Right now Tiktok is suppressing any content related to the LA protests, they adopted new terms to avoid this censorship by saying they are 'music festivals'
It reminds me of the play on words they do in Chinese's social media to avoid this kind of censorship
lobf · 15h ago
>It reminds me of the play on words they do in Chinese's social media to avoid this kind of censorship
A new way of speaking which removes nuance and is formed entirely of acceptable concepts and terminology as determined by the regime. We could call it newspeak.
If you see "Trust and Safety" it is actually a partnership between major tech companies. It provides guidance on how their TOS / community standards should be defined. Twitter was also a member until Elon bought it out. This is where things like policies on misinformation come from (or anything in general really). Every major social media company you can imagine is part of it, Discord, Reddit, Meta, Apple, etc.
The part that always concerns me is things like this are ripe for abuse. Whoever controls the partnership potentially controls all major platforms. They'll say you dont have to follow it to the letter, but that doesn't mean some wont.
This is also why when reddit changes internal rules Discord follows suit.
I am interested in this subject because I've seen Facebook become hostile over the years on specific types of remarks. I actually quit Facebook over its AI moderation, I made a harmless meme / joke comment and it flagged me, and when I appealed, it flagged me. Meanwhile others post much worse and I get dinged for making meme references that harm no one, my what? 50 friends on facebook will read it and not get my reference?
I've also seen other platforms shift their policies (a reddit comment section today is a night and day difference from a reddit thread in say 2010).
I think the model actually cares about where you post though, or at least there's some kind of location based standard.
I've used Reddit for ages, but recently received two 'account suspensions' both which misrepresented my remarks, one in which the appeal was ignored, the other in which the response to the appeal was a false claim that the remark was a threat.
But both happened very soon after I participated in discussions in /r/ukpolitics. I especially think they want to get rid of discussion concerning the proscription of Palestine Action. I don't think it's somebody from there following my comment feed and reporting things but instead something actually automated and part of Reddit itself, because it was rather fast.
hungmung · 18h ago
> /r/ukpolitics
Found your problem.
impossiblefork · 17h ago
Yes, but there's a reason I thought a foreign perspective could be useful to them.
jennyholzer · 19h ago
does "a partnership between major tech companies" mean "centralized control"?
giancarlostoro · 18h ago
That's my question after learning about DTS.
potato3732842 · 18h ago
It's not "centralized control" in the same way that a closed market with a few players not caring to compete on price isn't a "conspiracy" to keep prices high. Nobody is coordinating, corresponding or otherwise conspiring but everyone is smart enough to know what's good for them.
newsclues · 18h ago
Partners are big tech and government (or government staffed and funded 3rd parties).
ninininino · 18h ago
From what I can tell (I have a coworker I get lunch with who works in the Risk & Policy side of TNS at a tech major), it's not necessarily a "here's the top-down orders of what our new policy will be" as much as:
1) the people in this sub-industry role attend conferences and network and make friends and build professional relationships (for job referrals if there are layoffs at one tech co but hiring in the same area at different tech co)
2) at conferences, in group chats (w/ friends made at other companies in previous roles or friends from said conferences), common news events, developments in the field, and trends are discussed and ideas bounced off each other, which means even if there's no top-down order, there's sort of an averaging-effect and consensus building and battle-testing of ideas and approaches
3) there's a revolving door of people who work at one company in this area developing real-utility experience that translates well to working at another, so people move about and policy ideas cross-pollinate and spread. if you plucked someone off the street, even if it helped ideologically diversify the pool, they would truly be less effective as they ramped up and learned.
You don't actually need anything nefarious to happen, just an insular, small community with similar educational backgrounds, shared values, etc. Not a lot of Repubs from Alabama decide to attend Barnard and study _relevant_humanities_field_slash_law_ and then join tech to try to fight injustice/CSAM/bias/misinfo/election interference at the right time during ZIRP and then build the resume to then continue to land those roles.
These people are all doing what they think is right, they just aren't a super diverse group ideologically and there are social channels that tend to create more cross-brand homogeneity.
And even if you disagree with their moderation policy, there are huge, non-controversial areas you never see or think of that they are fighting everyday too (anti-terrorism, anti-suicide, connecting victims to resources, anti-CSAM, etc).
Probably the same way in physics departments, String Theorists hire other String Theorists and over time it grows and grows and grows. Or how economists all arrive at modern monetary theory.
lwo32k · 17h ago
This is what Max Weber calls Moral Detachment. These people are not in direct contact with people who suffer. And so their intentions will always be mistrusted. Costs of which will mount with time and manifest in all kinds of shocks and surprises.
Worth looking at why the Church (which has survived much longer than govts, businesses, science/tech orgs) emphasizes direct contact with suffering, through things like Pastoral Care. This is not an accident. They have learnt that lesson the hard way again and again through out history.
Not sure what the "Trust and Safety" people use to coordinate. My guess is Discord.
jennyholzer · 18h ago
it's obviously a cabal
ninininino · 16h ago
If it's a cabal then everything is a cabal.
potato3732842 · 18h ago
>These people are all doing what they think is right, they just aren't a super diverse group ideologically and there are social channels that tend to create more cross-brand homogeneity.
Exactly. Nothing intentionally nefarious is happening. Unintentionally nefarious things are happening all the time as a result of subsets of industries becoming insular circle jerks of like minded individuals. You see this in everything, it's not just for RightSpeak enforcers at FAANG.
It's just there's a lot more consequences for the rest of us bunch people at Meta do it to influence public discourse than when some business gets run off a cliff because the MBAs had too many sigmas or whatever.
legitster · 17h ago
Keep in mind the government pumps tens of thousands of enlisted through military intelligence analyst programs every year. These people are trained to sit in a cubicle for 8 hours a day reading mostly garbage and making objective summaries.
So a lot of highly trained intelligence analysts hit the market every year (I personally know about half a dozen). It's just going to be natural that some of the more experienced intelligence analysts are going to be sought out for these content moderation positions, especially now that foreign and nation-state actors are present.
I am pretty skeptical more of the more "deep-state"/"thought-police" concerns. Obviously these people are going to be biased towards collecting intelligence and collaborating with the government. But the CIA would almost certainly rather keep any media manipulation campaigns clandestine and in-house rather than trust former analysts to do their bidding.
skarz · 16h ago
>These people are trained to sit in a cubicle for 8 hours a day reading mostly garbage and making objective summaries.
You just described the entire Cyber Mission Force, lol.
MeIam · 16h ago
Even the article itself gives people a pause in order to avoid being blacklisted.
It basically says that they are watching you so you will self censor.
Meta has basically been taken over by US and Israeli intelligence agencies.
drukenemo · 7h ago
It was always in their hands.
zthrowaway · 19h ago
I remember when this was dismissed as a right-wing conspiracy theory.
jennyholzer · 19h ago
My cousin doesn't buy it when I tell him the United States has more aggressively censored media than China.
euleriancon · 19h ago
The nature of Chinese censorship makes it difficult to provide hard numbers, but it really is worse. America's handling of censorship is certainly not the best, and it has gotten worse recently, but it is not on the level of China.
antonymoose · 19h ago
At least the Chinese have the courtesy to be obvious about it. The American and European powers pretend we’re free and open societies while actively undermining public speech that it doesn’t like.
ambicapter · 19h ago
You think they're obvious about it intentionally?
antonymoose · 19h ago
Isn’t that the entire point of their system, the social score lets you know exactly what’s going on?
PeterStuer · 18h ago
On a scale from credit score to being debanked, where does China's social score rank on the Western oubliette spectrum?
antonymoose · 17h ago
I’m not here to rank societies.
adamsb6 · 18h ago
Social scores aren't real.
aisosodndn · 18h ago
The social score is not real. That is western propaganda in action.
Are you making the distinction that its name is actually the social credit system and not social score? Or that the system isn't fully in place yet.
Or perhaps are you suggesting that gov.cn and baidu are part of the deep state's propaganda plan against China.
pyth0 · 18h ago
Your links (at least the ones I could translate) seem to describe a system very similar to a Credit Score like you have in Western economies. At least it seems very different from the propagandized version of a score that tracks your every action and determines "how good of a citizen are you".
euleriancon · 17h ago
You're completely right, it is very similar to the western style credit score, and is often either accidentally or deliberately misrepresented. That being said, it covers behaviors not covered by western credit scores that does have elements of tracking "how good of a citizen are you".
I think this article from Beijing University does a great job of highlighting some of the issues.
I think this answers all your questions? It has no real effect (many people don’t have one). But, I’m not sure what your question really is.
The American propaganda definition (which may vary) is incorrect because the system doesn’t really exist.
euleriancon · 17h ago
I agree that the American understanding of the Social Credit System is flawed, but to suggest it doesn't exist is an extreme overreach.
Furthermore, it clearly is a system that is important to the CCP and has an effect.
From the Baidu page:
建立社会信用体系是保持国民经济持续、稳定增长的需要
Establishing a social credit system is necessary to maintain sustained and stable growth of the national economy
Certainly Mainland China does need a credit system, and undoubtedly the Social Credit System will and has helped in that regard, but it does have legitimate flaws with regards to privacy.
Its goals extend beyond ensuring creditworthiness to
社会信用体系具有揭示功能，能够扬善惩恶，提高经济效率；
The social credit system has a revealing function, can promote good and punish evil, and improve economic efficiency;
And its integration with the National Healthcare Security Administration, and other government and private entities extend its reach far beyond what the Western credit systems do.
who couldnt easily get to his next fights against tai chi frauds because the social credit score prevented him from flying or bussing and whathaveyou
rangestransform · 19h ago
I think they cultivate the image of having a panopticon to say to citizens "don't even try", but in reality the censors can't see everything
1oooqooq · 18h ago
there's a paper that compares both when it comes to promoting organized political action (which is the only type of censorship that is not morally justifiable under any semblance of democracy) and both countries scored the same low points.
both got high passing grades on allowing meaningless complaining about government.
pizzathyme · 19h ago
My understanding was in the US, they can openly criticize the government
You are saying that is inaccurate? Or you are talking about a different type of censorship?
jennyholzer · 19h ago
speech is heavily, heavily restricted in the united states, in particular on American social media platforms.
there are a massive number of subjects which cannot be spoken about on social media without risking massive deboosting and the blacklisting of your accounts.
this censorship is directed by "former" CIA agents working at all major American social media companies. In other words, this is direct government censorship of private citizens' speech.
legitster · 17h ago
We're literally on a social media platform right now criticizing the US with publicly available information about US intelligence.
What content are you worried would blacklist your account?
ipython · 19h ago
What is “deboosting”? If I own a social media site wouldn’t you argue that I should be able to control what content I “boost” in the first place? Am I forced to compulsory “boost” your content? In which case wouldn’t that mean I am “censoring” the PoV of the social media company?
Can you share the topic contents that are subject to your accusations? If you’re able to share them here without fear of government reprisal then I would argue that’s not censorship.
kelseyfrog · 18h ago
A current example would be Tiktok artificially boosting ice related challenges.
Why? Because it makes searching for immigration and customs enforcement content much more difficult to find. It lower the social temperature and stops it from metaphorically boiling over.
Is crowding out content censorship? Who knows. If tilting feeds in one direction and away from another has the same effect and isn't censorship because of a definitional technicality, does it really matter?
dkiebd · 18h ago
> If I own a social media site wouldn’t you argue that I should be able to control what content I “boost” in the first place? Am I forced to compulsory “boost” your content? In which case wouldn’t that mean I am “censoring” the PoV of the social media company?
That sounds cool as long as you forfeit your Section 230 rights since at that point you’re more of a newspaper than a social network.
Yes, I know all social networks do this currently which is why they should all lose their Section 230 rights.
pixl97 · 17h ago
>If you’re able to share them here without fear of government reprisal then I would argue that’s not censorship
I mean, the definition of censorship is far larger than just that, and what you're talking about is it's more extreme form.
Moreso you ignore all the modern subtlety and nuance of modern censorship. The government doesn't need to attack you directly, they just tell the large companies that contract with the government they can't do business with companies that do certain things. Or they tell payment processors that businesses that are 'high risk' need to be audited more and will invite more government intervention in which the payment processors just drop said businesses.
I mean, if you were on a corner protesting, then the government came in and closed the roads and routed all traffic around you so no one saw you, it would be really sus, right?
ipython · 16h ago
I think we are starting to see that under the current administration, yes. But the question was - does it rise to the level that Chinese have? I argue no.
I also worry about some sort of policy where a site “must” carry content. That has its own risks as well, which should be obvious.
aisosodndn · 18h ago
You can about some things. Others (most recently anything too anti Israel) will get you deported, debanked, etc.
The saddest part of US censorship is it isn’t even pro American. It’s pro American billionaires who are disproportionately pro Israel.
afroboy · 15h ago
Say something bad about Israel in your public social media.
kelseyfrog · 18h ago
In China, dissent is caged because it still has teeth. In the US, free speech is allowed because the teeth are all gone. We parade the animal about, saying, "Look, we still have free speech", but it has no ability to bite.
I don't know what's worse, being trapped in a cage or de-fanged and let loose. I've only ever lived without teeth, so the idea of biting sounds almost beautiful.
pstuart · 18h ago
The last time it had teeth was the 60s into the 70s with the protests for Civil Rights and against the Vietnam War.
But angry crowds can still remind them that the threat exists -- witness Josh Hawley fleeing the capital when the angry mob broke through (the irony being that the mob was in service of his boss, Trump).
ipython · 19h ago
Really? Who do you think douyin hires to perform content moderation for example?
Also, don’t forget to obtain your icp license from the government before establishing a website in the mainland!
elteto · 17h ago
And he's right, one shouldn't buy into crap.
jennyholzer · 19h ago
we're 20 years into social media 1984 and Americans still want to believe that it's unimaginably worse in China.
ch4s3 · 19h ago
It seem by all account imaginably worse in China, particularly in Xinjiang. I might also call to attention the disappearance from western social media of a prominent Chinese maker. I'm also unaware of anyone in the US being sent to prison for political speech online.
buyucu · 18h ago
Julian Assange might disagree with that.
ch4s3 · 18h ago
What exactly did he say online that got him accused of espionage? I seem to remember the issue being that he was accused of conspiring with Manning to release classified documents, and possibly gaining unauthorized access to congressional records via an exploit in the systems access controls. I don't like the idea of the US government hounding journalists who work with leakers, but Assange was always tiptoeing up to and possibly just past laws unrelated to speech. I not a simple and straightforward case and does not prove that the US is like China in terms of censorship. You can be jailed in China for simply talking about the Tienanmen Square massacre or implying Taiwanese sovereignty, nothing comparable happens in the US.
buyucu · 5h ago
When China throws people into prison, it's authoritarianism. When America does it, it's for FREEDOM!!!!
This is you in a nutshell.
IncreasePosts · 19h ago
So what you're saying is "my cousin has viewpoints grounded in reality"?
vorpalhex · 19h ago
That statement is still incorrect. China censors directly and heavily, eg "pooh bear"
In the US you are still very much free to insult the president, etc but if you post things deemed to be pro-terrorist or against what the Government wants to promote on social media, it won't go anywhere. Firearms or vaping content during the Biden admin as an example.
The current admin has heavily gutted the federal funding and workforce that backed these efforts and issued bulletins to private industry, but I suspect there is still pressure from pseudo-government "advocates".
adamsb6 · 18h ago
You can buy Winnie the Pooh merchandise in every mall in China.
You can't use Winnie the Pooh as code to agitate against the government.
vorpalhex · 17h ago
But here "Winnie the Pooh" is just calling Xi a lazy authoritarian.
That's an insult, not "agitat[ing] against the government"
paxys · 19h ago
And let me guess, you think the USA is currently more fascist than Nazi Germany?
afroboy · 15h ago
Yes, read what they did to Muslims in middle east.
It reminds me of the play on words they do in Chinese's social media to avoid this kind of censorship
A new way of speaking which removes nuance and is formed entirely of acceptable concepts and terminology as determined by the regime. We could call it newspeak.
Seems double-plus ungood to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MintPress_News
The part that always concerns me is things like this are ripe for abuse. Whoever controls the partnership potentially controls all major platforms. They'll say you dont have to follow it to the letter, but that doesn't mean some wont.
This is also why when reddit changes internal rules Discord follows suit.
I am interested in this subject because I've seen Facebook become hostile over the years on specific types of remarks. I actually quit Facebook over its AI moderation, I made a harmless meme / joke comment and it flagged me, and when I appealed, it flagged me. Meanwhile others post much worse and I get dinged for making meme references that harm no one, my what? 50 friends on facebook will read it and not get my reference?
I've also seen other platforms shift their policies (a reddit comment section today is a night and day difference from a reddit thread in say 2010).
Digital Trust & Safety Partnership website here:
https://dtspartnership.org/
I've used Reddit for ages, but recently received two 'account suspensions' both which misrepresented my remarks, one in which the appeal was ignored, the other in which the response to the appeal was a false claim that the remark was a threat.
But both happened very soon after I participated in discussions in /r/ukpolitics. I especially think they want to get rid of discussion concerning the proscription of Palestine Action. I don't think it's somebody from there following my comment feed and reporting things but instead something actually automated and part of Reddit itself, because it was rather fast.
Found your problem.
1) the people in this sub-industry role attend conferences and network and make friends and build professional relationships (for job referrals if there are layoffs at one tech co but hiring in the same area at different tech co)
2) at conferences, in group chats (w/ friends made at other companies in previous roles or friends from said conferences), common news events, developments in the field, and trends are discussed and ideas bounced off each other, which means even if there's no top-down order, there's sort of an averaging-effect and consensus building and battle-testing of ideas and approaches
3) there's a revolving door of people who work at one company in this area developing real-utility experience that translates well to working at another, so people move about and policy ideas cross-pollinate and spread. if you plucked someone off the street, even if it helped ideologically diversify the pool, they would truly be less effective as they ramped up and learned.
You don't actually need anything nefarious to happen, just an insular, small community with similar educational backgrounds, shared values, etc. Not a lot of Repubs from Alabama decide to attend Barnard and study _relevant_humanities_field_slash_law_ and then join tech to try to fight injustice/CSAM/bias/misinfo/election interference at the right time during ZIRP and then build the resume to then continue to land those roles.
These people are all doing what they think is right, they just aren't a super diverse group ideologically and there are social channels that tend to create more cross-brand homogeneity.
And even if you disagree with their moderation policy, there are huge, non-controversial areas you never see or think of that they are fighting everyday too (anti-terrorism, anti-suicide, connecting victims to resources, anti-CSAM, etc).
Probably the same way in physics departments, String Theorists hire other String Theorists and over time it grows and grows and grows. Or how economists all arrive at modern monetary theory.
Worth looking at why the Church (which has survived much longer than govts, businesses, science/tech orgs) emphasizes direct contact with suffering, through things like Pastoral Care. This is not an accident. They have learnt that lesson the hard way again and again through out history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
GameJournoPros during GamerGate.
Not sure what the "Trust and Safety" people use to coordinate. My guess is Discord.
Exactly. Nothing intentionally nefarious is happening. Unintentionally nefarious things are happening all the time as a result of subsets of industries becoming insular circle jerks of like minded individuals. You see this in everything, it's not just for RightSpeak enforcers at FAANG.
It's just there's a lot more consequences for the rest of us bunch people at Meta do it to influence public discourse than when some business gets run off a cliff because the MBAs had too many sigmas or whatever.
So a lot of highly trained intelligence analysts hit the market every year (I personally know about half a dozen). It's just going to be natural that some of the more experienced intelligence analysts are going to be sought out for these content moderation positions, especially now that foreign and nation-state actors are present.
I am pretty skeptical more of the more "deep-state"/"thought-police" concerns. Obviously these people are going to be biased towards collecting intelligence and collaborating with the government. But the CIA would almost certainly rather keep any media manipulation campaigns clandestine and in-house rather than trust former analysts to do their bidding.
You just described the entire Cyber Mission Force, lol.
It basically says that they are watching you so you will self censor.
Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32191637
gov.cn page on social credit system plan https://www.ndrc.gov.cn/xxgk/zcfb/tz/202406/P020240604321155...
gov.cn page on social credit system suggested changes/opinions https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/202503/content_7016535.htm
baidu page on social credit system https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%A4%BE%E4%BC%9A%E4%BF%A1%E7%...
Are you making the distinction that its name is actually the social credit system and not social score? Or that the system isn't fully in place yet.
Or perhaps are you suggesting that gov.cn and baidu are part of the deep state's propaganda plan against China.
I think this article from Beijing University does a great job of highlighting some of the issues.
Web page:
https://fzzfyjy.cupl.edu.cn/info/1035/11343.htm
Pdf: https://www.law.pku.edu.cn/docs/20210927092933450384.pdf
I think this answers all your questions? It has no real effect (many people don’t have one). But, I’m not sure what your question really is.
The American propaganda definition (which may vary) is incorrect because the system doesn’t really exist.
Furthermore, it clearly is a system that is important to the CCP and has an effect.
From the Baidu page:
建立社会信用体系是保持国民经济持续、稳定增长的需要
Establishing a social credit system is necessary to maintain sustained and stable growth of the national economy
Certainly Mainland China does need a credit system, and undoubtedly the Social Credit System will and has helped in that regard, but it does have legitimate flaws with regards to privacy.
Its goals extend beyond ensuring creditworthiness to
社会信用体系具有揭示功能，能够扬善惩恶，提高经济效率；
The social credit system has a revealing function, can promote good and punish evil, and improve economic efficiency;
And its integration with the National Healthcare Security Administration, and other government and private entities extend its reach far beyond what the Western credit systems do.
who couldnt easily get to his next fights against tai chi frauds because the social credit score prevented him from flying or bussing and whathaveyou
both got high passing grades on allowing meaningless complaining about government.
You are saying that is inaccurate? Or you are talking about a different type of censorship?
there are a massive number of subjects which cannot be spoken about on social media without risking massive deboosting and the blacklisting of your accounts.
this censorship is directed by "former" CIA agents working at all major American social media companies. In other words, this is direct government censorship of private citizens' speech.
What content are you worried would blacklist your account?
Can you share the topic contents that are subject to your accusations? If you’re able to share them here without fear of government reprisal then I would argue that’s not censorship.
Why? Because it makes searching for immigration and customs enforcement content much more difficult to find. It lower the social temperature and stops it from metaphorically boiling over.
Is crowding out content censorship? Who knows. If tilting feeds in one direction and away from another has the same effect and isn't censorship because of a definitional technicality, does it really matter?
That sounds cool as long as you forfeit your Section 230 rights since at that point you’re more of a newspaper than a social network.
Yes, I know all social networks do this currently which is why they should all lose their Section 230 rights.
I mean, the definition of censorship is far larger than just that, and what you're talking about is it's more extreme form.
Moreso you ignore all the modern subtlety and nuance of modern censorship. The government doesn't need to attack you directly, they just tell the large companies that contract with the government they can't do business with companies that do certain things. Or they tell payment processors that businesses that are 'high risk' need to be audited more and will invite more government intervention in which the payment processors just drop said businesses.
I mean, if you were on a corner protesting, then the government came in and closed the roads and routed all traffic around you so no one saw you, it would be really sus, right?
I also worry about some sort of policy where a site “must” carry content. That has its own risks as well, which should be obvious.
The saddest part of US censorship is it isn’t even pro American. It’s pro American billionaires who are disproportionately pro Israel.
I don't know what's worse, being trapped in a cage or de-fanged and let loose. I've only ever lived without teeth, so the idea of biting sounds almost beautiful.
But angry crowds can still remind them that the threat exists -- witness Josh Hawley fleeing the capital when the angry mob broke through (the irony being that the mob was in service of his boss, Trump).
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714013
Also, don’t forget to obtain your icp license from the government before establishing a website in the mainland!
This is you in a nutshell.
In the US you are still very much free to insult the president, etc but if you post things deemed to be pro-terrorist or against what the Government wants to promote on social media, it won't go anywhere. Firearms or vaping content during the Biden admin as an example.
The current admin has heavily gutted the federal funding and workforce that backed these efforts and issued bulletins to private industry, but I suspect there is still pressure from pseudo-government "advocates".
You can't use Winnie the Pooh as code to agitate against the government.
That's an insult, not "agitat[ing] against the government"