Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

YouTube "Error" Leads to Censorship of Chinese-Language Phrases Critical of the CCP

posted by martyb on Wednesday May 27 2020, @03:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the oops!-(we-got-caught) dept.

takyon writes:

YouTube is deleting comments with two phrases that insult China's Communist Party

YouTube is automatically deleting comments that contain certain Chinese-language phrases related to criticism of the country's ruling Communist Party (CCP). The company confirmed to The Verge this was happening in error and that it was looking into the issue.

"This appears to be an error in our enforcement systems and we are investigating," said a YouTube spokesperson. The company did not elaborate on how or why this error came to be, but said it was not the result of any change in its moderation policy.

[...] Comments left under videos or in live streams that contain the words "共匪" ("communist bandit") or "五毛" ("50-cent party") are automatically deleted in around 15 seconds, though their English language translations and Romanized Pinyin equivalents are not.

[...] The accidental censorship is even more puzzling considering that YouTube is currently blocked in China, giving its parent company, Google, even less reason to censor comments critical of the CCP or apply moderation systems in accordance with Chinese censorship laws.

The automatic deletion of these phrases was highlighted on Tuesday by US technologist and former Oculus founder Palmer Luckey on Twitter. But earlier reports of the issue date back to the middle of May when they were spotted by human rights activist Jennifer Zeng. As mentioned above, though, The Verge also found complaints on YouTube's official help pages dated to October 2019.

Shadows of Project Dragonfly.

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
YouTube "Error" Leads to Censorship of Chinese-Language Phrases Critical of the CCP | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 42 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:03AM (14 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:03AM (#999506)

    Chinese ‘Netizens’ Claim Americans Are Eating Coronavirus Dead

    https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2020/05/26/chinese-netizens-claim-americans-are-eating-coronavirus-dead/ [breitbart.com]

    A page on WeChat, a Chinese social media site, claimed American officials have been “processing dead bodies” of Chinese coronavirus victims into burgers and feeding them to the masses, the South China Morning Post revealed on Tuesday, claiming Beijing had shut the page down.

    Prior to its deletion, however, the page – the “Scholar Forum for Ultimate Truth” – had attracted 1.7 million page views, according to the Post.

    China has built an extensive online censorship apparatus that has successfully shut down a wide variety of factual information detrimental to the regime or simply commentary by dissidents on the failures of the Communist Party. Yet when faced with outrageous false information that disparages America or other foreign nations, China’s censors suddenly struggle to keep up with the volume of material.

    The Post noted that one of the most outrageous posts on the “Scholar Forum for Ultimate Truth” page, a pro-communist conspiracy WeChat account, accused Americans of eating those killed by the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

    “The US has been processing dead bodies from Covid-19 [Chinese coronavirus] diseases into hamburgers,” the page reportedly claimed, adding that the bodies “were very likely of being processed into frozen meat, fake beef or pork, or processed into cooked meat as hamburgers and hot dogs.”

    The page offered as evidence of this claim the unsubstantiated allegation that “cannibalism has existed in the U.S. before … and only a few dozen years ago, Americans ate blacks, Indians and Chinese.”

    The offending post was published last month and garnered 100,000 readers as well as nearly 1,000 financial contributors to the page. The Post reported that its content was not unusual for the page, which regularly posted anti-Western, anti-American conspiracy theories and insults. The page was reportedly only taken down this week.

      “While China has the world’s most sophisticated censorship system, misinformation and sensational content still runs wild on the internet. There are about 30 million social media accounts on WeChat alone,” the Post observed.

    There is little evidence that China is interested in shutting down anti-American conspiracy theories, especially given that the Chinese Foreign Ministry has peddled them officially. The most regularly touted conspiracy theory about the Chinese coronavirus pandemic is the claim that the virus did not originate in Wuhan, China, where the first cases were reported, but in a U.S. Army laboratory in Maryland.

    “It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian accused in March. “Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”

    The Chinese state media outlet Global Times, which regularly uses unnamed “Chinese netizens” as a metric of public opinion, later added the claim that the Fort Detrick, Maryland U.S. Army lab was the alleged source of the virus. Neither Zhao nor the propaganda newspaper have offered any evidence for this claim, nor have any independent investigators or journalists revealed evidence for the theory.

    Another Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, suggested the possibility this month that respiratory illness cases in the United States related to the use of e-cigarettes, or vapes, identified last year were actually misdiagnosed Chinese coronavirus cases. Hua offered no evidence for this theory and did not explain how that was possible given the vaping illness cases were not contagious, while the Chinese coronavirus is believed to spread

    To explain the fact that no cases of Chinese coronavirus have been diagnosed outside of Wuhan earlier than the first known cases, Beijing offered another explanation: that American military personnel participating in the Military World Games in October, held in Wuhan, brought the virus into China. According to Vice, the conspiracy theory originated in the West, “but the Communist Party of China has promoted it so aggressively within China that it has become accepted knowledge among the Chinese populace that the U.S. military imported the coronavirus to Wuhan.”

    Vice quoted one Chinese-American who said that she found “most Chinese people really believe the U.S. brought the virus to China and they call it ‘USA virus.'”

    Chinese state media identified one American servicewoman in particular, Maatje Benassi, as the original carrier of the disease. There is no evidence tying Benassi to the pandemic, and the U.S. Army reservist told CNN that the conspiracy theory has largely destroyed her life.

    “I want everybody to stop harassing me, because this is cyberbullying to me and it’s gone way out of hand,” Maajte said in an interview in April.

    China was disqualified from the 2019 Military World Games, which it was hosting, for “extensive cheating.”

    Other information China has allowed to freely propagate behind its “great firewall” include claims “the coronavirus was created as a bioweapon or was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to further vaccine sales … [or] that the virus can be cured by eating garlic or drinking a bleach concoction.”

    The false information promoted by China’s official channels contrasts significantly with what its censors act decisively to remove from venues like WeChat. Perhaps the most outrageous example of censored content in the past year is the medical information posted on WeChat by Dr. Li Wenliang, a Wuhan doctor. Li was among the first doctors to identify and diagnose the Chinese coronavirus infection and shared tips with other doctors on WeChat on how to prevent the spread of contagious diseases – tips like washing hands and wearing protective gear. WeChat rapidly censored his tips, even though he shared them only with other doctors and not the public, and detained Li, forcing him to issue a humiliating public apology for the information.

    Li died in February of Chinese coronavirus infection. He was 34.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   -1  
       Offtopic=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Offtopic' Modifier   0  
    Total Score:   -1  

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:37AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:37AM (#999510)

    Burgers? Who do they think they are? Alex Jones?

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:40AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:40AM (#999511)

    There is little evidence that China is interested in shutting down anti-American conspiracy theories, especially given that the Chinese Foreign Ministry has peddled them officially. The most regularly touted conspiracy theory about the Chinese coronavirus pandemic is the claim that the virus did not originate in Wuhan, China, where the first cases were reported, but in a U.S. Army laboratory in Maryland.

    What a surprise.

    So AIDS was fucking a monkey and coronavirus was from fucking a bat?

    I don't think you get it from eating one, only fucking one. What else do the commies have to do anyway?

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by khallow on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:53AM (1 child)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:53AM (#999516) Journal

    Chinese state media identified one American servicewoman in particular, Maatje Benassi, as the original carrier of the disease. There is no evidence tying Benassi to the pandemic, and the U.S. Army reservist told CNN that the conspiracy theory has largely destroyed her life.

    That's pretty low considering that she finished a 130+ km race with a concussion and broken rib. If she had been hit by covid, I doubt she would have even started, much less finished [army.mil] the race with the injuries she had.

    • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @05:07AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @05:07AM (#999520)

      Asymptomatic carriers are a thing. But it's just China trying to deflect its biggest PR crisis.

  • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @05:46AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @05:46AM (#999528)

    Li died in February of Chinese coronavirus infection. He was 34.

    Among healthy 34 year-olds, the death rate is tiny. Bayes says it is much more likely Dr Li died of criticizing Pooh Bear's government.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by MostCynical on Wednesday May 27 2020, @08:09AM (2 children)

      by MostCynical (2589) on Wednesday May 27 2020, @08:09AM (#999541) Journal

      the "criticism" was "spreading false rumours" about the disease..
      For which he was incarcerated, even while sick, until they let him go, at which point, he was too sick to respond to treatment, and died..
       

      --
      "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2020, @10:19AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2020, @10:19AM (#1000114)

        For which he was incarcerated, even while sick, until they let him go, at which point, he was too sick to respond to treatment, and died..

        And there is was NO treatment so ....

        It's retarded how much lies you have in one fucking sentence. The guy wasn't even in jail. He had a reprimand. But whatever, spread the lies because they make you feed superior or something.

        • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2020, @05:28PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2020, @05:28PM (#1000204)

          Your engrish is showing.

  • (Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @11:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @11:22AM (#999568)

    Will the US get the virus under control, like China has? [babylonbee.com]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:11PM (#999602)

    That's just silly.

    The food problem in the States is a processing problem, not a production problem.

    I would think it would be much easier to find people to work in cramped conditions to butcher non-infected animals than to work in the same conditions to butcher infected people. The whole idea just defies any type of logic.

    Then again, so does not wearing a mask in public with a respiratory infection pandemic raging.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:19PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:19PM (#999609)

    The most regularly touted conspiracy theory about the Chinese coronavirus pandemic is the claim that the virus did not originate in Wuhan, China, where the first cases were reported, but in a U.S. Army laboratory in Maryland.

    Funny that, my brother-in-law was on the phone to his sister in the 'States a couple of days back, she more or less came out with the same story, though with the Gates mob thrown into the mix as well.

    Assuming she's not unique in thinking this, when a percentage of US citizens also believe that the Chinese aren't totally responsible for this as well based on what they're being 'fed', you do have to wonder who's pulling the strings, and to what ends..and bear in mind, even if it's ultimately Chinese propaganda this stuff is based on, it is quite possible for any Chinese global 'shit-stirring' to be both beneficial to China, for internal consumption there, and to the countries they're deploying said 'shit-stirring' against, the 'political reaction' to said 'shit-stirring' being useful for internal consumption in the targetted countries.

    TL;DR We're all being played, so welcome to the planet of the mushrooms!; so very, very dark, and so much shit to digest...

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:55PM (2 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:55PM (#999624) Journal
      Or it could just be the usual rumor clusterfuck that surrounds events like this. Keep in mind that there are a bunch of people trolling as hard as they can, just for the lolz.

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:11PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:11PM (#999636)

        True, but when all the major powers now employ/deploy state sponsored troll units as part of their IW operations (hello there, anyone from the 77th reading this...) it's becoming increasingly difficult to spot the /b/tards from the bastards....err, well, you get what I mean..

        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:43PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:43PM (#999664) Journal
          I think the whole thing will end up being an educational moment for everyone, including those propaganda units. Not much really happens with those rumors and the more rumors that pile on, the less effective the whole mess is.