship is not only about memes...
- hungryhobo 6y ago
  Am chinese National. Personally I think it's a double edged sword. It's basically protectionism but for information. On one hand censorship hinders internal transparency and makes it difficult to hold the government accountable. On the other hand information warfare is a thing, especially between geopolitical rivals, censorship is a cheap way to mitigate against them. For what it's worth, there are increasing voices within the chinese government that are advocating for removing the great firewall because the new generation of chinese are more and more confident with their own political system.
  - pca006132 6y ago
    But I see the GFW getting more advanced :) And I think that it may be more justifiable if the censorship is also towards fake information and hate speech, but sadly this isn't quite true (check weibo or something). This is purely something political.
    - hungryhobo 6y ago
      If we are just talking about GFW I actually think people will eventually realize the CCP got it right all along, data is the new oil, and other government are just too incompetent to protect it.
mrtweetyhack 6y ago
thanks asshole
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
xvector 6y ago
Surprise, Chinese websites enforce political censorship within China? I am not sure what is news here. Are we going to pretend the NSA doesn’t integrate with PRISM to make lists of its own? Because they are beholden to the government, corporate control over the public square has us all fucked. Today people cheer Big Tech’s ability to censor distasteful politics from the public square. Tomorrow, when “content moderation” makes civil disobedience impossible to publicize, we will lament the lack of decentralized social media. In other words, centralized social media cements moves towards authoritarianism, but makes it very difficult to move back in the other direction, especially if attempted via the most tried and true methods in history. The revolution won’t be televised. You won’t find it on Twitter or Douyin either. So why did anyone expect anything different? Unless the people can take back control of the public square from the corporations, democracy will crack. Edit: consider responding with something coherent rather than downvoting and moving on
- Dig1t 6y ago
  The whataboutism WRT to the NSA detracts from the importance of the issue. > I am not sure what is news here. In fact, the Chinese government goes to great lengths to downplay and hide the extent of their censorship efforts, and it might actually be a surprise to some people. It is worthwhile discussing ALL forms of censorship, whether it be by the NSA, Beijing, or corporations. The only way we can deal with these issues is by discussing them at length and raising awareness.
  - xvector 6y ago
    I agree. I added a bit describing how whining about government censorship is pointless so long as we support centralized social media, which is the real problem here. It is hypocritical for HN to cheer on censorship by Twitter and Big Tech while upvoting this article. The fundamental problem here, underlying both Chinese and American censorship/surveillance, is that we have willingly handed control of the public square over to an entity beholden to one that does not have our best interests in mind. So long as we let the public square rest in the hands of these entities, democracy will slowly slip from our hands, one ban and censor at a time. You can’t blame China or ByteDance or Twitter or the NSA for this sort of thing. The natural state of governments and corporations is vying for more power and wealth at all costs, democracy be damned. The blame rests on us, the people, for trusting corporations with our speech.
the_only_law 6y ago
Has this article been discussed here before? I could have sworn I recall seeing this article maybe a week or two ago on the front page but I can’t find a past thread with any activity.
- vulcan01 6y ago
  It has: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26192988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26192988 (You have a good memory!)
- choppaface 6y ago
  Yeah I don't get it. I submitted it last week but it got no attention. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26190172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26190172 ) It's a really eye-opening article because everybody does Trust & Safety differently and in ByteDance's case there appears to be a huge divide between how US and Chinese users are treated.
  - xvector 6y ago
    > there appears to be a huge divide between how US and Chinese users are treated. TikTok is not Douyin. TikTok serves users outside of China, and ByteDance is aware that such extensive censorship would cause massive backlash against the app, so it is not done - especially when the public perception of China makes the company so precariously placed. As such, this is why you can still see posts about Uyighur Muslims and anti-China rhetoric on your FYP in TikTok rather easily. With Douyin, censorship is state mandated. Practically every big Chinese tech company will have some advanced state-of-the-art censorship infrastructure for their Chinese users.
  - dstick 6y ago
    This is HN - you need frontpage or it’s dead. So someone that incidentally shares your interest needs to spot it in the stream of “new” posts, a bunch of friends upvote you, or it’s manually boosted by the staff. Just keep posting and don’t feel bad if it doesn’t get traction :)
TheRealPomax 6y ago
What's the point of a pseudonym if ByteDance can trivially identify who this was?
sanp 6y ago
I wonder how much of AI growth in China is driven by this use case - the need to censor at scale.
thedudeabides5 6y ago
“When I was at ByteDance, we received multiple requests from the bases to develop an algorithm that could automatically detect when a Douyin user spoke Uyghur, and then cut off the livestream session... ...every audio clip would be automatically transcribed into text, allowing algorithms to compare the notes with a long and constantly-updated list of sensitive words, dates and names, as well as Natural Language Processing models. Algorithms would then analyze whether the content was risky enough to require individual monitoring. If a user mentioned a sensitive term, a content moderator would receive the original video clip and the transcript showing where the term appeared. If the moderator deemed the speech sensitive or inappropriate, they would shut down the ongoing livestreaming session and even suspend or delete the account.”
- brundolf 6y ago
  Everybody talks about AI overlords, but the real threat is regular-old overlords using AI as a tool
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  And where people speaking dialects were warned to switch to Mandarin for better monitoring... that chills me. So damn privileged to live in the West.
  - xvector 6y ago
    The ball is rolling downhill. If we continue to allow centralized social media companies beholden to a government, to be the public square, then we too will turn into this dystopian nightmare given time. We must reclaim the public square if we wish to retain democracy.
- c7DJTLrn 6y ago
  When people have suggested a Hippocratic oath for technology workers in the past I've laughed at the idea. I think I've changed my mind.
legerdemain 6y ago
Sure, and I helped build Palantir's license-plate-reading, immigrant-processing, and drone-targeting machines. Everyone in the Bay Area is fine with that. No one cares. To an average affluent Bay Area engineer, illegal immigrants and people getting blown up half a world away are extremely abstract concerns. The real sources of pain in a Bay Area engineer's life are their inability to sip lattes through a mask and Planet Granite in Sunnyvale being closed. Meanwhile, my inbox is blowing up with inquiries from companies and I have my pick of lucrative jobs.
- AlexCoventry 6y ago
  Can you expand on that? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
  - Krasnol 6y ago
    My guess is: "having no conscience makes you rich".
    - legerdemain 6y ago
      No, you have it backwards. Having no conscience doesn't make you rich. But the rich do have no conscience worth speaking of.
  - deviation 6y ago
    Seems like indirect sarcasm. I have been seeing more of it here on HN. Unfortunately it lowers the quality of conversations that we are capable of having on here..
  - legerdemain 6y ago
    My point is that as software engineers, maaaaany of us are complicit in activity that is morally ambiguous at best, a nuisance on average, and in many cases actively misanthropic. These are the careers that we have chosen and stuck to because the benefit to us outweighs the harm to society. We are aware of what we're doing and also apathetic about it. A person complaining about their employer being somewhere between morally indifferent and morally monstrous is a reflection of how incredibly normal this is. Users on this site reading this person's complaints and tut-tutting about how bad it sounds is a reflection of how normal this is. We are all neck-deep in the filth of depravity, willingly and gladly, and we're pontificating the important differences between the filth reaching ear-level or just mouth-level.
qchips 6y ago
It's becoming tougher to work for ethical companies, specially in Tech. If it's not the company itself, it's the shares of its mother company in another one.
rossdavidh 6y ago
Wow, that sounds disheartening. Thank goodness nothing like that could happen with tech companies in the U.S.A.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  It's at least a little different: The Chinese tech companies are echoing and enforcing the party line, aiding and abetting government censorship. US tech firms were positioning themselves as adversaries of the previous president. We'll see how things play out with the new administration.
  - notsureaboutpg 6y ago
    But in China there isn't an opposition party. US tech firms echo and enforce their party line. Their party just happens to not always be in power. The party line Chinese firms echo and enforce comes from a party always in power.
brauhaus 6y ago
"We didn't have enough Uyghur language data points in our system, and the most popular livestream rooms were already closely monitored." This deeply saddened me. They reason why the Uyghur dialect wasn't banned wasn't for ethical reasons, but base operational ones. It's like when the bloody Franco dictatorship forbade the Catalan dialect decades ago.
bobthechef 6y ago
If you want to know where American governance is headed, look to China's regime for a foretaste. Big Tech and its ideological and political allies are taking us there, inch by inch.

199 points by hker 6y ago

yorwba 6y ago

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26192988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26192988

arbitrage 6y ago

Well, thanks, buddy.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

kypro 6y ago

It would be interesting if someone from China could comment on censorship in China. Is there a fraction of people who agrees with it or is almost it universally disapproved of? Some of these arguments for censorship made in this article sound eerily similar to how we justify censorship in the West. > Our role was to make sure that low-level content moderators could find "harmful and dangerous content" as soon as possible. Without context this could apply to any Western social media platform. Of course in the West its companies not politicians who call the shots, but the language to justify the actions is certainly similar. I'm not trying to equate Western censorship to Chinese censorship, but in the West it's certainly fair to say many people are happy and even welcoming of censorship – is the same in China?

aaomidi 6y ago
Not China, but in Iran, everyone fucking hates it.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  To be fair, how well your country plays a big factor in how you view your countries policies. While life in China is far from perfect, China has been growing at a strong steady pace, and I'm sure people are much more likely to accept the way things are if things are getting better, whereas Iran has been stuck in a rut of sactions for a very long time, and especially once Iranian people compare themselves to the prosperity they had before, it's a hard pill to swallow.
  - ls65536 6y ago
    This is it. Relative economic prosperity, at least as long as it's somewhat widely distributed among a large proportion of the population, usually seems to be quite helpful in smoothing over any roughness of the general political situation for most. In any place, one might disagree ideologically with the way certain things are unfolding politically, but people will usually be much more likely to accept it so long as their material situation is improving, be it real or perceived. Of course, if that economic prosperity or general perception of it goes into decline, the situation can suddenly become quite ugly politically.
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    Definitely true, not something that can be applied elsewhere. There's also a silencing effect if you're in a good quality of life that you don't want to potentially risk that by being annoyed about some aspects of society. I think that applies to China and it applies to Iran. And you can see it in other countries where they have no policy change, but due to outside reasons the quality of life decreases and people start demanding policy and regime change.
punnerud 6y ago
Isn’t one of the problem the risk of retaliation towards family and friends in China? With speech and face recognition this can also be done for everyone commenting on China even in the West?
ehmmmmmmmm 6y ago
> It would be interesting if someone from China could comment on censorship in China. Is there a fraction of people who agrees with it or is almost it universally disapproved of? In general people don't agree with it. However, for a lot of people, it's not actually on their radar. The reality is most people in China are so engrossed in their work and day-to-day life that censorship isn't really actually an issue for them, and taking political action is not something that an average citizen would do considering the grave risks to your career. Also, it's worth noting that most citizens prioritize safety over free speech. If changes in the law indirectly mean that there will be riots on the streets, most citizens would rather have whatever it takes to have no riots. That isn't to say people agree with censorship, but for what it's worth, people are happy that you can more or less walk around anywhere in China without much fear of your personal safety. Most people in Shenzhen were extremely happy they were in Shenzhen where you could walk around freely instead of "free" Hong Kong where you had to be in fear of idiot high school students throwing Molotov cocktails and beating up anyone who spoke Mandarin.
- Fauntleroy 6y ago
  You're really conflating a couple other issues in with the original idea here.
- throwaway8581 6y ago
  That attitude is catching on in America. The censorship and consent apparatus is more privatized and not officially backed by state power (but see threats from politicians to tech companies to remove “disinformation” “or else”) but most people just put their heads down and toe the “official” line. You might even put on a little show about how woke you are to prove your loyalty. Such acting is common in all regimes. This happens in every society. There is an official ideology and whether through central direction or self-organizing systems, that ideology is enforced. Occasional periods of lighter repression (when the official ideology is something like classical or Rawlsian liberalism) end up just being openings for more assertive ideologies to take control. America recently exited such a period.
  - int_19h 6y ago
throwaway2474 6y ago
It’s very different. The West begins with privacy as a basic expectation, and is surprised when it doesn’t exist. In China it is never assumed in the first place (between individuals and the state). People accept the surveillance and mostly trust the state to act responsibly, or at least don’t see it as a major problem the way it’s seen in the US. Companies proudly display this kind of censorship and surveillance tech, and get very little social pushback.
- cirenehc 6y ago
  I think the concept of privacy directly conflicts with anti-censorship. The most private system is also 100% censored.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    By its owner, which is as it should be.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Alupis 6y ago
Part of the issue we often forget, here in countries without mass censorship, is what people under these regimes actually experience. If you are born into, grow up in, and continue to live in a society where all external information flowing into your society is filtered through government censors... would you even know it? If you did, would you think it's bad? Or is that just your government protecting you? It's literally all you would know. To understand that it's not that way everywhere... to understand there is a better way of life outside what you've experienced... to understand unfettered access to raw information is a good thing even if it makes your government/country look bad - takes experiencing it first-hand to contrast it against what you've got.
- pca006132 6y ago
  No, people there are aware of the censorship, anti-censorship tools are actively developed and quite a lot of teenagers (to say the least) have access to them, although the tools are frequently replaced due to advancement in censorship technology. Although they are annoyed by the censorship, some of them would think that the censorship may be good for the country as it prevents 'unintelligible' people from being 'brainwashed' by western ideas, and act against the government/society or whatsoever. They claim that the censorship is to filter out those 'unintelligible' people from accessing information that they should not know, although this can't really justify the efforts the state put into censorship technology. Those people are pretty happy to recent cases in western countries, such as COVID, BLM, Trump, and claimed that this is the advantage of their system that prevents such problem... And they also think that the western media also censor information, such as Facebook and Twitter bans. Also, the great firewall is also beneficial to the internet companies, as this helps them to avoid competition with foreign companies, and can often just build a knock-off of the products of foreign companies... So the government really have the economic incentives to keep it. Edit: I am not living in mainland, but I know quite a lot of friends from there and I often read the articles in mainland websites (although I can't really post/edit them, as I don't have my identity verified for those sites). For me, I would say that censorship is essential in every country. It may be helpful to censor information as done by Facebook and Twitter, but what mainland does is not only censorship: they arrest people for posting information against them, and their censorship is mostly not regarding fake information (as claimed by them), but rather information against the government. Some of them think that maintaining a harmony is good for the people, but censorship can't really make harmony, everyone understand that it is fake, but well, our opinion don't really matter now anyway.
chrischen 6y ago
I would characterize the biggest difference is that Chinese people are actually aware they are being massively censored, while Americans think they have no censorship.
- CobrastanJorji 6y ago
  In some ways, you're right, but Americans feel most strongly about the freedom of speech when it comes to specifically political speech, and I think the biggest difference is that I, as an American, can choose to say "I think our President of the United States is a fascist and a criminal and he should be arrested for his crimes" and I am in no way worried that the government will track me down and punish me in any manner, nor will they pressure Hacker News to strike my post. Meanwhile, the Chinese government will literally disappear a billionaire celebrity for saying something mildly critical of the government. That's a prospect that's pretty much anathema to an American way of thinking about freedom. That's not to say that America doesn't have LOTS of problems with censorship. We do. Oodles. Some of it's secret and some if it's blatant and in the open. But China is orders of magnitude worse for political speech.
  - chrischen 6y ago
    If you speak freely, and it is not powerful enough to cause any consequences, then are you freely speaking at all? Sounds like a great way to make us feel like we have political power and that our speech has power, when in reality the moment our speech can disrupt the establishment it gets clamped down. One big difference here vs China is that the establishment is a bit more distributed. The people in power here are just as eager to censor as the people in power in China. The only difference is the people in power in China are mostly the people in control of the government. But the one bigger difference is that we only seem to think the government is capable of censorship, when really it's a matter of the people in power.
    - mef 6y ago
      yes, that’s speaking freely without convincing anyone of anything.
int_19h 6y ago
> Some of these arguments for censorship made in this article sound eerily similar to how we justify censorship in the West. The gist of any centralized top-down censorship is that some ideas are just too dangerous to allow them in public discourse. It can be dressed up in slightly different terms - "social harmony" or "threat to democracy" etc - but it's fundamentally about the same thing.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwaway_ruok 6y ago
Chinese national here. > Is there a fraction of people who agrees with it or is almost it universally disapproved of? There is a fraction of people who agrees with it. Otherwise it wouldn't be there. But most people dislike, or at least are annoyed by, the censorship. There are several different kind of dislike. There are people who are opposed to censorship in principle. There are people who find certain rules or mechanisms too ridiculous. There are people who only complain when it inconvenience them. There are several types of supports. There are a small fraction of people who think that whatever the government does is for the greater good of the country. There are people who are happy when the fist hammers down on contents that they don't like, e.g. porn, anti-patriotic speech. I'd say, anecdotally, most people find the current state of censorship somewhat unreasonable, but at the same time, have accepted it as a trait of the Chinese society that isn't going away in the forseeable future.
- lambda_obrien 6y ago
  Sounds a lot like everywhere else, like America. I bet if Americans and Chinese looked, we have more in common with each other than we have with our politicians.
  - ericmay 6y ago
    I definitely agree that THE PEOPLE have a lot in common. Almost everyone all over the world just wants to enjoy life.
    - leesalminen 6y ago
      This is why the us vs them dichotomy is so important to those in power. Dividing us is the only thing that keeps them in power. Unfortunately there are so many values of “us” and “them” now that it’s obscured the only definition that really matters.
      - Gene_Parmesan 6y ago
        I agree 1000x. Noam Chomsky has a great quote about this from The Common Good: "Now that ... workers are superfluous, what do you do with them? First of all, you have to make sure they don't notice that society is unfair and try to change that, and the best way to distract them is to get them to hate and fear one another."
nglengjai 6y ago
I can comment as I grew up in China my entire life and came to the west just a few years ago, attending international school. People obviously know censorship exists and most believe is for the greater good, as China needs social stability above all. Most people just want to live their lives, have children receive a good education, make money, have safety, etc. There is no need to bad mouth the government after everything they do for the people. So many families are now wealthy, business is booming, people can afford nicer houses, and the economy is doing better than ever. Crime and danger pretty much does not exist, cities are walkable, life is safe. My family and friends families were low-middle class when I was a kid and are now in the upper class by western standards. Also, you have to understand that Chinese culture, especially Han culture, is very united and shares a lot of patriotism. Family values are very strong, cultural morals I think are very homogenous. This makes it very easy for everyone to agree with government decisions. Contrary to the west, we have very high faith the the government is always doing the most efficient and safe decisions for the general public, and people are happy about it because this has been shown to be true with how it has concretely affected hundreds of millions of people's lives. So many people taken out of poverty within a short span of time. Social media censorship is not a big deal because we don't miss what we don't know. For example, people don't care they can't use google, facebook, instagram, because we have our own social networks. Also, people know not to talk about political subjects in these platforms because it is in bad taste and we know how to self-censor. Also, we Chinese see the chaos and mess from the news coming from the west regarding polarization, fighting between political parties, and social unrest and we don't want that. Contrary to the middle east, I would say most Chinese do not believe they are oppressed at all. They are happy with how the government handles things. I'd say people are happy with the censorship because they believe it brings stronger national security, social stability, and reinforces shared cultural values most Chinese have with each other. Please keep in mind that we have different social values in the east than the west. Our perception of freedom and values that matter to society are quite different. Although this may seem extreme to you, your views sometimes seem extreme to us. Thank you for your time.
- indeedmug 6y ago
  I think most Westerns see pro China posts as propaganda. But I think there is more relatable concern about well fare and prosperity. People in American live their lives seperate from politics anyway. I don't really think of Trump all the time going to work and I frankly don't really want to either.
illuminati1911 6y ago
I've lived in China for few years. I haven't asked everyone I know, but based on my feeling most people don't like it. That being said, for most Chinese not liking the censorship is kind of like not liking a bad weather. You don't like it, but you accept it and move on. Also based on my experience, most white collars (or at least ones working for international companies) in China have either direct or indirect access to the uncensored internet. Companies are allowed to purchase access to VPNs (legal, government approved) to bypass the censorship. This is so that they can access Google, YouTube, banned social media etc. to help them to do international business. Lot of companies integrate these VPNs directly into their corporate wifis meaning that all employees in the company network can bypass the censorship. Despite having the unblocked access, I've noticed that only very few Chinese are interested in reading foreign news sources or using foreign social media/video platforms.
- bsder 6y ago
  > Despite having the unblocked access, I've noticed that only very few Chinese are interested in reading foreign news sources or using foreign social media/video platforms. To be fair, I assume language is also a barrier. I'm sure not going out of my way to learn Chinese to access Chinese language information sources. I would hardly expect the inverse.
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    But many Chinese speak English because they deal with international trade. So this doesn't really work the same both ways.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    A significant number of Chinese can understand English if not speak it. 1% of China is still 20% of the UK.
- fakedang 6y ago
  It is the same pattern in most autocracies I've been to. As long as people are getting food, jobs, education and some form of the erstwhile American dream, nobody complains anywhere, or outwardly supports it. People don't care much for the big international news in any of those places, but rather the local tabloidy content. An article about a local food market taking place will get far more hits than an international piece on a COVID vaccine. Government workings are barely reported, unless it's for some "glorious" achievement. This is the model in China, Singapore, UAE, Saudi Arabia, etc. Of course, for dictatorships that don't manage to achieve the dream for their citizens, you'll see a lot of cursing, name calling politicians, and even outright revolutions. People are essentially politically charged and actively involved with spreading news. This is seen in places such as Egypt and Venezuela, where the governments are only surviving because of being propped up by external agents, usually from the former type of autocracies. This mentality is also seen in quite a few flawed democracies. And then there are the third type of autocracies, where people are simply desensitized to any news whatsoever. Places such as pseudo-democratic Afghanistan or autocratic Syria. People there only care about wanting to move away from that hell hole.
ehsankia 6y ago
> Is there a fraction of people who agrees with it or is almost it universally disapproved of? That seems like a loaded question. To be clear I don't live there and am not speaking for them, but from my perspective, as long as the country is getting more prosperous, people will overlook quite a lot. The same is true in the US, how well the economy does is what matters most in elections. Considering the strong steady growth [0] they've had, I'm sure people are much more likely to overlook things like censorship if they think it will lead to better lives. And honestly, it may. I'm not promoting their censorship, but look how much better of a job they did handling COVID (after the initial cover up), while on the other hand look at the whole mess that the US had with the election and Capitol riot. The US makes it very easy for China to sell its way of government to its people. [0] https://i.imgur.com/YRTBrlx.png https://i.imgur.com/YRTBrlx.png
anigbrowl 6y ago
Someone signed up to make this pro-CCP comment, which was then flagged within minutes - rather ironic given the context in which it was posted. Although I disagreed with several of the premises and the logic of the comment, I vouched for it as an interesting and valid contribution. However, the lack of transparency around flags and vouching on HN makes this meaningless, and I have never seen a flagged comment vouched back to visibility. Accordingly, I have reposted it below, although I would like to emphasize again that this is not an endorsement of its claims.. ---- nglengjai 10 minutes ago [dead] | parent | unvouch | favorite | on: I helped build ByteDance's censorship machine I can comment as I grew up in China my entire life and came to the west just a few years ago, attending international school. People obviously know censorship exists and most believe is for the greater good, as China needs social stability above all. Most people just want to live their lives, have children receive a good education, make money, have safety, etc. There is no need to bad mouth the government after everything they do for the people. So many families are now wealthy, business is booming, people can afford nicer houses, and the economy is doing better than ever. Crime and danger pretty much does not exist, cities are walkable, life is safe. My family and friends families were low-middle class when I was a kid and are now in the upper class by western standards. Also, you have to understand that Chinese culture, especially Han culture, is very united and shares a lot of patriotism. Family values are very strong, cultural morals I think are very homogenous. This makes it very easy for everyone to agree with government decisions. Contrary to the west, we have very high faith the the government is always doing the most efficient and safe decisions for the general public, and people are happy about it because this has been shown to be true with how it has concretely affected hundreds of millions of people's lives. So many people taken out of poverty within a short span of time. Social media censorship is not a big deal because we don't miss what we don't know. For example, people don't care they can't use google, facebook, instagram, because we have our own social networks. Also, people know not to talk about political subjects in these platforms because it is in bad taste and we know how to self-censor. Also, we Chinese see the chaos and mess from the news coming from the west regarding polarization, fighting between political parties, and social unrest and we don't want that. Contrary to the middle east, I would say most Chinese do not believe they are oppressed at all. They are happy with how the government handles things. I'd say people are happy with the censorship because they believe it brings stronger national security, social stability, and reinforces shared cultural values most Chinese have with each other. Please keep in mind that we have different social values in the east than the west. Our perception of freedom and values that matter to society are quite different. Although this may seem extreme to you, your views sometimes seem extreme to us. Thank you for your time.
m3at 6y ago
If you're interested in a long read, I found this article informative (though it's not focused only censorship): "Why do Chinese people like their government" https://supchina.com/2019/07/22/why-do-chinese-people-like-their-government/ https://supchina.com/2019/07/22/why-do-chinese-people-like-t...
bigpumpkin 6y ago
Most people (60%) don't care because they find everything they need on the Chinese internet anyways. 25% of the people find it a nuisance, but don't speak out against it. 5% of the people actively use a VPN to circumvent it. 5% of the people oppose it out of principle. 5% of the people actively support it because they think it's a way to prevent "information warfare" from the West.
concordDance 6y ago
> Of course in the West its companies not politicians who call the shots, but the language to justify the actions is certainly similar. Almost identical. "Terrorist" viewpoints/content and "hate speech" are banned and censored in most Western countries.
berdario 6y ago
Btw, censorship in China is often misrepresented here in the western world... For example, we all "know" that Winnie the Pooh is banned... The reality is a bit different: https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1339716341037600769 https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/133971634103760076... https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1348578713563119616 https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/134857871356311961... I think that it boils down to: if you're obviously making fun of an head of state (i.e. you have a meme/image with both Winnie and Xi Jinping) it's going to be recognized as such, and taken down... But Winnie by itself (or the memes in foreign contexts) aren't really at risk of getting banned. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china-blog-40627855 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china-blog-40627855 It actually reminds me of something that happened in Italy 15 years ago: https://www.repubblica.it/2006/11/sezioni/esteri/benedettoxvi-10/volantini-manifesto/volantini-manifesto.html https://www.repubblica.it/2006/11/sezioni/esteri/benedettoxv... The police entered the newsroom of the Manifesto, from which a bunch of leaflets had been thrown. On it you could read "Pastore Tedesco", referring to the German Pope (a wordplay on him being a pastor, and the German Sheperd dog breed) Authorities can seem really thin-skinned, given that in both cases it's an almost innocuous comparison that is being teased (to a cartoon bear, or a dog breed)... But given that these were targeted to an head of state, it's not too surprising. Obviously, censorship is not only about memes...
hungryhobo 6y ago
Am chinese National. Personally I think it's a double edged sword. It's basically protectionism but for information. On one hand censorship hinders internal transparency and makes it difficult to hold the government accountable. On the other hand information warfare is a thing, especially between geopolitical rivals, censorship is a cheap way to mitigate against them. For what it's worth, there are increasing voices within the chinese government that are advocating for removing the great firewall because the new generation of chinese are more and more confident with their own political system.
- pca006132 6y ago
  But I see the GFW getting more advanced :) And I think that it may be more justifiable if the censorship is also towards fake information and hate speech, but sadly this isn't quite true (check weibo or something). This is purely something political.
  - hungryhobo 6y ago
    If we are just talking about GFW I actually think people will eventually realize the CCP got it right all along, data is the new oil, and other government are just too incompetent to protect it.

mrtweetyhack 6y ago

thanks asshole

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

xvector 6y ago

Surprise, Chinese websites enforce political censorship within China? I am not sure what is news here. Are we going to pretend the NSA doesn’t integrate with PRISM to make lists of its own? Because they are beholden to the government, corporate control over the public square has us all fucked. Today people cheer Big Tech’s ability to censor distasteful politics from the public square. Tomorrow, when “content moderation” makes civil disobedience impossible to publicize, we will lament the lack of decentralized social media. In other words, centralized social media cements moves towards authoritarianism, but makes it very difficult to move back in the other direction, especially if attempted via the most tried and true methods in history. The revolution won’t be televised. You won’t find it on Twitter or Douyin either. So why did anyone expect anything different? Unless the people can take back control of the public square from the corporations, democracy will crack. Edit: consider responding with something coherent rather than downvoting and moving on

Dig1t 6y ago
The whataboutism WRT to the NSA detracts from the importance of the issue. > I am not sure what is news here. In fact, the Chinese government goes to great lengths to downplay and hide the extent of their censorship efforts, and it might actually be a surprise to some people. It is worthwhile discussing ALL forms of censorship, whether it be by the NSA, Beijing, or corporations. The only way we can deal with these issues is by discussing them at length and raising awareness.
- xvector 6y ago
  I agree. I added a bit describing how whining about government censorship is pointless so long as we support centralized social media, which is the real problem here. It is hypocritical for HN to cheer on censorship by Twitter and Big Tech while upvoting this article. The fundamental problem here, underlying both Chinese and American censorship/surveillance, is that we have willingly handed control of the public square over to an entity beholden to one that does not have our best interests in mind. So long as we let the public square rest in the hands of these entities, democracy will slowly slip from our hands, one ban and censor at a time. You can’t blame China or ByteDance or Twitter or the NSA for this sort of thing. The natural state of governments and corporations is vying for more power and wealth at all costs, democracy be damned. The blame rests on us, the people, for trusting corporations with our speech.

the_only_law 6y ago

Has this article been discussed here before? I could have sworn I recall seeing this article maybe a week or two ago on the front page but I can’t find a past thread with any activity.

vulcan01 6y ago
It has: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26192988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26192988 (You have a good memory!)
choppaface 6y ago
Yeah I don't get it. I submitted it last week but it got no attention. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26190172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26190172 ) It's a really eye-opening article because everybody does Trust & Safety differently and in ByteDance's case there appears to be a huge divide between how US and Chinese users are treated.
- xvector 6y ago
  > there appears to be a huge divide between how US and Chinese users are treated. TikTok is not Douyin. TikTok serves users outside of China, and ByteDance is aware that such extensive censorship would cause massive backlash against the app, so it is not done - especially when the public perception of China makes the company so precariously placed. As such, this is why you can still see posts about Uyighur Muslims and anti-China rhetoric on your FYP in TikTok rather easily. With Douyin, censorship is state mandated. Practically every big Chinese tech company will have some advanced state-of-the-art censorship infrastructure for their Chinese users.
- dstick 6y ago
  This is HN - you need frontpage or it’s dead. So someone that incidentally shares your interest needs to spot it in the stream of “new” posts, a bunch of friends upvote you, or it’s manually boosted by the staff. Just keep posting and don’t feel bad if it doesn’t get traction :)

TheRealPomax 6y ago

What's the point of a pseudonym if ByteDance can trivially identify who this was?

sanp 6y ago

I wonder how much of AI growth in China is driven by this use case - the need to censor at scale.

thedudeabides5 6y ago

“When I was at ByteDance, we received multiple requests from the bases to develop an algorithm that could automatically detect when a Douyin user spoke Uyghur, and then cut off the livestream session... ...every audio clip would be automatically transcribed into text, allowing algorithms to compare the notes with a long and constantly-updated list of sensitive words, dates and names, as well as Natural Language Processing models. Algorithms would then analyze whether the content was risky enough to require individual monitoring. If a user mentioned a sensitive term, a content moderator would receive the original video clip and the transcript showing where the term appeared. If the moderator deemed the speech sensitive or inappropriate, they would shut down the ongoing livestreaming session and even suspend or delete the account.”

brundolf 6y ago
Everybody talks about AI overlords, but the real threat is regular-old overlords using AI as a tool
EdwardDiego 6y ago
And where people speaking dialects were warned to switch to Mandarin for better monitoring... that chills me. So damn privileged to live in the West.
- xvector 6y ago
  The ball is rolling downhill. If we continue to allow centralized social media companies beholden to a government, to be the public square, then we too will turn into this dystopian nightmare given time. We must reclaim the public square if we wish to retain democracy.
c7DJTLrn 6y ago
When people have suggested a Hippocratic oath for technology workers in the past I've laughed at the idea. I think I've changed my mind.

legerdemain 6y ago

Sure, and I helped build Palantir's license-plate-reading, immigrant-processing, and drone-targeting machines. Everyone in the Bay Area is fine with that. No one cares. To an average affluent Bay Area engineer, illegal immigrants and people getting blown up half a world away are extremely abstract concerns. The real sources of pain in a Bay Area engineer's life are their inability to sip lattes through a mask and Planet Granite in Sunnyvale being closed. Meanwhile, my inbox is blowing up with inquiries from companies and I have my pick of lucrative jobs.

AlexCoventry 6y ago
Can you expand on that? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
- Krasnol 6y ago
  My guess is: "having no conscience makes you rich".
  - legerdemain 6y ago
    No, you have it backwards. Having no conscience doesn't make you rich. But the rich do have no conscience worth speaking of.
- deviation 6y ago
  Seems like indirect sarcasm. I have been seeing more of it here on HN. Unfortunately it lowers the quality of conversations that we are capable of having on here..
- legerdemain 6y ago
  My point is that as software engineers, maaaaany of us are complicit in activity that is morally ambiguous at best, a nuisance on average, and in many cases actively misanthropic. These are the careers that we have chosen and stuck to because the benefit to us outweighs the harm to society. We are aware of what we're doing and also apathetic about it. A person complaining about their employer being somewhere between morally indifferent and morally monstrous is a reflection of how incredibly normal this is. Users on this site reading this person's complaints and tut-tutting about how bad it sounds is a reflection of how normal this is. We are all neck-deep in the filth of depravity, willingly and gladly, and we're pontificating the important differences between the filth reaching ear-level or just mouth-level.

qchips 6y ago

It's becoming tougher to work for ethical companies, specially in Tech. If it's not the company itself, it's the shares of its mother company in another one.

rossdavidh 6y ago

Wow, that sounds disheartening. Thank goodness nothing like that could happen with tech companies in the U.S.A.

ForHackernews 6y ago
It's at least a little different: The Chinese tech companies are echoing and enforcing the party line, aiding and abetting government censorship. US tech firms were positioning themselves as adversaries of the previous president. We'll see how things play out with the new administration.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  But in China there isn't an opposition party. US tech firms echo and enforce their party line. Their party just happens to not always be in power. The party line Chinese firms echo and enforce comes from a party always in power.

brauhaus 6y ago

"We didn't have enough Uyghur language data points in our system, and the most popular livestream rooms were already closely monitored." This deeply saddened me. They reason why the Uyghur dialect wasn't banned wasn't for ethical reasons, but base operational ones. It's like when the bloody Franco dictatorship forbade the Catalan dialect decades ago.

bobthechef 6y ago

If you want to know where American governance is headed, look to China's regime for a foretaste. Big Tech and its ideological and political allies are taking us there, inch by inch.