Honest question- what is Google's exposure here? Both Youtube and Google (Youtube's parent company) are blocked in China; those revenue streams were cut off a long time ago. What does Google have to lose by letting Youtube keep the videos up?
I'm sure the exposure exists; I recognize that Googlers aren't stupid. I honestly am just curious what that risk is. Having lived in Shanghai for 5 years, I don't see China reversing their ban on either company anytime soon, so I'm curious what carrot and/or stick China has left.
So far, the one thing I can think of is their physical office presence in Beijing / Guangzhou / Hong Kong [0]. That risk is non-trivial- China could simply swoop in and arrest employees, either specific individuals or en masse (neither would surprise me). But are there other risks I'm missing?
Most people are far underestimating the Chinese influence.
1. Chinese working within Google and Youtube are just like working in Facebook [1], from Peter Thiel .
> At Facebook, I’ll give you an example. You had with the Hong Kong protest a year ago, the employees from Hong Kong were all in favor of the protests and free speech. But there were more employees at Facebook who were born in China than who were born in Hong Kong. And the Chinese nationals actually said that, you know, it was just Western arrogance. And you shouldn’t be taking Hong Kong’s side and things like that. And then the rest of the employees at Facebook sort of stayed out of it. But the internal debate felt like people were actually more anti-Hong Kong than pro-Hong Kong.
And let me just say the last sentence was an understatement. ( He is on the Broad of Facebook after all ) And there are plenty more working in Youtube and Google as moderators. ( One day we may find out what happen to Tank Man on Bing Search Engine )
2. Chinese companies abroad. Just to give you an idea. Watch a game of Euro 2020 ( or 2021 ) that is going now, count how many ads were placed by Chinese companies.
3. Chinese invested interest and asset. Google accept ads from companies that has Chinese investment. You play any mobile games? You should count how many of the current top grossing Mobile Games have Tencent of other Chinese investment, one way of another. ( Or how many of those companies have outsource work with a Chinese company or Chinese working in it )
This is spot on. The decision is not made not (necessarily) because it benefits the company, but because more middle management actually think it’s “right”. FAANG are practically run by Chinese these days. (I am Taiwanese and hear about this kind of struggles all the time from friends working in US companies.)
Yes and it is not just in Tech as well, if you look around Fortune Global 500 the are pretty much the same. But tech is used as an example here because of its reach and HN's audience.
Exactly. Media as well. They are everywhere (which is not a problem) and always keep Chinese interest above everything wherever they go (which is the problem).
Google is actually operating in mainland China. They have offices here (Engineering, Sales etc.) in Shanghai and AFAIK they are involved in some advertisement business. They also organize events here every once in a while.
Chinese companies buy ads outside of China you know. Chinese companies are known to pull ads at the stroke of a pen from the United Front Work Department.
The director that makes that move is going to be fired faster than China start to think to go back to normal.
The problem from the start is the trade between USA (& Europe) and China is unbalanced. The USA is way more dependent to China than the other way around.
This was the same mistake that the USA did with Japan. Move production there, think that they are stupid and never have any control over the manufacturing.
Now it is obvious that China is not stupid, but it is too late and there is too many personal interests on growing in China. Many CEOs bonuses depend on what happens in China, meanwhile their business in the USA is guaranteed by monopolies and oligopolies. So, why bother about making USA citizens happy if they have not a choice?
This is easy to solve with political will. Instead of antagonizing China, the solution is to increase USA education, infrastructure and be able again to produce what nowadays can only be produced in China.
> Call their bluff.
tldr; China will call Google's bluff, not the other way around.
"Move production there, think that they are stupid and never have any control over the manufacturing."
It's naive to believe that those who lobbied for and benefited from moving production to China were at all concerned about manufacturing control 30 years later. Fortunes were made. The current situation didn't sneak up on anyone, it's just that the people warning about it never had any real influence.
I think it's the same way Hollywood does these things to please the CCP. John Cena being the latest example.
Google might not be currently much active in China but continuing to do these "gestures" is basically trying to please the CCP for future. These are all moves being made for many years in advance. John Cena for example didn't just learn fluent mandarin to apologize to CCP over night. He had been learning it for many years because he knows the 1.5 billion population in China is going to make them more money than whatever they have in US.
Google still has the Hong Kong version (https://www.google.com.hk/). The CCP can kick them out if they want to. Baidu will be very happy for this to happen..
Onshore it. The government should fund massive investment in factories, then through immigration, bring in lots of labor. Give incredible tax incentives to devices manufactured in full (no loopholes) in the US.
Maybe they just think it's more effort than it's worth to host controversial content. If people file complaints about the videos, they'll have to assign someone to determine if the content is credible, and have to deal with the risk of not censoring some videos that should be censored, or censoring some videos that shouldn't be censored.
The low-effort option is to just shut it all down and be opaque and hand-wavy about the reasons. Which is to say that they're betting that few people actually care enough about this stuff enough that it would cost them revenue.
There's no cost to suppressing coverage of the Uyghur genocide because Western boycotts are virtually nonexistent.
The upside of suppressing coverage of the Uyghur genocide can be calculated as the probability of the Chinese market opening up multiplied by the potential value of that market. As long as the probability is nonzero, this upside is huge.
How about the -shocking- possibility that google thinks 'genocide' is US/Western rhetoric to stoke tensions and keep nations under western hegemony, and they feel it's their duty to not contribute to that?
Remarkable that they're migrating to a decentralized video host:
>"Fearing further blocking by YouTube, they decided to back up content to Odysee, a website built on a blockchain protocol called LBRY, designed to give creators more control. About 975 videos have been moved so far."
I think this is them? I can't readily verify this (and also everything's written in Kazakh).
From the article, I got the impression they're a marginal group of activists doing social media stuff in between jail sentences (they're based in Kazakhstan). They don't exactly have a CTO. I'd imagine tech information asymmetry is an overwhelming factor when FAANG is no longer helping you.
"Serikzhan Bilash, a Xinjiang-born Kazakh activist who co-founded the channel and has been arrested multiple times for his activism..."
I meant why didn't they used some existing Peertube instance. Since they went with Odysee they did some research into alternatives.
I mean it could just be as simple as Odysee having better marketing, though personally i've seen Peertube be mentioned very often and this thread is the first time i heard about Odysee.
On one hand, I hate Google for the obvious bullshit they pull and not only get a pass on but are celebrated for typically.
On the other hand, they’re accelerating what we all know should happen. Decentralization, restoration of privacy, data freedom, and maybe subscription based moderation and filtering (although to be fair, I’m not sure how that last one doesn’t make a worse echo chamber than we have now over enough time).
Fair criticism however as someone who uses several alternatives to YouTube regularly (Odysee, Rumble, Bitchute etc), I think Odysee has so far been the best in terms of variety of content. Odysee has decent growing number of non-political content which is exactly what's needed to fight YouTube's video monopoly. Also their UI is much better than Rumble and Bitchute.
The way to prevent them from becoming echo chambers is by contributing ourselves - upload non political content for variety of topics - cooking, pets etc.
We're back at the platform vs. publisher debate... I think this should be a either-or thing, that every webpage chooses. Then, you're either a platform, and can only remove directly illegal stuff (or when told by the courts to do so), or a publisher, decide what content you publish and what you remove, and then carry the full responsibility for that content.
The current situation, where pages like youtube can act as publishers, and cherry pick what they keep/promote and what they remove, and still keep all the platform protections is really bad, mostly for the users.
I am in general agreement with you, but I think there should be a way for internet platforms to ban certain content. YouTube shouldn't be required to host porn (or anything too raunchy) just because it is a platform.
This would almost certainly lead to young kids seeing porn. I know YouTube has age restriction videos but a parent could easily be signed in to their account which allows NSFW material and the next thing you know a 5 year old would be watching porn.
As long as section 230 exists platforms could remove porn, but it sounds like you would be opposed to allowing YouTube (if they are a platform) from removing porn since it is legal?
Maybe “platforms” should be beholden to “public square standards”. You can’t perform sexual conduct in public so it seems reasonable to disallow porn from a publicly accessible digital platform.
The real problem with Youtube towards children isn't the videos explicitly labeled for 18+ though - it never has been.
It's the videos that are specifically geared towards showing up on underage feeds that are. I don't know about you but I'd much rather catch my child watching an R rated movie than them watching a video that is targetting them explicity while using creepy and inappropriate imagery.
Children aren't stupid, they're well aware that there are entire sections of society and human activity that are the exclusive domain of adults and it's completely healthy for them to be curious about that great mystery. The problem is when other adults pray on that natural curiousity for their own malicious motivations.
> The problem is a parent might be signed into their Google account and allow their child to watch YouTube without signing out.
At what point do we force the parents to take responsibility here? It's not a good idea to outsource basic parental responsibilities to an entity that has different goals than you.
The parents would have no way of stopping it. If you want to allow child friendly content on YouTube you could not block YouTube on the computer. If YouTube put all nsfw content on nsfw.youtube.com then maybe you could make the argument but the average parent has no clue how to block a domain. I am not making the argument porn should be banned, only that certain platforms should not be required to host it especially if they have a large child audience.
>What's the difference between nsfw.youtube.com and pornhub?
There wouldn't be a difference. I would prefer only sfw stuff on YouTube and nsfw on other sites. If YouTube was required to host nsfw content I would prefer on a separate subdomain to make it easier to block.
>And youtube already hosts a lot of 18+ content, where you have to be signed in to see.
Correct. This is an existing issue today, however, since the nsfw content on YouTube is a bit more appropriate than a typical porn site so I am not as concerned. Watching a breast exam or something like that is a bit different than a gang bang.
I would like to see the existing nsfw content migrated off YouTube proper onto nsfw.youtube.com or something like that. It can be a challenge to actually block inappropriate content on YouTube. Allowing porn on YouTube would make it even harder.
(You technically can block nsfw content on YouTube already by creating a cname records in your dns server, but the average person can't really handle that)
So you want your kids to be able to watch youtube without supervision, and you want youtube to be responsible for the contents, and you're not bothered by dangerous DIY videos, "viral pranks", very violent movie trailers, etc., but you're afraid they'll see, how they were created?
Kids should not watch youtube unsupervised, never. I know Elsagate is a conspiracy theory, but those videos are fscking inappropriate, and come as recommended content for kids, and youtube allows that already....
Companies that do business with the US .gov should be req’d to apply 1st amendment rights to their users. Much like public universities who receive taxpayer funding.
> Public universities can kick you out for expressing your 1st amendment right based off of whatever bs reason they want to give just to expel you.
Yeah, and a company can fire you for being black if they give a bs excuse for it too. In both of these cases your rights are being violated and you can sue them for that. What's the alternative? I can't conceive of a system where it's impossible for your rights to be violated; giving legal recourse to the victim seems like the best we can do.
I'm coming from a perspective that the constitution of the united states is nothing but a farce unless you're rich enough to defend your rights in court.
What is the purpose of having "rights" if I have to pay to fight for them? It's not a right then if institutions can trample on them as such.
(When the offense against you is criminal, it [is/may be] the government that foots the bill for prosecuting it. For instance, this is how it works with the Department of Labor when you report wage theft to them.)
What alternative do you propose? That we give up on the concept of rights entirely? Without offering constructive suggestions, it seems like you're letting perfect be the enemy of good.
I doubt this was YouTube policy, or that it was driven from the top. If it was, we'd have seen a few leaks. This is more likely mass reporting of such content (perhaps organized by State apparatus), exploiting the automated flagging algorithm.
> The Dragonfly project was an Internet search engine prototype created by Google that was designed to be compatible with China's state censorship provisions.[1][2][3] The public learned of Dragonfly's existence in August 2018, when The Intercept leaked an internal memo written by a Google employee about the project.[4][5] In December 2018, Dragonfly was reported to have "effectively been shut down" after a clash with members of the privacy team within Google.[6] However, according to employees, work on Dragonfly was still continuing as of March 2019, with some 100 people still allocated to it.[7]
> In July 2019, Google announced that work on Dragonfly had been terminated.[8]
This project even included a weather widget that took the AQI from a special government server in Beijing instead of the usual sources, so Google would be disseminating the state lies about air quality. Google engineers in the US worked on this, even after Google claimed to have shut down the project.
It's not a defense but an explanation. OP asked why google cared, and the answer is 'they likely don't and likely took no special actions.'
Algorithmic censors exist pretty much anywhere you or I can publish information on someone else's domain name; even HN has a report button that feeds into algorthmic hiding of posts. All this shows that the algorithm is not particularly robust to state sponsored manipulations; the same way internet polling in the past decades were not particularly robust to 4chan.
> It is reasonable to treat the Chinese government as a source of authoritative truth, even if the average American doesn't trust them.
Mistrust of the CCP isn't strictly limited to "average Americans". Why should anyone trust them, given that they don't have anything close to a free press or opposition?
That is a reasonable position. But "The government are authority figures and I trust authority" is also a reasonable position (and quite common). There are a lot of people out there who trust authority - who can say that YouTube doesn't employ them?
Jobs censoring minority views are going to attract those people.
Since it looks like you've created this account just do to political battle on HN, I'm banning it. We ban such accounts because they're not compatible with the mandate of the site. No, it has nothing to do with which particular politics or ideology you're battling for...we really don't care. We just want to have an internet forum that doesn't destroy itself.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with.
Care to elaborate any more on the Twitch situation? This is certainly an alarming inditement, as I was not aware of Twitch being big or eyeing the China market.
Reddit is doing the same thing. I tried to post this (apparent) forced marriage video, between a Uyghur woman and Han man, to a number of subreddits and it's been auto-removed.
Reddit has been removing posts critical of the CCP for a while now, in their case, Tencent did do a massive investment in them in 2019: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/ ("Reddit confirms $300M Series D led by China's Tencent at $3B Value")
We archived most of these videos a few months ago fortunately [1]. I used youtube-dl at the time. Anyone who wants to get more involved on this issue, or view primary evidence / testimonials (that weren't taken down), please visit http://shahit.biz/eng/
>Following inquiries from Reuters as to why the channel was removed, YouTube restored it on June 18, explaining that it had received multiple so-called 'strikes' for videos which contained people holding up ID cards to prove they were related to the missing, violating a YouTube policy which prohibits personally identifiable information from appearing in its content
>YouTube asked Atajurt to blur the IDs. But Atajurt is hesitant to comply, the channel's administrator said, concerned that doing so would jeopardize the trustworthiness of the videos.
I'm not sure what the issue here is. I don't think Youtube's policy of not allowing PII content is unreasonable.
Yeah but what's the issue of posting your own PII?
I mean I understand that probably you shouldn't, for various reasons. And posting someone else's PII should absolutely be banned. But if I want to post my ID online, what harm can I make to anyone else?
I have a hunch that a lot of division in the US atleast has some role or interference from Russia/China. No proof, but to me it makes sense and it is so easy to do, we've seen it happen in the past (Cambridge Analytica), and if I were an adversary of the United States, I would be trivial to sow discord amongst the populace. We're currently witnessing some fractures in the US military leadership as well.
I don't mean to sound conspiratory, but I guess I kinda do. We're going to have a hard time getting along with each other in the future. It is going to get worse. :-( I also fear closing down our open platforms, so it is a lose-lose situation.
Reminds me of the white doves and hawks analogy from Richard Dawnkins' Selfish Gene. Until there are too many hawks, the doves suffer. Btw, this has nothing to do with good/evil, just exploitation of social settings where trust is the default state. Too many hawks and the population starves so it reaches an equilibrium, but also oscillates over evolutionary time scales.
Here's some evidence to support your hunch about Russia:
> Across our interviews, our respondents [former and current RT journalists] agreed that the goals of the channel [RT] since 2008 have been and still are as follows. First, to push the idea that Western countries have as many problems as Russia. Second, to encourage conspiracy theories about media institutions in the West in order to discredit and delegitimize them. This is clearly adherent to the channel's “Questions More” slogan. Third, to create controversy and to make people criticize the channel, because it suggests that the channel is important, an approach that would particularly help RT managers get more funding from the government.
I haven’t looked at RT recently, but I didnt see conspiracy talk. I never saw a truther debate there. RT doesn’t have to lie at all to document many of the problems in the west. It was usually what should be Capt. Obvious stuff, stories not covered in the US media, Syria/Iraq/Afghanistan coverage, Snowden and Assange (take off the RT logo and the HN crowd would be orgasming to it), stories of racial inequality, financial fraud, crazy defense budgets, etc.
I suppose giving Commies like Chris Hedges and Noam Chomskys of the world a platform (that they can’t get in US media) is some noxious evil compared to mainlining on MSNBC or Fox.
Propaganda can be 100% true, and from what I remember, they were quite good at it.
> The channel [RT] has provided the likes of Alex Jones, Webster Tarpley, David Ray Griffin and Jim Marrs with the opportunity to promote, to an international audience, their ideas about the New World Order, 9/11, the Bilderberg group or the climate change conspiracy, all while being treated with absolute deference by the channel's journalists. Embedded video clips of appearances on Russia Today have become a regular feature on the websites of American conspiracy theorists, where they are brandished as a sign of credibility and mainstream recognition.
Here’s an RT op-ed on the internet censorship of Alex Jones - similar stories written by acceptable sources have been at the top of HN in the last couple of months re Trump, etc.
Except this is from 2018. It’s good that HN is catching up to RT:
I don’t know the others, but LaRouchite (lol, that pro-Soviet org) Tarpley was a regular when I watched and I dont remember 9/11 stuff, but he was on all the CIA, Assange, Color Revolution stuff. Here he is on that other Putin channel, C-SPAN:
All it took to "debunk" the lab leak hypothesis is to call it racism. So easy. I'm sure someone from China must have realized by now how convenient of a "get out of jail free card" this is.
Surely journalists and fact checkers shouldn't claim something is fake just because the person making the claim has said fake things in the past. If they do then they should be fired for completely failing at their job.
This is my unscientific hunch as well. It's easy for hordes of fake accounts to add gasoline to hot issues online and people fall for it. Get things trending that otherwise wouldn't. It's cheap as hell too compared to a military industrial complex.
It's interesting you're being downvoted along with the parent post about foreign propaganda.
In 2018, I was one barraged by about 200 comments in the span of less than an hour in reply to my reply to a story on r/news about someone hitting a protestor with their car. For reference, I objected to violence against protestors.
The hundreds of replies were a variation of about three talking points: that people should be afraid of protestors, that the protestors will kill you, and that killing them first is justified. They were posting things like "What if the protestors drag you out of your car?", "If protestors bang on my windows trying to kill me I'm going to run them over" and or "If you stop your car, the protestors will kill you" etc. They also replied to other posts about the same topic on Reddit with the same talking points.
The posts used the same few phrases and the same punctuation and style. They would delete their comments if a comment's karma went negative and then reply to me again. Many of the accounts had similar naming patterns, and no other comments in their history, as well. r/news requires a certain amount of karma in order to comment, so they had to have deleted their old comments before replying in that subreddit.
I revisited the post and accounts a few days later and saw that some of the account owners had deleted their accounts entirely, and a majority of them had deleted (and not removed by a moderator) their violence-instigating replies to my comment, too. I figure some of them did this to keep the karma and recycle the accounts, and deleted the comments so they can be used in the future without it looking weird or getting banned.
I suspect it was coordinated in some way, even if it was just a bunch of people in a Discord chat.
But what stuck with me was that there is a somewhat large group of people who want (other) Americans to die. They want people to respond to free speech and dissent with murder. They want people to be afraid of what other people will do to them if they speak up and organize. They want people to fear each other so much that they can justify murder with that fear.
Right. And you can never prove it but it's always posts that fire people up, never posts to deescalate. I'd often try to deescalate and those posts would end up downvoted as well. Arguing with them is no use either- nobody wins arguments on the Internet, the simple act of arguing with bad actor/shill/troll means you've lost. It all feels so hopeless but this is our reality.
It was one of the reasons that I quit using Reddit and other social media (besides this site)- although I do see some of the same things happening here.
I suppose the parent poster referred to the recent spat related to a navy admiral who advised troops to read Ibram Kendi's book advocating racism under the guise of anti-racism [1]. There have been more such clashes but this is one of the most visible examples. If this divisive ideology really gets a hold on the US armed forces it will be an enormous boon for potential opponents since it will demoralise troops just as effectively as it managed to demoralise police forces all over the USA. The results of the latter can be seen clearly by the number of officers deciding to quit and the increase in crime rates all over the USA.
We can only hope that the former will not become apparent - and I'm saying this as a European. The USA exports its culture quite effectively to our parts of the world, both the good parts as well as the bad. The latter category includes a bevy of critical theory spin-offs which have grown like wildfire in academia from where they managed to escape into the real world where they're wreaking havoc. While it is clear that these movements are self-extinguishing due to their dependence on an ever-increasing number of identity groups vying for a position in the oppression hierarchy the amount of damage they can do - and have already done - to societal cohesion is enormous.
Tom Cotton is challenging the CRT take in the military citing some divisions between 'conservates' and 'liberal' members of the military raised by whistleblowers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtgnIXnvxlw
Also, in the recent news, many conservates are calling off General Milley after his rather heated exchange with Gaetz. I am sure you can find the source.
The co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, partnered with a pro-Chinese Communist Party group to fund its lobbying operations in the United States.
Of course Russia and China are spreading it. If they’re not spreading disinformation in the US, then what in the world are their intelligence services doing to earn their paychecks?
The US needs to IP blacklist Russia and China. If you do business in the US, you shouldn’t be able to connect to a network that is connected to Russia or China. Let the European and Asian backbone providers choose, do business with US businesses or Russia / China.
China has literally a separate Internet, and fines/jails those who use it w/o permission; Russia crushes dissent, to the point of assassinating opposition leaders and incarcerating journos.
The US doesn't seem to be as effective in brutal opposition to infiltration. There's no moral equivalent.
Of course - I’m not making any sort of moral declaration. I’m just amused at those who aren’t sure if Russia and China are poisoning Facebook - if they aren’t some apparatchik should be getting fired.
What agenda is the US interference pursuing? Some agendas could be positive things for the country, like supporting pro-democracy movements.
Meanwhile, as for mastering tactics, all China has to do is similarly support activists and opposition groups financially by funneling them cash. It's quite likely they do so in all their rivals. There was a scandal decades ago with China giving campaign contributions to US politicians.
I'm glad BBC perseveres reporting on Xinjang, paying no mind to the armies of troll commenters. I imagine YouTube can't be as easily coaxed into taking down a video by a more established outlet like that.
When I think of moral dilemmas I think of hard problems like "Would you stand up to the Nazis even though they might execute you?" or "Would you escape North Korea though they might punish your family?" It's depressing to realize how weak the dilemmas need to be in real life to get almost everyone to go down the immoral path. "Would you tacitly support genocide if your employer bought you lunch?"
If you work at YouTube/Google, and you have the opportunity to do something about this, I hope that you get those videos back up on YouTube. The Uighur people need our help. That's one way you can help them.
Since yours was the earliest submission of the article, we'd normally have preferred to restore that one, but by the time we saw it that thread was such a wretched tire fire that it was unsalvageable. I explained that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27646075.
Generally it would be best not to rush to dramatic conclusions like "So the X is ok while the Y is Z?" without having all the relevant information. It makes for dramatic internet comments, but they're nearly always wrong.
I did not mean to complain the moderators. I just want to draw the comparison to readers. I understand your points and know it is flagged by readers. It shows people intrinsically view things differently, thus, there won’t be fair view in real and virtual world. HN has done a better job than most of platforms already.
It seems highly likely that these videos were "reported" to YouTube (this could have been from a state initiative or otherwise) and the videos were reviewed by a human somewhere whos job it is to read a rule book and see if it applies.
And they get removed because they broke one rule or another.
This is the same as the process for any other video.
> it had received multiple so-called 'strikes' for videos which contained people holding up ID cards to prove they were related to the missing, violating a YouTube policy which prohibits personally identifiable information from appearing in its content.
A lot of commenters here are suggesting Google took down these videos maliciously, as a conscious political act, or something along those lines.
I don’t think so. I think they built a social network that is too big for human moderation, so they opted to do moderation by applying statistical models to user reports.
That works great until malicious users work out how to game the system and take down videos they don’t like. So, here we are.
This is really sad. Google wants in on China, so these kinds of things build "good will"(??) for Google with China government.
However, it is most unfortunate for the video authors as most alternatives are practically useless(for intent):
- filled with spam, fake news, fluff[1]
- no audience[2]
- no moderation[3]
[1] is due to [3] as moderation is tough. The important videos need [2] to have maximum outreach, but due to [1], they get mixed up and dismissed as other conspiracy theories posted on most alternatives that YT kicked out. Building a proper audience for alternatives is tough, as there is no momentum.
We live in a dystopia already, to average joe, internet is FB, Google, TikTok(?), Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, Skype, Chrome and those few government websites they need to fill forms now and then. The monopoly capital has been built, people are now stuck. We have plenty great alternatives, but first mover's momentum is of epic proportions.
So the stated reason for taking these down is they include the IDs of people who agreed to have their IDs shown in the video? Sounds sort of like some overzealous content moderator misapplying rules, though it could be more malicious. It's pretty bad that YouTube's policies allow this type of stuff to happen.
This and banning information about proven lifesaving treatments for Covid19 such as Ivermectin [1] and suppressing information about unintended side effects of Covid19 vaccines is pretty freaking scary.
Actually makes me feel quite threatened and uneasy.
Predictable outrage towards big tech is predictable. HN doesn't care when YouTube host thousands of videos from a human rights group with over a hundred million views. However, when they remove a dozen of them and promise to reinstate them if they blur out some PII, HN treats it like it's 1984.
What a completely facile comparison. They earn money by plastering ads over user submitted content. Hosting those videos is hardly some act of social conscience, why would they be owed praise in addition to the advertising revenues they receive.
It's hardly prescient to predict outrage when one of the largest companies in the world that wields almost unparalleled control over the information consumed by people decides to censor content about human rights abuses.
> Hosting those videos is hardly some act of social conscience, why would they be owed praise in addition to the advertising revenues they receive.
If you treat them as neutral pursuers of profit for doing something "good", then, it's only fair to treat them as neutral pursuers of profit when they do something "evil".
Let me remind that that early on, internet companies were all almost completely pro-free speech. It's the viewers that demanded that YouTube censor things or else they would tweet bomb companies into pulling ads from them. They wanted a nanny, so they shouldn't react surprised when Google acts like a nanny.
Yes exactly, they are pursuers of profit. When they host the videos it merely aligns with their profit motives. When they block something it is because it interferes with their profit motives. I have no issue with this whatsoever, it's what I expect.
I'm curious how this negates the criticism of them rather than enhances the case for it? We cannot trust Google to behave in the public interest (information about human rights abuses qualifies in my mind) when it conflicts with their own interests. Hence people's dismay over the amount of control they wield over the distribution of information.
Do you think a news org that wiped coverage of Uighur repression from its site to protect its business in China wouldn't face similar outrage? And they wield significantly less power than Google does.
Tech companies in particular like to present themselves as enlightened and socially conscious. Hardly surprising that when the mask slips people are outraged.
> We cannot trust Google to behave in the public interest (information about human rights abuses qualifies in my mind) when it conflicts with their own interests. Hence people's dismay over the amount of control they wield over the distribution of information.
Assuming that people do want some level of censorship, profit motive actually ends up being the most fair. If enough people are angry about this, Google will change their policy. Social media treat the control they have on information as more of a burden than an asset, as it should be. They would love to have an authoritative doctrine or committee that they can point their fingers to when someone disagrees with their decision of whether or not to censor something. In fact, Facebook spent $130 million dollars establishing a content "supreme court" in an attempt to do that. However, people are naturally even more skeptical of anyone who wants the responsibility of moderating billions of hours of content.
> Do you think a news org that wiped coverage of Uighur repression from its site to protect its business in China wouldn't face similar outrage?
I don't think this is a fair comparison. This describes removing a dozen videos that showed IDs and asked them to blur out. News organizations also have very strict rules on what journalists can publish, which many would consider to be arbitrary. Pulling a pro-Uighur article for not following those rules does not deserve outrage either.
I have issue with the laziness of the report regarding the Xinjiang genocide reporting. The whole article is centered on this statement:
"""
where UN experts and rights groups estimate over a million people have been detained in recent years.
"""
The UN experts and right groups are not named. But I assume it was Adrian Zenz who was throughly discredited in [1] and the so-called evidences are from satalie images analyzed by non professional intelligence analyst like Ms. Xu Xiuzhong [2] who by all means have good faith but seriously lacking the credit to command such a large scale political crusade against China.
Disclaimer: I was born and raised in China and live in silicone valley for the last 10 years. And I think the current political narrative is from fear of unknown, and CCP needs to adjust it's policy to be more open.
But I cannot see any serious evidence of large scale concentration camp. Everything so far presented are no where close to the scale reported, aka 1 million.
> Zenz isn't discredited, it's just the PRC propaganda apparatus is trying its hardest to smear him as part of their coverup.
Grayzone has no connection with CCP.
And AFAIK, none of the CCP propaganda apparatus actually did any original research to attack Adrian Zenz. All I read is from Grayzone and Daniel Dumbrill, both are providing fact-checked new reporting.
Zenz is discredited by Grayzone report.
And TBH, I dont think Zenz should be treated as authority in the first place. This guy has not set foot on Xinjiang in his lifetime...
> Dumbrill’s YouTube channel has 140,000 subscribers while his videos, commentaries and interviews – on topics such as the Hong Kong protests – have previously appeared on CGTN. His long track record of providing fodder for Chinese state media to throw at the West has earned him special privileges not accorded to veteran foreign correspondents in the country.
> Last year, he partnered with CGTN to travel the length of the Tibet autonomous region, interviewing residents and visiting schools to highlight the successes of the Communist Party’s poverty alleviation campaign. In contrast, foreign journalists who gain permission to enter Tibet are accompanied by government minders and forced to strictly adhere to an imposed itinerary, with little time for independent reporting.
> While Chinese and foreign reporters do not need prior permission to enter the Xinjiang autonomous region, many journalists from Western media outlets have reported being tailed by security forces on arrival.
CGTN is China's version of Russia Today.
This is what real reporters encounter when they try to go there:
> Chinese authorities have made the [Xinjiang] story a huge challenge to cover. Their constant following makes true reporting almost impossible. In Kashgar, the best I could do was take photos and videos and hope police wouldn’t delete them.
> ...Another time, a police officer stopped us close to our hotel. Inspecting Chris’s photos, he deleted a shot of a camel. When Chris asked why that photo was deleted, the man turned to Chris and said, “In China, there are no whys.”
> It was good advice. As we pulled down another road in search of a re-education camp, a car sped in front of us, cut us off, and stopped. Men jumped out unfurling a spike strip directly in front of our car.
> “Road’s closed,” we were told. We didn’t ask why.
> Each evening as we returned to our hotel, we would pass a boarding school surrounded by tall fences topped with barbed wire. Socializing in clusters in the twilight, the adolescent students looked very much like prisoners.
> How they came to be there was impossible to discern and we couldn’t safely ask them. With the followers on our heels, any contact would be dangerous. Often we were left with the painful necessity of remaining remote, even when locals tried to be friendly.
Xinjiang is indeed highly locked down, and foreign reporters are not allowed to enter most parts of the region unless they are producing content that aligns with the Chinese government's message. Daniel Dumbrill is absolutely not a credible source.
Edit: Corrected from "the region" to "most parts of the region". From 2018:
> Transportation presents significant obstacles, too. Roughly the size of Alaska, Xinjiang encompasses vast swaths of desert and mountain terrain. Yet journalists are generally confined to a few urban areas, including Urumqi, the provincial capital, and Kashgar, a Uighur cultural hub tucked between the borders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Those who attempt to drive into the countryside are almost sure to be turned around by officials for contrived reasons—that the area is not designated for foreigners, for example, or that a reporter lacks the authorization to pass. On one occasion, while driving on a deserted road, Chin found himself surrounded by police after a street camera flagged his car as suspicious. “Luckily we were already on our way out of town,” he says. “They were kind enough to give us a police escort to the highway.”
> The re-education camps, scattered throughout Xinjiang, are also off-limits. At best, journalists can hope to get close enough to photograph their exteriors, but even then, members of their surveillance detail are likely to step in and demand that the photos be deleted.
> Xinjiang is indeed highly locked down, and foreign reporters are not allowed to enter the region unless they are producing content that aligns with the Chinese government's message.
I don't think it's locked down (for non-covid reasons), because I linked an account of the experiences of an NY Times journalist that went there. However, it's definitely true that reporters who aren't there to further the government's message are prevented from doing their jobs buy government minders and police.
Let me clarify what I meant by "locked down". The border situation at Xinjiang is exceptionally invasive. The following investigation is from 2019:
> Foreigners crossing certain Chinese borders into the Xinjiang region, where authorities are conducting a massive campaign of surveillance and oppression against the local Muslim population, are being forced to install a piece of malware on their phones that gives all of their text messages as well as other pieces of data to the authorities, a collaboration by Motherboard, Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Guardian, the New York Times, and the German public broadcaster NDR has found.
> The Android malware, which is installed by a border guard when they physically seize the phone, also scans the tourist or traveller's device for a specific set of files, according to multiple expert analyses of the software. The files authorities are looking for include Islamic extremist content, but also innocuous Islamic material, academic books on Islam by leading researchers, and even music from a Japanese metal band.
> In no way is the downloading of tourists’ text messages and other mobile phone data comparable to the treatment of the Uighur population in Xinjiang, who live under the constant gaze of facial recognition systems, CCTV, and physical searches. Last week, VICE News published an undercover documentary detailing some of the human rights abuses and surveillance against the Uighur population. But the malware news shows that the Chinese government’s aggressive style of policing and surveillance in the Xinjiang region has extended to foreigners, too.
> (Update: after the publication of this piece, multiple antivirus firms updated their products to flag the app as malware).
Yeah, but does that happen on the internal border between Xinjiang and the rest of China? That boarder is more relevant for reporting.
However, the surveillance in China is definitely an issue. Journalists have to declare themselves as such in visa applications (or pledge to not do any journalism), all foreigners have to register with the local police wherever they're staying (hotels do this for you behind the scenes), and I think pretty much all long distance travel requires ID. So the government knows who the journalists are, where they are, and can swarm them with minders to manage what they see (and intimidate people from speaking to them). I've read multiple reports that say that's exactly what happens when (good) journalists visit Xinjiang.
This current situation is getting worse and worse.
Anyone commenting on Xinjiang here never get any truth themselves...
Each time I recommend them to watch YT videos from non main-stream media, no one reply back with what they found out...
And apparently everyone is happy to bash the credit of mainstream media, except for China/XInjiang, it's like suddenly a bunch of guys never set foot in Xinjiang, start to trusting another bunch of guys also never set foot in Xinjiang, and claim that they are good friends all along...
> Each time I recommend them to watch YT videos from non main-stream media, no one reply back with what they found out...
Youtube videos from randos aren't very good sources, period, especially on topics like this. I mean, that guy seems like laowhy86's mirror universe twin.
> And apparently everyone is happy to bash the credit of mainstream media, except for China/XInjiang, it's like suddenly a bunch of guys never set foot in Xinjiang, start to trusting another bunch of guys also never set foot in Xinjiang, and claim that they are good friends all along...
Even the people who bash the MSM rely on it for pretty much all of their information about the outside world.
Also, you put far too much weight on "setting foot" somewhere. For instance, would taking a regime-lead guided tour of North Korea (like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24R8JObNNQ4) really help anyone understand North Korea at all? It's probably the only way to "set foot" there as a foreigner. The answer is no. You'd get much better understanding reviewing documents (both officially distributed and otherwise), interviewing defectors, and maybe even looking at satellite photos. The highly produced tour would be superfluous (and in this case, potentially dangerous).
> Youtube videos from randos aren't very good sources
Sure
But a rado guy who have not even had the first-hand information, would be an even worse source. That's always been my #1 rule of assessing the reliability of any news reporting.
My point still stands, the mainstream media's report on Xinjiang is lazy, they have no first-hand deep reporting.
Note that the early reporting by Vice is the right approach [1]. But it still suffers from the same inconsideration to the different cultural and political aspects of Chinese society. For example, when reporters are followed by government employees, that's the usual lazy bureaucratic reactions to western media. Those are not evidences of "vanishing Uyghurs".
Instead, if they just pretend to be normal travellers, and hop on trains, on bus, on the street, and gather the information through small talks and gossips with real locals, they'll have much more freedom to reach deeper.
No, they dont think they should be restricted at all. They believe in free press; which was never been established in China since the unification in Qin dynasty. They believe that news reporting is so universally believed that, they would get whatever truth they seek just by showcasing their face.
From a larger scope, government in US enjoys an legitimacy through voting democracy. So they usually do not care much about criticism about their performance from media. Individuals certainly are much more sensitive to such reporting, but that's same for Chinese beauractics.
That's different in China, criticism to government performance is questioning the legitimacy. So the default contract is that media cannot openly criticize government, but individuals are given plenty of channels to ask for improvements.
Essentially, China runs like a big corp. It wont allow individual to openly criticize the leadership. But it allows a lot of channels to offer suggestions.
So the working approach, for US government, is to establish non-public channels, and inquiry the situation directly, and ask for the open dialogue in private. And obviously, that's what George Bush (the old one) did regarding 1989's Tiananmen Protest [5]. Basically, he asked for the information through direct channel, and learned what's going, and assessed from a balanced view.
And frankly, at this stage of China, voting democracy does not work in China. At least 20% of the population who went through Cultural Revolution still believes the fierce class struggle (age older than 45, just given an idea, there is no statistics). (The vocal voices who argue no one likes Cultural Revolution are unanimously intellectuals, who were suffering from the wrong accusations, which is understandable). And the colleague educated population is only 25% for 2 year equivalent, and 14% for 4 year equivalent.
There has never been any successful deployment of voting democracy outside of US for decently sized countries, let alone the largest country on earth.
Once China learned the techniques of organizing the society with more self-directed citizens, the people will naturally ask for more independence. The historical trend has been showing a steadily improvement of Chinese people's awareness of their rights. You may believe in the so-called regression of personal freedom after Xi's ascension to power. But in reality, it's more of a sentiment towards competition with US, not that anyone forgetting what happened before.
And for that, because of the vast size of China, YT videos, even rando ones are more useful than media reports, because they are showing nuances.
As for Daniel, "like laowhy86's mirror universe twin". Exactly, that's what Daniel stands for, and I have the same assessment as well.
But the truth is that, I do watch both. Although laowhy86 has gradually showing behaviors that are based on racial biases, and I no longer follow them only because I no longer follow much of the same content from Daniel and laowhy86 as a whole. Obviously their content is heavily temporary, follows certain trendy topics, and after a while everyone sees the futility to see diversity from individuals, because individuals are always, I mean, shows individual preferences.
> Even the people who bash the MSM rely on it for pretty much all of their information about the outside world.
That's the problem, right? One should start realize that their preferred media might not have the 1st-hand information on other regions of the world. And start looking for that.
I know very well that CCTV does not show negative staff about China. But it's obviously impressive to be able to showcase a lot of real achievement of the Chinese people.
As for US mainstream media, unfortunately, their hostility towards China drove me off just like laowhy86. They simply cannot even consider dial the balance of reporting a little bit.
For example, China was US' defacto ally during the cold war, China countered USSR's influence in Asia, even started a war to Vietnam, who was supported by USSR to invade Cambodia and Thailand. China was the most important ally of US during cold war [3] because of its pressure to USSR from inside the communist bloc. Considering the historical importance of Cold war and its victory by the western world, don't you think China deserves some mentioning. No, never... not even a hint.
Look at also the Dixie Mission [2], which also correctly predicted the outcome of China's political struggle. Given the widespread debate on "who lost China", did anyone give balanced report on Dixie Mission? Very little. I mean, at the time, Mao and CCP like US very much, at least not less than towards USSR. If you read the Dixie Mission report, you might find that the observers actually saw a lot of first-hand situations of the CCP controlled area, that gives a complete picture, not some biased reports by people sitting in the white house or Shanghai's foreign controlled areas. If Dixie report was treated with balanced view, there might not even be a cold war at all... As CCP explicitly seeks the support from US at the time.
> Also, you put far too much weight on "setting foot" somewhere.
No, I have not put enough.
I haven't visited Xinjiang, after the 75 incident [4], because I am concerned about the safety.
I intend to visit Xinjiang myself; and talk to the people. I remain distrust the 1 million Uygur story. But I have no doubt that there are issues within the area that requires continued effort to solve. And I need to see it through my own eyes to be confident about my judgement.
> My point still stands, the mainstream media's report on Xinjiang is lazy, they have no first-hand deep reporting.
That is demonstrably false. I think the problem is that you expect them to report on this like it was an easy story to report, but it's an extremely difficult story to report because of the interference.
> For example, when reporters are followed by government employees, that's the usual lazy bureaucratic reactions to western media. Those are not evidences of "vanishing Uyghurs".
It's the exact opposite thing to do if you're trying to dispel allegations of such a thing. The interference, on its own, proves nothing, but lends credence to the things that have been learned about through other channels.
> Instead, if they just pretend to be normal travellers, and hop on trains, on bus, on the street, and gather the information through small talks and gossips with real locals, they'll have much more freedom to reach deeper.
I don't think what you describe is actually legal in China. First of all, journalists need to declare themselves by getting a special visa, and its unlikely they could fly under the radar if they worked for a major outlet. Secondly, if they do try that approach the government is going to swarm them with minders and plainclothes police to prevent what you're suggesting.
> Hoping to hear both sides, Mr. McDonell spent several days traveling across Xinjiang, planning to interview local residents and Chinese officials. Instead, he filmed a segment that communicates the lengths to which the government was willing to go to prevent him from finding out what is really happening in the region.
There was also one account I read where a journalist had to go through ridiculous lengths to avoid the minders, but that only bought him less than a day (maybe only an hour or two) before they caught up (he traveled at that last minute with no warning and made sudden changes).
> There has never been any successful deployment of voting democracy outside of US for decently sized countries, let alone the largest country on earth.
Huh? I'm sure there are at least a few other countries that would like a word.
> Considering the historical importance of Cold war and its victory by the western world, don't you think China deserves some mentioning. No, never... not even a hint.
It does get mentioned, or at least it did when it was relevant. I mean, this alliance was even mentioned in an action movie from the 80s I watched as a teenager (Red Dawn, about a Soviet Invasion of the US. Some teenage insurgents ask a down piloted who was helping the US fight the Soviets, the answer was only China, not even Europe).
> That's the problem, right? One should start realize that their preferred media might not have the 1st-hand information on other regions of the world. And start looking for that.
But the MSM does have first hand information. For instance, like that gathered from foreign correspondents and foreign bureaus.
> And for that, because of the vast size of China, YT videos, even rando ones are more useful than media reports, because they are showing nuances.
> These and thousands of other videos are meant to look like unfiltered glimpses of life in Xinjiang, the western Chinese region where the Communist Party has carried out repressive policies against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities.
Most of the clips carry no logos or other signs that they are official propaganda....
> A monthslong analysis of more than 3,000 of the videos by The New York Times and ProPublica found evidence of an influence campaign orchestrated by the Chinese government.
> The operation has produced and spread thousands of videos in which Chinese citizens deny abuses against their own communities and scold foreign officials and multinational corporations who dare question the Chinese government’s human rights record in Xinjiang.
> ... Establishing that government officials had a hand in making these testimonials is sometimes just a matter of asking.
> When reached by phone, the man said local propaganda authorities had produced the clip. When asked for details, he gave the number of an official he called Mr. He, saying, “Why don’t you ask the head of the propaganda department?”
> And I need to see it through my own eyes to be confident about my judgement.
> I think the problem is that you expect them to report on this like it was an easy story to report
WTH are you talking about!?
Reporting Xinjiang issue is exceedingly difficult. And western media is extremely lazy about it!
How can you exactly read my statement as polar opposite...
That's why first-hand information is critical. It's extremely hard to get the information. And it's also extremely difficult to categorize and making a coherent analysis on them as well. So that's why laziness is the worst kind of mistake in reporting.
> It's the exact opposite thing to do if you're trying to dispel allegations of such a thing. The interference, on its own, proves nothing, but lends credence to the things that have been learned about through other channels.
Well, if western media has been more objective since 1949, I bet there will be much less interference. Heck, even during cultural revolution, I'd bet there is more comprehensive and balanced reporting on China.
> I don't think what you describe is actually legal in China. First of all, journalists need to declare themselves by getting a special visa, and its unlikely they could fly under the radar if they worked for a major outlet. Secondly, if they do try that approach the government is going to swarm them with minders and plainclothes police to prevent what you're suggesting.
Since when Western treat China laws as enforceable.
Till today, it is reported as China bans FB etc company. But in fact it's FB etc chose to not follow the laws in China, so they essentially shut themselves out...
If you decide to follow Chinese law, why not report within the lines of the state law then. Like daniel dumbrill did? Of course you'll not get much non-compliant reporting. Then why not try something else...
> Huh? I'm sure there are at least a few other countries that would like a word.
> It does get mentioned, or at least it did when it was relevant. I mean, this alliance was even mentioned in an action movie from the 80s I watched as a teenager (Red Dawn, about a Soviet Invasion of the US. Some teenage insurgents ask a down piloted who was helping the US fight the Soviets, the answer was only China, not even Europe).
Sure 80s, you are old enough to see this.
Ask people born in the 80s, and see what they told you.
I find you being incredibly insensitive to the vastness of US, and even more so to China...
You seem to the kind of people who should start travelling around the country and the world and see how everything is working nowadays...
> But the MSM does have first hand information. For instance, like that gathered from foreign correspondents and foreign bureaus.
You have seen the reporting from MSM, and the results obtained by those correspondents. I seen little first-hand information.
> Or are fabricated
Of course. What do you expect from any information. Heck, even the code I wrote myself requires myself to write tests on them.
> And what of things you're not allowed to see?
What do you want to say?
I am saying the western media are lazy and had little first hand information. You posted me a bunch of summary without concrete information.
And TBH, I have told many people that the western society loses its sense of perspective. And start to not only favor the one-dimentional view point indoctrined in the past centenry, they are now incapable of thinking in different angle altogether.
Don't read news, go on YouTube and watch clips from everyday average person living or traveling to any area you are interested in. News has failed me for 5 years, with YouTube and everything, I don't need these journalist
> Don't read news, go on YouTube and watch clips from everyday average person living or traveling to any area you are interested in. News has failed me for 5 years, with YouTube and everything, I don't need these journalist
This idea has some pretty serious flaws:
1. An "average traveler" is not a competent person to really dig into the truth somewhere, especially if it's hidden. Sure, they can give you a good idea of what an average traveler's experience is, but that's pretty atypical and will not answer many journalistic-type questions (e.g. an average travller to France is going to tell you a lot about the Louvre and Eiffel Tower, not so much about the banlieues or Yellow Vests).
2. Where are your Youtube video clips of an average person living in North Korea? If Youtube existed in 1938, what do you think the video clips of an average ethnic German would have told you about Germany? Many people are prevented from speaking publicly, and others will just report the local conventional wisdom, full of the typical local biases and falsehoods.
That's not to say that one can't find out something important for either of these groups, but that will almost certainly be by chance and not give you anywhere approaching a complete picture.
Most people who reject journalism just go on to re-invent it badly, with worse flaws than what they rejected.
They'll tell you the Hitler guy is mobilizing nationalism and preparing for military expansion. That certainly can help Chamberlain avoiding his fatal wrong assessment.
And your reasoning of YT video non reliable, because of needing investigation and information is hidden.
That's a very flawed idea.
There are 2 kinds of events, those happening on a large scale, like genocide; and those happen covertly in covert surrounding, like an assisnation, gang activity.
For the second kind, of course random YouTuber is not going to get the information.
But for the first kind, of course a random Youtuber is plently informative. Not because he cannot be disguised, but he see the activities on the ground.
Your main steam media are just rehashing the taking point from some authoritative sources. They essentially are a form of entertainment. That's why news anchors are paid as movie stars.
US media is the worst kind of media. They are setup from ground up to seek profit. And we all know what that eventually leads to...
> But for the first kind, of course a random Youtuber is plently informative. Not because he cannot be disguised, but he see the activities on the ground.
I actually did make that same point:
>> That's not to say that one can't find out something important for either of these groups, but that will almost certainly be by chance and not give you anywhere approaching a complete picture.
My point isn't that a random Youtuber can't have something important to say or show, it's that they're not a replacement for journalism.
Also, it's important to keep in mind that the "random youtuber" style can and has been faked for manipulative purposes.
> Your main steam media are just rehashing the taking point from some authoritative sources. They essentially are a form of entertainment. That's why news anchors are paid as movie stars.
Eh, that's true sometimes, but it's not really the kind of journalism I'm talking about here (more investigative journalism and critical synthesis).
Also, you've been all about boots on the ground and I think I actually posted an account from a journalist who described what that's like in Xinjiang. That's not an anchorman reading off a teleprompter.
> US media is the worst kind of media. They are setup from ground up to seek profit. And we all know what that eventually leads to...
That's a pretty inaccurate generalization. US media spans a wide from PBS News Hour and NPR to the New York Times to the New York Post and Fox News opinion blowhards. That take also seems to ignore things like advertising/news and news/opinion firewalls.
And what's better? Media by people with an ideological axe to grind?
The NYT reports are texts, without even a photo of any one of the Chinese observers. While at the same time, the report was working together with some colleague... It's rather dubious that such photos were not included at all... The reporting is also all about being followed, and has no information about what they actually learned. It's like: see that person follows me, they must not like me asking people around, so I wont ask around, I'll just report that I got followed. WTH? Are you are reporter or some kind of superhero? To report any kind of coverup story, you have to be covert and careful... This whole piece just looks to play on the customized lazy bureaucratic and use imagination to confer certain biased sterotype...
They included a short video highlighting some of the plainclothes police who were following them, but it's not like such people are going to wear a big sign to make it obvious who they are in a photo.
> Blumenthal’s website [The Grayzone] has been accused of whitewashing the crimes of authoritarian countries, from Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela to Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, while failing to highlight flaws in regimes that are staunchly opposed to US foreign policy.
> And TBH, I dont think Zenz should be treated as authority in the first place. This guy has not set foot on Xinjiang in his lifetime...
Why would that matter? All of our authorities on Ancient Rome never set foot in the Roman Empire.
Can you link some more sources about the gray zone? Being banned from Wikipedia just makes sense because they are a blog and not a primary source. I would like to see a writeup of what they get wrong because their podcast Moderate Rebels [1] is very informative and well-researched.
> Can you link some more sources about the gray zone? Being banned from Wikipedia just makes sense because they are a blog and not a primary source.
IIRC, it was mainly banned because "there is consensus that The Grayzone publishes false or fabricated information" (as the summary states). I believe this was one of the examples: https://www.thedailybeast.com/in-nicaragua-torture-is-used-t... (Grayzone presenting the forced confession of an anti-regime activist as legitimate). Here's another about Max Blumenthal himself fabricating a quote: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/di.... There were questions about its editorial oversight, but those were secondary. Basically it's one of those sites, like RT, that has a political position and has little problem with pushing disinformation to support it.
The second article is ten years old and reads like a "he said/she said" and the payoff is pretty underwhelming.
The political position of the grayzone is anti-imperialist which is an insightful way to view the US and its actions in central and south america for the past few decades. I am having trouble following the Nicaragua article as it is heavy on details. I know that one of the grayzone reporters actually lives in Nicaragua so I value their reporting more than a journalist based somewhere else.
And huge thanks to Russia for funding some media critical of the US. Radio Sputnik has some great shows like By Any Means Necessary.
> The political position of the grayzone is anti-imperialist which is an insightful way to view the US and its actions in central and south america for the past few decades.
> There were questions about its editorial oversight, but those were secondary. Basically it's one of those sites, like RT, that has a political position and has little problem with pushing disinformation to support it.
I think any news agency is like this.
The strength of journalist freedom is that all such different news agencies can present their facts.
> disinformation
I am pretty sure everyone believed their information and don't want to verify them thoroughly. I mean, even US government does want to verify the so-called evidences of WMD in Iraq...
I’m kind of curious here: if I were creating any service or running any group that had any chance of getting taken down completely from my provider (versus in the SRE sense of high availability), I would have multiple options on standby at the ready at all times, ready to deploy. This seems obvious, am I missing something here?
I'm sure YT is going to trot out some stock reason for not re-instating the videos.
But this is pathetic. When YT goes on a bandwagon for some cause or other, this doesn't happen, but it appears to happen when the politics don't align with either their own politics or may offend one of their markets or their sponsors.
So, I guess it's their platform and they can do what they want, but there is a danger that this will tilt one-way and leave no room for this kind of dissent. And that is a great loss.
I hope they grow a conscience but I rather doubt it.
AT&T is a common carrier. You'd have to, I don't know, get Youtube categorized as a common carrier. It's not like that's controversial a fight that Google has won every time it's come up. It's not like there are laws in places like NY that explicitly exempt information systems from being considered common carriers.
We're a long way from being able to casually make a comparison between AT&T and Youtube that will be taken seriously.
But since the issue at hand is that people often believe people should get to behave however they want with their own platforms, you only need to point to one high-profile counter example to disprove that that's some universal maxim: that the law currently usually sides with Google doesn't mean the "it's their platform" argument is sufficient.
Yep. Only way to solve this is to change the laws to force any Big Tech/Corporations/Banks with over 1 million daily active user-content generating users in the USA to be declared common carriers. And this can be joined by other countries to make it global and thus put pressure on the CCP.
I’m certain they can for your Internet if they don’t like your packets.
But in either situation, phone calls are not analogous because they’re 1:1. YouTube is about public broadcast. You also don’t pay for their service to host your videos.
Ideally the parent's comment is forward hopeful. As in, in the near future big tech will be shackled as Ma Bell was, and then carved up.
Several of the big tech monsters started a fight they can't win with half of the country that now absolutely hates them (and will at one time or another control vast amounts of political power), and the other half which still wants to see them restricted anyway. The question is how far the Feds and states will go in curbing big tech's abuses on eg cancel culture and content censorship, given the various monopoly positions of these companies. Florida's law on deplatforming is a small, correct first step. Texas is guaranteed to follow, and a lot more restrictions will follow after that.
The notion that they can do whatever they want with their monopoly platforms, is already probably not an accurate premise. In the near future, it will definitely not be. We're in about inning one of laying down innumerable restrictions on what big tech can do with their platforms. The odds are quite high the regulators will in fact go further than they should over time, severely damaging the US tech economy.
The free-run days for big tech are very clearly over. They're merely too arrogant to recognize it. What was the last major acquisition by Facebook? There are three other prominent US social networks out there with a collective $200b in market cap now. Everything Facebook has is very stale, boring. Instagram is a giant yawn at this point, it's old, increasingly boring and lame. Which is why young people flocked to TikTok so quickly. Facebook has been de facto barred for a long time from eating any of their major competitors. All that money piling up to the ceiling and FB can't even use it to further their monopoly, and they know it. The party is largely over, although big tech will continue to drift for a while on enormous momentum.
If Amazon were smart, they'd be in the process of spinning off AWS right now, to unshackle it from so much anti-trust attention that the parent draws, to get far out in front of that. That's guaranteed to happen within the ten or so years after the Bezos era regardless. Google could probably do the same with YouTube, but they'll aggressively fight against that (Amazon will willingly spin off AWS as their stock stagnates, in the typical unlock shareholder value move).
I agree with most of your comment except the Florida/Texas/States lawsuits. I don't think this can be dealt on the state level. This needs to be done by the federal congress and senate passing laws. Force any Big Tech/Corporations/Banks with over 1 million daily active user-content generating users in the USA to be declared common carriers. And this can be joined by other countries to make it global and thus put pressure on the CCP.
> Google has offices in China, I'd bet they manufacture one thing or another there, etc. Business relations go beyond just consumer-facing services
That might be a self-serving excuse that would apply to Apple, which the PRC has by the balls, but not Google. Whatever Google has in China is relatively minor to its business.
There are plenty of Chinese brand advertising on YT. And there is a large population consuming YT videos through VPN, and oversea Chinese people myself for example (you can pretty much find every Chinese content creator with decent followers, probably >100k, mirror their video between Chinese ddomestic sites and YT.
I've heard China encourages/allows/supports some creators on YouTube for cultural export too.
I mean if YouTube is 'banned' then someone like Dianxi Xiaoge with 7.5 million subscribers isn't exactly under the radar if they wanted to enforce their rules.
I don't know any such concrete measures to support some creators.
I do see that CCP wants to tell a more positive side of China on all sorts of media platforms. That in itself is pretty reasonable. I mean, certainly no other political group are going to say good things about China anyway.
No, it's wholly unreasonable to allow China to use these platforms to disseminate propaganda when they ban them in their own country. The federal government should ban Chinese propagandists from YouTube, the New York Times, etc. unless China unblocks these sites.
What are the criteria to label things as "disseminating propaganda"?
Also, you'd follow the laws. Doing such thing as you suggested violates a lot of US laws.
And in fact, China does have laws to force operators to follow other Chinese laws, including censorship laws. Technically, Google and FB and all those banned firms are leaving China voluntarily because they decide not profitable to follow those laws.
So if certain laws are passed to shut out Chinese propaganda outlets, that'll be totally fine.
But again, this will be banning individual outlets, not just platforms. China probably will retaliate to bann individuals as well.
I am asking the criteria as the factual characters, not its source...
But I understand you. CCP labels everything coming from USA as propaganda as well. I do see you and a lot of US people share a lot of common values of CCP, a bit ironically...
China has censorship laws. Therefore, anything that is allowed out of China is what China's censorship allows. The purpose of censorship is to suppress anything that could be construed as negative about the regime, i.e. allow only what is positive, i.e. propaganda.
Hope that clears it up for you?
> But I understand you.
Actually, I sincerely doubt that.
> CCP labels everything coming from USA as propaganda as well. I do see you and a lot of US people share a lot of common values of CCP, a bit ironically...
Yeah, right. And for condemning Stalin, I must be Hitler; for condemning Hitler, I must be Stalin. For condemning both, I must be both Hitler and Stalin!
Take that tired old propagandist trope and shove it somewhere, mr People's Democratic Justice.
No one read Chinese in USA anyway. People are quite ignorant here. Had little appetite for alternative views, let alone content written in the most difficult language on earth...
CCP propaganda is in English, of course, and they openly run advertisements on the New York Times[0], despite NYT being blocked in China. You can also find numerous videos from state-owned media on YouTube, where they put some Uyghurs on camera to talk about how good life is in Xinjiang, as well as Twitter accounts that peddle apologia for concentration camps.[1]
There's no reason America should allow China to peddle propaganda on platforms that are blocked in China.
This is kind of a new thing for society though. We used to have many media outlets, corporations, and governments. Now most media outlets are owned by a very few corporations, and they are tightly entangled with government interests globally.
YouTubers have no alternative platform for their content if they want ads but advertisers have new options every month when another TV network drops a streaming app. The incentives are super clear.
It’s so sad. Google used to be one you could look up to but it has moved so far in the wrong direction. Capitulating to China would be the final straw for me.
Google has come a long way since their "Don't be evil" days. Google is evil now. They have no morals anymore. They don't care about people. Only money, which is all too common.
No worries, Google will just sponsor a human rights award and award it to themselves to help them feel better about enabling human rights violations. They have the playbook perfected. [0]
“Usually when that kind of corporate feelgood bullshit happens though, it's not publicized and isn't done in such an in your face, 'lol fuck you everybody' kind of way.”
YouTube cares about human rights because they'll deny genocide but at least for pride week they animated a gay pride parade on the YouTube logo in the app. Isn't that true human rights work after all?
I think the only way to really fight this is to take it to a stupid level.
Something like try to take down all videos about aliens on the platform as misinformation.
I mean how can we take down all these videos but let videos about aliens be fine with zero proof for the existence of aliens? It is clearly conspiracy theory and misinformation.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. I'm sure you can express your substantive views thoughtfully, or your thoughtful views substantively; comments like this are the opposite of that, so please don't.
Your point being? In the end anything and everything you do may end being used for evil by someone else. Even if you're a hermit in the woods, one day someone may use your old discarded axe to kill someone.
YouTube doesn't care. If society decided to start hating left-handed people YouTube wouldn't hesitate to remove left-handed content. If rape porn was legal and advertiser-friendly YouTube would put it on the front page. It's a perfect sociopath.
Strange coincidence but I was joking to myself today about how the next woke identity would be left handed people… then I remember Simpsons did it already.
Imagine the dirt the tech giants have on all government officials on the planet. Imagine if the tech giants went on a human rights offensive against the state.
I hope they don't get into the habit of blackmailing politicians when the cause is just. For one, because Google's perception of justice may not always be right. For another, because once they get into that habit, once they have established the methods and procedures for doing it, could we really trust them to not abuse this tool simply for their own profit?
Conspiracy nuts and other unsavory members from fringe communities do make for odd bedfellows when one is being actively censored, thus why I am loathe to promote Bitchute et al. Best second alternative would be their own Peertube instance, but that of course requires them to put up their own infrastructure.
Q: What's the difference between fake news / conspiracy theories and the real news?
A: About 8 months.
Sure this joke is an exaggeration, but occurrences like this seem to be getting more common. Sometimes it's much longer than 8 months. The informed reader can fill in the blanks.
One very big problem is YT and other content providers intentionally provide recommendations to reinforce confirmation biases of the viewer. If you click a few wacky conspiracy videos you will start seeing more in your feed. If you click fact and logic based alternate videos, you will start seeing confirmations of this particular view point, but no factual/logical discussions from opposing viewpoints. What's worse, inevitably you will start seeing references to censorship in your favorite topics. This feels very much like a political agenda on the part of big tech content providers.
In any event it is clear the algorithm is not interested in healthy reasonable discussion and debate to further democracy.
It's the fact that the censors are there to step in for things that are plausibly true. There isn't any need to censor flat-earth theories. Nobody cares, it doesn't have any implications and it easy to disprove (eg, the fact that the horizon dips away).
The censors only get really active for things that could plausibly be true or things that are absolutely true but inconvenient to the people who control the censorship office.
Not talking about flat earters. I’m taking about tech companies picking election winners by “fact checking”/suppressing stories that make their chosen guy look bad.
Todays conspiracy is often tomorrow's orthodoxy. Society is better served by erring on the side of free speech and letting evolution decide what ideas are good and where are not. This was settled hundreds of years ago but apparently this generation did not get the memo.
Flat earth is 5% idiots and some damn near remainder trolling, but the other two… what if they were right?
Obviously they aren’t.
But in this scenario, what if they were and you were part of the useful idiots covering up for someone? You would be the bad guy directly hurting society… so instead, how about a free marketplace of thoughts and opinions and allow the “orthodoxy” to be organic even if it might slightly be flawed on average (to the example we land on “no vaccines aren’t bad, but we have a lot more required testing and liability just incase”).
What makes your pet theories better than anyone else’s? Why “can’t” you be wrong?
Under this logic should we remove regulation from banks? Should companies not be subject to workplace rules?
Companies that interact with society need regulation as does YouTube. Its going to be hard to balance the freedom of expression vs what is harmful. In what is a grey zone I feel encouraging violence is the best line, and letting the courts sort out defamation.
They shouldn't have this much power in the first place. The fact they have a platform that captures basically an entire market is a feature of corporate-applied technology and a failure of the political system.
But that's where we are, and after this incident we'll merely negatively adjust our perceptions of Google and continue to use their services.
I can understand the copyright stuff because Google can’t possibly afford the fight against the MPAA/RIAA. Why wade into politics though? What gain does Google obtain through political censorship?
I’m going to take a guess that perhaps it has to do with Google’s ability to continue to commercially operate in China.
Perhaps X leadership from Google spoke with Y leadership from China and reached this compromise in order to avoid a potential all-out ban of Google’s services in China, similar to - though nowhere close to the same reasoning behind - the US’ ban of Huawei telecommunications equipment.
PLEASE NOTE that this is purely conjecture. I am not affiliated with Google or China, in any way, shape, or form. This should not be taken as fact.
Is any part of Google still operating in China? All Google domains are blocked in China. If you use an Android device in China with Google Play Services (or microG), you will not receive any push notifications through Firebase Cloud Messaging unless you use a VPN (or equivalent), and many VPNs are blocked or throttled to an unusable level. Even Android's internet connectivity check is broken in AOSP, since the Great Firewall blocks the android.com domain, which hosts the test page.
I would guess also that it has to do with "normalizing" relationships with China as well. Every country has skeletons in its closet. And every government seeks to rationize and minimize those skeletons as much as possible. As a country gains stake in mefia institutions, those institutions internalize some of the propaganda of that country.
This skeleton is not in the closet, it’s on the front yard and still being punched in the face every day. Meaning they have not stopped oppressing which is needed for it to be a skeleton in the closet.
My comment is not to minimize the oppression. It is rather to point out that other countries, engaging in similar oppression and dehumanization have managed their PR in such a way that they don't need to twist the arm of a company like Google to ensure their preferred vocabulary is used. It is the status quo. China is doing the work now of integrating itself with the "free" media to ensure a certain image. A country like the US did so decades ago.
I was going to say this as well. I, too, am neither affiliated with Google or China. This very much sounds like a, "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine," kind of thing IMHO.
Pretty sure they're still trying really hard to get GCP functional in mainland China, somehow. You know, like how Amazon/AWS made it: https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/
if the pandemic and 180 turnaround on the ability to speak about covid not coming from natural occurrence didn't wake you up to the idea that these platforms think they are the arbiter of truth, nothing will.
There's a statistic that polled Americans with 83% "approving of action against China" [1] if covid was made in a Chinese lab. This story was floated early during covid and rejected, but because the US is trying to manufacture consent for action against China it's gotten a second wind. Also the Adrian Zenz "genocide" is part of the same attempt. Don't fall for it.
Adrian Zenz’s work is a generation-leading project in uncovering human rights violations and promoting human freedom. Your empty pot shot notwithstanding.
I’ve seen this kind of crap all over Twitter and other social media. Always these galaxy brain compilation threads that rely on the reader not clicking any links. It’s loosely cobbled together, spurious trash.
Eg- first section, the “investigations” are heavily stage-managed by CCP guides, just like WHO/Wuhan. They usually look at some one specific place, like the World Bank covering it’s ass on a particular vocational school project it funded.
These threads are always full of holes, broken logic and twisted context.
But Zenz hardly matters. There’s far too many sources and data streams from others for this to hinge on Zenz.
