As US TikTok users move to RedNote, some are encountering Chinese-style censorship for the first time
As US TikTok users move to RedNote, some are encountering Chinese-style censorship for the first time
Summary
Many Americans joining China’s social media platform RedNote are encountering strict censorship uncommon in Western platforms.
One non-binary user had a post asking if the platform welcomed gay people removed within hours.
Posts on LGBTQ+ topics, fitness photos, and sensitive cultural content have been censored, frustrating users unfamiliar with China's moderation rules.
RedNote is hiring English-language moderators to handle the influx. While some users enjoy cultural exchange, others criticize restrictions.
Analysts see RedNote’s growth among US users as a soft power win for China.
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The fuck did they expect going to a Chinese platform
Well the tankies seem to think that China is actually a Utopia that the western governments are hiding from us, so naturally there shouldn't be any censorship issues lol
People moving to Red Note aren't tankies and I've only heard people who describe what tankies say that tankies think China is a utopia that our governments are hiding from us. Kinda like Ben Shapiro describing what "the left" people say or do.
lemmy.ca has some tankie instances defederated, so it would make sense why you don't see what tankies are saying
https://lemmy.ca/instancesBut I do agree that people using rednote aren't tankies.
I wish .ca would list a reason for defederation.
If you checked out those tankie instances or listened to them in your home instance for just a few minutes, you wouldn’t have to ask lol.
.world still federates with .ml and man those guys can have the most braindead takes… and they’re one of the more reasonable tankie instances.
Oh .ca is still with .ml, I go there to laugh every once in a while.
This can help, but it's reports against instances in general and not specifically from .ca https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/censured
“I’m an American and have a right to free speech, no matter what country the service is hosted in!”
But what if there is no country that “allows” the speech you want to say? I want to call for the beheading of billionaires. I assume you don’t think I should be able to do that?
My question is how much of these articles are manufactured outrage. Like, I can't imagine anybody expected anything different - especially since some of this stuff is censored already on American social media (especially LGBT related stuff), and the media has spent 50 years telling Americans how much censorship there is in China and the Great Firewall.
Probably 90% from my personal experience, I see loads of LGBTQ posts on RedNote. I wonder if they're being sensored or just waiting to go through the moderation queue.
I could see English posts maybe accumulating negative sentiment scores or even just a lack of known words causing a post to end up in a moderation queue.
For reference sentiment scores are basically a numeric way of scoring a post. Words like "hate" get -10 points neutral words get 1 point, and positive words like love and friendship get +10 points. At least when I was in college, this was a popular way for social media to determine if they should push your content or not.
I said in another comment about what I learned from following a Chinese lesbian on Twitter is that with China it's like "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" - you can say and do things that you could or should get in trouble for, but as long as you do it the right way, it'll be overlooked.
There's gay bars and a big lesbian scene in China, but there's a common practice there, that used to happen in Europe and the US as well before the culture shifted, where lesbians get married to men - either gay guys or just a guy they have an arrangement with - to fulfill the cultural obligation expected of them to get married, and then they basically live their own separate lives.
So most likely what's happening is people who don't know the cultural do's and don't's are getting censored for stepping over the line.
But LGBTQ stuff is censored all the time on other social media anyway, whenever they think they can get away with it, so it's not like it's all that surprising - especially when you add in China's official stance on LGBTQ people.
These feel like they're freaking out about something that everybody already knew was gonna happen, and omitting the fact that it happens elsewhere as well to make it seem like a big deal.
This is all just leading up to the TikTok savior Trump winning over the youth crowd. If you force them to a platform that is much worse, they will forget how controlling the previous platform was and just be happy to have it.
You are assuming TikTokers have any intelligence, morals, principle or talent (or even humanity)
This is an extremely weird take.
On Lemmy it's not, this place is filled with pseudo-intellectuals with no critical thinking abilities at all. They literally have no idea what a ban like this means. The problem is I can't tell I'd they're shills or worse, they really think this is a good thing cuz "le short videos bad". I'm starting to think that only the worst people from reddit came here.
