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It's a tragedy for sharing human knowledge. Say what you want about China, but there's a huge amount of amazing stuff there that the Western world just doesn't

It's a tragedy for sharing human knowledge. Say what you want about China, but there's a huge amount of amazing stuff there that the Western world just doesn't know about. Art, architecture, science, technology, etc. Think about how much human knowledge in Discord servers is hidden from search engines --- in China there's orders of magnitude more knowledge hidden in Wechat, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, etc.

imiric 3y ago
> in China there's orders of magnitude more knowledge hidden in Wechat, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, etc. I wouldn't refer to highly censored information, disinformation, and discourse controlled by the CCP as "knowledge". Similarly for western social media. While they're not directly controlled by governments, each platform has its own biases and algorithms that enforce their values and beliefs on the information hosted on their servers. These are not public squares that protect "freedom of speech", regardless of what they may claim. The knowledge found on these sites is of minimal value, and most of it is drowned by the noise produced by the vast majority of their users and bots.
- porphyra 3y ago
  What??? there's tons of valid information there about all sorts of topics not even remotely related to political stuff that would get censored. There's food, technology, science, whatever. I mean sure there's noise in the form of memes like all social media sites, but calling it "minimal value" is pretty extreme. To take one example, I use Xiaohongshu to read about camera lenses. There's a lot of good information that's not available on Western platforms (optical simulations, anecdotes about rare lenses, etc).
  - imiric 3y ago
    Perhaps "minimal value" is wrongly phrased. After all, if you find great value in these sites, I can't contradict your experience. My point is that most content posted on these platforms is heavily modified to game and appease the algorithms that drive engagement. So you never really know if something is factual and honest. Add to that the fact that these platforms promote content that is actively harmful to its users, and to society as a whole, and I doubt whether whatever valuable information is on them is really worth searching for and consuming. Chances are that you would be able to find the same information elsewhere, without risking your sanity. That said, I do have an extremely negative view of all social media, and actively avoid it, so I concede that I may be missing out. :)
    - alisonatwork 3y ago
      A better example than dedicated social media apps is perhaps Baike, commonly described as China's Wikipedia. Except it isn't, because it's not a non-profit organization with a mission to provide free and unbiased information to the world, it's a locked-down product of Baidu, one of China's major tech companies who once upon a time (much like Google) owned domestic search and maps, who also run Tieba (something like Reddit) and so on. This is the biggest difference I find on the "chinanet" - all of the top sites are owned by one of the major tech companies, and all of these companies have an interest in trying to keep you inside their ecosystem. Outside of the chinanet this also happens, where Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft all try to keep you inside their ecosystems (to say nothing of the traditional media companies like Disney, WBD etc), but outside the chinanet there remains a small but influential "information wants to be free" movement that is unaligned with any government or corporation. So we have Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap and the Internet Archive... It's not much, but it's something. From my perspective if people really want to see a free and open internet, where information is never hidden in gated communities, the only choice is to support non-profits with aligned missions. Then people all over the world - including China - can contribute.
      - porphyra 3y ago
        God I wish Wikipedia wasn't banned by the Great Firewall. It's kinda sad that stuff like Caltrain electrification, for example, has a huge and well-researched article despite not even being in service yet, just because of the large amount of Wikipedians in the Bay Area where the Wikimedia Foundation is headquartered. In the meanwhile, entire operational train systems both in China and elsewhere in the world that have vastly greater ridership, longer length, more advanced technology, etc, get nary a mention. I have nothing against Caltrain electrification getting a great article since I'm an inclusionist but it is just sad how little of the cool things, especially in China, are on Wikipedia.
        yorwba 3y ago
        Even with the Great Firewall, Chinese Wikipedia is the eighth largest by number of edits, daily views, and active users: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias/Table2 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias/Table2 Chinese topics are usually well-covered on the Chinese Wikipedia, the lack of an English-language article is more likely to be attributable to a shortage of English-Chinese bilinguals translating that information. Do you have some particular train system in mind?
alisonatwork 3y ago
A lot of Chinese language content is hidden in domestic gated communities regardless of whether other countries ban access or not. The original problem here is most Chinese tech companies behave exactly like Discord in order to entice people to use their apps and ecosystem exclusively. In fact, in my experience, trying to access information freely on the web is much more difficult in China than it is in many western countries, precisely because the companies are so aggressive about forcing people to install their apps.

imiric 3y ago

> in China there's orders of magnitude more knowledge hidden in Wechat, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, etc. I wouldn't refer to highly censored information, disinformation, and discourse controlled by the CCP as "knowledge". Similarly for western social media. While they're not directly controlled by governments, each platform has its own biases and algorithms that enforce their values and beliefs on the information hosted on their servers. These are not public squares that protect "freedom of speech", regardless of what they may claim. The knowledge found on these sites is of minimal value, and most of it is drowned by the noise produced by the vast majority of their users and bots.

porphyra 3y ago
What??? there's tons of valid information there about all sorts of topics not even remotely related to political stuff that would get censored. There's food, technology, science, whatever. I mean sure there's noise in the form of memes like all social media sites, but calling it "minimal value" is pretty extreme. To take one example, I use Xiaohongshu to read about camera lenses. There's a lot of good information that's not available on Western platforms (optical simulations, anecdotes about rare lenses, etc).
- imiric 3y ago
  Perhaps "minimal value" is wrongly phrased. After all, if you find great value in these sites, I can't contradict your experience. My point is that most content posted on these platforms is heavily modified to game and appease the algorithms that drive engagement. So you never really know if something is factual and honest. Add to that the fact that these platforms promote content that is actively harmful to its users, and to society as a whole, and I doubt whether whatever valuable information is on them is really worth searching for and consuming. Chances are that you would be able to find the same information elsewhere, without risking your sanity. That said, I do have an extremely negative view of all social media, and actively avoid it, so I concede that I may be missing out. :)
  - alisonatwork 3y ago
    A better example than dedicated social media apps is perhaps Baike, commonly described as China's Wikipedia. Except it isn't, because it's not a non-profit organization with a mission to provide free and unbiased information to the world, it's a locked-down product of Baidu, one of China's major tech companies who once upon a time (much like Google) owned domestic search and maps, who also run Tieba (something like Reddit) and so on. This is the biggest difference I find on the "chinanet" - all of the top sites are owned by one of the major tech companies, and all of these companies have an interest in trying to keep you inside their ecosystem. Outside of the chinanet this also happens, where Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft all try to keep you inside their ecosystems (to say nothing of the traditional media companies like Disney, WBD etc), but outside the chinanet there remains a small but influential "information wants to be free" movement that is unaligned with any government or corporation. So we have Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap and the Internet Archive... It's not much, but it's something. From my perspective if people really want to see a free and open internet, where information is never hidden in gated communities, the only choice is to support non-profits with aligned missions. Then people all over the world - including China - can contribute.
    - porphyra 3y ago
      God I wish Wikipedia wasn't banned by the Great Firewall. It's kinda sad that stuff like Caltrain electrification, for example, has a huge and well-researched article despite not even being in service yet, just because of the large amount of Wikipedians in the Bay Area where the Wikimedia Foundation is headquartered. In the meanwhile, entire operational train systems both in China and elsewhere in the world that have vastly greater ridership, longer length, more advanced technology, etc, get nary a mention. I have nothing against Caltrain electrification getting a great article since I'm an inclusionist but it is just sad how little of the cool things, especially in China, are on Wikipedia.
      - yorwba 3y ago
        Even with the Great Firewall, Chinese Wikipedia is the eighth largest by number of edits, daily views, and active users: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias/Table2 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias/Table2 Chinese topics are usually well-covered on the Chinese Wikipedia, the lack of an English-language article is more likely to be attributable to a shortage of English-Chinese bilinguals translating that information. Do you have some particular train system in mind?

alisonatwork 3y ago

A lot of Chinese language content is hidden in domestic gated communities regardless of whether other countries ban access or not. The original problem here is most Chinese tech companies behave exactly like Discord in order to entice people to use their apps and ecosystem exclusively. In fact, in my experience, trying to access information freely on the web is much more difficult in China than it is in many western countries, precisely because the companies are so aggressive about forcing people to install their apps.