{"id":7380,"date":"2019-02-11T04:38:06","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T04:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/reddit-censorship-fears-spark-criticism-of-tencent-funding-reports\/"},"modified":"2019-02-11T04:38:06","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T04:38:06","slug":"reddit-censorship-fears-spark-criticism-of-tencent-funding-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/reddit-censorship-fears-spark-criticism-of-tencent-funding-reports\/","title":{"rendered":"Reddit: Censorship fears spark criticism of Tencent funding reports"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div property=\"articleBody\">\n<figure class=\"media-landscape no-caption full-width lead\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" alt=\"A Reddit logo on a smartphone\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/D9CF\/production\/_105595755_reddit.jpg\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\"\/><span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">A reported investment by Chinese tech giant Tencent in Reddit has sparked a backlash on the popular community news site over censorship fears. <\/p>\n<p>Last week <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2019\/02\/05\/raiseit\/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29\" class=\"story-body__link-external\">reports said that Tencent would be investing $150m (\u00a3115m)<\/a> into the platform. <\/p>\n<p>China has a strict internet censorship regime known as the Great Firewall and Reddit is among the sites it blocks. <\/p>\n<p>The proposed funding prompted a wave of criticism on Reddit, which many of its users see as a bastion of free speech.<\/p>\n<p>Most analysts agree that it is unlikely Tencent or any other such investor would be able to control what content is posted on the site but that hasn&#8217;t stopped a stream of memes and protest messages appearing in the past few days.<\/p>\n<p>The Reddit platform allows users to share links on any conceivable subject, which are then up-or down-voted, meaning the most popular content surfaces to the top and is more prominent.<\/p>\n<p>The platform has 330 million active users and describes itself as the &#8220;Front Page of the Internet&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Along with sites like Facebook and Twitter, Reddit is inaccessible in China as part of the country&#8217;s Great Firewall.<\/p>\n<p>The government&#8217;s internet censorship regime uses a series of technical measures to block foreign platforms and controversial content.<\/p>\n<p>China-based messaging services and social media are restricted, with key words and expressions blocked if they express dissent or ridicule senior political leaders.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-asia-china-41523073\" class=\"story-body__link\">How Chinese authorities censor your thoughts<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-asia-china-44557528\" class=\"story-body__link\">Why you can talk about John Oliver in China<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So the report prompted some concerns among the Reddit community that the site may even face content restrictions outside China in the future.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">Winnie the Pooh memes <\/h2>\n<p>In recent days Reddit users shared images of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest and Winnie the Pooh in reference to concerns a tie-up with the Chinese firm would lead to stricter content controls. <\/p>\n<p>In the past, Chinese authorities have blocked information related to the crackdown against protesters in Beijing&#8217;s Tiananmen Square on the anniversary of the event. Search terms such as &#8220;six four&#8221; &#8211; a reference to the date of the event 4 June and &#8220;never forget&#8221; when typed into Chinese search engines have not returned any results.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/blogs-china-blog-40627855\" class=\"story-body__link\">Winnie the Pooh has also been blocked at times on Chinese social media sites<\/a> as bloggers compare the cartoon character to the country&#8217;s President Xi Jinping. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape no-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                 <span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Reddit <\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>One popular <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/pics\/comments\/aokdta\/given_that_reddit_just_took_a_150_million\/\" class=\"story-body__link-external\">post by FreeSpeechWarrior featuring an image of a man stopping tanks in Tiananmen Square<\/a> was up-voted on the site more than 200,000 times. <\/p>\n<p>A separate post from user BonZZil17 said: &#8220;Thanks for the money Tencent, now here&#8217;s Tank man from the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Another, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/pics\/comments\/aokdta\/given_that_reddit_just_took_a_150_million\/\" class=\"story-body__link-external\">posted by ChristopherVDV, shared an image of Winnie the Pooh<\/a> citing Tencent&#8217;s investment had been up-voted more than 37,000 times. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Given that Reddit just took a $150 million investment from a Chinese censorship powerhouse, I thought it would be nice to post this picture of Winnie-The-Pooh before our new glorious overlords decide we cannot post it anymore,&#8221; the post read.  <\/p>\n<p>Still, the level of Tencent&#8217;s proposed funding falls far short of full control. <\/p>\n<p>A $150m investment represents a fraction of the site&#8217;s value, which is thought to be worth as much as $2.7bn.<\/p>\n<p>Tencent, which also operates the Chinese social network WeChat, is one of China&#8217;s most successful technology companies. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-47194096\">Source<\/a> by <a href=\"\">[author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright Getty Images A reported investment by Chinese tech giant Tencent in Reddit has sparked a backlash on the popular community news site over censorship fears. Last week reports said that Tencent would be investing $150m (\u00a3115m) into the platform. China has a strict internet censorship regime known as the Great Firewall and Reddit &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}