How TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-how-tiktok-censors-videos-that-do-not-please-beijing

by avocado4 • 7 years ago

245 85 7 years ago

gtirloni2• 7 years ago

Beijing ByteDance Technology Co Ltd. is a Chinese Internet technology company operating several machine learning-enabled content platforms, headquartered in Beijing. It was founded by Zhang Yiming in 2012.

What's to be surprised about exactly? This sort of thing is the norm.

philipov• 7 years ago

It's not about surprise, it's about spreading awareness, and not allowing this kind of behavior to be normalized. If you think news is only worth spreading if it's a surprise, then you've been totally taken in by the shock-mongerers and by those who want this kind of behavior to be ignored, allowed, and encouraged.

gtirloni2• 7 years ago

I think the HN crowd is well aware.

dragonelite• 7 years ago

We already have social media platforms for 20+ years. Everybody says they don't want to be tracked when asked, but also a lot/majority don't care if they can stay in touch with their families or get those social media dopamine shots(likes and stuff)

pmarreck• 7 years ago

Incentivizing free speech in a clever way!

Leary5• 7 years ago

I hate companies that abide by the ideological positions of the country they're from. Hopefully the US can pass a law that bans the use of any social media app that harms Freedom of Speech through the insidious use of "Community Guidelines"

maest• 7 years ago

Honest question, is this supposed to be written tongue in cheek? I can't convince myself whether it is or it isn't.

WaxProlix• 7 years ago

Poe's law is going to become so relevant that it's no longer relevant anymore. We live in a post-irony society.

mc322• 7 years ago

I think they’re serious but obviously poking fun at the incongruence where we castigate Chinese apps but are fine having domestic companies engage in similar behavior except it's not at the behest of the gov.

nailer• 7 years ago

A 'town square' law where a communications medium is ruled to be essential or of great influence (eg, Twitter) ensuring that free speech can continue to exist would be a positive thing.

dang4• 7 years ago

This account has been using HN primarily for political and national battle, which is against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We warned you about this before and ask you to stop: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727426. If you can't or won't stop, we're unfortunately going to have to ban you, because this is an abuse of HN. The site exists for intellectual curiosity, which is not compatible with political agendas. Would you please take the spirit of this place more to heart? That means posting on a variety of things that gratify your curiosity, rather than on just a single topic that you're fighting about—regardless of what that topic is or what your position is about it.

Leary5• 7 years ago

Thank you for your comment, moderator dang. I understand HN is a place of great intellectual curiosity where the Freedom of Speech is valued. In the context of potential contentious political issues here in America, however, I also understand the very idea of "freedom of speech" has become a hot button idea used by many who advocate for hate speech. I will refrain from commenting on sensitive issues like these from now on to honor the spirit of this place.

dang4• 7 years ago

Url changed from https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49826155, which points to this.

nyolfen2• 7 years ago

as we all know, it's a private platform and they have no obligation to host speech that violates their guidelines. nothing to see here.

xvector5• 7 years ago

Being a private platform does not absolve you of social responsibility. When you take on the role of a public forum or place of communication, you also take on some social responsibility, whether you like it or not.

Whether you choose to ignore it with carefully crafted "Community Guidelines"-based legalese or you choose to respect and acknowledge it, it doesn't change the fact that the responsibility exists.

zamadatix• 7 years ago

The problem with this kind of statement is "social responsibility" isn't one thing. To their social group this is what being socially responsible is. To your/my social group it isn't.

Saying "you have a social responsibility to not do that" is only one step better than arguing "I don't think you should do that" as a reason someone shouldn't do something.

nyolfen2• 7 years ago

what about the chinese state's social responsibility to maintain order?

systemtest• 7 years ago

I don't see TikTok as a public forum, it's literally a place for 10 second clips of teens doing silly dances.

big_chungus2• 7 years ago

The fact that someone owns a platform does not mean we are not free to criticize what he chooses to do with it. Saying we could not would be a greater violation of speech.

linkregister2• 7 years ago

Yep, let's delete this topic. Sure having a company censor foreign users' content on political grounds is bad, but it's legal!

What? You don't like something? Is it legal? Then you'd better clam up, buddy!

As we all know, all things that are legal are just the way it is, and we have to just deal with them.

avocado42• 7 years ago

Also if you check the AndroidManifest.xml of TikTok app you'll see they are tracking persistent device identifiers coupled with phone #. Then if you uninstall TikTok you'll still have a bunch of their files in shared space that other Chinese apps can pick up were you to install them, presumably so they can track you even if you uninstall the app.

vymague2• 7 years ago

Is this something we can report? Or is it allowed in Android?

avocado42• 7 years ago

It's a bad practice according to Google, but not forbidden.

https://developer.android.com/training/articles/user-data-id...

chii• 7 years ago

Is there a way to prevent an app from leaking data put like this, e.g, some kind of sandbox disk where files written with one app cannot be accessed by another app (until the user allows it - like photo sharing etc)?

LimKruscal3• 7 years ago

Is that so? I decompile the v7.4.6 APK file through javadecompilers.com and only find out they ask for several devices permission. Also, I think if they want to do this they will not put it in the AndroidManifest.xml because this file is not able to store the ID of devices and it will make it super easy for us to sue them.

Cthulhu_• 7 years ago

Who are you? You only registered to make this one comment, denying the claims without any backing information and while promoting a random website / service. I'm not sure you're acting in good faith and I wonder whose payroll you're on.

yorwba2• 7 years ago

Relevant HN submission about this kind of behavior: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21071746

xvector5• 7 years ago

TikTok's developers should be ashamed of themselves.

I have nothing but derision for employees who take part in implementing something so obviously horrible but do not make an attempt to move out of their job or even acknowledge what they are doing wrong.

baby• 7 years ago

In China you either comply and have a chance to build a company or have a job somewhere, or you don’t and... you don’t have a career.

vymague2• 7 years ago

It seems they are just motivating the smart people to leave the country.

stonekyx• 7 years ago

They should indeed, but I guess it's hard for those engineers in China to find a domestic company that allows them to do differently.

Moving to a foreign company in China may not actually solve the problem, and moving to a different country may not be an option at all, so they end up keep doing the bad things and pretend not to know. I have a friend there who seems to be like this.

tempsy• 7 years ago

TikTok/ByteDance has offices in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles here in the US. I know a former colleague who is not Chinese who works there. Point is there are certainly many non-Chinese citizens who work there that are complicit in enforcing such rules.

piiswrong• 7 years ago

Are you referring to the PRISM project?

xvector5• 7 years ago

Yes, the same logic applies.

a0zU• 7 years ago

I doubt they think about the implications of what they're being asked to do, especially with things like this becoming more of a norm in China.

cttet• 7 years ago

They may have completely values. Your shame does not quite matter for them.

The real solution is either find a way to reshape their value or conquer them.

ummwhat• 7 years ago

I don't think you understand.

There are people going to work every day in China doing the job of censor and they reckon they are doing something good and patriotic. Even at the level of policy makers, the censorship is there in the first place and continues to be there because many legitimately think it is good for the country.

Without being educated on a topic, you're unlikely to figure out most things about it on your own. Without an education in rights and civil liberties, you're unlikely to conclude on your own that censorship in principle is bad.

If you want to make a difference, get off your high horse and construct an argument against censorship for someone who wasn't educated in a Western country like you were.

swordsmith• 7 years ago

Even a significant chunk of educated Chinese with exposure to Western democracy and political system often justifies the censorship with "most Chinese people are not educated and get easily influenced by things on the internet and this results in social instability". I can see the reasoning behind that, and can't think of a satisfying counter-argument.

martin_a• 7 years ago

TikTok's developers should be ashamed of themselves.

Well, there are enough developers from Western companies like FAANG and alike on here, which do not acknowledge that they are doing something wrong, either. Why should Chinese developers be more to blame?

xvector5• 7 years ago

The FAANG developers that engage in similarly destructive policies should be similarly ashamed. More, even, because they have more context on what our freedom means to us.

tomp• 7 years ago

All societies censor. China censors Tienanmen square and gays, the West censors child porn and terrorist videos. All "for the good of society", we just happen to disagree what "the good of society" is.

So the real blame doesn't fall upon developers, but on their encompassing societies / governments, and on us, because we have to decide what technological platforms we want to use, and which society's standards of morality to import.

dirtyid2• 7 years ago

Another incredibly vague investigation. Description of leaked guideline basically amounts to no divisive politics. Guardian yellow peril narrative: "TikTok, is advancing Chinese foreign policy aims abroad through the app". What I see from the guidelines: TikTok is an app designed for kids and No Politics policies make the app friendly for kids, which is preferable to the Youtube radicalization treadmill model. IMO, the internet needs a different standards for children. Sometimes I think 90% of fights online are some variation of anonymous kids screaming at kids, adults screaming adults but is actually a kid with dumb naive hot takes. This is the right policy of kid oriented apps like TikTok and Youtube kids IMO. Not broader social media like twitter, facebook or weibo.

Original allegations by Guardian [1].

In every case, they are placed in a context designed to make the rules seem general purpose, rather than specific exceptions. A ban on criticism of China’s socialist system, for instance, comes under a general ban of “criticism/attack towards policies, social rules of any country, such as constitutional monarchy, monarchy, parliamentary system, separation of powers, socialism system, etc”.
Another ban covers “demonisation or distortion of local or other countries’ history such as May 1998 riots of Indonesia, Cambodian genocide, Tiananmen Square incidents”.
A more general purpose rule bans “highly controversial topics, such as separatism, religion sects conflicts, conflicts between ethnic groups, for instance exaggerating the Islamic sects conflicts, inciting the independence of Northern Ireland, Republic of Chechnya, Tibet and Taiwan and exaggerating the ethnic conflict between black and white”.

TikTok claims these are deprecated guidelines:

The old guidelines in question are outdated and no longer in use. Today we take localised approaches, including local moderators, local content and moderation policies, local refinement of global policies, and more. We also consult with a number of independent local committees and are working to scale this at a global level, including forming an independent committee of leading industry organisations and experts to continually assess these policies.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...

xvector5• 7 years ago

TikTok is an app designed for kids and No Politics policies make the app friendly for kids, which is preferable to the Youtube radicalization treadmill model.

I think this is a false dichotomy. You are mentioning two companies that play this game in bad faith. There is a middle-ground.

dirtyid2• 7 years ago

What is the middle-ground? The end goal is behaviour modelling of some kind that requires selective information or censorship. I'm partial to unrestricted free speech 8chan / edge-lord internet openness, but western society broadly is drifting towards censoring extremely divisive content, aka the China model. The question is where do you draw the line? DOTA conduct points that banning the most toxic players (kids) that seems to be well received? Oh no that's social credit. I predict that western and eastern social media will converge on the same censorship solutions, maybe even overlap.

Leary5• 7 years ago

How is this implemented technically? Does TikTok know what every video is saying through speech recognition?

What if I unfurl a Free Tibet flag in my video (visual only)

tpmx• 7 years ago

"... instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention ..."

sunkenvicar2• 7 years ago

Thanks for this. App deleted because China is not a reliable place to do business.

dang4• 7 years ago

Please keep nationalistic flamebait off HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

sunkenvicar2• 7 years ago

You are hallucinating nationalism where there is none.

China is untrustworthy because they routinely break business deals.

They violate trade agreements: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fCAut_Gr-3E

They steal our IP: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-china-systematically-pries-...

They are waging war against us with Fentanyl: https://www.wsj.com/articles/despite-new-safeguards-fentanyl...

Chinese Fentanyl has killed hundreds of thousands of North Americans in the Third Opium War. It’s a no-brainer to pivot away from China.

United857• 7 years ago

The article doesn't mention a key point: The TikTok that's available internationally is a completely separate service instance than Douyin (the Chinese version). Content/users from one aren't accessible on the other.

takumo• 7 years ago

It doesn't mention it because it isn't really relevant. The international app is still being censored according to the same rules as the app in China.

It still prohibits users from discussing topics the CCP doesn't want brought up. (e.g. Tiananman Square, Falun Gong, organ harvesting, and Xinjiang)

The main differences are that outside of China you're not bound by their laws requiring users to sign up using their legal name and provide identification to prove as such. In addition to which people aren't being disappeared or arrested for their posts.

aaron_m04• 7 years ago

The main differences are [...] In addition to which people aren't being disappeared or arrested for their posts.

I would not recommend talking about these subjects with the international app outside China and then going to China.

chvid• 7 years ago

Or maybe TikTok just want their platform to be filled with cheerful silly jokes and 10 second dance moves? And not politics, religious stuff or anti this and that ...

Maybe it is even a businesss strategy and not something the CCP actually has forced upon them.

bigpumpkin• 7 years ago

Which is quite a contrast from Snapchat's current environment, where you can select political filters for your snaps.

Craighead• 7 years ago

or maybe posting simple things like any reference to a certain quadrilateral in online games like league of legends is enough for any Chinese player to be removed from the game

games are fun and completive things arent they? there shouldn't be any politics around them, yet, China decides to censor references to a certain quadrilateral by removing players from a game

FussyZeus• 7 years ago

I'd be over the moon if Twitter banned political discussion. No matter what side you're on, if any, you have to acknowledge that having discussions in 240 character bites is not going to convince anybody of anything. The only thing Twitter is really good at is letting people dunk on other people and showing their followers how smart they are. There's no nuance and no motive to actually persuade others, it's just basically a bar fight over the Internet.

potatofarmer45• 7 years ago

The issue here is the spread of Chinese Censorship beyond China. With WeChat, so far, users outside of China are not subjected to the same level of censorship when communicating with other non-Chinese users.

This is different because it subjects all users to a Chinese "standard" which basically means any conspiracy crap about how evil America is and typical whataboutism videos can be prioritized via "algorithms" while a whole range of "sensitive" issues can be blocked. It gives the Chinese government tools that slowly enable it to "guide" discussions online. What is interesting about TikTok is that unlike WeChat, it seems to have users beyond the Chinese diaspora which gives Beijing far more "soft power" influence to craft a "positive image of China"

Fjolsvith2• 7 years ago

Same could be said for other venues of online expression, including the current one.

EastSmith• 7 years ago

Algorithmic sorting / curated content has no place in services like TikTok, Twitter, Facebook. If I subscribe to someone I want to see all the content. I've been fighting with twitter switching to curated content for some time now, and finally recently Twitter stopped switching me back to curated ordering.

aembleton• 7 years ago

But in what order? If it is just by time stamp that will give you a lot of noise to wade through.

Use an app like talon if you want twitter ordered by time.

How TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing

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