Summary
Many Americans joining China’s social media platform RedNote are encountering strict censorship uncommon in Western platforms.
One non-binary user had a post asking if the platform welcomed gay people removed within hours.
Posts on LGBTQ+ topics, fitness photos, and sensitive cultural content have been censored, frustrating users unfamiliar with China’s moderation rules.
RedNote is hiring English-language moderators to handle the influx. While some users enjoy cultural exchange, others criticize restrictions.
Analysts see RedNote’s growth among US users as a soft power win for China.
Well color me constipated, because no shit.
Anyone who has been using Xitter over the last couple of years has already experienced Chinese style censorship.
Chinese style censorship is more consistent, though. No one is making up rules on the fly.
This is consistent. Anything that makes the racists, fascists, incels, tech bros, and billionaires uncomfortable is blocked.
What makes them uncomfortable could change tomorrow.
Did mentions of Tiananmen Square make China uncomfortable before 1989 or did that change? Did mentions of Winnie the Pooh make China uncomfortable before 2017 or did that change?
I’m not sure what point you were trying to make.
That is a comparatively slow rate of change, don’t you think so?
That was only two representative examples. Do you actually want me to make an exhaustive list of all of the changes that have happened over time to the Chinese censorship regime?
The point was obvious…
Chinese censorship is planned and targeted, with the intent to control and suppress dissent. It works hard to maintain a narrative and prevent excessive and rapid shifts so as to achieve a long term goal of control.
The billionaires running American social media (with a special shout to Musk) are mercurial and subject to the petty whims and feelings of the owner.
So while yes, obviously both change and the heads of the CCP are also occasionally subject to emotional responses, the differences between the two are stark and obvious. So no, “everything technically changes” is not a valid counter to the significant differences in intent and volatility.
Claiming you don’t understand the point they were making is just being intentionally obtuse.
Thank you. It seems it was clear enough for at least one other person.
I’m sure your point was very clear in your head but it may not be obvious to you that other people can’t read your mind. Suggesting that anyone who doesn’t get your opaque point is being obtuse is arrogant and childish.
Do better.
My point was just that Musk has very thin skin.
And Xi doesn’t?
That is a poor defence of censorship.
I’m not trying to defend it, just saying that as bad as Chinese censorship is, Musk is worse.
China censors all literature, film, music, and internet discourse employing advanced technologies and multiple tens of thousands of people while also running the world’s largest prison for journalist. VPNs are blocked. Apps like Signal are blocked. Online gaming for minors is limited to 3 hours per day on weekends and holidays only. People get harassed by police for what they post online. Many go to jail for criticizing the government, spreading pornography or health related sexual content (including anything LGBT), supporting Taiwanese independence, or casting doubt on Chinese folk legends. Then, in addition to that (which I have not even begun to do justice to), all media companies run their own internal censorship regimes so as not to get in trouble with the authorities. And this rolls downhill: you the individual self-censor to not get in trouble with your boss or worse.
You don’t think that’s exactly where the US is heading?
To the contrary… it’s a real concern. That’s why we shouldn’t falsely equivocate the CCP censorship apparatus to the haphazard moderation impulses of a childish social media CEO.
We’ve got a lot more to lose, especially with the long-emerging (and currently accelerating) conflux of state and social media.
For insurance, the pending KOSA bill opens a huge opportunity for future government censorship: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/12/09/new-kosa-same-as-old-kosa-but-now-with-elons-ignorant-endorsement/
Heading is different from already being there.
Is there a pedant brigade or something?
Yeah… I don’t think you’re the expert on China censorship you present yourself as.
I think you just regurgitated every piece of Cold War propaganda & every rumor about Chinese censorship that you’ve ever heard.
I mean, all the Chengdu '89 mums get rounded up at the end of May each year still.
You can’t even talk about the Cultural Revolution these days.
Even stating the fact that the RoC still exists will get your WeChat account closed.
I’m not sure what you think PRC censorship is like.
Which of my statements do you disagree with? How would you characterize the state of freedom of speech in the PRC?
This is why I’m against using Rednote myself. Just try searching tiananmen square in Rednote and you won’t get any results.
Someone here was defending it the other day claiming that China wouldn’t use it for propaganda purposes because politics is banned there.
They didn’t see the problem with that.
Oh, well that makes it completely useless then.
Removed by mod
Are you seriously suggesting that the bloodbathed atrocities committed by the Chinese government on innocent student protestors in Tiananmen Square never happened?
People did get killed, but no one died in the Square, and calling it a “massacre” is a stretch. Here are some NSFW/NFSL images and here is a video what actually went on with tank man (who blocked tanks from leaving the square, not entering it).
I think that’s splitting hairs and a purposeful distraction from the point that the Chinese government’s murdered innocent people.
To say- “but it happened near the square, not AT it!” is nothing short of disingenuous.
And for the record, they said the west “made it up”. Misinformation at its finest.
Quite a few of the people killed were unarmed military & police, which means that at least some of the “peaceful” protesters were not as peaceful as Western media portray them.
Did the Chinese military kill innocent students protestors or not?
Answer the question without splitting hairs and distractions.
Did they, or did they not?
Given that a few hundred people died, I think it’s safe to assume that government agents must have killed at least some nonviolent protesters, yes. I don’t know anyone who’d dispute that.
Leaving aside the fact that nobody questions that Roth was detained for 20 hours by the Chinese government and quite possibly bribed or blackmailed.
Here’s an archive of the link from that CBS page, since it’s broken now: https://web.archive.org/web/20090606124946/https://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/06/04/world/worldwatch/entry5061564.shtml
It talks about the soldiers shooting people outside Tiananmen Square. This is the event that “the Tiananmen Square Massacre” refers to. The number of people killed ranges from tens to hundreds to thousands, depending on who you ask, plus more wounded, but nobody can deny that there wasn’t a massacre.
Thank you
Removed by mod
Now I am quite ready for you to disengage, shut down, and just yell and say I am a crazy person
Do you see a .ml after my name?
And if that’s the “normal response” you’re accustomed to, then maybe other people aren’t the problem.
No, my response is to end this now and to stop engaging in a discussion that is clearly pointless. I’ve said what needed be said on the matter.
Removed by mod
Lol I’m almost permanently shadow banned from youtube for the same reason, only rarely do my comments actually show up, and I can’t even reply to my own comment. The funny thing is I made just one comment to trip their alarm, because everything else I write comments about are usually memes and YTP.
I also saw a fairly well liked reddit mod get banned by the site admins for stating Israel is an ethnostate.
Thn first amendment protects you against censhorship by the government only, so yeah facebook can censor yoyr speech
So if you wanted to talk shit about Israel you could spin up your own lemmy instance and there’s nothing the government or anyone else can do about.
Can the same be said about Mainland Taiwan?
Many Americans joining China’s social media platform RedNote are encountering strict censorship uncommon in Western platforms.
This has nothing to do with the first amendment in the first place.
Being banned from FB however as everything to do with common censorship on western platforms.
You can just go on the app and you’ll see it for yourself, they don’t bite.
-
There’s lots of posts of people asking opinions about LGBT stuff and the platform has a large lesbian community.
-
The app is originally more popular with women and the norm is to assume anonymous users are female, “sis” is considered complementary and a sign of acceptance.
-
My Hero Academia is considered cancelled because the manga included a reference to Unit 731, which did some real Nazi shit in WWII.
-
Chinese politics and history post-revolution is a sensitive topic and generally avoided. If you’re planning to go there so you can tell them about Tienanmen Square and how their government is evil, don’t bother lol.
-
There are a few Western fascists trying to get on there, probably in hopes that the moderators won’t recognize their dogwhistles (things like 1488, groyper, etc). They banned Nick Fuentes before he could post anything because they recognized the name, and I’ve seen posts circulating warning about their keywords. Hopefully the moderators they’re hiring will help nip it in the bud.
-
Generally, like, remember that you’re a guest and your experience will probably be fine. I’ve been surprised at both sides being respectful, and people are generally happy to have us. I’m sure there’s parts of the Chinese internet that are much less pleasant but RedBook seems like a pretty amiable cultural crossing point. It’s a unique opportunity to see another perspective without just going out on your own and there’s no telling how long it’ll last.
I am taking lots of notes from all the Chinese spies so that I can become a better Chinese spy for everyone here on Lemmy 🤗
From my experience, it’s a place for lighthearted fun.
I hated using Instagram and Facebook because of the toxic right-wingers always starting shit.
So imagine my surprise when these right-wing instigators actually get banned when I report them on RedNote.
Get wrecked idiots, finally a social app with an actual code of conduct.
This is the irony of it all. People are encountering Chinese censorship and realizing they prefer it over American censorship. XD
Ridiculous. I’ve seen comments removed from tiktok for using the word dumb, but some right wing Russian bot comes along and says the most evil, vile shit you’ve ever seen and you report it and the moderators always just happen to not find anything wrong with it. That’s not ‘American censorship’ that’s bullshit.
That’s literally American censorship and you can see the same pattern on all large American social media platforms. Youtube has the gamer to fascist pipeline set up with their recommendation system. Facebook recently did an “about face” which was really just making official their love of fascism. Twitter… is twitter. The capitalist class has always been fine with fascism and the platforms they own reflect that. Language is policed more than fascist rhetoric because advertisers don’t like the language.
“[Describes censorship] … That is not censorship bro.”
I don’t know to tell you.
Chinese politics and history post-revolution is a sensitive topic and generally avoided. If you’re planning to go there so you can tell them about Tienanmen Square and how their government is evil, don’t bother lol.
Do you think maybe that’s possibly a bad thing?
-
this is disgusting. personally I prefer lgbtq related posts be censored by companies like Facebook and Twitter instead.
cisgender is hate speech, y’all
Removed by mod
There’s a lot of gay people on the app this is strait up lies. Holy shit my eyes are open to this bullshit
Gay=/= enby
Mainland Taiwan per usual I see.
I wonder what happens if you post winnie the poo shit.
They have a lot of pooh posts mainly from the ride at Disney there.
deleted by creator
Dude yea I went to the app. I see the posts I was curious about it as well. There are a lot of Winnie the pooh posts you can see. Like go there yourself.
You’re literally parroting bullshit
This is the crux of it. People are so used to getting away with “bravely” parroting Western Cold War propaganda that even the mildest push-back is experienced as a massive affront.
The reason the US is more lax about censorship is that they can afford to because people are so gullible they’ll believe anything they’re told regardless of their own, lying eyes.
I’m sure it’s still exponentially better than censoring all free speech and critical opinion, and only being fed what your government mandates you a need to know.
Go on… ask china how they feel about Tiananmen Square. Better yet, how about you go ahead and show me some material from all those North Korean comedians taking about how incompetent their government is.
Man… It really blows my mind how much lemmy is a microcosm of how shit is in the world.
You .ml folk sure like to come here and sling your shit in .world and pretend that things like free speech is somehow something to shit on, when you know damn well we can’t respond in kind in your house. It’s interesting how you all seem to enjoy the freedom you have here to say dumb shit every day- knowing that you have a safe space to run back to when people call you out.
Remember that.
Removed by mod
“Everything is propaganda except CCP propaganda”
You tankies are fucking wild.
Why even bother talking with y’all? If I prove something you say is wrong, you just switch to something else (and yet you’re always accusing us of whataboutism!) and put words into my mouth that I never said. If you want to let yourself be deceived, I can’t stop you, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
You say you’ve provided direct proof? What proof? Additionally, you haven’t confronted me on anything. I only just came in here to call out your nonsense.
Oh, and you know damn well that I’m not wrong. It’s easy to prove that .ml shuts down any narrative that casts a shadow on their broken-assed ideology. And if you even think to deny this, I’ll have you look at the modlogs as evidence.
Unfortunately though, here you remain, rattling on with your misguided rhetoric- arrogantly positing opinions and seemingly demanding to be taken seriously.
Suffice it to say, lemmy is a microcosm of the real would. It’s plain to see that the communist blathering of .ml is an attempted emulation of the countries they blindly worship. Which in and of itself would be fine. People should be allowed to be as foolish and ignorant as they chose. But the problem lies when they all come here accusing bias and unfair treatment.
Utterly mind-blowing it is! To see so many people that claim to hate America and westernized media spending so much of their time contributing to its success. In contrast…
Consider looking through my comment history. See how many times I’ve wasted my time posting or commenting in a .ml community. See how many times I’ve debated with people there. Then compare that to the overwhelming amount of time you spend here debating with people that will probably never agree with you.
Kind regards!
Removed by mod
The entire worldwide LGBT TikTok population should flood RedNote and post pro-LGBT stuff in their native language. Let Rednote scramble finding moderators that can speak in a language that’s only spoken by a few million people. Then those users should leave after a few weeks and leave RedNote with the bill. And then rinse and repeat after a few months.
They mean the second time. I’m sure they mean the second time.
It just went back online
Leopards and Faces…
So mh maybe spread shit talk in ALL languages on rednote for break them by their censoring?
The fuck did they expect going to a Chinese platform
Well the tankies seem to think that China is actually a Utopia that the western governments are hiding from us, so naturally there shouldn’t be any censorship issues lol
People moving to Red Note aren’t tankies and I’ve only heard people who describe what tankies say that tankies think China is a utopia that our governments are hiding from us. Kinda like Ben Shapiro describing what “the left” people say or do.
lemmy.ca has some tankie instances defederated, so it would make sense why you don’t see what tankies are saying
https://lemmy.ca/instancesBut I do agree that people using rednote aren’t tankies.
I wish .ca would list a reason for defederation.
If you checked out those tankie instances or listened to them in your home instance for just a few minutes, you wouldn’t have to ask lol.
.world still federates with .ml and man those guys can have the most braindead takes… and they’re one of the more reasonable tankie instances.
Oh .ca is still with .ml, I go there to laugh every once in a while.
This can help, but it’s reports against instances in general and not specifically from .ca https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/censured
“I’m an American and have a right to free speech, no matter what country the service is hosted in!”
But what if there is no country that “allows” the speech you want to say? I want to call for the beheading of billionaires. I assume you don’t think I should be able to do that?
That’s certainly what certain people on lemmy.world seem to think despite the server being in The Netherlands.
My question is how much of these articles are manufactured outrage. Like, I can’t imagine anybody expected anything different - especially since some of this stuff is censored already on American social media (especially LGBT related stuff), and the media has spent 50 years telling Americans how much censorship there is in China and the Great Firewall.
Probably 90% from my personal experience, I see loads of LGBTQ posts on RedNote. I wonder if they’re being sensored or just waiting to go through the moderation queue.
I could see English posts maybe accumulating negative sentiment scores or even just a lack of known words causing a post to end up in a moderation queue.
For reference sentiment scores are basically a numeric way of scoring a post. Words like “hate” get -10 points neutral words get 1 point, and positive words like love and friendship get +10 points. At least when I was in college, this was a popular way for social media to determine if they should push your content or not.
I said in another comment about what I learned from following a Chinese lesbian on Twitter is that with China it’s like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” - you can say and do things that you could or should get in trouble for, but as long as you do it the right way, it’ll be overlooked.
There’s gay bars and a big lesbian scene in China, but there’s a common practice there, that used to happen in Europe and the US as well before the culture shifted, where lesbians get married to men - either gay guys or just a guy they have an arrangement with - to fulfill the cultural obligation expected of them to get married, and then they basically live their own separate lives.
So most likely what’s happening is people who don’t know the cultural do’s and don’t’s are getting censored for stepping over the line.
But LGBTQ stuff is censored all the time on other social media anyway, whenever they think they can get away with it, so it’s not like it’s all that surprising - especially when you add in China’s official stance on LGBTQ people.
These feel like they’re freaking out about something that everybody already knew was gonna happen, and omitting the fact that it happens elsewhere as well to make it seem like a big deal.
This is all just leading up to the TikTok savior Trump winning over the youth crowd. If you force them to a platform that is much worse, they will forget how controlling the previous platform was and just be happy to have it.
You are assuming TikTokers have any intelligence, morals, principle or talent (or even humanity)
This is an extremely weird take.
On Lemmy it’s not, this place is filled with pseudo-intellectuals with no critical thinking abilities at all. They literally have no idea what a ban like this means. The problem is I can’t tell I’d they’re shills or worse, they really think this is a good thing cuz “le short videos bad”. I’m starting to think that only the worst people from reddit came here.
Removed by mod
Ikr, that’s the whole world, not just TikTok users.
Somehow TikTokers even surpass that (Along with Twitch streamers)
Removed by mod
Who Lemmy.World ??
