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Reddit, Banned In China, Is Reportedly Set To Land $150 Million Investment From a Chinese Censorship Powerhouse (gizmodo.com) 103

Posted by BeauHD from the connecting-the-dots dept.
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.
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Reddit, Banned In China, Is Reportedly Set To Land $150 Million Investment From a Chinese Censorship Powerhouse More

Reddit, Banned In China, Is Reportedly Set To Land $150 Million Investment From a Chinese Censorship Powerhouse

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  • Mystery solved (Score:5, Funny)

    by elrous0 ( 869638 ) on Wednesday February 06, 2019 @07:16PM (#58081486)

    Well, at least I don't have to wonder anymore why I was perma-banned for posting "I think Xi Jinping may be overrated."

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday February 06, 2019 @07:20PM (#58081502)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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.

      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'

    • 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?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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.

  • Reddit needs help censoring Republicans (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mashiki ( 184564 )

      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)

    by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Wednesday February 06, 2019 @08:03PM (#58081668) Homepage

    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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      [consumers] 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...

      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.

    • Agreed. Those same wikileaks also demonstrated that Russia was actively working and spreading outright lies in The_Donald and other highly conservative Reddits. White Nationalists, racists, and sexists and most Republicans have tried to turn the site into their own collective version of shit. Their Subreddits outright ban alternative thoughts. It's quite disgusting what conservatives are doing in the name of being able to hold onto racist/sexist/rapist beliefs.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Wednesday February 06, 2019 @08:15PM (#58081702)

    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.

    • If you believe that then why do you bother to post on Slashdot? It's not that much different here...

      • 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

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by mccalli ( 323026 )
          Undoing moderation in this thread to respond to this.

          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

          • 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.

    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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.

  • I never gave a fuck about Reddit and this doesn't change my position
  • Only in Silicon Valley is borrowing money to get you into more debt, considered raising your "valuation". No website is worth $3B. It is a website.
  • See r/reclassified [reddit.com] for a list of the latest banned/quarantined subreddits. 10 in the past 24 hours.
  • Tiananmen square?
    No saying Taiwanis real China?
    No cartoon bear jokes?
    No comments on term limits?
    Dont mention Tibet?
    Animal Farm, 1984
    Dont disagree with Reddit.
  • It's about censorship, filtering news and control of the narrative.

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