Sources Contact Advanced Search Tutorials

An Interest In:

Web News this Week

Search Archive

Some of Our Sources

View All Sources

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

September 25, 2019 11:30 am

How TikTok Censors Videos That Do Not Please Beijing

According to leaked documents revealed by the Guardian, TikTok instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong. "The documents [...] lay out how ByteDance, the Beijing-headquartered technology company that owns TikTok, is advancing Chinese foreign policy aims abroad through the app," writes Alex Hern for the Guardian. From the report: The guidelines divide banned material into two categories: some content is marked as a "violation," which sees it deleted from the site entirely, and can lead to a user being banned from the service. But lesser infringements are marked as "visible to self," which leaves the content up but limits its distribution through TikTok's algorithmically-curated feed. This latter enforcement technique means that it can be unclear to users whether they have posted infringing content, or if their post simply has not been deemed compelling enough to be shared widely by the notoriously unpredictable algorithm. The bulk of the guidelines covering China are contained in a section governing "hate speech and religion." In every case, they are placed in a context designed to make the rules seem general purpose, rather than specific exceptions. A ban on criticism of China's socialist system, for instance, comes under a general ban of "criticism/attack towards policies, social rules of any country, such as constitutional monarchy, monarchy, parliamentary system, separation of powers, socialism system, etc." Another ban covers "demonization or distortion of local or other countries' history such as May 1998 riots of Indonesia, Cambodian genocide, Tiananmen Square incidents." A more general purpose rule bans "highly controversial topics, such as separatism, religion sects conflicts, conflicts between ethnic groups, for instance exaggerating the Islamic sects conflicts, inciting the independence of Northern Ireland, Republic of Chechnya, Tibet and Taiwan and exaggerating the ethnic conflict between black and white." All the above violations result in posts being marked "visible to self." But posts promoting Falun Gong are marked as a "violation," since the organization is categorized as a "group promoting suicide," alongside the Aum cult that used sarin to launch terrorist attacks on the Tokyo Metro in 1995 and "Momo group," a hoax conspiracy that went viral earlier this year. ByteDance said in a statement that the version of the documents that the Guardian obtained was retired in May, and that the current guidelines do not reference specific countries or issues.

Slashdot

Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..

More About this Source Visit Slashdot