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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36582 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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This is hardly a one-off-- there was a nearly identical incident with an NBA player (see https://time.com/5694150/nba-china-hong-kong/ ). There was also an incident with Disney putting a pro-Dalai Lama movie out which China took umbrage at, the result of which was that Disney apologized and promised never to do it again: https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Disney-s-magical-thinking-won-t-keep-politics-away-from-Mulan . I have not bothered to dredge up further examples, but seems like there's a lot of them, and the net effect is even greater given that the way to avoid getting embroiled in similar scandals is to never offend China in the first place.

china having a similar level of 'influence' with many other executives and companies in america due to the very deep trade ties between us

They do indeed have that level of financial influence and it is indeed significant in practice; the fact that China's influence is felt in a huge number of other places in the US economy is not a reason to feel better about China having similar leverage over the owner of Twitter.

EDIT: from incidents where China has exerted leverage in the past the response from American politicians has not generally been anything more than worried hand-wringing. I see no particular reason it'll be different for China exerting influence over Twitter, especially if it comes in the form of Twitter algorithmically downplaying stuff China might get offended by.

As ilforte said, the nba and disney things are incredibly minor and unsurprising (compare to disney's desire to make culturally-acceptable movies in the US) compared to politically censoring one of the main social media platforms in the united states. The latter is something that many maintream publications and politicans, even govt or intelligence agencies, have their eyes trained on like a hawk. If china really convinced musk to censor tianmen square 2.0 on twitter, the reaction would be severe.

The latter is something that many maintream publications and politicans, even govt or intelligence agencies, have their eyes trained on like a hawk. If china really convinced musk to censor tianmen square 2.0 on twitter, the reaction would be severe.

I don't think there's any evidence to say this. What evidence we do have, says they wouldn't care at all. Yes, the situations aren't perfectly analogous, but they are the best we have to predict what the official government reaction would be.

The closest analogy would be 'russian troll farms on social media', though? It's arguably less of a provocation, since they're just creating accounts and posting, instead of 'censoring', but there was a lot of noise about that.

Even for the china nba and disney thing, we know about them because of "mainstream media" reporting!

What if it's not full out censoring but a infobox with a warning, or a mild deprioritization?

What do you think would've happened if twitter put a misinformation infobox on a lot of the Uighur concentration camp content a few years ago, or deprioritized it? There would have been massive backlash. Internal whistleblowers, hearings, investigations, etc.

This is hardly a one-off-- there was a nearly identical incident with an NBA player

? Some entertainment workers deleting tweets and so on under CCP's pressure suggests that it's plausible that the world's richest man may turn his company into an asset of a foreign propaganda?

The degree to which Americans accept their untouchability and superiority over the Chinese as the norm, and flinch when this assumption is punctured, is just astounding and unsettling. This NBA story would be a nothingburger, if not for the implicit «wait, those yellow monkeys got an Imperial Citizen to bend the knee?» gasp. (Notably, much greater and more thin-skinned crackdown from locally powerful parties, e.g. team ADL unbanking Kanye West, is received meekly and with nuanced understanding, or kowtowing approval).

I have not bothered to dredge up further examples, but seems like there's a lot of them

Nah, that's pretty much it, a few cases of low-level hysterics.

from incidents where China has exerted leverage in the past the response from American politicians has not generally been anything more than worried hand-wringing

Meanwhile, some fake news in Bloomberg have become a pretext to wholly eradicate China's premier corporation, and there isn't even a pretext claimed for the current round of sanctions devastating advanced sectors of Chinese economy. All this is accepted matter-of-factly by the entirety of the political class and general population, as the Empire's natural entitlement.

It's okay to approve of this, but please stop the underdog act.

The degree to which Americans accept their untouchability and superiority over the Chinese as the norm, and flinch when this assumption is punctured, is just astounding and unsettling. This NBA story would be a nothingburger, if not for the implicit «wait, those yellow monkeys got an Imperial Citizen to bend the knee?» gasp.

This just sounds like a childish sneer. I'm no fan of the GAE but until recently it was completely normal to believe that your tribe or nation was superior to others. I do think America is better than China in pretty much every way that matters and that American people are for the most part better than Chinese people, mostly because China is so damaged. Applied Marxism and government thuggery really did a number on the (mainland) Chinese. Their culture and morals are degraded. Not just different, but degraded. So yeah, I do find it disgusting when American companies kowtow to Chinese pressure, in the same way one might be disgusted at anyone acquiescing to the demands of the Japanese Empire, or the Nazi State. Perhaps you feel the same about Putin.

It's okay to approve of this, but please stop the underdog act.

Americans can't do this because they haven't woken up to the reality of what China is like. I still hear people tell me about the "huge" "middle class" in China (lmao), how only the government is bad and they're just like us, etc. etc. So they have to invent a story for themselves so they don't feel like they're "punching down." But we are punching down, and we should be. Along with the rest of the West.

Some entertainment workers deleting tweets and so on under CCP's pressure suggests that it's plausible that the world's richest man may turn his company into an asset of a foreign propaganda?

No, you've missed the point entirely. The point is that even if China were to exert influence on Twitter, past events show us that most likely nobody in the government will give a shit.

Some entertainment workers deleting tweets and so on under CCP's pressure suggests that it's plausible that the world's richest man may turn his company into an asset of a foreign propaganda?

Let's make this clear, he's the world's richest man for as long as Tesla's doing well.

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