No, that's not the definition of censorship.
>censorship: the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
It's funny how many people are trying to redefine the definition of censorship in recent times; since Big Tech has grown more powerful than governments in their ability to control information flow. Though I'm glad it seems we have moved past the "only the government can do censorship" psuedo definition that many on HN were so frequently asserting.
The latter is very Brave New World-esque in that it both “keeps the app fun” and acts as a means to suppress dissent. If they have the capability to identify political/protest content, why not label and allow filtering instead of blanket removing all of it from the app?
I don’t judge it as worthwhile to get rid of such a platform for capitalistic soma reasons. I’m even more suspicious when the company is from a country with close government-business ties where the government has openly demonstrated it uses such apps to suppress political dissent.
> I’m even more suspicious when the company is from a country with close government-business ties where the government has openly demonstrated it uses such apps to suppress political dissent.
I agree it's a reason for heightened suspicion but I feel like in this and a lot of stories around Tiktok, the suspicion is close to the only thing there is.
What I don't like about this argument that all platforms, even privately-owned, should be open to political or protest speech, is that the same argument can be used to criticize the moderation of hate speech, conspiracy theories, recruitment for fundamentalist religious terrorism networks, and other toxic social forces. In the US, the law prevents the government from getting involved, so we are dependent on private actors to moderate speech online.
Now if there's something in these policies about Tiktok censoring differently videos of HK protests or criticism of the Chinese communist party vs those of unrelated protests in the US, that would be different. It's not what I've seen though....
"America's got talent" is a great show too, and they certainly select who gets onstage from all the people they audition. Is that censorship? I don't expect that TV show to give me info about protests any more than Tiktok.
Censorship is when the powers of government or the marketplace are such that nobody could, if they wanted, get their message out. Yes there is actual censorship in China that filters anything from group messaging apps to movies, but isn't Tiktok here just defining an editorial line of non-controversial content?