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Teen's TikTok video about China's Muslim camps goes viral

92 points| lewisflude | 6 years ago |bbc.co.uk

16 comments

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[+] discardculture|6 years ago|reply
I've noticed that stories related to Chinese state censorship garner less comments in HN than stories about US or western government censorship.

Why is that? I'm not making accusations, and if people are not comfortable about talking about this in this forum that's fine.

inb4: "There's no proof, you failed to quantify your observation, which is anecdotal and all in your head." Similar such comments were made in the 1940s.

[+] dang|6 years ago|reply
> I've noticed

That is sample bias. People notice what they dislike and disagree with much more than what they like or agree with.

There have been tons of HN threads about Chinese state activity and nearly all are overwhelmingly critical. The HN Search box at the bottom of the page is helpful for finding things.

> I'm not making accusations

Since that insinuates just the opposite, your comment breaks the site guideline which asks "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken."

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

[+] Simulacra|6 years ago|reply
Interesting way of getting around censorship. Although I’m curious - if YouTube can demonetize a video because it hears sweet child of mine playing in the background, could it not also listen for certain words, and immediately censor it?
[+] Tarsul|6 years ago|reply
there was a recent article[1] that explained how Tiktok is doing its censoring (for German videos). Interestingly, the censors usually only watch frames of the videos (no sound!) and only have 30 seconds to decide what to do with the video (if they want to fulfill their ratio), meaning the kind of tactic this woman used is actually perfect for circumventing the censors (at least in the short-term)... until they change their proceedings (which they will, they are working on algorithms).

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21619098

[+] moretai|6 years ago|reply
Does the average chinese person care about this? Does the average human care about this?

Are we propagating negative chinese news? I am not suggesting it's fake news, and I am sure it's happening. But literally nothing will come of it. If this is a holocaust, we aren't doing anything about it. There are multiple genocides, and we do nothing about it.

[+] save_ferris|6 years ago|reply
> Are we propagating negative Chinese news?

Yes? Should we not care what one of the largest economies in the world is doing to its people?

> literally nothing will come of it.

How do you figure that?

Are you arguing that we shouldn’t cover something newsworthy because you’re convinced nothing will change?

[+] tim333|6 years ago|reply
Quite a lot of humans care about this. Public pressure can have an influence.
[+] yorwba|6 years ago|reply
The interesting part here is that TikTok kept the video up. That does make their claims that they aren't exporting Chinese-style censorship somewhat convincing.
[+] Jamwinner|6 years ago|reply
We have too many business interests there to speak up. See YCs recent exit.
[+] foobar_|6 years ago|reply
Honest question ... Is that what the govt wants ... change your religion and you walk free? Why not change then? Are there people who have changed?
[+] derivagral|6 years ago|reply
My (western) understanding is that this is in response to a lot of activity (terrorism might be the right word, or it might not) around cultural repression. The goal from the government is integration and safety/control, as I understand it.

As far as "just change", I'm not sure what to say in response to this. I don't mean this as an attack or anything, but "come on just give up your life/culture/values" seems a bit... crass?