Summary
Many Americans joining China’s social media platform RedNote are encountering strict censorship uncommon in Western platforms.
One non-binary user had a post asking if the platform welcomed gay people removed within hours.
Posts on LGBTQ+ topics, fitness photos, and sensitive cultural content have been censored, frustrating users unfamiliar with China’s moderation rules.
RedNote is hiring English-language moderators to handle the influx. While some users enjoy cultural exchange, others criticize restrictions.
Analysts see RedNote’s growth among US users as a soft power win for China.
The entire worldwide LGBT TikTok population should flood RedNote and post pro-LGBT stuff in their native language. Let Rednote scramble finding moderators that can speak in a language that’s only spoken by a few million people. Then those users should leave after a few weeks and leave RedNote with the bill. And then rinse and repeat after a few months.
Leopards and Faces…
The fuck did they expect going to a Chinese platform
You are assuming TikTokers have any intelligence, morals, principle or talent (or even humanity)
This is an extremely weird take.
On Lemmy it’s not, this place is filled with pseudo-intellectuals with no critical thinking abilities at all. They literally have no idea what a ban like this means. The problem is I can’t tell I’d they’re shills or worse, they really think this is a good thing cuz “le short videos bad”. I’m starting to think that only the worst people from reddit came here.
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Ikr, that’s the whole world, not just TikTok users.
Somehow TikTokers even surpass that (Along with Twitch streamers)
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Who Lemmy.World ??
Well the tankies seem to think that China is actually a Utopia that the western governments are hiding from us, so naturally there shouldn’t be any censorship issues lol
People moving to Red Note aren’t tankies and I’ve only heard people who describe what tankies say that tankies think China is a utopia that our governments are hiding from us. Kinda like Ben Shapiro describing what “the left” people say or do.
lemmy.ca has some tankie instances defederated, so it would make sense why you don’t see what tankies are saying
https://lemmy.ca/instancesBut I do agree that people using rednote aren’t tankies.
I wish .ca would list a reason for defederation.
If you checked out those tankie instances or listened to them in your home instance for just a few minutes, you wouldn’t have to ask lol.
.world still federates with .ml and man those guys can have the most braindead takes… and they’re one of the more reasonable tankie instances.
Oh .ca is still with .ml, I go there to laugh every once in a while.
This can help, but it’s reports against instances in general and not specifically from .ca https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/censured
“I’m an American and have a right to free speech, no matter what country the service is hosted in!”
That’s certainly what certain people on lemmy.world seem to think despite the server being in The Netherlands.
But what if there is no country that “allows” the speech you want to say? I want to call for the beheading of billionaires. I assume you don’t think I should be able to do that?
My question is how much of these articles are manufactured outrage. Like, I can’t imagine anybody expected anything different - especially since some of this stuff is censored already on American social media (especially LGBT related stuff), and the media has spent 50 years telling Americans how much censorship there is in China and the Great Firewall.
Probably 90% from my personal experience, I see loads of LGBTQ posts on RedNote. I wonder if they’re being sensored or just waiting to go through the moderation queue.
I could see English posts maybe accumulating negative sentiment scores or even just a lack of known words causing a post to end up in a moderation queue.
For reference sentiment scores are basically a numeric way of scoring a post. Words like “hate” get -10 points neutral words get 1 point, and positive words like love and friendship get +10 points. At least when I was in college, this was a popular way for social media to determine if they should push your content or not.
I said in another comment about what I learned from following a Chinese lesbian on Twitter is that with China it’s like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” - you can say and do things that you could or should get in trouble for, but as long as you do it the right way, it’ll be overlooked.
There’s gay bars and a big lesbian scene in China, but there’s a common practice there, that used to happen in Europe and the US as well before the culture shifted, where lesbians get married to men - either gay guys or just a guy they have an arrangement with - to fulfill the cultural obligation expected of them to get married, and then they basically live their own separate lives.
So most likely what’s happening is people who don’t know the cultural do’s and don’t’s are getting censored for stepping over the line.
But LGBTQ stuff is censored all the time on other social media anyway, whenever they think they can get away with it, so it’s not like it’s all that surprising - especially when you add in China’s official stance on LGBTQ people.
These feel like they’re freaking out about something that everybody already knew was gonna happen, and omitting the fact that it happens elsewhere as well to make it seem like a big deal.
This is all just leading up to the TikTok savior Trump winning over the youth crowd. If you force them to a platform that is much worse, they will forget how controlling the previous platform was and just be happy to have it.
Anyone who has been using Xitter over the last couple of years has already experienced Chinese style censorship.
Chinese style censorship is more consistent, though. No one is making up rules on the fly.
This is consistent. Anything that makes the racists, fascists, incels, tech bros, and billionaires uncomfortable is blocked.
What makes them uncomfortable could change tomorrow.
Did mentions of Tiananmen Square make China uncomfortable before 1989 or did that change? Did mentions of Winnie the Pooh make China uncomfortable before 2017 or did that change?
I’m not sure what point you were trying to make.
That is a comparatively slow rate of change, don’t you think so?
That was only two representative examples. Do you actually want me to make an exhaustive list of all of the changes that have happened over time to the Chinese censorship regime?
My point was just that Musk has very thin skin.
And Xi doesn’t?
The point was obvious…
Chinese censorship is planned and targeted, with the intent to control and suppress dissent. It works hard to maintain a narrative and prevent excessive and rapid shifts so as to achieve a long term goal of control.
The billionaires running American social media (with a special shout to Musk) are mercurial and subject to the petty whims and feelings of the owner.
So while yes, obviously both change and the heads of the CCP are also occasionally subject to emotional responses, the differences between the two are stark and obvious. So no, “everything technically changes” is not a valid counter to the significant differences in intent and volatility.
Claiming you don’t understand the point they were making is just being intentionally obtuse.
Thank you. It seems it was clear enough for at least one other person.
I’m sure your point was very clear in your head but it may not be obvious to you that other people can’t read your mind. Suggesting that anyone who doesn’t get your opaque point is being obtuse is arrogant and childish.
Do better.
That is a poor defence of censorship.
I’m not trying to defend it, just saying that as bad as Chinese censorship is, Musk is worse.
China censors all literature, film, music, and internet discourse employing advanced technologies and multiple tens of thousands of people while also running the world’s largest prison for journalist. VPNs are blocked. Apps like Signal are blocked. Online gaming for minors is limited to 3 hours per day on weekends and holidays only. People get harassed by police for what they post online. Many go to jail for criticizing the government, spreading pornography or health related sexual content (including anything LGBT), supporting Taiwanese independence, or casting doubt on Chinese folk legends. Then, in addition to that (which I have not even begun to do justice to), all media companies run their own internal censorship regimes so as not to get in trouble with the authorities. And this rolls downhill: you the individual self-censor to not get in trouble with your boss or worse.
You don’t think that’s exactly where the US is heading?
Heading is different from already being there.
Is there a pedant brigade or something?
To the contrary… it’s a real concern. That’s why we shouldn’t falsely equivocate the CCP censorship apparatus to the haphazard moderation impulses of a childish social media CEO.
We’ve got a lot more to lose, especially with the long-emerging (and currently accelerating) conflux of state and social media.
For insurance, the pending KOSA bill opens a huge opportunity for future government censorship: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/12/09/new-kosa-same-as-old-kosa-but-now-with-elons-ignorant-endorsement/
Yeah… I don’t think you’re the expert on China censorship you present yourself as.
I think you just regurgitated every piece of Cold War propaganda & every rumor about Chinese censorship that you’ve ever heard.
Which of my statements do you disagree with? How would you characterize the state of freedom of speech in the PRC?
this is disgusting. personally I prefer lgbtq related posts be censored by companies like Facebook and Twitter instead.
cisgender is hate speech, y’all
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They mean the second time. I’m sure they mean the second time.
Some devs in China must be working overtime to create separate infrastructure for the US so that censors aren’t overwhelmed and miss things Chinese people aren’t supposed to see. 😂
Let’s get the vpns ready and use burners! Fuck censorship!
Non-Chinese devices can’t access Douyin even with VPN, though.
Already done I’m sure.
So mh maybe spread shit talk in ALL languages on rednote for break them by their censoring?
There’s a lot of gay people on the app this is strait up lies. Holy shit my eyes are open to this bullshit
Gay=/= enby
Yep, hopefully they see that just because the US is shitty that China can’t be worse.
They both suck equally in my book
They suck and excel at different things. For example the US doesn’t have high speed rail while China doesn’t have military bases around the globe.
Actually the Chinese high speed rail is littered with issues. Safety is obviously an issue, most stories that escape the bubble and make it west are about steel quality in the tracks causing cracking and closures.
The other issue is economics. Sure, China has a lot of high speed rail, but a lot of it goes nowhere important, connecting small cities where a normal train line would have been more economical and practical for the sole reason of claiming more high speed rail than any ither country. This has lead to a huge expansion in the governments “hidden debt” to over 1 trillion usd from the rail line operator alone. This is only for laying the lines themselves does not even account for new trains or maitenance or stations and services.
Also, if the recognized speed of high speed rail is 125mph like wikipedia says, America has a decent amount, it just so happens large cities are spread apart across the continent and flying is more economical than high speed rail.
Can’t say anything about quality issues.
I can say a few things about the economics. It doesn’t matter whether some or all of this rail is economical or not. Countless infrastructure projects around the world are built without them being economical. The half-a-trillion US interstate highway network was likely not economical either. Infrastructure like that has two important purposes. One’s to support future use. Given the speed with which cities have appeared and filled with people in China, or expanded in the US, a rail line or a large highway corridor support this urbanization. Urbanization creates significant economic growth. The other purpose is finding work for people who then spend their wages in the rest of the economy. So long as there isn’t shortage in real resources - people, concrete, iron, etc. - spending money for this increases domestic consumption and therefore economic growth. Functionally doesn’t matter if the money was created via debt or printed. You can cancel or pay that debt by printing the amount. The debt is typically created out of thin air anyways. Western counties used to this too prior to the neoliberal era when there was slack in the economy. These days we have a lot of bullshit jobs that serve a similar purpose. I think both things considered, HSR buildout in China is solid long term planning, despite of its growing pains.
On what’s high speed rail, I’m thinking ETR500/1000 like the Frecciarossa 1000 in Italy. Those regularly go at 300kph. Looking at Amtrak’s wiki:
Amtrak’s network includes over 500 stations along 21,400 miles (34,000 km) of track. It directly owns approximately 623 miles (1,003 km) of this track and operates an additional 132 miles of track; the remaining mileage is over rail lines owned by other railroad companies. While most track speeds are limited to 79 mph (127 km/h) or less, several lines have been upgraded to support top speeds of 110 mph (180 km/h), and parts of the Northeast Corridor support top speeds of 160 mph (260 km/h).
It seems only parts of the Northeast Corridor get close to that. There’s plenty of geographic high speed rail opportunity in the US that would eliminate short haul flights which have the worst carbon footprint of all flights. There’s no public investment appetite for it. There’s barely enough public funding to maintain the existing roadway infrastructure. Plus I’m sure airlines donate good money to government officials to ensure HSR isn’t a threat to their profits.
Then you have successfully fallen for china’s propaganda.
Living and working conditions in China for most citizens are horrific, far beyond even the worst problems we see in the US.
Source: have pooped through a hole in the bottom of a moving train in China, and also visited a foxconn
jailfactory.Living and working conditions in China for most citizens are horrific, far beyond even the worst problems we see in the US.
Okay I hate China as much as the next guy but this can’t be true. CCP treatment of a small subset of its citizens is horrible, but they can get by despite that because they’re able to competently run the country for the rest of the population. There’s an implied consent here of the sort you typically see in stable dictatorships.
It can be true. There are more Chinese people living on less than $10 per day than there are total Americans.
Absolutely not a China stan or anything. I’m pretty solidly against any government that allows the existence of billionaires. But judging a system by the amount of us dollars people live off of is a pretty metric. I have 100 monies, does that buy me a condo or a condom? I have 100 million monies, can I afford to eat tonight? Depends on the cost of living, the inflation rate, so many factors.
What percentage of their populace is homeless, has access to clean water, has access to the Internet? Or if you’re dead set on using the amount of people living off a set amount of dollars, at least provide some info on what 10usd gets you in China, and if there’s a big difference depending on geography?
Again, not a China stan, I think their censorship is shitty, I think their about as socialist as Nebraska, and that the Chinese government has hurt the socialist movement pretty severely by leaning into capitalism and abandoning any truly socialist ideals in exchange for international strength. In fairness, I’m also not a fan of the US. Just so you understand my position here. I’m not jumping to the defense of either, they certainly don’t need my help.
You can google these things yourself if you wanted.
About 90% of the Chinese population has access to clean water, which means around 140 million people still do not, and that’s by China’s own reported numbers and standards. It’s probably worse than that in reality.
There are more Chinese people without access to the internet than the total US population, About 77% have access, and that metric does not measure households with internet, it’s just people who have ANY access, including using a cheap phone only at public WIFI locations.
Of course there’s a big difference based on location, some cities on the coasts are exceptionally wealthy compared to rural inland areas.
The point wasn’t that I wanted the info, friend. The point was to demonstrate how shitty a metric X USD is.
You gotta take into account cost of living differences there or you’re not making much of a point. There are countries in the world where living off 10 dollars a day would make you solidly upper middle class. I’d know; I come from one of them. Either way your claim that living conditions for “most citizens” are horrific doesn’t hold much water when their middle class is still one of the fastest growing in the world.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted, this seems pretty irrefutable and apolitical haha
Their middle class is one of the fastest growing in the world simply because so many people are still in poverty.
They have 140 million people (around 10%) that don’t even have access to clean water, and about 20% that don’t have access (any access) to the internet.
Even if you take into account PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) Chinese citizens, the median Chinese family is FAR worse off than the Median American.
At least they have a train…
The train is for city folk to get between cities, rural folk can’t afford it.
have pooped through a hole in the bottom of a moving train in China
Sorry, but that sounds like an upgrade to me. Pooping has gotten so boring lately, but that sounds exciting! I’d pay good money to experience taking a miles-long dump.
Imagine you’re lost in the Chinese wilderness
“I can smell the train tracks!”
The CCP think of everything
Ive been to China for work. Must be why they have mega cities there. Couldn’t be poor people exist in both countries. Never said I like the Chinese government.
There are more Chinese people living on less than $10 per day than total Americans.
The median household income is close to 1/10th of the US amount.
The US poverty situation simply cannot compare.
They also have a population of over a billion people. What misleading point are you trying to make? The U.S. is literally the richest country in the world.
The point I’m trying to make is in relation to the original comment that stated that both countries suck equally.
They do not suck equally, and it’s not even close.
Dude, I grew up poor as dirt in this country. You can suck an egg trying to tell me that.
And just what were they making in that Fozconn factory? Ohhh American electronics.
How does that make it any better that the Chinese government lets it happen?
Actually foxconn makes a ton of the low-cost android and android go phones used in China, India, Indonesia, and Africa. Many of the phones made by foxconn (like HMD/Nokia for example) barely register as having sold units in the US.
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There’s a train in Belgium with an open hole for the bathroom? What year was this in?
Not equal, China is better at censorship, tracking, and social pressure. They own the corporations and businesses. Go to other countries to kidnap their citizens that talked bad about them.
US corps own the government, not seeing how that’s better. Also, the US does kidnap people who they don’t like internationally as well.
What if we didn’t do oppression olympics and needless political division for 5 minutes. Every gov sucks in its own way, so do corps, but people, including Chinese people are awesome.
You can just go on the app and you’ll see it for yourself, they don’t bite.
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There’s lots of posts of people asking opinions about LGBT stuff and the platform has a large lesbian community.
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The app is originally more popular with women and the norm is to assume anonymous users are female, “sis” is considered complementary and a sign of acceptance.
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My Hero Academia is considered cancelled because the manga included a reference to Unit 731, which did some real Nazi shit in WWII.
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Chinese politics and history post-revolution is a sensitive topic and generally avoided. If you’re planning to go there so you can tell them about Tienanmen Square and how their government is evil, don’t bother lol.
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There are a few Western fascists trying to get on there, probably in hopes that the moderators won’t recognize their dogwhistles (things like 1488, groyper, etc). They banned Nick Fuentes before he could post anything because they recognized the name, and I’ve seen posts circulating warning about their keywords. Hopefully the moderators they’re hiring will help nip it in the bud.
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Generally, like, remember that you’re a guest and your experience will probably be fine. I’ve been surprised at both sides being respectful, and people are generally happy to have us. I’m sure there’s parts of the Chinese internet that are much less pleasant but RedBook seems like a pretty amiable cultural crossing point. It’s a unique opportunity to see another perspective without just going out on your own and there’s no telling how long it’ll last.
I am taking lots of notes from all the Chinese spies so that I can become a better Chinese spy for everyone here on Lemmy 🤗
Chinese politics and history post-revolution is a sensitive topic and generally avoided. If you’re planning to go there so you can tell them about Tienanmen Square and how their government is evil, don’t bother lol.
Do you think maybe that’s possibly a bad thing?
From my experience, it’s a place for lighthearted fun.
I hated using Instagram and Facebook because of the toxic right-wingers always starting shit.
So imagine my surprise when these right-wing instigators actually get banned when I report them on RedNote.
Get wrecked idiots, finally a social app with an actual code of conduct.
This is the irony of it all. People are encountering Chinese censorship and realizing they prefer it over American censorship. XD
Ridiculous. I’ve seen comments removed from tiktok for using the word dumb, but some right wing Russian bot comes along and says the most evil, vile shit you’ve ever seen and you report it and the moderators always just happen to not find anything wrong with it. That’s not ‘American censorship’ that’s bullshit.
That’s literally American censorship and you can see the same pattern on all large American social media platforms. Youtube has the gamer to fascist pipeline set up with their recommendation system. Facebook recently did an “about face” which was really just making official their love of fascism. Twitter… is twitter. The capitalist class has always been fine with fascism and the platforms they own reflect that. Language is policed more than fascist rhetoric because advertisers don’t like the language.
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Damn, who could’ve seen that circus coming while honking its way over here? Not me.
Well color me constipated, because no shit.
I suppose the real question is whether most users will balk at this and move to a new platform, or just accept it.
My bet is that they’ll just accept it.
It would be interesting to see what the effects are. I’ve heard that TikTok is the only mainstream social media where leftist content isn’t attenuated by the algorithm. Don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it is, and if we assume Red Note is similar in that regard, and if you bet right, they’ll keep getting exposed to leftism without corpo platforms being able to stop it. Unless they do another ban. I’m curious whether there would be a point when the TikTok > Red Note users would realize that and refuse to go back to the corpo propaganda machines.
Out of curiosity, what leftist content do you see there that the “western” social media sites won’t allow on their platform?
I don’t think it’s so much that western social media “won’t allow” leftist content, you can certainly post it and share it, but the algorithms aren’t going to do anything to help it gain traction.
Pretty much all of my Facebook friends skew liberal, leftist, even pretty hardcore socialist and communist. They share their memes and post about politics, and I like and interact with that stuff in positive ways. The few political pages I follow myself are pretty much all left leaning causes- environmentalism, pages devoted to voting out Republican candidates in my local elections, LGBTQ rights, atheism, etc. and I actively block, unfollow, and when appropriate report (though of course the reports never seem to go anywhere) any sort of of homo/trans-phobic, racist, bullshit and any misinformation I come across.
I’m just about the furthest right of anyone on my Facebook, and I’m still pretty far left. I have a few hobbies and interests and such that tend to skew right-wing, like hunting, fishing, guns, etc. but I don’t really interact with any pages relating to any of that on Facebook, don’t post about those things, etc. and the way I approach and interact with those sorts of activities is very different than the way most conservatives do.
If you looked at my ads and recommendations though, you’d think I was some kind of truly insane redneck. Gun stuff, weird Christian tradwife quiver-full homesteader shit, very thinly veiled racism, homophobia, etc, muscle cars and big trucks (I think muscle cars are stupid, I do like trucks but not the big lifted monster trucks that it’s always showing me, I think a stock maverick is pretty damn close to perfect)
The only left wing stuff I see is stuff my friends are sharing themselves, and mostly it’s stuff they’ve posted themselves and not shared from anywhere else on Facebook. Their stuff’s mostly not getting taken down, but it’s not getting promoted to any wider audience by the algorithm.
I dunno, you have a favorite pickup truck. I have a hard time believing you’re on the left.
Yeah, fuck me for having an opinion on something I frequently find myself needing to use.
No, in an ideal world, a truck shouldnt be anyone’s primary transportation. Privately owned passenger vehicles in general should be a rarity and most people’s needs should be served by public transportation.
However, sometimes you need a truck, they do exist to serve the purpose of moving large or bulky things that you can’t with other vehicles, they’re not just for idiots to waste gas driving getting groceries or for idiots to go play in the mud. And people tend to develop opinions on the tools they use. I have a favorite hammer, I have opinions on computer operating systems, a preferred style of cabinet hinges, and opinions and preferences on countless other things.
And it happens that I like trucks. I don’t own a truck, it’s not a practical vehicle for my everyday needs, but I borrow them frequently from friends and family and rent them on occasion. And the maverick is my preferred truck for when I need one.
Ya know, Pick Up Trucks aren’t inherently evil (though I’d argue many current designs are rather destructive in several ways), and there’s, like, lefty farmers, contractors, non-city people, etc. I think policing what people are allowed to like will get us nowhere.
The Toyota Hilux is the People’s Truck!
Powering insurgence globally.
Who is policing? I’m just saying you’re a random entity on the internet who also fanboys over a low visibility, polluting, death machine. Then you go on about how you’re actually pretty far left…could easily be a big old case of the lady doth protest too much (akin to the protonmail guy walking back his maga nature with “I’m left on some issues, right on others”).
All I said is I don’t buy this facade you have.
You are policing, that was my point.
Liking the concept of a small, utilitarian pick up doesn’t make you right wing. Liking big pick ups might make you a bit misguided in my eyes, but still doesn’t mean you can’t be on the political left.
I am vegan, and could very easily make arguments why you are unethical and aren’t “properly” left wing if you aren’t. I just don’t think that it’s productive, and that you can’t nail down a person’s whole world view over some general issue like this.
This is hownit works. On algorithm-driven platforms you don’t have to ban anything. You can both allow it, and have it not reach any meaningful audience. It’s brilliant really.
A lot of advertisers pulled out of Facebook, so you get the ones going for the target audience.
Pro Palestine opinions get you banned, or de-prioritized on Facebook.
Pro Luigi content gets you a ban on all major US social media.
Mmmm, I see plenty of people supporting Luigi and not getting banned.
For example: https://www.businessinsider.com/luigi-mangione-content-meta-facebook-instagram-youtube-tiktok-moderation-2025-1?op=1
That is one story running covering the ongoing removal of pro-Mangione content. It was an isolated incident.
Well, the billionaires do want to keep things under control. They know their power is fragile.
My bet is that they’ll just accept it.
People won’t care until they or an issue they care about is censored.
