Chinese investment means increased pressure on tech oligopolies* to increase censorship of media critical of China. They've been branching out to increase soft influence, keep news sites and Olympic committee from recognizing Taiwan as a separate nation. Then there's what is currently going on in Hong Kong. Chinese investor cash is effectively Chinese government investment. It's not a good thing.
Not that this isn't a valid concern, but is there really any evidence that this is happening in Silicon Valley? Hong Kong's a different matter because of just how comparatively dominating and close by the mainland Chinese market is compared to the tiny city state.
But in the US tech sector, the Chinese market is at best an after-thought. We're also living through probably the strongest seller's market in history when it comes to venture funding. My guess is that in most situations if a fund like Tencent tried to force an Internet startup to censor their content, they'd get laughed in the face as the founders just walked next door to the next VC firm on Sand Hill Road.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a SV insider by any stretch. So take these speculations on my part with a big grain of salt...)
Moderators on reddit reserve the right to censor their subreddits. This is not censorship by reddit, this is censorship by the users who created that community. Some communities use it quite effectively like askscience and askhistory to limit responses to certified experts, others use to enforce some minimum standard of content and to deter shitposting, while some use it to control the narrative and shape opinion.
In any case, to suggest Chinese influence on reddit censorship, either the reddit admins are doing the censorship, or the Chinese influence is somehow reaching the mods.
No one has made a good case for that that I've seen.
The situation is a nightmare on any "official" subreddit. So much so that I have taken to completely stay of the frontpage, remove all the default subreddits and only explicitly whitelist subreddits based on my interests.
The reddit frontpage is a cesspool worse than 4chan. At least in 4chan people don't try to hide behind fake veneers of moral superiority.
Seriously, it’s like worldnews doesn’t have an army of mods, and senior mods who agree with the actions of their fellow mods.
It can’t have anything to do with the subs and users who are banned from r/India for harassing normal people, islamaphobia, Alls for genocide and so on, right?
I mean, it’s not like there’s THREE right wing pro govt Indian subreddits which constantly harangue and badger the main sub, attack ABCDesis and are coordinating some sort of absurd propaganda war to make it seem that r/India is.... what?
Other people doing bad things does not negate that Muslims also do bad things. I hate this deflection/whataboutism as if it means anything.
On another note,
>Muslims are being killed in Palestine by Israel and still Muslims are terrorists.
>US attacked Afghanistan for oil and still Muslims are terrorists.
>US threatening to attack Iran and still Muslims are terrorists.
You can talk about and criticize all three of these things freely if you want, without worrying about being retaliated against physically by extremists or being censored by platforms who are afraid of the lashback if they fail to do so as Muslims are somehow a protected minority.
A lot of comments still up are even more directly critical of Beijing than that post. Mods flagged it for "vote manipulation."
So I don't know what to make of this.
A sympathetic voting ring could have boosted the comment without the commenter knowing, confusing everyone here.
Or maybe Tencent really is picking specific posts to complain about to Reddit admins, or planting mods in high profile subs (but those mods can only catch so much).
Is there any way to sample which comments have been deleted by mods, to see if there's a consistent bias?
I stand by my belief that reddit is one of the worst sites on the net and far far worse than Facebook when it comes to reinforcing echo chamber mentalities.
I stopped visiting the site after the pulse shooting in Orlando when moderators deleted my post listing blood donation facilities in the Orlando area.
Speaking of Reddit, a citizen of Hong Kong had a post this morning make it to the front page giving out a bit of info about the protest. Nearly half the comments were purged by the mods. Reddit had gone down hell in the last few years, but this was something else.
Aren't all Reddit subs driven by their own moderators? Or are there core subs that are Reddit-moderated?
I had a lawyer friend who liked to post in a legal advice sub, moderated by someone in law enforcement, who banned him for posting information about your rights if you're arrested.
The lion share of subs are moderated by a relative few mods. There was a post showing the graph of control recently, I found it disturbing. Unfortunately Reddit has critical mass now, I think it can survive what ever it becomes. It could lose every user who wishes it was like the first 5 years and hardly notuce. There won't be a Digg moment for Reddit.
I suspect that Reddit intentionally keeps the moderators of core subs a group of "normal users" (who will follow any requests by the admins) as a level of obfuscation for any corporate-driven censorship or vote-tampering.
I would agree with that, especially for their biggest and most influential subs like /r/news and /r/politics. Reddit's owners have shown they're not above selling out some of these subs to firms like ShareBlue. It would make sense as part of their contract, they'd ensure that the mods were 'suited' to their customers' goals.
Linking to the domain was banned. I doubt reddit has the technical capabilities to effectively prevent them from continuing their alleged bot/vote-manipulation activities.
The result of the investigation isn't a factor in determining if a claim is falsifiable or not, only the question if the investigation is possible. This is confusing falsifiable with falsified.
The scientist seeking to determine if it is falsifiable. That no scientist has the resources necessary to do so now does not have bearing on determining if some claim is falsifiable or not.
"Tencent imposes new regulations on streamers in China"
Yes, these regulations are currently China-specific, but (1) that's bad enough itself, (2) Companies may apply censorship worldwide as a an engineering-simplification measure.
> they'd get laughed in the face as the founders just walked next door to the next VC firm on Sand Hill Road.
Money talks, and Tencent and other Chinese companies have a lot. Once they've bought their stake, they can't be simply laughed off.
As someone who just spends a lot of time in engineering slack channels, comments seem to alternate every other day on how hard or how easy it is to raise money. I've been through fund raising once (~5 years ago) as a small-time founder and can't help but believe the reality is somewhere in between gold-rush and desert.
(I don't have access to the actual article due to WSJ paywall.)
> Tencent tried to force an Internet startup to censor their content
I assume you are referring to Tencent's recent investment in popular social media site Reddit, during their $300mm series D, at a $3B valuation, so they've already taken the money, whether they will laugh across across sand hill road is another question.
There is not yet direct evidence, of such censorship having yet occurred, but once it does happen, could any outsiders prove censorship beyond a shadow of a doubt? Give it time, first, for corporate censorship to become normalized on the English areas of the site, before pro-Hong Kong viewpoints become demonized, and Chinese mainland views propagate. Like, honestly, weird memes of shirtless Putin on horseback.
This is coming around especially as censorship in the US is also slowly becoming normalized. Try saying the phrase global climate change/warming as a government scientist. And then watch the people that try to justify it.
" they'd get laughed in the face as the founders just walked next door to the next VC firm on Sand Hill Road."
I don't think it's so easy, because the issue wouldn't come up during funding, it'd happen later.
Also - the vast majoriy of companies do not 'waltz into VC to raise money'. Consider that if they are taking Chinese money, it might be a sign they had difficulty with American firms, because why would you take money from a super foreign investor if some entity in the Valley would fund you? 'Better terms'? Well, those terms might have 'strings attached'.
But I think it's right to point out the possibility that this mightn't be rampant.
Maybe it's more common, possibly on a case to case basis, but I don't think startups are acting in the 'strategic interest of Donald Trumps trade war' plan, so to speak.
> Chinese investor cash is effectively Chinese government investment.
Agreed. I've said this before and say it again - if a Chinese acquirer is willing to buy your company for a much higher multiplier than their Western counterparts then there is an obvious reason.
The idea is that successful message control will be subtle to imperceptible at first, but through successive actions it will just become commonplace to "not diss China".
If Reddit is the "forum of the internet" then it won't matter if it slowly erodes into a Fox News like media presence. It will exert the gravity over other forums through its "reasonability" on non-sensitive topics.
Kind of like how most modern politicians don't say anything bad about Israel.
The shift can influence on easy a admin/mod will ban certain thread and comments if content "diss China". Again, like how the action of Israel is rarely (never) mentioned by politician.
Even Taiwan does not recognize Taiwan as a separate nation. Its position is that the Republic of China still exists, is the only legitimate state in all of China, and that its seat of government in Taiwan.
There is a growing movement in Taiwan to give up on this claim and instead pursue an existence as a de jure, rather than merely de facto independent nation.
That includes Hacker News, by the way. Now that "YCombinator China" is a thing, sooner or later YC is going to start getting gentle insinuations that they really ought to tone down the criticism of China on that forum site they run, if they want to keep doing business there. Then the insinuations will get not-so-gentle, and at that point either YC China or Hacker News will get the bullet.
Meh...PG writing a blog post entitled "Why YC Is Quitting China" would cause plenty of tsoris in Beijing, and the Chinese certainly know this.
I'd bet that PG/sama have thought about this set of issues, and they probably have their redlines drawn, but are probably also not advertising them, as is strategically prudent.
> PG writing a blog post entitled "Why YC Is Quitting China" would cause plenty of tsoris in Beijing, and the Chinese certainly know this.
Absolutely nobody but a very select few people would care. YC is not even on the radar of lots of tech start-ups or their founders, the world is a lot larger than what you might think from hanging out here. And that's with full knowledge of the sea change that YC has brought for founders and the absolutely incredible number of companies it has generated, there are still many more people - and founders - in the world that have never heard of YC compared to those that have.
The typical news cycle lasts about 48 hours. People have no problem remembering what 9/11 was all about because it was the top item for over a year. Now ask them in what year it was and see if you get the right answer.
If YC has to stop doing business in China, it will be a very momentary blip and China will most definitely not change course because of a PG blogpost.
I think you're eliding the fact that technology development and specifically startup growth are current strategic priorities for the PRC, and making a straw man by framing my argument as "China will change course because of a PG blogpost".
And also, do you really know multiple people who do not know what year 9/11 happened? C'mon
> I think you're eliding the fact that technology development and specifically startup growth are current strategic priorities for the PRC, and making a straw man by framing my argument as "China will change course because of a PG blogpost".
It's not a strawman when that is exactly what you wrote:
>> Meh...PG writing a blog post entitled "Why YC Is Quitting China" would cause plenty of tsoris in Beijing, and the Chinese certainly know this.
>> Absolutely nobody but a very select few people would care.
> Are you kidding me, it would be on the front page of the Journal. People would care after that.
YC is incredibly important to the start-up world but strategic priorities of the PRC aside if YC leaves China then that's not going to move any needles. If Google isn't powerful enough to make a play there you can just about forget what influence YC has there. To think that PG can influence Chinese policy with a blogpost is ridiculous.
> And also, do you really know multiple people who do not know what year 9/11 happened?
Yes. They typically know it was somewhere in the early 00's but not what specific year. It baffles me, but it is about as solid a fact as I have about this given that I've tried this many times now. Feel free to conduct your own little experiment and see what happens. I think in part it is because everybody always talks about 9/11 without adding the year.
Edit: FWIW: I just checked one more person and they did not in fact remember what year it was, only be linking it to some event in their own life were they able to make the connection.
Tsoris means stress or suffering. A front-page article in a major American newspaper saying that the world's pre-eminent tech incubator was pulling out of the Chinese market due to political pressure would constitute a major loss of face and, yes, cause stress within the CPC leadership.
I didn't say that this would drive a policy change after the fact. Quite the opposite, it would likely result in some kind of drama related to the CPC digging in its heels and attempting to recast the drama in a nationalist context. But, the initial loss of face would still be bad from their perspective.
I do think that YC/PG do in fact have some leverage/deterrence power with regard to being politically pressured by the CPC leadership because of their ability to walk away from the table in a publicly embarrassing manner.
Does that clear things up, and do you agree or disagree?
I don’t think China, the people or the ruling party, care much at all about YC. Of course there would be minor caring if something hit the front page of the journal about “YC quitting China”. But it would have to be such a minor thing. I wonder why you think China would care about such a tiny organization, relatively speaking (wondering in earnest).
Both. China is a country of 1.4 billion people, they're detaining hundreds of thousands of people for no good reason in Xinjiang, they execute or imprison political enemies and are building artificial islands in the South China Sea in order to turn international waters into Chinese sovereign waters. The scale of that place will blow your mind. A single city like Guangzhou has 50% more people than the entire Bay Area.
You really think a single VC company that plays no critical role in national security is even on their radar?
YC is so tiny compared to so many things. I don’t think it would be a spat because that to me means China would respond or there would be [serious] rumblings within the ruling party.
Is this very different from Americans though ? Americans have forced all nations to treat Iran as a terrorist state when it is very friendly to rest of the world compared to Saudi. Saudi Barbaria exists only because of Americans.
Can we say with certainty that American money isn't coming to other countries with strings attached ?
I'm not sure friendly is a word I would use to describe Iran, and Saudi Arabia would exist with or without American support. The US-Saudi alliance is rocky at best, and only exists because the Saudis have oil, and largely persists because Saudi hates Iran, which is important to the US because of their strong alliance to Israel. You have to choose sides in the Middle East, and the US chose Israel. Everything else flows from there.
The US is an enabler of Saudi nonsense, but the Saudi state is not being propped up with American resources. They would be powerful in the region regardless of American support.
> Saudi Arabia would exist with or without American support
At the same level? I have my doubts. If they weren't a close ally of the US, terrorist financing/leading stings would be going much further. Would they be able to do their thing in Yemen without US support? Or would they be a pariah on the world stage because of their acts, which are hard to tell apart from those of ISIS/ISIL? Not that I'm a big fan of the Iranian Mullahs and their backwards idea of how to run a society, but they appear somewhat moderate compared to the wahabi style.
Things would be significantly different in hard to predict ways. I'm just saying that "Saudi Arabia wouldn't exist without America" is extremely wrong.
Radicalization financing is nothing new from KSA and is not confined to madrassas of India. South East Asia, Europe and Americas have seen their fair share of this.
As far Iran sanctions and oil imports of India is concerned that is largely collateral damage.
USA and India have complicated relationship, at the surface level they should be allies but at the second level India's in-cohesive politics and financial reforms have added up such a way, US does not see a reliable partner in India and India's interests do not overlap with US given its neighborhood.
There are other parties to blame outside of Americans for the religiously charged climate in India.
Why do you keep writing Barbaria instead of Arabia? At first I thought it was a typo, but you keep using it. Is that how Arabia is spelled in your native language?
Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are dystopian oppressive tyrannies. I don't think any western nations should be "friendly" to such countries that so openly and proudly trample on basic human rights.
China's also a dystopian oppressive oligarchy. Should we be doing business with them? I think we shouldn't, but given how deeply their hooks are into our economy, there's not much choice at this point.
Iran funds Hezbollah, thus unless we want to claim Hezbollah is not a terrorist group, then it follows that Iran is a terrorist state, even if through a Hezbollah proxy.
The entire news article appears like typical american hitjob. There is no evidence whatsoever that Iranian state is linked to this man, heck no evidence about Hezbullah either.
At any rate none of this is different from what Saudi citizens have been doing for years in Europe and USA.
It was a Lebanese group. In that sense America is linked to every tyrant in Middle East, ISIS etc. America has always been the agressor in Iran relationship.
> keep news sites and Olympic committee from recognizing Taiwan as a separate nation
No, they don't want to be a separate nation. It's a more complex situation than that. Taiwan considers itself as the Republic of China, where they consider the government in Beijing to be illegitimate, and reject communist rule.
Note that the rest of the world has also moved on, when we say "China" we also mean the one ruled by the government in Beijing, which makes the whole situation more complex.
>> keep news sites and Olympic committee from recognizing Taiwan as a separate nation
> No, they don't want to be a separate nation. It's a more complex situation than that. Taiwan considers itself as the Republic of China, where they consider the government in Beijing to be illegitimate, and reject communist rule.
> The current official position of the party is that the "Republic of China (Taiwan)" is an independent and sovereign country whose territory consists of Taiwan and its surrounding smaller islands and whose sovereignty derives only from the ROC citizens living in Taiwan (similar philosophy of self-determination), based on the "Resolution on Taiwan's Future" in 1999. It considers Taiwan independence to be a current fact, making a formal declaration of independence unnecessary.
It is a more complex situation, but your view is dated. Taiwan has to maintain the fiction that it still supports a one-China policy, because to do otherwise and declare independence would invite Beijing's wrath: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#PRC...
Yes, the narratives keep on changing and there are various political camps that have different opinions because... politics. I had no idea my view was dated, thanks! I guess the pendulum swings back and forward every number of years. But to get to the main point about the "Olympic committee from recognizing Taiwan as a separate nation", there's definitely no overwhelming consensus yet, even by the Taiwanese themselves, that their government should form an independent country!
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