I’m not ignoring it, and shit like that really, really worries me. And I’m not pleased with our gov’t trying to try Julien Assange, or that Edward Snowden has had to flee to Russia (!!!) for exposing an illegal NSA program. OTOH, we know for certain that certain keywords, phrases, events, etc. are actively suppressed on Chinese social media platforms and can’t be publicly discussed, contrasted with the very lively debate about viewpoint suppression in American social media. We know, for instance, that despite conservative tears and shouting to the contrary, that Facebook and Twitter were actively amplifying conservative voices, because outrage drive engagement. But a search for Tianmen Square on Weibo, for instance, isn’t going to bring up anything about massacres of student democracy advocates.
I’m not ignoring it, and shit like that really, really worries me. And I’m not pleased with our gov’t trying to try Julien Assange, or that Edward Snowden has had to flee to Russia (!!!) for exposing an illegal NSA program. OTOH, we know for certain that certain keywords, phrases, events, etc. are actively suppressed on Chinese social media platforms and can’t be publicly discussed, contrasted with the very lively debate about viewpoint suppression in American social media. We know, for instance, that despite conservative tears and shouting to the contrary, that Facebook and Twitter were actively amplifying conservative voices, because outrage drive engagement. But a search for Tianmen Square on Weibo, for instance, isn’t going to bring up anything about massacres of student democracy advocates.