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Ahoy, this is Reddit's despair after the company has welcomed the investment of Chinese censorship lord Tencent.
Not quite.
In reality, it's the opposite. By recruiting the company behind one of the largest and most dynamic social networks on the internet – WeChat chat application – and countless hit games, Reddit has achieved a major blow and accumulated a huge amount of money, which can help it reach a higher level.
But, at the moment, reports in the United States suggest the opposite. Last week, you may have seen a series of negative stories following the latest round of Reddit investments, reported for the first time by TechCrunch, led by Tencent, valuing the company at $ 3 billion .
Triggered by an article by Gizmodo last week, it is feared that an agreement with the "Chinese center of censorship" will lead Reddit to bankruptcy and ruin his morality, well no matter what he has left him . Reddit users, who are not afraid of humor, have already covered the site with banned content in China, including Winnie the Pooh, the cartoon character often used to represent Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Gizmodo called Tencent "one of the most important architects of the Great Firewall" and it is a refrain that has been repeated in many other reports.
I understand'Is a delicious irony; an illicit part of the internet that combines its strengths with a company that aggressively monitors and censors its users. In addition, Reddit is already blocked in China.
But, unfortunately for Gizmodo, the fears are exaggerated and his descriptions of Tencent are at best naive and at worst deliberately erroneous.
Chinese censorship system
Tencent is not an "architect" of China's Internet censorship program by the big firewall. It is one of the many companies that, because of its success, is a prime target for the government, which has little room for maneuver.
Tencent is sitting in an awkward position, of course. It's the biggest Internet company in China – it became the first $ 500 billion company in Asia last year – making it a central part of the government's ongoing campaign to control the Internet space Chinese.
After an unprecedented crackdown on Twitter-like Weibo service in 2012, when the government closed its comments for three days, Chinese censorship became more proactive than reactive. This approach, among other things, leaves few traces and allows Beijing to transfer responsibility to the platforms themselves, who fear the repercussions of the authorities' anger.
This is to say that today's dynamic sees the biggest Chinese Internet companies, including Tencent, responsible for monitoring the content produced by their users and, if necessary, to delete it.
Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, delivers a speech on "Redesigning Reddit" on the third day of the Web Summit at Altice Arena on November 08, 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal. Web Summit.
Censoring social networks is one thing, but censoring WeChat – Tencent's most valuable badet and the best messaging application in China with more than one billion monthly users – is another. Tencent was strongly criticized (and rightly so) for implementing a series of "silent" blocks that, for some terms, prevent the sending or collection of messages by the recipient.
Likewise, it has also removed millions of WeChat accounts as a result of countless government initiatives aimed at suppressing media, badgraphy and unfounded rumors.
These measures of repression and censorship are not false, but Gizmodo draws a picture that suggests that Tencent is complicit in the cleaning of his slate.
The truth is that society, even a society of this size, has no choice when the Chinese government comes on demand. To ignore the convening, or not to act, would cause Tencent – a publicly traded company – serious problems that would not reflect well the shareholders. Meeting these demands is expensive and requires a lot of resources because it requires a new "content verification" division with specialized employees hired and trained. In short, it is certainly not something that companies voluntarily subscribe to.
A rite of pbadage
Tencent definitely does not have control over the agenda, as anyone who has a strong interest in technology in China can say. The company had a poor end to the year in 2018, in part because the Chinese government decided to freeze new gaming licenses.
This prevented Tencent from monetizing its new games list, a situation that caused it to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and see its share fall by nearly 50% between March and October. The gel has just been thawed, with a handful of licenses provisionally distributed this year.
So much for the Chinese government that looks after theirs.
These problems affect all technology companies in China with a significant presence. Being hit by government demands and requests for censorship is a rite of pbadage for Chinese startups, such as a dreaded badge of honor that shows that your service has gained enough influence to be considered a threat.
It's arrived at ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, the current social darling for many American media. Last year, his CEO was forced to make a sorry apology after "too much emphasis on growth and the focus on quality and accountability."
The company has decided to increase the number of auditors of its content (read, police censure) from 6,000 to 10,000 people, a measure likely to appease the government. Still, this was presented as an example, with a number of TikTok applications removed from application stores and locked in the authorities' voices.
Welcome to the club!
But it's not just Chinese companies.
Tencent became the first $ 500 billion Asian company with a rally in equities – today it is worth about $ 425 billion. [Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Choices
Apple, self-proclaimed protector of freedom, withdrew in 2017 all unlicensed VPN from its China-based App Store, at the request of the government. Although, in a rare move contrary to its fundamental purpose of privacy protection, it has yielded to the rules and agreed to store the data of Chinese iCloud users on Chinese soil, by through a government-backed cloud service provider, nothing less.
The difference between Apple and companies like Tencent and ByteDance lies in the fact that the American company has the choice. He voluntarily entered China and complied with the requirements to silence freedom of speech to maintain his income.
Tencent and ByteDance, as major players in the Internet, would struggle to get out of their native China and stay in business. Today, in the era of censorship, some Chinese companies would like to have started in Hong Kong or another area, but few markets have the opportunity offered by 800 million Internet users.
The fact is that they have no control over the demands of censorship and have no way of pushing them back. Blaming them – and painting them as co-conspirators, even "architects" – is misleading.
Tencent actually has a reputation as a savvy investor that can be an badet to non-Chinese companies.
Its capital and advice has enabled Fortnite's creator, Epic Games, to completely reorganize its business to make it the resounding success it is today. Tencent is also the main investor in Snap. CEO Evan Spiegel said he often sought his advice. His other contracts include Tesla, Discord, Kik and many others, which resulted in no censorship.
Yes, Reddit and Tencent are strange friends, but that's precisely the interest of venture capital. The best founders surround themselves with different opinions, perspectives and experiences to ensure that they evaluate all possible strategies. Tencent can give Reddit a unique insight that, for those who use it, can only be a net benefit to the future health of Reddit's business and ongoing service.
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