YouTube automatically deletes comments that mention some Chinese phrases commonly used to criticize the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Chinese netizens have discovered.
Comments that contain such phrases are deleted within seconds, which suggests it’s the work of YouTube’s algorithms.
One apparently banned phrase is “gongfei” (共匪), which can be translated as “communist bandit.” It seems to date back to the Chinese civil war era.
Another phrase that gets deleted is “wumao” (五毛), which literally means “fifty cents” and is commonly used to describe the army of internet trolls the CCP uses to spread its propaganda online. It’s rumored the trolls used to be paid around 50 cents per post.
The Epoch Times tested both phrases repeatedly under different YouTube accounts and different videos, always obtaining the same result—the comments were deleted in roughly 20 seconds.
Google, which owns YouTube, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The issue was noted on May 13 by Jennifer Zeng, a blogger and creator of YouTube content with a focus on China news and commentary.
She posted a video of a person demonstrating the comment deletion. Others then confirmed the observation. The issue has also been picked up by Taiwan News.
CCP Connection
Google has been repeatedly under fire for allegedly cozying up to the CCP.
Since 2018, Google has been cooperating with a leading artificial intelligence (AI) research body at Tsinghua University, a prestigious Chinese academic institution that also conducts AI research for the Chinese military.
Google also faced criticism after information emerged in 2018 that it was secretly developing a censored search app for the Chinese market as part of a project dubbed “Dragonfly.”
According to insider information leaked to the Intercept, the controversial Google app was designed to link users’ search history with their phone numbers, making it easier for the regime to target dissidents.
Lawmakers, human-rights advocates, and even some Google employees spoke out against the project, which, it appears, has since been shelved.
Google ran a censored version of its search engine in China from 2006 to 2010, but exited after the company said a cyber attack originating from China had targeted Google email accounts of dozens of Chinese human rights activists.
Widespread Abuse
China is one of the worst abusers of human rights, according to watchdogs. In recent decades, the regime has killed hundreds of thousands of prisoners of conscience to sell their organs for transplants, based on extensive research conducted since allegations of the crime first surfaced in 2006.
Last year, an independent tribunal in London, concluded that state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience had taken place for years in China “on a significant scale,” and is still taking place today.
The CCP runs the world’s most sophisticated system of internet censorship, employing tens of thousands of people to manually delete content and make negative or positive posts and comments based on the regime’s instructions.
The regime requires foreign companies that operate in China to censor topics it deems “sensitive,” such as democracy, human rights, and the ongoing persecution in China of Falun Gong practitioners, underground Christians, Uyghurs, rights activists, and others. Companies are also forced to share with the regime any of their data stored in China.
Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai has previously said that the company has invested in China for years and plans to continue to do so.
The Trump administration has placed significant emphasis on pushing back against the CCP, particularly in the tech and cyber sector.
“We need to make sure that our companies don’t do deals that strengthen a competitor’s military or tighten the regime’s grip of repression in parts of that country,” State Secretary Mike Pompeo said in January.
Bowen Xiao, Cathy He, and Nathan Su contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times
