China is a leading indicator. So was Toutiao. So was TikTok. Twitter is its present.
China is a different People Operating System,
Perhaps, until recently most Americans have disagreed about what “good citizenship” is. Some ideological expressions focus on rights, others emphasize a shared history.
Any “Good American” algorithm would be stuck dealing with this pluralism, computing a minimalistic and toothless version of “good citizenship” algo
To complexify it further, if you’ve calculated what “good citizenship” is, you must then establish what citizens should be required to do, believe, or express following such conception. Maybe this has changed. Is TikTok is a mechanism that primarily targets American demographic/psyxhograic profiles for behavioural infiltration and promotes wedge issues.
In China social media does the opposite.
Table of Contents
Instrumentalization
The instrumentalization of behavior emphasizes data’fication to set standards according to policy priorities.
People control in China there can be very quickly coerced into the daily lives and rituals of its occupants. In America such changes require a bit more finesse.
Let’s discuss:
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has inculcated “consciousnesses” also called “comprehensives” since its creation in 1921. The founding ‘consciousness’ emphasis was on “class consciousness” (阶级意识).
“Four Consciousnesses”
Skipping a few decades to 2016, the recently enacted “Four Consciousnesses” are an expression of loyalty to both the Chinese Communist Party and to its supreme embodiment and emotional representation in the rule of Xi Jinping.
The Consciousnesses 四个意识 transformed the Chinese Communist party from an elite political party into a ‘personal’ party. Although these don’t translate well into English and there are not exact linguistic and cultural equivalents,
The Four Consciousnesses are:
- “political consciousness” 政治意识 primary consideration of political priorities when addressing issues
- “consciousness of the overall situation” 大局意识 the overarching priorities of the Party and government
- “consciousness of the core” 核心意识 meaning to follow and protect Xi Jinping as the leadership “core”
- “compliance consciousness” 看齐意识 referring to the need to fall in line with the Party
(There is also a “reverence consciousness” 敬畏意识 which is a respect for the hierarchical rule of the Chinese Communist Party political structure and defines the roles of subordinates)
TOUTIAO
In 2018 China’s broadcast regulator demanded that Toutiao, a news aggregator app with over 120 million daily users that is owned by Bytedance, put a freeze on uploading services for new account holders and be subjected to a purge of all existing programs.
China’s internet regulator ordered the ByteDance clean up its search engine, saying the search function threw up “slanderous” information on a late Communist Party military leader.
The State argued that the search engine’s results showed inaccuracies on Fang Zhimin, who is viewed as a revolutionary martyr by the party.
In 2018, China passed a law making it potentially a criminal offense to defame or deny the deeds and spirit of the country’s historic heroes and martyrs and ordered Toutiao to “thoroughly clean up relevant information and punish relevant responsible persons”, as well as “improve the search function.”
The app should “prevent information dissemination that distorts, demonizes, blasphemes and negates the deeds and spirits of heroes”
How China gets its news
Toutiao is a popular AI-driven news aggregator that recommends different news articles to users and is a competitor with Chinese search engine giant Baidu.
Tautiao was founded by Zhang Yiming. Remember this name, you’ll see it again and there’s a bigly update, buckle up
A department operation under the National Radio and Television Administration said it was prioritizing action against the platforms in response to…
“fierce attention in public opinion from society about programming at the Jinri Toutiao (and Kuaishou) sites that violated social morals.”
In the weeks and months leading up to the announcement State media softened up the public for the user created content suppression by doing intense and regular features about such issues as false and misleading news.
Rectification Measures
According to the notice Toutiao will be subject to the following “rectification measures”:
- Comprehensive inspection of existing stored programs, with immediate pulling offline of indecent, violent, bloody, pornographic or otherwise harmful programs.
- Ceasing of all new accounts with video uploading functions, and comprehensive review of all existing accounts. Suspension of uploading functions or indefinite blocking of all accounts that have uploaded harmful or illegal programming.
- Investigation of the liability of website reviewers and managers in cases of broadcasting of content that is illegal.
- The uploading of video programming must immediately be reduced to a scale fitting to the capacity of review and management, ensuring that no programs are broadcast that have not been reviewed.
Jiantao (检讨)
Is an act of submission not to social mores and concerns, but to those in power.
Yiming made a corporate (indistinguishable from the Personal) apology addressing the failing of ‘his’ platform and acknowledging his desire to fulfill the obligations of State “rectification measures.”
Zhang confessed that the “deep-level causes” of the problems at Toutiao included “a weak [understanding and implementation of] the “four consciousnesses”.
Zhang mentions the service’s failure to respect “socialist core values,” and its “deviation from public opinion guidance” — this latter term being a Party buzzword (dating back to the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests) synonymous with information and press controls as a means of maintaining Party dominance.
Zhang also explicitly references Xi Jinping’s notion of the “New Era,” and writes: “All along, we have placed excessive emphasis on the role of technology, and we have not acknowledged that technology must be led by the socialist core value system, broadcasting positive energy, suiting the demands of the era, and respecting common convention.”
In the list of the company’s remedies, there is even a mention of the need to promote more content from “authoritative media,” dictating that the Party is unhappy with algorithms that wall users off from official messaging if they show no interest in such content.
China is a leading indicator
The apology represents the tensions between technological innovation and political controls. He is a technologist celebrating innovation and apologizing at the same time for its political crimes.
He is Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey and the political intrusions in his business are the same in ours, the difference being the enforcement agents in America are the FBI and our intel agencies injecting themselves into the body of Facebook and Twitter like a virus.
