90 Miles From Tyranny : YouTube Censors Criticism of China

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

YouTube Censors Criticism of China




Site automatically deletes terms used by regime critics

YouTube is deleting comments that contain two terms Chinese dissidents use to criticize the government, raising concerns about the tech industry's willingness to censor content to gain favor with the communist regime.

Comments on YouTube videos containing the terms 共匪 (Gòngfěi), meaning "communist bandit," and 五毛党 (wǔmáodǎng), meaning "fifty-cent party," are automatically deleted from the site shortly after they are posted. The latter is a derogatory term referring to Chinese internet censors who are allegedly paid 50 cents for every internet post that they erase.

A YouTube spokeswoman acknowledged to the Washington Free Beacon that the website's algorithm has been deleting any comments containing either of the two terms within seconds of their submission. She blamed "an error in our enforcement mechanism" for the deletions, rather than an effort to stymie criticism of the authoritarian government. The deletions have raised eyebrows among Republican lawmakers, one of whom is calling on the Department of Justice to investigate.





Robert Spalding, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and retired Air Force general, said that YouTube's decision to remove the two terms from the comment section is symptomatic of a...

Read More HERE

1 comment:

  1. After removing 'Corona' and 'China' and 'Wuhan' from a comment I made on You Tube, my comment was posted successfully. Previous to those deletions my comment was not posted even after three tries. Long ago I had learned to copy my comments until after they successfully posted.


    Rick

    ReplyDelete

Test Word Verification