Reddit, Banned In China, Is Reportedly Set To Land $150 Million Investment From a Chinese Censorship Powerhouse (gizmodo.com) 103
Reddit is about to get a huge new round of investment of up to $300 million. As Gizmodo points out, "the first $150 million is reportedly expected to come from the Chinese tech giant Tencent, the first ever Asian technology company to pass a $500 billion market value." The investment is complicated since Reddit is banned in China via the Great Firewall of China. Also, "Tencent is not merely a resident of China's internet -- the company is one of the most important architects of the Great Firewall," reports Gizmodo. "It's an interesting source of cash for a Silicon Valley company whose product is essentially speech." From the report: Tencent is, at great cost and ultimately for great profit, literally reinventing censorship in China. The Great Firewall was not built by the Communist Party in Beijing, it's built by the tech giants all around China. This opaque but clearly powerful relationship between the $500 billion company and the Chinese government raises interesting and unanswered questions about Tencent's forays into the West, including questions about Reddit's future.
The pending Chinese investment in Reddit, a social media company with relatively little Chinese-language community, is a richer twist on that old tale, and it's a part of Tencent's expanding global investment strategy. The Chinese company owns about 12 percent of Snap, for instance, even though Snapchat is banned in China. Tencent also owns a piece of the chat app Discord even though, you guessed it, Discord is blocked in China. If Tencent does kick in $150 million on a nearly $3 billion valuation for Reddit, as TechCrunch reports, it will be interesting if we ever find out exactly what it means. What kind of influence and position, if any, will Tencent gain at Reddit? Neither company responded to Gizmodo's questions.
The pending Chinese investment in Reddit, a social media company with relatively little Chinese-language community, is a richer twist on that old tale, and it's a part of Tencent's expanding global investment strategy. The Chinese company owns about 12 percent of Snap, for instance, even though Snapchat is banned in China. Tencent also owns a piece of the chat app Discord even though, you guessed it, Discord is blocked in China. If Tencent does kick in $150 million on a nearly $3 billion valuation for Reddit, as TechCrunch reports, it will be interesting if we ever find out exactly what it means. What kind of influence and position, if any, will Tencent gain at Reddit? Neither company responded to Gizmodo's questions.
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Trump need to ban reddit till they pay a tariff!
Maybe Trump can haggle with them a bit, and get China to build him his wall . . . ?
That would take the pressure off the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and then they could kiss and make up, and get on with their proper government business.
But, alas, something makes me think we'll have a stalemate for the next two years, like the World War I trench battles, where no one wins, and everybody loses.
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Maybe he can get a firewall from Huawei and deploy it on the southern border.
Hey, it's some kind of wall, no. Better than a beaded curtain.
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Re:Las Vegas Rules (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure they're not stupid, and are well aware of that too.
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Amusingly Facebook sells you to the highest bidder so the Chinese own anyone they want already. Reddit forums are probably of use to the Chinese with appropriate oversight. Everyone seems to forget that the great firewall of china does not mean they are technologically backward. They adopt things like mobile payment faster than the rest of us.
Mystery solved (Score:5, Funny)
Well, at least I don't have to wonder anymore why I was perma-banned for posting "I think Xi Jinping may be overrated."
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Well, at least I don't have to wonder anymore why I was perma-banned for posting "I think Xi Jinping may be overrated."
Since Slashdot is not banned or censored in China, you have already posted that.
Re:Mystery solved (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot is not yet a chinese propaganda machine.
Correct. It would need to support Unicode for that.
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Rule 34 is an Internet rule that states that Internet pornography exists concerning every conceivable topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Comment removed (Score:3)
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There wasn't any way to prove BEFORE that any controversial moderation decision wasn't forced on them by outside pressure. You have to rely on whistleblowers to tell you.
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It has already been shown that a relatively small group runs the moderation of both Reddit and Wikipedia [imgoat.com] and they have some disturbing beliefs [theralphretort.com] and relationships [8ch.net] that no one is mentioning because the MSM [spectator.org] is not reporting on it, so it's up to places like /pol/ and other fringe outlets to do the research and reporting.
To get on topic, a certain Tom Edwards was Microsoft'
optics (Score:2)
How is this bad optics for Reddit? They are already notorious for their heavy handed censorship of anything that challenges the official Corporate Progressive narrative.
Maybe Tencent made their investment so they could get their hands on some of Reddit's advanced censorship technology?
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There is no way they're going to prove to anyone now that any controversial moderation decision wasn't forced on them by outside pressure now.
Every decision is already the subject of wild conspiracy theories and cries of "SJW!" so the probably don't even care. At this point it can't really get any worse than it already is.
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Hmm, sounds suspiciously like you're a communist. Also confused about who makes the rules in your country.
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In the real world the US government is the agent of big business and cartels, not the other way around.
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Show me where Alex Jones has equal access.
Why would anyone give Alex Jones equal access? They guy's an incoherent arsehole, and no civilised person would want to be associated with him.
If he wanted access to any platform I ran, I'd ban him too, because Alex Jones brings with him a whole bunch of unpleasantness, and he just spoils everything for the rest of us.
Re: Different forms of censorship (Score:3)
"Why would anyone give Alex Jones equal access? They guy's an incoherent arsehole, and no civilised person would want to be associated with him."
No doubt Chinese censorship apologists would hurl similar insults at anyone challenging their Party's official narrative.
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That is not censorship. That is consequences. Your parents taught you that when you were 3. Alex Jones' parents obviously did not and now he has to live in the real world all he can do is whine like a child about it.
Re: Different forms of censorship (Score:2)
Calling the target of censorship "thoroughly unpleasant" does not make the suppression of his speech any less censorious.
Fwiw, I had always assumed that anyone who had looked at Mr Jones' website for me than five seconds could tell he was a loon. That still doesn't make it okay for his (inexplicably threatened) political opponents to censor his speech.
If anything, the coordinated effort by multiple patastate companies to stifle his speech has lent Mr Jones a level of credibility he never before enjoyed. Str
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That's what's known as consequences. Parents teach their children about it before they go to school.
Re: Different forms of censorship (Score:2)
It's _totally_ censorship if I run a publishing platform that's _open to the public_, then decide to boot you off because I disagree with your politics.
But Corporate Progressive nazi assholes don't really give a fuck about freedom of speech. They want all dissent silenced! 'Cuz "arseholes".
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Corporate Progressive nazi assholes...
Aaaand there we go.
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Prove me wrong. Show me where Alex Jones has equal access.
His own website. Twitter and all that before he got himself banned for being a massive knob. Any other website he might care to sign up to. Before he gets banned for being a knob that is.
Reddit needs help censoring Republicans (Score:1)
Those pesky patriots over at the_donald have to be kept off the frontpage at all costs! Luckily, the Chinese Communist Party is here to help!
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Well the apparent overnight flip of /r/politics from pro-bernie to pro-hillary(and if you're not with her, you're banned) is what drove a lot of people to the_donald. A lot of social and political subs have become full-on echo chambers the last few years, in the canada and canadapolitics subs are complete garbage.
Nah, they'll fit right in (Score:5, Insightful)
Tencent will fit right in at Reddit. Reddit isn't some kind of free speech platform. In fact, they censor daily and with great enthusiasm. The top admin was caught red-handed altering people's posts in the database. The problem with youtube, google, facebook, twitter, reddit... we took this open platform of the internet where anyone could do anything and we gave control over our behavior to a few big players because their products were slick and had a lot of cash invested in them. We centralized... and in centralizing we gave control over this free wheeling space of the internet to a handful of companies.
And now we're seeing the problem with that. The same problem we had before with the handful of media companies that provided our TV, Newspapers, Radio, etc...The freedom is gone if you centralize.
Wikileaks released emails which showed that Shareblue/Correct the Record was astroturfing many subs on Reddit.
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It's not necessarily slick-ness, it's the Network Effect: everybody goes "there" because everybody else goes "there".
Perhaps with some adjustments, such as summaries/titles and basic markup for quoting/linking etc., Usenet could be resurrected as a primary discussion and announcement source.
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we took this open platform of the internet where anyone could do anything and we gave control over our behavior to a few big players
Bollocks.
Even if you hosted your own site on your dial-up connection back in the day, your ISP would eventually cut you off. Usenet is still around but the server operator would just ban you if you started abusing it. When was this golden age you speak of?
Things are actually much better these days. We have TOR and hidden sites, we have platforms like YouTube that give people immense reach on a very effective medium, and we have 4chan if you really want to go nuts. All free.
The people moaning about being ba
Reddit is already a lost cause (Score:4, Insightful)
It's nearly impossible to have any sort of civil discussion there since anything posted either:
1) Gets removed by the moderators because your opinion doesn't align with their own
or
2) You just get banned by the moderators because your opinion doesn't align with their own
The moderators basically control the microphone. I liken it to folks calling in to some talk show host thinking they're going to argue with the
host on the air when they can silence you with the push of a button.
IF the moderators don't get you, the users themselves will down vote into oblivion any opinion that clashes with the echo chamber group think.
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I originally included how much Slashdot has gone downhill over the years devolving to the point of where it stands today. However, since bitching about Slashdot on an article discussing Reddit seemed pointless, I decided to remove that portion of my reply.
But since you mentioned it. . . . . :D
Slashdot certainly has a troll problem without a doubt, but it pales in comparison to what Reddit is.
Reddit makes Slashdot look downright classy. :|
Though, I will admit, the thought did cross my mind of deleting my acc
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Yes, the troll problem is an issue and it frustrates me that I use so many mod points clearing up rubbish rather than promoting good comments. It's endless, and some of it is copy/paste and I think there's a case to be made for sysadmin-level filtering of a lot of it. There's a slippery slope argument to have about that, but it's one I would sit on the "ok so long as we keep an eye it" side of things.
I've been coming to Slashdot for a long time - th
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I would agree, there seem to be so many people who are motivated by despising a particular poster than actually contributing.
Additionally, many seem to feel posting AC makes being a jerk a viable thing.
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Curious, I have never even seen a post removed from r/UK. Apparently our politics has not yet been infiltrated by trolls as yours undoubtedly has.
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That's just KotakuInAction though, most of Reddit is fine. Or at least no worse than the bulletin board systems and forums of old. Even Usenet had moderated groups.
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So what? (Score:2)
$3 billion valuation (Score:2)
subreddits getting banned all the time (Score:2)
So no (Score:2)
No saying Taiwanis real China?
No cartoon bear jokes?
No comments on term limits?
Dont mention Tibet?
Animal Farm, 1984
Dont disagree with Reddit.
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Reddit hasn't been about speech in awhile (Score:1)