[solaarphunk]

They are blocked because they don’t censor content. If they did agree to, they would be allowed - just like Microsoft, Bing, Apple, and a handful of other digital products are not blocked in China.

Edit: for those downvoting me, Google literally shut down their China operations because they were unwilling to comply with censorship requirements. Conversely, Google and other US companies seem completely willing to comply with national security letters that compel them to spy on non-US persons, which should make other countries where US companies operate equally uneasy.

[supriyo-biswas]

"Doesn't censor content" is probably not describing the situation correctly; while some companies like Google have typically resisted such in the aughts, they regularly take requests from other countries of this sort, and it'd be very simple for them to reenter the China market by having a stance similar to what they have for other countries.

The issue here is probably caused by the requirement for an ICP recordal which requires removal of violating user-generated content within 15 minutes, which is probably a very tight deadline, probably coupled with a strong false positive rate which is why said companies are also hesitant to introduce automation.

It could also be argued that Tiktok is not completely value-aligned with US interests, although this has not been provably shown and whatever we have thus far is speculative.

[hiddencost]

Google tried to, but failed due to employee revolt:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)

Microsoft Bing has been merrily operating in China for a very long time: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-03-07/microsoft...

[est]

> ICP recordal which requires removal of violating user-generated content

And the reason behind that? Copy from other comments, "So China can't spy on Americans and astroturf propaganda", swap China/America

[fidotron]

Try releasing a mobile news app in the US and see how it goes.

Even one that just scrapes Yahoo or something.

[gkanai]

> They are blocked because they don’t censor content.

These platforms certainly do censor content. They have large teams globally that do just that.

[solaarphunk]

I agree, but they have clearly not met the standard for what China needs. I mean Zuck literally was jogging around Beijing 10 years ago trying to build goodwill to get in, and it was Google that made the decision to exit the market.

[est]

> They have large teams globally that do just that.

You are spreading the misinformation. Google can't keep up with the censorship shit and gave up as stated in their official blog

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...

> a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results

> We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn

People seem to forget Google had a notorious record a terrible customer service. And China always demand more.