Try commenting 共匪 on any youtube video, the comment will be deleted after ~15 seconds

Holy shit, it's true.

It looks like Google translate doesn’t offer suggested synonyms/related words for that term either. It translate the word to “gangster”.

Just tried it on a video about WHO and Bruce Alyward. It's still up after 6 minutes. Either we're inundating their censor bot, it's been shadowbanned, or Google has stopped under the flak. I'll keep checking later.

Try looking at your comment in an Incognito window and sort by new. You'll still see your own comment if you're logged in, but you won't see it otherwise. I just tried this.

It's still up after two hours: https://imgur.com/a/9x0Yvyc

I just tested it via two methods:

1) VPN'ed into work with Firefox in Private Mode (I posted from Brave)

2) Had a friend test it. He's on Chrome from a different city.

Interesting. What's the content of the video? Link?

Mine's been up for [edit: an hour]; make of that what you will.

This phrase is a pejorative for Communists; it is more or less equivalent to the term 'commies' in English.

EDIT: Please don't downvote me for contributing relevant facts to the discussion. I do not support censorship.

Youtube doesn't censor most pejoratives in comments, as you can tell by reading any of the comments.

I think you are reading things into the comment your replying to that aren't there.

It is either the case that the parent likes to add random facts into conversations such as "the word communist contains 9 letters" which has nothing to do with the conversation, or the parent clearly felt that the phrase being perjorative was tied to it being censored.

Let us assume the parent was being on topic and relevant. Therefore they seem to indicate the censoring was due to it being perjorative. As most other perjoratives are not typically censored (per my comment), that would imply that the "Communist Bandit" perjorative is somehow special.

Is it special because it's somehow especially worse than other perjoratives, or is it special because it offends a foreign state's political party?

I guess we're on a tangent now but maybe it's an interesting exercise.

the parent clearly felt that the phrase being perjorative was tied to it being censored.

How do you come to this conclusion? In my view the comment is not implying anything at all, it is merely translating (not only using a direct translation but also conveying the implications of the phrase "communist bandit"). The word "pejorative" adds to the translation. There is nothing in the original comment that says anything about censorship at all.

They definitely don’t ban the word “commie” in English, so why ban the Chinese one?

A banded together band of bandits bandying about their propaganda. Communists are not US citizens, and even if they were, the US does not have laws to protect softies from "pejorative speech." Clearly, someone claimed it was "hate speech" -- which it is not -- and now it's banned globally on YouTube because US laws stipulate they must not entertain Hate Speech, but until a US judge says "Communist Bandito" is hate speech, zero relevance.

wow, three "google bans/deletes" on the frontpage today. Its never too early to start ditching everything google.

I like how there are a bunch of comments in those other threads insisting Google doesn't do anything moderation that's "political".

One fascinating thing about being Very Online in the past 10-20 years is watching the messages of astroturfing campaigns slowly leak into public sentiment. I'm sure the same thing happens with other forms of media, primarily cable television. But as an example, with the whole 50 Cent Army, a few people have heard convincing arguments from them and turned into unwitting (or otherwise) propagators of the same rhetoric.

Carl Jung: “People don't have ideas. Ideas have people.”

To be fair, Google is in a no-win situation. Post-2016 election, there has been enormous pressure put on Google (and Facebook and Twitter) to ramp up their censorship from the anti-Trump center/center-left/left. The mainstream media is on it too and relishes taking shots at social media every chance they get (the YouTube 'adpocalypse' was spurned by a hit piece by Washington Post against some minor doofus thing that PewdiePie did, and explicitly targetted advertisers of YouTube).

Even tech commentators are in on it. Kara Swisher, for example, has been railing at social media companies every chance she gets to get them to ramp up censorship against things she deems offensive.

Off topic, but this framing really struck me:

the anti-Trump center/center-left/left

So... basically everyone who isn't a Trump supporter, then? Is that really how you see the world? The president of the united states vs. literally everyone else? And you've chosen the political side instead of the social consensus?

So... basically everyone who isn't a Trump supporter, then?

No. There are plenty of non-Trump supporters[1] who don't care for YouTube censorship. However, the calls for censorship and pressure on social media companies came as a result of the panic-induced from Trump's election and Russian election interference, which does correlate with anti-Trump voices, more specifically Democratic party establishment and their supporters.

Those aren't the only voices to call for censorship. There is also a parallel cultural war that pressures social media companies to censor hate-speech (as defined by supporters). This tends to generate a lot of noise from both sides, but I think it's probably minor in the grand scheme of things. That Democrats in Congress are cracking down on social media is by far a much bigger deal - because they can actually punish these companies through laws and regulation - and they have been threatening to do so.

[1] I supported Hillary in 2016 because, for all her faults and unlikability, she would have been a reasonable and competent leader. So no, I'm not a huge fan of Trump, but I also don't pearl-clutch every time he says something dumb on Twitter or in a press conference. In a similar vein, though I think he should be a one-term president, I don't think it's an existential threat if he gets elected again.

Democrats in Congress are cracking down on social media is by far a much bigger deal

What legislation are you talking about? I mean... they only have one house of congress. I'm sure there's some rhetoric somewhere, but it's just rhetoric.

I mean, the POTUS himself routinely calls for censorship of the news media, but it's likewise "just rhetoric" because he can't unilaterally pass laws (though he can come closer than the house can). Does that not trigger your same logic? If not, why not?

Good luck with that. Their services are essential to my life and I don't think they're doing this dramatic draconian version of censorship everyone thinks. Never seen this kind of hate from the HN crowd towards amazon or apple's manufacturers and warehouse workers working in deplorable conditions, which is far and away the worst thing a company could be doing. Not whatever this is.

Just tried it, and after 30 seconds it was deleted

I hope your youtube account isn't linked to a gmail account you consider important.

This is the first time I am seriously considering leaving Gmail. Seems like a royal pain in the ass to switch though, since you don't "own" your email handle like you would a domain.

In other news, Youtube will soon be coming to China. Pick your adventure, which do you want? Youtube in CN or write whatever you like?

You'll also get videos deleted if you include in them info against WHO advice.

Actually, this is more like: “In other news, you are in China now.”

I don’t care that much about how Chinese citizens let their 共肥 party censor them, but it’s not ok when I am being censored for speech that could be considered offensive to the communist party of China.

Nope. Well, sort of, but not really. It's more like. You are on Earth now. All the big govs work together at the highest levels. The whole nationalistic shtick is for us proles down here in the bleachers, working the boilers, eating scraps. You know, like entertainment? Something to get all excited about, like.

And all govs control info. Democracies just pretend they don't (they do it covertly, through narrative control, disinfo, etc). Social media now presents them with a problem. They have to censor platforms, which makes it overt.

This is against the historical trend of democracies modus operandi for information control. Brave new world out there!

Edit (this thread now has restrictions, can't reply you, below, so here):

I mean more "nationalistic shtick" as in the trope of "US vs China" or "US vs Russia" etc. They have to be able to start a profitable war, for something, right?

All the same...expanding the argument (as you have) to the "truths we hold to be self-evident", well, they are unfortunately not implemented in as iron-clad a way as us proles would think. It should be obvious. I love the US, living there, the people, the environment, everything about it...aaaannndd....structurally, you can't really say that the debt trap, opioid epidemic, Wall St bailout, social division deliberately inflamed by the media, covert info control and surveillance, democratic "theatrics" that stymie results, really equates with "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" can you, chum?

I mean, I sort of agree with you a little bit, even, in a way. It is sad. And I do think it is an impressive argument. Yes. Very much! ツ

Edit (to your edit ツ): Yes, the Muslims in camps, that is a hard thing for Westerners to get their head around. It's funny, tho. I wonder about it, for a few reasons:

- Western tech supports the security in XJ

- China has protected Russian, and US interests along its Western (Central Asian) borders with regard to the countries there, the Tajik, Afghan and Pakistan areas. It could have caused plenty of troubles for US/Russia there, but on the face of it their security interests align. And honestly, who do you think is coming across the Afghan-Chinese border (or via Tajik) and doing some of the interrogations in the detention centers, working right alongside Chinese? You guessed it, the [C_A] ツ.

- I would have thought an American would be more supportive of counter-terrorism/deradicalization/counter-narrative. Being soft on sepratist terrorists almost seems like being an apologist for terrorism. Something I know no American would ever do...I'm sure. :P Especially considering how tough the English speaking world has been on terrorists in the Middle East. I can't imagine them standing up to support Islamic terrorism in XJ, or is that just because it's against CN and it's like "enemy of my enemy is my friend"? But truth is CN no your enemy. Really no!

- The XJ narrative is actually cooperative propaganda between US/China. 90%+ of "whistleblowers/defectors" are Chinese disinfo agents working this psyop. Preparing for the "great discrediting" that will come. The remaining ones are fakes/unaffiliated individuals trying to get attention. The real story is: There is strong CT presence in XJ, but the "camps" is fake news, as you say. People apply to go. Like college. And yes, some people wish they were not there, just like college! But they can leave. Only people who are "detained" are terrorists, exactly like in the US.

- This XJ propos is a complex info strategy but boils down to:

1) an overly critical narrative works to support China (just like the overly critical MSM actually supported President Trump into election because it fired up his base);

2) regular Chinese, seeing how crazy and fake is Western coverage of XJ, begin to distrust more and more Western media, helping the Party;

3) eventually, when the time is right, XJ will be revealed as to have been wildly-mis-assessed by Western media, in a "mea culpa" moment that boosts Chinese world image, and plays to the idea of it having been unfairly "maligned and mistrusted".

4) For the US side, anything that supports criticism of China plays well domestically for racist/nationalist reasons, and can be used to fire up a base,

5) Also for US, anything extremely emotive and triggering, can be used to make proles act irrationally and distract them, and also thereby to grease the wheels for other moves such as law passage, etc. It's also a distraction to how they're working together.

It's all just calculations designed to take the global proletariat to a destination, through the best path. Path has to be right for each country's circumstances. So each country needs their own story. That's all it is. Don't worry about it. As long as you obey the law, you'll be fine.

I hope this "red pill" doesn't taste too bitter. I'm not trying to rock your worldview. Nor offend you. Actually I hope you feel a little more a peace about everything. The world doesn't have to be perfect, nor make perfect sense...but it's all still OK. Focus on the stuff that matters to you. Ignore the noise because it's a lie, and it's gonna happen anyway. You still have a lot of power to make your own life good.

And all govs control info. Democracies just pretend they don't (they do it covertly, through narrative control, disinfo, etc).

Wishful thinking. "Narrative control and disinfo" are categorically different than banning expressions, opinions, theories and thought. The scale and types of information control are not on comparable levels.

There are always contradictions inherent in governance. There are always both open and classified activities. There are always those peoples/departments/regimes that seek to stretch or overstep rules or norms.

But you can't group it all and say "Great Firewall is equal to think tank lobbying."

What citizens, businesses, platforms, politicians and basically every other entity is allowed to say in a free country vs. China is on different planets.

[XJ secret master plan]

Citations needed. Testimonials of citizens and family members dealing with camps are more convincing than wide-ranging, decontextualized, strung-together internet rants about XJP's secret genius plan.

Your reply sounds crazy, like a conspiracy. I don't want to believe it, but I have to admit this helps to explain something, you gave me a fresh and interesting view to think about the narrative.

How far does this go? How far could it go?

Can one take out an ad with "共匪" in the text? Adwords against it? Is this censored on Orkut? Would Google consider censoring Gmail? Or Google Voice? Would they consider bleeping Google Meets?

Google will need to be very public about who signed off on this and under what framework.

What if "共匪" is presented graphically? Do the sniffers have the image recognition to flag those too?

Generic corporate spam filters can OCR for spam text in pictures and have been able to do that for many years, I would assume Google can too.

I find it so ironic that the reason for censoring a slur against communism is because a capitalist company stands to lose revenue from angering the government of China.

From the actual Google Support question, this was posted on 11/10/19. Why are we only now just noticing? Was it previously confined to China and has now just rolled out globally?

Viral noticing is fed by widespread predispositions, which change over time like fashion.

There is a critical mass of people paying attention to censorship in general, and recently a critical mass of people attentive to the evils of the CCP.

Also, seems to have been at least since 2012

https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-keywords-...

Google & YouTube employees on HN: how do you justify still working at this company? Enough of the cognitive dissonance. Face your choices and tell me how you square yourself with them. For shame.

They look at their bank accounts.

That doesn't justify their behavior - it condemns it.

Yeah, but it's a good reason for a lot of them to keep working at the company and turn a deaf ear towards what it's been doing.

it's a good reason for a lot of them to keep working at the company and turn a deaf ear towards what it's been doing.

It's a reason. It's not a good reason.

It might be easy to say this, but I believe I would quit if I was asked to implement something like that. But perhaps I'd be different if I were paid $300k a year. (I sure hope not, though)

If you were being paid $300K/year, it costs your employer (as a rule of thumb) 1.5x, or about $450K/year. The only reason they could spend $450K/year on you is if they expected to make at least that much money with you, compared to what they would make without you. Even if you aren't directly working on this stuff, you are providing them with capital that is being spent on it.

I like to think I’d take the high road but the Milgram shock experiment[1] shows that most people, including me, probably wouldn’t.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

Then we need to come up with ways to counteract the Milgram effect, if that's even possible.

Laughing all the way to the bank... It justifies the behavior to people who think for themselves and not for some intangible global internet community. i'm not trolling.

With all that blood on their hands, they'd better be careful in handling the check or else the bank won't be able to read the routing number.

Imagine thinking anything Google does comes close to resembling having blood on its hands. It really seems to me that the first world doesn't have enough real problems on its hands.

Since when did enabling a tyrannical dictatorship doesn’t relate to bloodshed? They have concentration camps for gods sake.

Please do tell in very specific terms what Google does to enable a tyrannical dictatorship.

I have a bunch of friends at Google; it's a mix of "not my department," "the pay is good," and a few "true believers."

Don't say that he's hypocritical

Rather say that he's apolitical

"Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down?"

"That's not my department!" says Werner von Braun

For those who aren't aware and/or won't look this reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro

As the other comenter noted, Tom Lehrer is indeed a national treasure, and his satire is top shelf.

From the light-hearted "The Elements": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM (watch for the surprise at the end)

To the gallows comedy of "We Will All Go Together When We Go": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs

NB: I appreciate the irony linking to YouTube content in a 'WTF Google/YouTube' thread.

Not a Google or YouTube employee, but, practically, what would change? In the most likely case, a bunch of Googlers who believe it's important to be apolitical at work would take over the product and implement much stronger censorship to get promo. In the unlikely event all of them (and every applicant drooling for a FAANG job) had a change of heart too, Tencent would gladly step into the vacuum.

Google employees have proven themselves capable of collective action:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/technology/google-walkout...

Do it again.

I'm not sure how that addresses the points I raised - what was the outcome of that walkout? (Besides some retaliation against organizers.)

Unfortunately little - because the workers didn't stick to it. One walkout writes a headline, but a strike causes change.

A strike causes change when management can't hire enough workers to replace the strikers. My entire point is that they can. You can probably successfully strike against paying Andy Rubin hundreds of millions of dollars for creeping on employees - while there are a handful of folks who want that same life for themselves, there aren't that many. I'm claiming you can't strike over censoring some words on YouTube because there's no shortage of qualified-enough people who don't currently work for Google who would be glad to take your job.

(And you still haven't addressed my point about, suppose they strike successfully and Google decides it won't help the CCP at all and the CCP bans Google and has Tencent step in - what then? Did you save the world?)

They can organize against project maven but apparently this issue isn’t attractive enough for them.

How do you buy hardware? I’m genuinely asking because where I live it’s impossible to buy stuff that wasn’t made in China.

It’s almost impossible to lead en ethical life in this day and age if you do anything related to tech.

I’m genuinely asking because where I live it’s impossible to buy stuff that wasn’t made in China.

So wait, now buying something that was made in China means condoning the CCP? That's a pretty big jump in logic.

The CCP’s claim to legitimacy is based on continued economic growth in the PRC.

Buying made in China products supports this economic growth, and also the cheap, often exploitative, labor that went into producing them.

Besides, you should probably support the local manufacturing industry wherever you’re living.

And democracy's legitamacy is derived from monkeys voting in a system rigged against them, after listening to false promises of growth. While still supporting cheap, often exploitative labor.

I mean, from your description, I'd rather want a system that actually shows continued growth, rather than hollowed promises of growth.

Let's be honest here, democracy's real growth had been going to war with nations and extracting/exploiting resources from them. Hence why the past 50 years, there has been no real growth in democratic countries because they are not able to as easily extract from the rest of the world.

Is it? You are effectively funding the CCP every time you purchase something from China.

I am paying my taxes to my government as well, does not mean I agree with everything my government does. When it comes to purchasing certain categories of items (like electronics) you have no choice but to buy something made in China, most of the time.

Similar to the jump that working on the YouTube moderation toolkit is condoning the CCP, yes.

It’s almost impossible to lead en ethical life in this day and age if you do anything related to tech.

That doesn't change that an engineer in the bay area can choose to work for Google or choose to find an alternative place of employment. People can choose more ethical choices without living in a pure ethical panacea.

Sure, but then we're back to "What mental gymnastics do techies do to justify buying hardware they know is made in sweatshop conditions in China?"

Take that template and apply it to Googlers. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism; everyone has compromised a rigid belief structure somewhere.

I don't think it has to be mental gymnastics, but you are right that it is a real challenge.

I think people (especially those in privileged positions like engs in the bay area) should feel empowered to think and decide their line as to what they want to support and contribute to the world.

Hey alter-me, it's a nice thought. But, realistically, many people are faced with living a subpar life in the bay area (rent small apartments for the rest of your life) or working for a big corp and living a better life (own a home - can afford many things). It's not like these people are going to find a company that is perfectly ethical on every side while also still paying $400k+/yr for senior software engineers.

A lot of engineers are wage slaves as much as anyone else. It's not like everyone wants to do this stuff.

EDIT: On a more personal note - I hope your name is actually "Bradly" and you're not "Bradley". And that you actually go by that in real life instead of "Brad". As I know there's some "Brad"s out there that like to buy up Bradly variations without actually going by it. It's killing me.

I agree with you, I just think some big corps are worse than others, so I choose one that is on the better end of big-evil-corp. Is the pay that much worse at Stripe, Square, GitHub, Netflix than advertising companies?

--

Yes, I am a Bradly. About half my coworkers/friends/family call me Bradly and about half call me Brad. I introduce my self as both interchangeably depending on the situation.

It’s almost impossible to lead en ethical life in this day and age if you do anything related to tech.

So the lesson is: Being ethical in one way is hard, so don't bother being ethical in any aspect of your life?

Google is a pretty huge company. What if they're working on something unrelated - maybe even something that benefits the world?

I guess the same as consultants working for McKinsey, or bankers working for Goldman

"Not my department / group / office"

"Just a few bad apples"

I mean yes, those are valid points - and I'd imagine most junior workers being there just for the future (career) opportunities.

No junior engineer at google is going to have any say in strategic and political decisions like censorship.

Other companies have been doing the same for many years?

"To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

"The world's" doesn't mean "The part of the world we like most." "Universally" doesn't mean "Nobody in China gets to use our system until the Chinese government adopts Western notions of information control."

Google would operate in North Korea if it could, because as a point of philosophy, it's believed that access to more informtion, even curtailed by the government, is better than access to only information controlled by the government.

Are you speaking as a Google employee or just from personal opinion?

Also, this viewpoint is naive. Simply more information isn't better. What if all that information was about the flat earth theory and nothing else? Wouldn't more "mutually consistent" information be a better goal? Flat earth stuff is fun but you must limit yourself to a very small plausible universe in order to really buy into it.

Are you speaking as a Google employee or just from personal opinion?

The distinction is irrelevant; were I speaking as a Google employee I would still be speaking from personal opinion, not on behalf of my employer.

Also, this viewpoint is naive. Simply more information isn't better. What if all that information was about the flat earth theory and nothing else?

It's not though; it's "all" the world's information (within constraints; Google also isn't vending a search index to make pedophilic imagery easy to find). But the flat-Earth hypothetical doesn't apply because that's only a subset.

In fact, it doesn't apply in a way that's demonstrative, I think, of the game Google plays with authoritarian states. Google banks on the notion nature cannot be fooled. Sure, individual phrases or sets of facts (like Tienman Square history) can be knocked out of returned datasets. But the missing data leaves holes; it becomes apparent where the cuts are in the data.

This is why North Korea cuts the whole internet; they know it can't be contained. China's ruling party is more subtle; they'll block unpopular signal it if a sense of "decency," as it were, but they know their people aren't stupid. In any sense of "stupid."

The distinction is irrelevant; were I speaking as a Google employee I would still be speaking from personal opinion, not in behalf of my employer.

Seems like word splitting and I disagree. If you're working at Google, then your opinion is an answer to OP's question. If you're not, then your opinion doesn't count as a Google employee's justification for continuing to work at Google.

How do you justify being a citizen of your country? (not sure what country that is, but most of them have done bad things in the past). It's possible to be a part of a large organization and not agree with its every action.

People are plopped into existence as a citizen of a country. Not quite the same as choosing to work somewhere.

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

I have much less mobility as a US citizen to move to another country than I have as a software engineer. Almost any Google employee could have an offer somewhere else within 3 weeks of starting their search.

You couldn't move to Canada easily?

Compared to most other western countries, sure, Canada is on the easier side.

However, even with that in mind, it is still a very difficult and complicated process, with tons of hard limitations that can put a complete stop to the whole thing due to something trivial, like not having a degree. And even with that barrier of hard requirements cleared, it is still a pretty draconian experience.

Having gone through a similar thing myself (not with Canada, but I ended up coincidentally reading a lot about Canadian immigration laws), I can assure you, it is way more difficult than getting any job, even if you are a successful Google engineer, and by a far margin.

I am pretty sure that any person who went through an immigration process to another country can attest to that. And I am talking purely about the legal-paper-stuff aspect of immigration to another country, not things like getting adapted to your new country or anything like that.

Compared to most other western countries, sure, Canada is on the easier side.

Our process isn't that easy; we have an immigration system that the GOP would _like to have_.

There are points awarded based on your education and training, variated against the demand for those skills in Canada. If you are being imported by an employer they must go to considerable lengths to prove that they attempted to find an existing Canadian to fill that role. And so on.

And it can be all avoided by paying approximately $800,000 to what is effectively an escrow: you get it back after a few years, less inflation.

This analogy holds water about as well as a sieve. You can't shop around citizenship in most other countries. You can't just willy-nilly decide to renounce citizenship in one and go become a citizen in another. I'm sure people will jump in here with counter examples but I'm also sure they'll be the exception and not the norm. You're also born into citizenship. Comparing citizenship to the job market just seems so silly.

Nice mental gymnastics. There's always a choice to not support the country by not participating in its economy and becoming a hermit. Ah, but that's inconvenient!

Uhuh. Are you Ted Kaczynski then out in the wilderness right now using the internet through a satellite dish?

To begin with, citizenship is forced upon you. You don't have a choice about it. Yes, you can (in some cases) renounce it, though that's quite a momentous task - it involved pretty much cancelling your existing life, and takes many years. And as you say - most other countries may be worse - and the ones that aren't may not accept you either way.

Not working for Google, in particular, is extremely easy. Something that roughly 99.999% of the world's population succeeds at without even trying :-) And most people who are working for Google are also likely to be able to find another job quite easily.

The two are not comparable. At all. In any way or form.

I don't work there anymore, but this is a confused argument born of zealotry. Taking Google's money to work on open source is totally fine. More money spent on good things might even mean less spent on bad things.

For example, nothing good would come from the Go team quitting over unrelated political stuff.

FWIW, open source is not an absolute good. It is undercutting the ability of your peers to make a living. It is making software a commodity, such that capital rich hardware owners can make a killing. See AWS.

Commoditize your complement. https://www.gwern.net/Complement

It may not be common, but it is possible to make money on open-source software. Redhat would be the largest example. Automattic's WordPress is another.

If software can be profitable whether it's open or closed-source, then isn't open-source inherently better?

I'm not sure RedHat is a good example any more, since they were aquired by IBM.

nothing good would come from the Go team quitting over unrelated political stuff.

Are you sure about that? It might actually harm google enough that they respond by giving into some demands.

I’m not a Google employee, but really all companies of large enough size care only about the bottom line. Large companies don’t have morals, they just try to make money at all costs, full stop. Google is a bit more hypocritical in that they pretend to be about more than this, but lots of companies are similarly hypocritical, especially tech companies. It’s really only small businesses that have any sort of humanity (sometimes).

Google pay better than most, and if you’re on the right team I assume you get to work on very interesting/challenging projects. They’re just as heartless/selfish as any other bigco, but I don’t know that they’re worse.

The answer to this is collective action.

If all the ethical employees leave Google as you suggest, then who do you think will fill their place? Let's not assume they will suffer to find people willing to work for them. Will that make things better or worse?

Drew, ever since sourcehut got a little positive attention you seem to have adopted this mindset of "I started my own company and don't have to work for the man anymore, why doesn't everyone else just do the same?" You need to realize that this is an extremely narrow minded view to have. Not everyone can start their own business. What would you have done if sourcehut hadn't gained enough popularity to be successful? You would probably be working for [CORP ABC] who surely would be doing something you disliked, too. That would not make you a "bootlicker".

In fact, I'd like to ask this question of you: your website is undoubtedly being used by people to build software that you disagree with, perhaps even censorship. How do you justify still hosting your site instead of shutting it down? Enough of the cognitive dissonance. Face your choices and tell me how you square yourself with them.

Is it because you need the money from your site? So do Google employees (probably).

Is it because you still enjoy the work of building your site? So do Google employees (probably)?

Is it because on the aggregate you think that your site still provides benefit to society, despite it possibly being used for things you disagree with? So do Google employees (probably).

There are plenty of reasons why people still work for Google, and you probably would relate to them too if you stopped being so combative towards anyone who works for [big corp].

I am not relating the reader to my experience with SourceHut - I haven't told anyone to quit and start their own company rather than work for Google - but remininding them that the market for their talents is strong and that we have the luxury of choosing who we work for. I have held and spoken of these convictions since long before SourceHut. Read my blog archives or my old HN comments since pre-SourceHut and you'll find much of the same.

Who is using SourceHut to build software I disagree with on ethical terms? I am not aware of such a project.

I haven't told anyone to quit and start their own company rather than work for Google

Your past comments and submissions to HN say otherwise. You have been very outspoken and proud about the fact that you haven't taken money from "the man" (my words, not yours), and that others should do the same [0][1]. Whether it be a VC or Google, your messaging is clear.

Who is using SourceHut to build software I disagree with on ethical terms? I am not aware of such a project.

You're dodging the question. Have you done an audit on every single project hosted on SourceHut to see if you disagree with them? Would such an action even be something you agree with? What if someone was hosting such a repository (I'll go create one right now), would you remove it? But that is censorship, is it not? Do you even have the technical capability to do such an audit? If not, that means people could easily use your site for nefarious things, so how do you justify keeping it running?

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23080655

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23073740

Your past comments and submissions to HN say otherwise. You have been very outspoken and proud about the fact that you haven't taken money from "the man" (my words, not yours), and that others should do the same [0]

Your link omits context. A couple of comments up is this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23080485

In the quoted link I am speaking from the perspective of a startup founder offering advice to potential startup founders. In today's discussion I am speaking from the perspective of a tech worker speaking to other tech workers. I have been in both roles, and I have different advice for different kinds of people with different kinds of goals. Do me the courtesey of not assuming that I expect every person in all circumstances to be exactly like me.

You're dodging the question. Have you done an audit on every single project hosted on SourceHut to see if you disagree with them?

This is a disingenous line of questioning. Google employees are aware of their employer's misbehaviors. In order to even have seen my comments in the first place, they would have had to visit a discussion about those bad behaviors. Google employees cannot claim ignorance in the way you're assuming I am.

I am familiar with most public projects on sourcehut, of course. I do not conduct an audit on private projects, but if something was brought to my attention, I would conduct an investigation which may result in the termination of the account. For example, if some knucklehead on HN went to create a bunch of abusive repositories to prove their point in an internet argument, I would definitely terminate their account.

Your link omits context. A couple of comments up is this:

So your context arguing against my assertion that you are telling people to quit and start their own company is a link to a comment telling people they should quit and start their own company?

How about this [0] comment? I'll quote it here for you:

But, I may suggest an additional option: do something about it. Build a business that eschews VC culture, or become a VC who doesn't fit in among their blood-sucking peers.

This is a disingenous line of questioning. Google employees are aware of their employer's misbehaviors.

You're still dodging the question, and your reasoning is "I've stuck my head in the sand and I'm going to pretend nobody is using my site for things I disagree with"?

I'll ask it again and maybe you won't dodge it this time: You just admitted that you do not conduct audits on private projects. Without a doubt, someone is now or will be in the future using your site to build software that you disagree with. Knowing this, how do you justify still hosting your site instead of shutting it down?

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23073740

I told (past-tense) a person (singular) to consider founding a company in the context of their individual circumstances, while reassuring them that if they chose not to that I would support that decision; in a discussion entirely unrelated to the one we're having now.

You are arguing in bad faith and I have no interest in entertaining it any further.

You are arguing in bad faith and I have no interest in entertaining it any further.

Ironic, because this entire comment chain was started by you with a loaded question that was asked in bad faith. I guess it's fine when you do it, but not others, eh? Is this the same mentality you're holding in regards to sourcehut? "It's fine that I'm building something that may be used nefariously, but when Google employees do that, they're bootlickers"?

The fact that you still dodged the question is duly noted, btw.

I'll remind you that this "line of questioning" wasn't intended to bash SourceHut or you in any way, but rather to try to get you to empathize with the fact that "quit your job and stop working on things you enjoy just because someone on the internet disagrees with your company" is hardly a winning stance to take.

It has been harder and harder every year, and frankly I'm really disheartened and demoralized these days. Articles like this one don't really surprise me anymore. It's not my department, but I feel complicit none-the-less.

But when I look out at the tech industry landscape, it is clear that I can do more good from within, because I have more freedom and influence on the work, and I believe that the work is net positive for the technology ecosystem.

Businesses large and small seem to have their heads on backwards here in Silicon Valley. Their founders are all highly profit-motivated, and don't truly seek to make the world a better place. Those that wear a facade of idealism give me no reason to believe they are any better than Google. If I left Google, where would I go where I can work without shame? I even have a hard time imagining starting my own business without falling prey to the same broken mechanics that brought us to where we are today.

At least at Google, I can say with confidence that there is ongoing work by people I trust - who in turn are given a lot of autonomy by the company - to make the world a better place with technology.

- Not a google employee

- Am an employee of a large company whose practices would probably also not stand up to public scrutiny

First question is has this been verified beyond "someone said so"? Perhaps it has - but any search I do ultimately leads back to the same comment.

Second, google is hardly the only company to occasionally kowtow the the PRC. I don't think any large company wants to a face-off with them. Are there more ethical employers? Probably, but they're probably small and not everyone wants to work at a small company pace. Also, if the company got larger and push came to shove, I suspect they'd do what they needed to do to stay on China's good side. It's a better option than going under.

Really a lot of employers are ethically shaky.

- Is it better to work for the DoD? Some people say no.

- Is it better to work for a Big Bank? Some people say no.

- Is it better to work for Big Pharm? Some people say no.

- Is it better to work for a place that frankly abuses their warehouse workers? I think we've had that discussion.

I'm not sure where that leaves anyone who likes gainful employment, particularly outside the Silicon Valley startup culture.

That doesn't necessarily translate to 'throw up our hands' but it does meant a more nuanced approach to where we work, how we feel about our employer, and how we measure that against all the other places we do business with that also have their dark sides.

There was a previous unrelated discussion about this just a few hours ago which was climbing to the top of the front page when I saw it. And then just vanished: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264

It's not flagged, it just went from #13 on the front page to invisible. In a single refresh. How does that work? Looking at the votes and age, it should be in the top 5 of both Ask and the front page. What's the metric or decision that made it disappear?

@dang might be worth commenting on this? Moderation is fine, opaque removal of content with no explanation, not so much. I fully believe @dang has the best interests of the community in mind, so please give us a clear explanation of what's going on here.

HN is extremely corrupt in that way, but don't worry, my reply to you will be flagged and people will continue to ignore HN's extreme biases, and ideological agenda.

If this is true, follow the money. HN is run by a Venture Capital firm. What are their incentives? Who does the business have to keep happy?

If this is true, follow the money

Isn't it more likely it was flagged off the front page by overly-enthusiastic users?

I'll also admit that this link, to a support thread, is more compelling than the Ask HN, where half the comments were questioning whether the phenomenon was actually happening.

It was not flagged. It was on FP in top 10, then instantly moved to 3rd page without "[flagged]" appearing in the title.

Flagging has impacts other than the binary "flagged" state.

This does not explain an instant move of a submission made 1 hour ago from top 10 to 3rd page, where there are submissions made 1 DAY ago.

That depends on how many users flagged the post.

YCombinator has a financial incentive to support the Chinese regime.

Hacker news and dang in particular has a very good track record of even handed and well thought of moderation. They have definitely earned benefit of the doubt from me. Let's wait a little before bringing the torches.

I would think that having more transparency (eg: moderation/removal log) is much more appropriate than "he looks good to me".

I've already seen a few times where content demeaning YC companies mysteriously got disappeared... and then summarily blamed on automated removal. Who's right? No clue. But being able to see that log as it happens would be a significant good faith action.

This leads to am interesting security question: how to achieve real transparency?

I mean HN could publish a ranking algorithm and claim that that is what they use. But then we still wouldn't know

(1) if that is really what's running in the background,

(2) if that is really receiving user inputs that lead to the observed outcome.

I'm guessing for most people here the programming assignment "create a fake log including these real inputs so that this story is suddenly dropped according to the ranking algorithm" isn't that hard.

I think that in the end, you end up trusting something. (Eg. Is the log fake or real?) IF that is so, you might as well design the system around a predetermined root of trust... here, the moderators.

And how exactly did you determine this track record? It's not as if there's a log or appeals process...

The log is https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

The appeals process is to write to hn@ycombinator.com (Contact link in the footer.)

That's not a log, not even close. It's a link to dang's comment history, not a list of every comment/submission that has been deleted by the moderation team.

Go ahead and downvote me, doesn't make what I'm saying wrong.

AKA you want a tool that can be used by spammers to game the system.

If you don't like the moderation, apply to be a moderator.. or start your own forum.

Can you think of any popular services with a moderation team which publishes such a log? I definitely can't.

It does? What incentive?

YC wound down YC China, but still committed to funding Chinese companies[0], in a blog post carefully written to avoid explaining YC's motivations. And beyond that - how much Chinese money is invested in YC startups? How many YC companies have exited by bringing Chinese money to YC's coffers?

[0] https://blog.ycombinator.com/an-update-on-yc-china/

I have absolutely no idea, but I'd bet it's extremely little because I've never heard of anything. In any case, this strikes me as weak sauce. You can make up purity tests to accuse anybody of anything, and if you choose to read that blog post as signifying "support for the Chinese regime", that is entirely your fantasy.

In any case, this has zero effect on HN moderation. It had zero effect while YC China was being set up, zero effect while YC China was being wound down, and zero effect regardless of whatever "Chinese money" you're referring to, which you seem to know more about than I do. The only effect any of this has on HN moderation is people making up dark insinuations about it and posting them to HN. I expect that kind of thing from trolls but it's pretty weird to see you stoop to it.

Some users tend to flag stories about China and censorship because they generate a lot of nationalistic and hot headed comments and very little actual intelligent discussion. Just look at the comments attached to this submission.

The submission I linked is not flagged (at least as far as I can see from my account?). Either there's some non-intuitive stuff going on with the way submissions stay on the front page, or HN soft-nuked it. Either way I think we deserve an explanation and a clear understanding of the underlying rules.

Does HN always tell you when someone flags it? Or just a critical number of users or something like that?

I see the flagged indicator now and then, but I see it somewhat less frequently than I would THINK things get flagged, admittedly that's all conjecture.

It takes some amount of people flagging it before it shows up as [flagged] but flagging submissions affect rankings before it reaches that point. On top of that "Ask HN" posts also have some modifier on them that makes them drop quicker, these two effects seem to be cumulative, explaining why it dropped so quickly

It so happens that we've entered a period where technology, morality, ideology, etc. are converging - to censor those who wish to talk about these connections would seem very antithetical to a culture of inspiring bright minds, innovation, and technological advancement for the good of mankind.

I for one have never shied away from a "hot headed" argument. Imho, I feel that as adults it is our responsibility to voice our opinions even in times when that opinion will contrast with another. In fact, sometimes it is crucial to do so as often times the most important arguments to be had are the most heated.

I believe the HN esk counter-point would be that HN is not the proper forum for those kinds of discussion. Imho, there is no "proper" forum for these kinds of discussions. They simply need to be had, more now than ever in my lifetime, on every street corner, and in every shop.

the best and surest way to have your account deleted from facebook is to post porn.

the best and surest way to delete an inconvenient discussion from hn is to spam it with a political flame war.

i don't have proof that this is the case here but i wouldn't be surprised that such threads are actively heated up and/or gaslighted by nation state sponsored censors.

Or ideologues.

you missed the point. these people are targets.

I don't understand what point I've missed.

If "I wouldn't be surprised that such threads are actively heated up and/or gaslighted by nation state sponsored censors" is possibly true, can it not also be possibly true that ideologues do the same thing (consciously or not), knowing that so-called flamewars can (and often does) lead to censorship?

oh they surely do, that isn't the point. the point is to help them notice the thread and get them going enough for moderators to delist the story.

I also experienced this on numerous Chinese government-related posts in the past, where front page articles were not flagged, but quickly disappeared. Don't really have an explanation. Would be great if @dang can look into this.

I seriously doubt that there’s anything to “look into” from @dang’s perspective. A huge share of his moderation lately is focused on “nationalistic flamewar”, and from his perspective, it’s probably easier for any thread that might tend towards that to just quietly sink off the front page.

A few years ago, I reverse-engineered the HN ranking algorithm [1]. Basic ranking is based on votes vs age, but there are numerous other factors. Penalties are applied based on words in the title or the domain. Posts with too many comments got penalized as controversial. A "voting ring detector" triggers other automatic penalties.

HN ranking has probably become more complex since I looked at it. Manual moderation also impacts ranking.

[1] http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

Interesting.

I suspect the formula is changing if only because the sheer volume of spammy type stuff skyrocketing to the top seems to have subsided.

There was a short run where a lot of nearly raw spam type posts were quickly rising to the top, and sticking a long time despite almost / all the comments being about how terrible the spam is.

That's why software should be open source.

Ironically the article about google censorship ended up discussing whether there is hn censorship or whether it just magic ranking.

With open source everybody could check whether there was censorship outside of any smart ranking algorithm.

No, you cannot open source a fraud prevention mechanism. You want to keep it secret.

That sounds suspiciously like what used to be said of encryption.

Earlier today, a post linking to this article vanished: https://wmbriggs.com/post/30833/. It was generating upvotes and discussion.

Might it be because threads like these often cause toxic, rude, unproductive, and generally tribal discourse in the comments?

Looking around the comment threads, I certainly don't see a lot of intellectual curiosity being stimulated or minds being expanded. I see a lot of dogmatic accusations, hyperbolic bemoaning-the-downfall-of-civilization, and general "how could you possibly believe that?!"-toned rudeness. Not our finest hour.

Yeah pretty much all of HN's lines about how it's much better than other communities go out the window.

Perhaps such conversations can be had productively, but I've yet to see it.

I challenge you to find an on-line community whose average is better than HN's worst.

I really do. I might start visiting it; we lack civilized places on the Internet.

Do you have show dead on or ever check the bottom page/new posts?

It was flagged by users and set off the flamewar detector. We review those, but not while asleep.

The site guidelines specifically ask you not to post like this, but to send such questions to hn@ycombinator.com instead. Would you please review them (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)? The reason we ask that is that such comments routinely spark completely speculative subthreads that range from completely off topic (at the high end!) to outrage mobs. They're extremely repetitive and they basically act like a drug and not a nice one.

We're always happy to answer questions—it just takes time to deal with the firehose. Yes, you have to wait for an email reply, but you've had to wait for a reply to this comment too, and if you'd sent an email you wouldn't have damaged HN. This digression (I'll use a nice word) was the #1 subthread on the #1 story of HN when I saw it.

You can't compute a post's rank from its timestamp and score. The software is more complicated than that, plus user flags affect things, plus moderator action. The "why is this post at rank N when given the score X and the timestamp Y my mental algorithm tells me it should be at rank Z?" question is an HN classic, but people grossly overweight moderator action, or rather sinister-moderator-misdeeds in the answers they give themselves.

I mean, think about it you guys. Do you really think we're suppressing discussion of the suppression of the phrase "communist bandits" from YouTube? I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a.

It seems like my comment was also vanished from the top of the thread? I don't see what guidelines I came even close to breaking. Help me out here? No one's going to see your reply, my comment is detached from the submission. But I do want to understand what's going on here.

For what its worth, I was also shocked to see your entire comment thread, with over 110 children I believe, deleted from the thread without mention. Before this, I thought HN handled deletion with graying out, [flagged] or [dead] etc.

I only found it again by checking @dang's profile.

I've also emailed HN support strongly objecting to this complete deletion.

I didn't delete it; I downweighted it. You're running into the pagination problem (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23184485), which is that you've confused the first page of comments with the entire thread. Click More at the bottom and you'll find it perfectly intact, just lower.

We don't delete things outright on HN unless the author asks us to. The most we ever do is 'kill' a post, meaning it's still visible to anyone with 'showdead' set to 'yes' in their profile, and even that's rare. Beyond that, we'd never kill an entire subthread with dozens of replies. We might downweight it or we might auto-collapse it. That's all. By the way, if I had actually deleted that thread, you'd not have been able to find it via my profile. I'm not sure whether to be more hurt by your assuming I'm such an evil censor or such a bad programmer. (<-- that is an attempt at a joke)

It's routine HN moderation to downweight off-topic subthreads, especially when they're at the top of the page, and especially when they're indignant+offtopic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Thank you for clarifying - you can disregard my email! I don't think I've ever seen/clicked the More on comments and was unaware of that feature. I appreciate you taking the time to explain!

Of course I marked it off topic. It's the most off topic thing you could possibly have posted.

Guideline: "Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something. Send it to hn@ycombinator.com."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That's a bit disingenuous isn't it? You're saying that the actual beef (vanishing Ask thread about google censorship) is okay to mention, and the reason my comment was silently nuked is because I happened to address the HN team? That's a bit strange.

I really do believe you have the best interests of the community in mind, but this chain of events is making it difficult. Using 'off topic' as an arbitrarily broad mechanism to remove high SnR content doesn't have the best optics, especially when a lot of the child discussion was pointing out seemingly inconsistent and arbitrary enforcement of HN guidelines.

Again, help me out here. You're acting in good faith. Maybe a more clear and specific set of guidelines would help?

You're not going to tell me with a straight face that the highest upvoted comment on that submission and the origin of some healthy debate was 'off topic' when the top 3 comments of most front page submissions are far less related to TFA, are you?

I'm saying that what you posted was completely off topic, you shouldn't have posted it, and you should have emailed us instead (as indeed other users did). It's not that your comment was so bad in itself; it's the upvotes and replies that it attracted. They turned it into the worst subthread I've seen at the top of a high-ranked HN story in a long time.

If you think a subthread about "inconsistent and arbitrary enforcement of HN guidelines", or rather people's feverish imaginations about that, doesn't qualify for being downweighted as off-topic, I'm not sure what to add. A subthread like that sitting at #1 on the #1 story of HN is a three-alarm fire from a moderation point of view. Smart readers don't come to HN to read that.

We routinely downweight this sort of thing because if we didn't, most threads would consist of nothing but. Do you think that HN discussions stay on topic (to the extent they do) by themselves? That would be a self-driving-cars-level achievement.

HN users will happily comment all day about HN, moderation, and their imaginings about these things. There's no stronger force on the site, but unfortunately it's an addictive process that burns all the oxygen from actual discussion and ends up asphyxiating it. A forum becoming self-referential like that is the road to death. If a smart new user showed up here, wanting to read about interesting topics, and ran into endless reams of insider bickering, they'd close the tab and never come back.

We 100% see where you're coming from. Would it be crazy to request that HN create a publicly available list of "marked off topic / down-weighted / removed / flagged as duplicate" actions? I feel like HN could squash 90% of these concerns with that simple feature.

The troubling issue here seems to be HN asking users to "keep it quiet" by sending an email rather than commenting publicly about valid concerns. But I get your point that those concerns are technically "off-topic" from the underlying thread itself.

Hey, dang. I've sent a letter to hn@ycombinator.com 5 hours ago, questioning why my AskHN submission "Self-censorship on HN" has been flagged and blocked for further replies. Have you seen it by any chance? I'm really concerned about the issue.

Do you really think we're suppressing discussion of the suppression of the phrase "communist bandits" from YouTube? I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a.

Also, can the suppression of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264 (which missosoup is asking about) be connected with my "HN censorship" related comment in it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221622 ?

I have not seen it yet. If you saw the inbox you'd understand why. I'll get to it as soon as I can.

Edit: One not-so-obvious reason why subthreads like this are so disastrous for HN is that they suck up all the moderation resources. I haven't had a chance to even look at the rest of the HN front page yet, let alone the emails.

Thanks for the reply. If subthreads like this happen at all (let alone, as you put it, are so disastrous), then it might be a good idea to revisit the moderation mechanisms, don't you think so? Ideally, with a public discussion.

What I'd personally be happy to see being discussed:

- abandoning downvoting of comments completely

- introducing a compensation mechanism for flagging of comments (debatable)

- displaying all flagged submissions in a separate page with a link in the header (like "new", "ask", etc.)

No, because subthreads like this are eternal and no effort to prevent them can succeed. They can only be somewhat contained sometimes. If moderation mechanisms need to be changed, it needs to be for more substantial reasons.

Each generation of internet users thinks they're the first to come up with these things, and in a way they are, it's just that every previous generation was also the first to come up with them. It's an eternal cycle of internet forum life. The points you raise have been raised on HN for over a decade (HN Search is your friend!) and if they weren't those points they'd be others.

That probably sounds too dismissive. I don't mean that we're uninterested in hearing from users, getting suggestions, and answering questions. We do that all the time, and it's welcome. But making meta-posts to HN is not the best way to do it, especially in any inflammatory context, where they are almost guaranteed to blow up like the gas station in Zoolander—and then consume all our limited resources for the day, which ought to be going into making the site better.

I completely understand that it's an eternal issue. That does not automatically mean that it does not merit a yet another discussion. Downvote hell is real. Targeted censorship by (possibly coordinated) flagging is real (I presume so). I would love to read HN users' opinion on Bill Gates driving the world into a nightmarish dystopia, but can't do so, because some of the users think, that it's conspiracy bullshit (even if backed up by facts to some degree)? Might very well be so, but the fact, that we can't have such a discussion at all, has far-reaching implications, given the status of HN in the eye of the Internet crowd. It would be different, if all politics related subjects were outlawed here, but that is not the case. Rather, only some subjects are selectively and very opaquely (for the majority of users, who don't even get to see, that such a subject has been brought into their attention) dismissed as flamebait/propaganda/conspiracy/whatever. Why is that necessary?

Could not agree more, HN is taking the "we know best, so we ask that you blindly listen to us" highbrow approach. I lost 20% of my karma because I took a non-popular stance within a single thread lol. My stance was backed up by references/facts/data, but none of that mattered.

In a comment above, I mentioned the possible solution (to the issue discussed in above thread) that HN create a publicly available list of "marked off topic / down-weighted / removed / flagged as duplicate" actions. I feel like HN could squash 90% of these concerns with that simple feature.

You're underestimating the extent to which these things have been repeated ad nauseum already. This is a site for curiosity, and curiosity and repetition don't go together (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...).

On the question of political topics on HN, I've written about this at length in the past: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... If you take a look at those and still have a question I haven't addressed there, I'd be interested to know what it is. Just be sure you've familiarized yourself with past explanations, because if the idea is something like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've already explained many times why that won't work.

Seems like a child comment has been detached from this thread and moved into a separate top-level thread, that is currently at the top (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223772), while its' former parent (comment that I'm currently responding to) has been moved to the bottom (2nd page). QED.

Some interesting background on wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_bandit

I was just about to post this:

Communist bandit (Chinese: 共匪; pinyin: gòngfěi) is an anti-communist insult directed to the Chinese Communist Party. The term originated from the Nationalist Government in 1927.

This is direct censorship on behalf of the Chinese Government.

It's an insult but also a historical fact. KMT was listed a observer party in COMINTERN and Chiang Kai Shek himself was nominated as president of COMINTERN China branch. So in a sense KMT was the real Communist deal and CCP was a copycat version.

COMINTERN even ordered CCP to join force with KMT to form "united front", Mao himself was forced to join KMT. And it turned out to be a bloodshed purge by the KMT. Afterwards The CCP failed to hold its insurgent territories, CCP vows to kickout the Soviet consultants and cut links with COMINTERN and became independent, thus began the famous "Long March". THe term "bandit" was invented at that time.

Wasn't it was an enemy-of-my-enemy alliance that occurred in the context of the Japanese invasion, and both sides were planning on picking up their civil war where they left off, after the Japanese had been removed?

Why would Google do this, though? They seem to have mostly ceded the Chinese market.

Because the Chinese market is huge. Because freedom of speech in the Western world is an individual liberty which platforms such as YouTube do not need to guarantee, whereas censorship in China is an absolute requirement they must abide by. The payoffs are asymmetric. If we had legislation in the EU or in the US that demanded that YouTube not tamper with users’ comments, then they’d have to choose between one side and the other. As it is, they’re not legislated as a utility, so they have editorial oversight.

That doesn't really answer the question of that other user.

Google largely has largely taken being excluded from China in stride, the other user is wondering why they would do this now.

As another user posted, there’s a long list of terms dating back to 2012, so this isn’t recent. Even the post referred to dates from the end of 2019, so it isn’t exactly novel.

Google might well accept being excluded from China, but I’m assuming that the prospect of being allowed to re-enter that market is periodically dangled in front of them by the ruling party in China, and that consequentially Google has an ongoing motive to somewhat abide by the PRC’s rules.

Also, Google may be excluded from China, but Google also has a lot to lose if relations with China deteriorate, for example, if China somehow interferes with the primacy of Android there and therefore causes a massive dent in platform numbers.

I get that but that's just conjecture right?

As far as China disconnecting from Android or forking it... that seems inevitable. Deleting some comment's wont change that.

I'm not sure how reliable the following site is, but it looks like this has been banned at least since 2012, along with a long list of words that I find shockingly restrictive.

https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-keywords-...

its really sad to see Google kowtow to China. i guess money trump everything.

a free, open and democratic China is Taiwan. you can see it by Taiwan's handling of covid 19. they are open about their cases, allowed press to ask unlimited questions and show everything to Taiwanese and not conceal any info.

its sad that Western companies love money more than the Western values that they always talk about. "Don't be evil"

Western companies don’t talk about values, Western governments do. The past few decades have seen an aggressive destruction in the power of Western governments to subdue them to Corporate power. The US is a prime example where the Republican party’s only policy platform (not even exaggerating) is “tax cuts are the solution to every problem”.

The US government specifically has been declawed and dismembered by the current administration to the point of uselessness. The only time it’s willing to assert power is to enable the corrupt dealings of political appointees and lobbyists.

so what's this "Don't be evil" thingy that Google always talk about

You naively think that western governments are immune from being influenced by China.

You're wrong. Governmental institutions like the WHO have been influenced by China. The German government has been influenced: they have been reluctant to criticize China.

There is no magical governmental institution that is immune from this. If the president was a Democrat we'd be in this same situation.

Western companies don’t talk about values, Western governments do.

This is completely wrong.

Every other ad on TV in the US is preaching about how much Walmart/Amazon/Pepsi/etc. care about the environment/LGBT rights/safe working conditions/etc.

Western companies talk about their supposed values _all the time_, they're just mostly full of shit when they do.

Wait, but China is also doing the same. Have you watched any of the press conferences in China? They were frank and forthcoming with information, there were many reddit threads applauding it until everything got politicized around March.

Imagine you posting “nazi bandits” on a WW2 video and seeing it vanish after 15s.

We in the IT community need to disassociate with google as much as we possibly can.

Free speech is more important than ever.

There s no “we” in the IT community, theres the “well funded groupthink” and “the sea of the unknowns”. When did the IT band together to achieve something?

Plenty of times, see the entire open source movement or the cypherpunks, or the browser wars in which Firefox was a major competitor, there must be tons of examples.

The CCP is not the same as nazis. This is silly.

communism has killed more people than any other ideology or regime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Declaration_on_European...

I simply said they were not the same. You and another commenter have incorrectly inferred that I was talking about their victims. Says a lot more about you than it does about me.

It's more complex than that. Imagine that you are a US company operating in Germany that provides German citizens with an incredible amount of information that wouldn't otherwise be available. You have thousands of people working in Germany. Occasionally, the Nazis ask you to censor things, If you don't, your entire team is at risk and will all loose their employment and citizens of Germany will loose access to an incredible amount of information and services. It's not cut and dry.

It's not cut and dry.

Yeah, it actually is. You tell the Nazi's to fuck off and if they kick you out, they kick you out.

How do you feel about the German proscription on Nazi symbolism/speech? It's not absolute; for example, Mein Kampf is still published in Germany, but in academic critical editions which provide extensive historical information to place it in context.

Similar happens with the name "Eric Ciaramella", which YouTube instantly deletes. This is a name of a CIA whistle blower. It would be interesting to know what other words are in the YouTube censor list.

Interesting, but there is a pretty clear difference between censorship to protect an individual and censorship of critisising a government.

Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now? Who determines that "pretty clear difference?" Isn't the point of being against censorship is that nothing is above the interests of public scrutiny? Partial censorship seems fundamentally contradictory in terms of the underlying moral justification.

Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now?

No. It's a game that was played out long ago by responsible organizations. It's just that the tech industry is stumbling upon it these days.

For example, responsible media outlets don't publish information about rape victims or suicides unless there is a compelling public interest.

And it even varies by culture. US media reporting on crimes in Germany tend to get confused (to the point that at least once they suspected some public cover up attempt) that they won't get the names of arrested suspects - that's part of our approach to privacy here, while apparently having the names out is considered a mechanism against misconduct by the police in the US (at least that's how it was explained to me when I asked why the names are always public).

I can follow both arguments but there's only room for implementing one in any given society. Societies overlapping like they do now (thanks to globalization and, to no small part, the internet) doesn't make that easier.