Doing Business the Chinese Way: Facebook Develops A Censorship Tool
Doing Business the Chinese Way: Facebook Develops A
Censorship Tool
Xiang Wang, CONTRIBUTOR An editorial intern with Forbes
Asia. NOV 24, 2016 @ 07:45 AM
After seven years being banned in China, Facebook learned
its lesson—Do business the Chinese way. According to the New York Times,
Facebook has developed a censorship tool to restrict contents from appearing in
feeds, hoping to re-enter the Chinese market, where many other tech companies
including Google and Twitter failed in the past.
It is likely Facebook would provide a third party with
this censorship tool for monitoring posts, instead of censoring feeds itself.
The company may partner with a Chinese firm, utilizing local expertise and
connections in negotiating with Beijing. A Facebook spokeswoman said the
company had not made decisions on its China re-entry plan.
Now, let’s rewind and shift to Facebook’s fake news
controversy back home in the U.S. Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
outlined the company’s plan on fighting fake news. In his post Zuckerberg
mentioned Facebook’s commitment to “getting this right” and not being “arbiters
of the truth,” where the company does not want to discourage users to share
opinions or mistakenly restrict accurate content.
So can Facebook’s solution on developing a censorship
tool for China apply to the fake news problem in the U.S. as well? China expert
Jeremy Goldkorn discussed the blurred line between fake news and censorship in
China and the different Internet environments of the two countries with FORBES
ASIA.
The Chinese way vs. the American way
Whether it is how business is done in China, or how it
handles the growing Internet concerns, the country has it own
characteristics—the Chinese way. Jeremy Goldkorn, the founder of Danwei, a
China research and media-monitoring company, explained two major ways China
handles fake news.
One method is keyword filters. By setting up keyword
filters, the company could go through posts and servers to identify
misinformation. Another one is the human monitor. Different from a machine
filter, the company hires people to read information online to catch the “fish
escaped from the net” and make decisions on whether to keep or delete the
content.
Goldkorn argues that the Chinese way of handling fake
news is no difference than handling censorship. “I don’t think you can split
fake news and censorship apart in China. The function of these two methods
could be used in both ways,” Goldkorn
told FORBES ASIA.
Zuckerberg’s outline to battle fake news includes
stronger detection, easy reporting, third party verification and more. The
company has reached out to fact-checking organizations and is exploring ways to
label stories that are flagged by third parties as false.
Goldkorn said the setup of media and the Internet
environment in the U.S. and China is fundamentally different. “I don’t think
you can compare the U.S. fake news problem to China’s. It requires something
new to happen to tackle this problem here. It is difficult to know how this
issue is going to be implemented without calling for censorship.”
How Tencent handles fake news
While Facebook is busy laying out plans to fight fake
news on its platform, Tencent, China’s largest and most-used Internet service,
is not a newcomer but an expert in tackling illicit information. CEO Ma Huateng
called for sharing more social responsibilities as an “adult” company after
Tencent turned 18 this month. Its instant messaging tools such as QQ and
Wechat, which have news-sharing functions, have reached 1.73 billion users
combined, close to Facebook’s 1.79 billion users as of September.
“Besides building better products and running the
company, social livelihood and cyber security issues are no longer outside
Tencent’s business,” said Ma Huateng at the Third World Internet Conference in
Wuzhen, China last week.
Tencent has established various channels through websites
or hotlines on handling misinformation. According to Ma, the company has disposed
of 17 million cases so far this year. The company established an official
account on Wechat called “rumor filter” working with several major Chinese
media and professional organizations on helping users to better identify fake
news with a focus on social, health and scienc- related topics. Tencent also
assembled a security management team dedicated to Internet fraud.
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