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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.
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.
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.
It has already been shown that a relatively small group runs the moderation of both Reddit and Wikipedia and they have some disturbing beliefs and relationships that no one is mentioning because the MSM 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's head of geopolitical strategy which meant censoring products for the Chinese market. He joined the transgender cult and changed his name to Kate Edwards, then became head of the IGDA and was coordinating with the San Diego FBI to shut down alleged "harassment" of Zoe Quinn in July 2014. Note the date. When the Gamergate scandal broke a month later, Reddit was one of the forums that Shut Down Everything. Four years later, the now heavily censored Reddit attracts $150 million in Chinese investment.