<
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211109/09075447909/chinese-internet-companies-are-censoring-people-who-write-speak-tibetan-uyghur-lending-hand-to-chinas-cultural-genocides.shtml>
"Techdirt has reported on the oppression of Tibetans by the Chinese authorities
for 15 years now. More recently, the Turkic-speaking Uyghurs in Xinjiang have
come in for the same treatment, with the apparent aim of breaking their spirit
and imposing total obedience. But alongside the hundreds of prisons and
physical repression — sometimes leading to deaths — the Chinese authorities
have been making it increasingly hard for Tibetans and Uyghurs to preserve
their distinctive, non-Han cultures. Now Chinese Internet companies are lending
a hand to these cultural genocides, reported here by Protocol:
First it was Talkmate, a language-learning app that partners with UNESCO,
that posted via its official Weibo account that it had "temporarily" taken
down Tibetan and Uyghur language classes "due to government policies." There
is no set date for them to return.
On some services, even people who already speak those languages aren't allowed
to write them. The popular Chinese streaming service Bilibili has banned
comments posted in Tibetan and Uyghur:
Screen recordings shared by Fergus Ryan, a senior analyst with ASPI's
International Cyber Policy Centre, showed that when he tried to type
comments in Uyghur and Tibetan, he received error messages that read:
"Comment contains sensitive information."
Similarly, on Douyin, the original Chinese version of TikTok, whenever
live-streamers speak an ethnic minority language or a dialect, they will
receive a warning to switch to Standard Chinese. And if they don't, Douyin's
moderators will just cut off the stream, regardless of the content."
Via Glyn Moody, who wrote "desperately sad stuff"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
