One important thing here: much Chinese censorship isn’t centralized. It’s carried out by individual apps working toward what they think the govt wants, about 1/3rd of staff at any social media site are on censorship/content duty. - ThreadSky

beijingpalmer.bsky.social • 44 days ago

One important thing here: much Chinese censorship isn’t centralized. It’s carried out by individual apps working toward what they think the govt wants, about 1/3rd of staff at any social media site are on censorship/content duty.

Reposted from BeijingPalmer

it'll be a little while not out of any cunning plot but because the censorship apparatus isn't prepared for a high-volume of English posts. But this isn't a *help* for Xiaohongshu right now, it's a giant pain-in-the-ass potential political problem that their people will be sweating about.

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laurenwu.bsky.social•44 days ago

1/3 of staff! That's wild

beijingpalmer.bsky.social•44 days ago

well, remember that a lot of that is the same content management that any Western platform would do* - nudes, CSA, spam, etc. But then a lot of it is political!

*much of which is outsourced to the Philippines

laurenwu.bsky.social•43 days ago

I'm surprised because many of the US social networks have dramatically cut their moderation teams. The results were disastrous but they haven't ramped back up.

I guess CN companies didn't follow suit.

lorenziniforce.bsky.social•44 days ago

whooop. Love how half the job opportunities in my country are being either a moderation mule or a spammer

beijingpalmer.bsky.social•44 days ago

there was a really good story on the trauma Facebook moderators there were going through after having to look at a ton of CSA material and racism all day

of course now Meta's ok with that

lorenziniforce.bsky.social•44 days ago

yyyep

and opportunities are so thin on the ground for young people in this fucking country that shit like that is the only option for so many...

beijingpalmer.bsky.social•44 days ago

So what XHS is thinking right now isn’t “what will the govt tell us to do about this” but “how can we avoid the govt telling us what to do about this” because by that stage its *already* a problem for them.

beijingpalmer.bsky.social•44 days ago

That means preemptive action, I would expect that US accounts get singled out for particular attention pretty soon.

gothedistance49.bsky.social•44 days ago

Some of them already have.

gothedistance49.bsky.social•44 days ago

They're not taking any chances. The peoplr thinking they can talk politics willy nilly are getting banned

friederbinder.bsky.social•44 days ago

A good indicator of things to come will be whether Andy Boreham et al. will be allowed/ordered to put out a video on YouTube about it.

friederbinder.bsky.social•44 days ago

The smartest thing would probably be to do nothing for a while until the novelty wears off and the language barrier takes care of the rest and then hope that some of the genuine excitement sticks.

jakehalloran.bsky.social•44 days ago

yeah idk what the downside would really be for them to just institute a US geo-IP block. its not like its meaningful revenue anyway

fourdeltavictor.bsky.social•44 days ago

Feels like they should just ban all US IP's? Is it even worth operating here?

macsquirelera.bsky.social•44 days ago

I assume that before this the Chinese American diaspora was a worthwhile group to cater to

snowjob.bsky.social•44 days ago

People really overestimate how centralized things are in China overall

lucindacatchlove.bsky.social•44 days ago

I mean, to some degree that's also happening on US apps run by billionaires aligned with Trump. It's not exactly equivalent but the capitalism=democracy lie of the US has led us to where we're at (including vis a vis Russia and China).

devlinburgess.bsky.social•44 days ago

That's how a lot of authoritarian governments work. They don't personally control everything. They just control enough to ensure that everyone else tries to kowtow to the boss, either our of fear or ambition, anticipating what they want. "Working toward the Fuhrer," as the saying goes.

halvacoffee.fyi•43 days ago

yeah you can see it w/ russian social media too, the range of permissibility is defined by whoever runs the service (with something like vk being sealed shut while t-journal users poke at the govt)

the government rarely (if ever) actually does anything other than saying vague threats

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