←back to thread

ByteDance sacks intern for sabotaging AI project

(www.bbc.com)
192 points beedeebeedee | 1 comments | 21 Oct 24 03:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source
Show context
lysace ◴[21 Oct 24 18:53 UTC] No.41907169[source]▶
I find it weird that China has a very tight information control and simultaneously over and over again has the weirdest "netizen" rumors that go mainstream.

What's the explanation? That they are explicitly allowed for some strategical reason? Something else?

Edit: @dang: Sorry in advance. I do feel like we got some pretty good discussion around this explosive topic, at least in its first hour.

Folks, keep up the good behavior — it makes me look good.

replies(13): >>41907221 #>>41907399 #>>41907480 #>>41907484 #>>41907535 #>>41907573 #>>41907660 #>>41907690 #>>41907710 #>>41907794 #>>41907883 #>>41907954 #>>41909239 #
erulabs ◴[21 Oct 24 19:15 UTC] No.41907399[source]▶
My explanation is that their tight control is an illusion. Not to get political, but the illusion of power is power, and suggesting they control billions of peoples speech is certainly an illusion of power.

China, and all other (supposedly) top-down-economies, survive only because their control is not airtight. If they were to actually have complete control, things would fall apart rapidly. “No one knows how Paris is fed” and all that.

replies(6): >>41907440 #>>41907493 #>>41907550 #>>41907671 #>>41907737 #>>41908047 #
1. caycep ◴[21 Oct 24 19:43 UTC] No.41907737[source]▶
Culturally, the Chinese population has more of a rebellious streak than people realize. It's a weird contrast - the Great Firewall is there but citizens and often the workers that maintain the firewall seem to circumvent it on a regular basis. Often in order just to function day to day and survive, as noted above.

Also an analogy re how the image is of communist central planning, but post Deng, it's maybe even more of a freewheeling capitalist economy in some regions than the US....(especially in Shenzhen - see Bunnie Huang's write-ups of the ecosystem/economies there)