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ByteDance is able to achieve a host of features in their products because of the size of their content moderation team.Īre companies outsourcing censorship to third-party companies? To some degree, a Chinese tech company's censorship mechanism determines the kind of social media product they can offer. If the profitability of your product isn't there yet, you won't be able to expand your censorship staff drastically. Why aren't other tech companies hiring more censors, then? When I worked for Weibo, they only hired about 200 censors. I think Weibo's content moderation apparatus is just 10% of ByteDance. Though they boast their AI capabilities, they spend the most on manpower moderating content they have at least 10,000 content moderators in Tianjin alone. One reason why ByteDance has become so successful is that it hires the most censors among all social media companies. Liu: Human censors are still a critical part of it. Protocol: Can social media platforms achieve censorship largely through technology, or is it still a labor-intensive undertaking? The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and sequencing. Liu has recently made public over 1,000 internal memos that he saved while working on Weibo's content moderation team, as well as government directives and lists of censored content he received while working at Le.com, a Beijing-based video streaming company. Liu is currently an editor at China Digital Times, a U.S.-based publication tracking censorship in China. Protocol spoke about these evolving censorship measures with Liu Lipeng, who worked as an internet censor and a content quality manager at several Chinese tech companies, including Weibo, for nearly 10 years. Last weekend, Chinese web users reported that "lie flat," a popular term referring to the retreat from the rat race in protest against cutthroat competition, had been censored. In the weeks leading up to the June 4 anniversary this year, analysts who track censorship in China have observed an uptick in censorship activities that seemed rather random, as well as an elevated level of punishment for speech infractions. As Protocol | China has reported, several major hate campaigns led by ultra-nationalist influencers, or "Red Vs," have triggered widespread censorship in recent months. The moves felt familiar, but censorship has been tightening nevertheless. Weibo users reported account deletions or suspensions after they shared images of candles, even when they didn't mention a specific event or cause. Internet companies prevented users from sharing content " due to maintenance." The candle emoji disappeared from WeChat's default emoji collection. Social media users and even video gamers discovered they were not able to change profile images. This year, web users found it to be business as usual. Each year, around the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests and ensuing crackdown, censorship tightens in China.