Hah! Maybe this is how I should look at my account being suspended for no reason a little less than two weeks ago. The email associated with this 6-year-old account does not exist on Gmail but cannot be registered again either. Such a bummer since I had good karma and a fairly organized feed.

After explaining this to the admins -- I was still denied access back to my account. Actually, it's starting to grind my gears how stupid this admin guy was for implying that I might be some mysterious perpetrator trying to take over a shitty Reddit account. Even my browsing history (which they have logs for) matches the usual tango; figures.

Whatever!

Exactly. My acc was suspended for saying "violent thing"

All I said was quote VD Savarkar's statement on Cows.

Now note that I've been threatened on reddit and much worse but I do not see them getting any bans or things like that. Stupidity.

I was constantly banned from subreddits only recently (past 2 years or so). When I would ask them to show me the rule I broke, the mods would just say something along the lines of, "you don't have to break a rule since bans are at mod discretion, yada, yada, yada." Basically, I was only offending their delicate sensibilities that they didn't care to share. I finally threw my hands up and haven't been back in months. Guess I should formally wrap it up by finally deleting my decade old account.

Mods for individual subreddits can do whatever they want with their own subreddits. That is completely different issue from the reddit admins that run the whole site.

Correct, and most of the mods I've encountered are very user-hostile. I miss the times when the admins would smack them down for that kind of crap. Oh well, the times they are a changin'!

FYI: You don't need an email address to create a Reddit account. They made it look like you do, but you can just press 'Next' in the modal.

What is the evidence that reddit is taking the 150 million for censorship?

There was a post here that said that reddit was being valued at like $3 billion. Relative to that, 150 million is a tiny amount. Also, Tencent isn't equivalent to the Chinese government. Although the Chinese government certainly has more say in what it's companies can or cannot do, it's not right to say they're the same thing.

If the government wants to use them to pressure Reddit, they can and will.

In this instance, Tencent and the government are functionally equivalent.

Using that logic, the CIA and almost every company in existence is functionally equivalent.

This is just sloppy thinking. You have to show evidence for your opinions. In this particular instance, do you have any specific evidence?

I don't generally feel the need provide decades of historical context in a 2 line forum post. If you lack that context, feel free to ignore my comment and do some research.

You're clearly missing a bit of nuance on the context if you call tencent the same thing as the Chinese government.

You think the CCP would be making investments into foreign social networks that they block? I It makes no sense. There's limited leverage over Reddit for the same reason. Anyone accessing them from China does it over VPN anyways.

>You think the CCP would be making investments into foreign social networks that they block?

No, that's why they are allowing Tencent to do it for them.

You think this deal doesn't have CCP approval? Tencent has an executive Party Committee who's explicit purpose is to make sure the company is advancing the Party's goals.

There are 100 million party members in China. It's a big part of getting ahead.

Of course the deal was approved in the boring sense. Neither that nor party membership mean that this is strategically interesting to the government.

So the largest companies in China going around buying up pieces of social media and entertainment companies around the world isn't strategically interesting?

The Chinese government forced a US company to publicly apologise when their website merely listed Hong Kong on the same level as China in a dropdown.

The government attempts to control the global narrative about China in any way they can. Of course they were involved with this.

I'm trying to get something out of this comment beyond "any international business by Chinese companies is nefarious by definition", and I have to admit that I can't.

I guess if they know their role and stick to manufacturing it's ok?

As far as Hong Kong.. they've got a pretty fair reason to be oversensitive about westerners implying it's not part of China.

What you should get out of it is that Chinese companies are effectively a proxy for the government.

And the Chinese government operates the largest and most effective censorship program in the history of humanity.

So maybe we don't want to sell them a stake in media and entertainment companies.

>As far as Hong Kong.. they've got a pretty fair reason to be oversensitive about westerners implying it's not part of China.

Maybe we should have let the people of Hong Kong vote on the issue.

Regardless, they did the exact same thing with Taiwan.

So you can't think of any reason that the Chinese would be upset about specifically English speaking people implying Hong Kong isn't part of China?

I mean, I get that you don't like them, but at a certain point it becomes willful ignorance.

I know why China is upset about it. They know that a large percentage of the population of Hong Kong doesn't want to be part of China.

And they have done everything in their power to make sure that the Hong Kong independence movement doesn't gain a foothold. From punishing protestors to eroding local autonomy, to encouraging mainland immigration, to manipulating global speech.

This isn't about some disadvantaged country being sensitive because they were taking advantage of by colonial powers a century ago.

This is about a modern colonial power asserting dominance over an oppressed people.

>I mean, I get that you don't like them

Yeah I don't "like" a government that puts millions of people in reeducation camps because of their religion. A government who most likely executes political prisoners to harvest their organs.

I don't like a government that insists that the populations of Taiwan, Tibet, and Hong Kong have no right to self-determination.

If you don't dislike such a government, I'd suggest that you are the one being willfully ignorant.

1997 was not a century ago.

Bias buster for you: what if you applied the same level of hostile rhetoric and numerical exaggeration to the deeds of the other 4 UNSC members over a given timeframe? Or, God forbid, applied dispassionate analysis to all 5?

Let me guess, that's whataboutism?

>1997 was not a century ago.

What was done to China in 1997? I'd say the people of Hong Kong have legitimate grievances against The British government from that year. Not offering them full citizenship for instance. They also have legitimate Grievances against China for not taking their opinions into account

>deeds of the other 4 UNSC members over a given timeframe?

So what? The US government has done bad things, and continues to do bad things. I'm not going to try to defend those actions. "Oh well we imprison too many black people, but China's bad too, so I guess that makes it OK." That's the equivalent argument.

At the same time it doesn't stop the Chinese government from being objectively horrible, (and objectively worse on most fronts), and it doesn't stop me from wanting to limit their influence over my country.

>Let me guess, that's whataboutism?

Yes, that's the definition of whataboutism. Hanging a lantern on it doesn't mean it's not true.

You'll note that I haven't defended anything except sovereignty over HK.

If you only apply extreme rhetoric and exaggeration towards one country, that's bias. At a certain point, all you're saying is that you really really don't like China. Whatever. They'll continue as they are and we'll continue being a house divided against itself that doesn't build anything.

Hopefully we don't start any "just" wars over it. America has a bad habit of doing that.

>You'll note that I haven't defended anything except sovereignty over HK.

You did. I pointed out examples of bad things China is doing to explain why I don't want Chinese companies to partially own American media companies. You countered with: whatabout the bad stuff other countries have done.

If that wasn't a defense, then it was an irrelevant tangent that you had no reason to bring up. I don't go around to threads about the problems with US criminal justice system and start talking about Chinese organ harvesting.

Clearly you aren't here to argue in good faith.

You made a conspiracy-theory-esque suggestion that any given commercial action by any given Chinese company is some sort of commie plot.

It's a tautology. Anything Chinese companies/people do is evil, because China is evil, because everything they do is evil...

I was just trying to expand your mind a little bit with my suggestion of consistent standards. I guess you're happy where you are. Cheers.

You were defending a tyrannical government through text book whataboutism. It doesn't matter that you were doing it to "expand my mind"--you could say that about literally any argument you make, no matter how morally repugnant.

>It's a tautology. Anything Chinese companies/people do is evil, because China is evil, because everything they do is evil...

I listed very specific, "evil" things that the Chinese government is doing. Yet you've decided to avoid those and instead address an imaginary argument that you invented out of whole cloth because it's easier for you to argue against. That's called a straw man.

Once again you managed to invent an imaginary position to argue against. If you aren't able to have an adult conversation, you shouldn't post here. This isn't the place for trolling.

It's just us bro, thread is long dead otherwise.

... Consider those hundreds of millions (!!) who have joined the middle class. Are they your enemy? Should we start another cold war?

What if you tried to think from their point of view?

(And who is downvoting this deep into a dead thread? Some humanitarian?)

>It's just us bro, thread is long dead otherwise.

Which is what makes it weird that you bother to build straw men to argue against in the first place. It's almost like you're deliberately trying to bait me into wasting more time.

>(And who is downvoting this deep into a dead thread? Some humanitarian?)

Your previous response was likely flag killed because it doesn't meet content standards, not downvoted because people don't like your view point.

Maybe I could work on defensive writing a little bit, but then maybe I shouldn't have to.

Want to set me straight on the straw man? Any closing thoughts about the welfare of hundreds of millions of Chinese? After all, that was the thrust of my last two comments, and you've studiously ignored it.

(I didn't notice the flag. Hi dang!)

Sorry, I'm not going to waste any more of my time explaining the concept of a straw man.

That's three times you've declined to say how you really feel about them.

I'm starting to think my 'straw man' was pretty accurate :). Cheers.

Sorry you're apparently not capable of having a discussion in good faith. Since it's just you here, there's no point.

China isn’t the United States. If you think they’re the same...

You're completely ignoring historical context and engaging in whataboutism as well.

I am surprised you thought there was previously freedom of speech on Reddit.

it's a private company, there's no freedom of speech involved. You want a baker to create a cake that says an offensive message, the baker doesn't' have to comply.

What if the telephone company doesn't want to carry your offensive message to your friend? It's a private company, the telephone company doesn't have to comply.

In other words, I don't think your analogy entirely fits here, as Reddit is more of a platform for communication, they're not paying an artist (baker) to create some art. Jus' sayin'

The telephone company actually does have to carry your message, because they are a common carrier and regulated by the FCC.

In other words, you argument is a bit ignorant. Reddit is a private forum that’s allowed to what they want as long as they don’t discriminate against protected classes.

Actually, in some cases, they do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

Internet companies have protection under the law that they can't be held liable for what their users say. IMHO that protection brings with it a duty to allow people to speak freely on their platform.

They can't eat their cake and have it too.

That law is already being eroded in this country in the name of child porn and sex trafficking.