Er… it is different. The Chinese firewall also includes massive censorship of what can be said internally, and it’s far beyond whether links can be shared and discussed.
What do you mean by “what can be said internally”?
Doesn’t the free market Great Firewall of USA do that? There are lists of topics that, if you express support for them, will get you automatically banned from facebook etc. Social media sites sell information about your activities to data brokers who in turn sell services that help decide what jobs or loans are available to you. Reddit blocking an entire ccTLD is pretty over-the-top but demands for more censorship have been in vogue in the USA since 2016.
Okay, but there’s a difference between removing solicitations to join ISIS and shutting down every criticism of Xi Jinping. Facebook is also being a lot more transparent here about its actions. China can be incredibly opaque from my understanding, so there is a significant degree of self-censorship.
It’s not that rules are entirely unpublished. It’s that the laws that exist are so vague and broad that it’s opaque what rights you actually have. Case in point: it is unlawful to “injure the reputation of state organs”. Uh… okay. So I can’t bad mouth the reliability of state media while in China? Well they don’t exactly say, but that seems a safe inference. This has historically been a complaint of companies, that they don’t know where the boundaries are so they have to be extra conservative with restrictions.
Its unclear for you because that concept doesnt exist in your country, and the translation is likely missing some of the nuance. For someone who grew up and went to school in China, its probably pretty clear.
Yeah, I’m talking comparisons more. Transparency around moderation is hard, even with the most well intended moderators. I moderate for a subreddit with a little over 250k subscribers and seven moderators. We try to be consistent and transparent in what the rules are, how they are interpreted, and how we came to conclusions. Some unevenness is inevitable in what is a very human judgement (was this rule broken?) and there are some things we have to keep secret to avoid people working the system. I suspect that Facebook runs into the same issues and more, but at a larger scale.
Meanwhile, China seems like it just doesn’t particularly give a fuck. Like, The Epoch Times knows exactly why they’re blocked, but otherwise it might be kind of a crap shot. And from what I’ve heard, this means the authorities could show up at your offices if you’re less than diligent about censoring your users according to the unwritten rules. So companies do a little extra censoring… just in case.
Er… it is different. The Chinese firewall also includes massive censorship of what can be said internally, and it’s far beyond whether links can be shared and discussed.
What do you mean by “what can be said internally”?
Doesn’t the free market Great Firewall of USA do that? There are lists of topics that, if you express support for them, will get you automatically banned from facebook etc. Social media sites sell information about your activities to data brokers who in turn sell services that help decide what jobs or loans are available to you. Reddit blocking an entire ccTLD is pretty over-the-top but demands for more censorship have been in vogue in the USA since 2016.
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Okay, but there’s a difference between removing solicitations to join ISIS and shutting down every criticism of Xi Jinping. Facebook is also being a lot more transparent here about its actions. China can be incredibly opaque from my understanding, so there is a significant degree of self-censorship.
Maybe its opaque to you because you dont speak Chinese. Why would they bother to publish the details in English?
It’s not that rules are entirely unpublished. It’s that the laws that exist are so vague and broad that it’s opaque what rights you actually have. Case in point: it is unlawful to “injure the reputation of state organs”. Uh… okay. So I can’t bad mouth the reliability of state media while in China? Well they don’t exactly say, but that seems a safe inference. This has historically been a complaint of companies, that they don’t know where the boundaries are so they have to be extra conservative with restrictions.
Its unclear for you because that concept doesnt exist in your country, and the translation is likely missing some of the nuance. For someone who grew up and went to school in China, its probably pretty clear.
I’m not judging what you’re saying, but Facebook is anything but transparent.
Yeah, I’m talking comparisons more. Transparency around moderation is hard, even with the most well intended moderators. I moderate for a subreddit with a little over 250k subscribers and seven moderators. We try to be consistent and transparent in what the rules are, how they are interpreted, and how we came to conclusions. Some unevenness is inevitable in what is a very human judgement (was this rule broken?) and there are some things we have to keep secret to avoid people working the system. I suspect that Facebook runs into the same issues and more, but at a larger scale.
Meanwhile, China seems like it just doesn’t particularly give a fuck. Like, The Epoch Times knows exactly why they’re blocked, but otherwise it might be kind of a crap shot. And from what I’ve heard, this means the authorities could show up at your offices if you’re less than diligent about censoring your users according to the unwritten rules. So companies do a little extra censoring… just in case.