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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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @07:08PM (1 child)
The problem with your hypothesis is that this has already happened. China became the world's largest economy several years ago and continues to grow at an accelerating rate. Here [wikipedia.org] is a list of nations by GDP. China is currently approaching a 50% larger economy than the US. China will, in the very foreseeable future, have an economy larger than both the EU and US - combined. This is why companies are starting to kowtow to China. But it also gets even 'better' - within 10 years India is also expected to overcome the US. That may happen even quicker now due to corona. As worldwide economies continue to develop, economies start to become more and more just a function of population. 330 million can't compete against 1.4 billion. The same reason India today looks economically irrelevant yet will rapidly be overtaking the US. Again, 330 million competing against 1.4 billion.
Hong Kong is economically irrelevant - currently accounting for 1.6% of the Chinese GDP. To give some contrast that's the exact same share that Wisconsin or Missouri of the US GDP. The reason there's so much intrigue is strategic. Hong Kong is obviously right next to the mainland. For some sort of analog imagine if Peurto Rico was geographically just off the coast of New England, and had a sizable minority of pro-Chinese individuals increasingly actively trying to destabilize the state, possibly with foreign support, and even doing things like actively waving Chinese flags while doing so.
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As an aside this is also the same reason that the US will likely try to start a war, probably a cold one, with China after this virus while using the virus itself as the casus belli. War is awesome for the economy and the US' only hope of remaining relevant is to try to destroy China's desirability as a manufacturing source. War tends to add the sort of uncertainty to achieve just that. And who knows, it may even end up working. World War 2 followed nearly immediately after the great depression and it set the stage for American supremacy that sent us rocketing to where we are today.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Thursday May 28 2020, @11:58AM
As to your first para, about GDP: China officially has 16 (sixteen) corona deaths outside of Wuhan. Do you also believe that number?
As to Hong Kong being irrelevant: there's this little thing called a stock exchange, which has an outsized influence on a nation's economy. Hong Kong, especially, has an outsized influence to the Chinese economy as it is the only venue through which Western investors can support the CCP's economic illusion circus.
And to your third para, the United States looking to start a war with China: no, but it will be dragged into one. If you fear that China is unfairly competing against Western economies, destroying their economies ... think just about what those very same tactics mean to China's neighbors.
Countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand and even Russia and South-Korea are looking at a future as commodities suppliers, and nothing more: their industrial base either being destroyed by razor-thin profit margins, if not below cost, production by China; or simply being taken over and -- as is the Chinese habit -- their decisions being centralized, in China.