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Reddit, Banned In China, Is Reportedly Set To Land $150 Million Investment From a Chinese Censorship Powerhouse (gizmodo.com)
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.
Well, at least I don't have to wonder anymore why I was perma-banned for posting "I think Xi Jinping may be overrated."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
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.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Which is why if the new Chinese investors try to impose their censorship stuff on Reddit, they will lose their money as all the users bugger off to somewhere else.
I'm sure they're not stupid, and are well aware of that too.
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!
So you're OK with the US government dictating what US companies do then?
Hmm, sounds suspiciously like you're a communist. Also confused about who makes the rules in your country.
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.
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.
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.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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.
In the real world the US government is the agent of big business and cartels, not the other way around.
Why is Snark Required?
I never gave a fuck about Reddit and this doesn't change my position
The A/C above would like to turn that on it's head though. Clearly a communist.
Hopefully. China is increasingly growing more powerful, influential, and interconnected with the rest of the world. Love or hate the Communist Party of China and their authoritarianism and human rights stance, they're a major player on the world stage. It would be chilling if a country as increasingly powerful as China was able to get the IP information of those posting comments anti-CPC comments, and could then trace those comments to individuals. I do not trust Chinese investment in social media platforms.
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.
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.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
See r/reclassified 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.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Because the democrats are the party of the illegals?
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?
"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.
It's about censorship, filtering news and control of the narrative.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
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.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
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. Streisand effect and all that...
It's not censorship if you (and everyone else) refuse to engage with someone because they're an arsehole.
That's what's known as consequences. Parents teach their children about it before they go to school.
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".
Corporate Progressive nazi assholes...
Aaaand there we go.