Author’s Notes: While writing this article, I came across what could be a much bigger possible issue than we had initially thought. What started with a curious string of events regarding controversial censorship decisions, lead us to something far more interesting. Please note as well that throughout this article, we discuss the banning of certain types of somewhat controversial — albeit legal (mostly importantly) — art.The discussion of this ban is not a reference to the morality or the authors’ personal opinions or otherwise on the art in question. The basis for this discussion is presented as is, and solely the timing of this as it fits into the scope of the article.

Editor’s Note from Nick Monroe: You’d be a fool to believe that China is in isolation from the rest of the world. In our interconnected social media age, China’s influence from the other side of the globe is an important factor to consider for the West. While untangling the Discord dilemma I got in contact with the author. What he pointed out to me struck a nerve that’s at the center of the censorship disaster going on these days. We have no idea why Discord’s terms of service was authored like it was. Can something like a terms of service be influenced by investors? This piece by him is an exploration into answering questions like this. A thoughtful effort of trying to comprehend a system of influence. I’m glad to have helped him flesh his piece out, and the end product here is worth your consideration.

The Big Idea

Recently, a string of seemingly innocuous — yet random — account suspensions on Reddit started me and a few friends down what turned out to be an oddly profound spiral of research. Unlike most one night rabbit holes, this ended up with one of the most horrifyingly latent elucidations that we could have possibly stumbled upon.

Before I proceed, I’d like to say that I’m not claiming any of this is necessarily “factual” in the sense of being the sole, undeniable reality of things. I am not being accusatory, or necessarily pointing fingers with blame, at any companies or their staff. I do know the old saying “correlation does not equal causation” of course, so I want to add a disclaimer that the theories presented in this article are presented as is, based solely off of what conclusions can be drawn from the evidence at hand. There is a possibility we’re looking too far into things, and we’re off the mark; however, I’d like to think that when something happens with the sheer scope and repeated metronome as this, it’s too entangled to simply be brushed off as a mere coincidence. That said, I’m not necessarily suggesting that there’s a singular, wider conspiracy at play as much as I’m pointing out what could be a series of separate events, all connected by a singular, coincidentally overlapping subject, and the importance posed by these events individually. As they say after all, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Now, to reiterate, I could be wrong about one case, I could be wrong about all of them; but the real issue here is that some of this — especially what we’ve found by accident as you’ll see— is demonstrably true. Not every nuance needs to necessarily connect to a singular overarching web for this to be a big deal; and you’ll see why. I admittedly do not have insider information, thus I can only make such assumptions from the outside, based on connecting the dots.

For background, I was stumbling through a subreddit dedicated to the sub-genre of video games called “visual novels”, when I found a post called “Anime Censorship hits Reddit”. The post pointed out the banning of a user who had posted an anime character in a swimsuit; something which has been a norm on subreddits such as r/anime, r/animemes, r/awwnime, and other communities based around the anime medium. It’s suggestive admittedly, but certainly not against any actual policies or laws. Looking through the thread, I saw a number of other users who appear to have been banned on February 8th as well — apparently for no real discernible reason, yet overlapping in the same form of posting history.

Interestingly enough, this comes the same day as an announcement that Tencent — and possibly other Chinese firms — have lead an investment round into the social media company. As expected, this was not met with the warmest of welcomes on the front page of the website, with the following being pushed to r/popular (and similar content pushed tor/all) following the reports going public.

This all comes at an interesting time; recently, chat application, video game store, and Skype competitor Discord found itself embroiled in what’s been dubbed “The Discord Scandal”. To sum up the situation, which is quite complex (especially to those not as well versed with internet subcultures), Discord began allowing certain types of “questionable” adult content on its platform, while actively barring other types. The content in question? Well, that’s where it gets complicated — the Discord ToS describes it as pictures which depict minors, or specifically, a sub-genre of Anime art which pertains to young looking characters. This, on its own, is obviously not really an issue, and would seem like a logical thing from the outside looking in on first glance.

From Discord’s Terms of Service.

So then what’s the issue here exactly? To start, adouble standard was uncovered in the staff actively allowing art depicting minors, or rather, as long as the art in question was “Furry”. I won’t go too into the details of it (Freelance Journalist Nick Monroe has a comprehensive thread detailing it here), but this is very important to keep in mind contextually for the rest of this article.

In the overall, wider scheme of things, the allowance of (or lack thereof) adult content has been a hot button issue within the last year across the internet; Tumblr for example found itself banning “all adult content”, while Steam supposedly began to open its floodgates — before finding itself embroiled in a similar standard of vague inconsistency, not too far off from say, Discord’s. That said, what does all of this have to do with China, beyond the aforementioned investment of Tencent in Reddit and Discord? That’s where things get supremely interesting.

In 2017, China officially endorsed the “Xi Jinping Doctrine” (also known as the “Xi Jinping Thought”, depending on both translation and reporting source; this is similar to and intersects with, but not to be confused with the “Confidence Doctrine”.), a political theory which does two things; first off, elevate Xi Jinping to a status similar to Mao, and secondly, bring Xi’s political ideology not just into the mainstream of Chinese politics, but create an environment in which his policy/philosophy would be actively spread and promoted. Note that this does not just mean domestically; China has a long history of active foreign promotion of Chinese ideals and propaganda. What’s more is that Xi Jinping himself has laid out a plan to make China a “lead, global influence” over the next few decades by encroaching on both the economic and cultural dependencies of the rest of the world.

In fact, back in 2008, it was thought that China maintained a literal army of 300,000 internet posters (for reference, the entire British Army has approximately 82,000 men), whose sole job was to improve China’s standing online and spread narratives friendly to that of the beliefs of the Chinese government. Fast forward a few good years, and security researchers and academics believe that number to have grown to at least 2,000,000. That’s 2 million paid agents whose job is to do nothing but monitor online activity, and astroturf social media to promote the ideals of a “harmonious society” according to the beliefs of the Chinese government. That’s approximately ten times the size of the entire United States Marine Corps. Inside China, they’ve become so pervasive, they’ve gained the mocking nickname the “50 Cent Army” — a reference to how much the government supposedly pays. I thought that this is of particular interest to note, as not everybody reading may be familiar with the exact ins and outs of the Chinese government’s attempt to control information and sway foreign opinion. The sheer scale and size of their operations, will perhaps elucidate just the sheer lengths to which they’ll entertain to achieve these objectives.

What’s more interesting here? Look at the tactics used. Keep this in mind as well as you read over the rest of the article; especially in regards to what is being censored, and how.

Furthermore, because of China’s pseudo-Communist style of government, all mega-corporations are essentially tools of the government; in order for a company of such immense size to remain in business, they need to not just be approved by associated government departments, but also pledge to both uphold and spread the same ideals of the government (which to reiterate would in this case, be the “Xi Jinping Thought”) to retain favor. And as you’ll see later, Beijing has taken a distinct emphasis to this principle in recent times. These ideals, which have been shown to the world throughout last year of course, meaning things such “homoerotic fiction” writers being imprisoned (with heavier sentences than rapists), cartoon artists being arrested, actors being forced into public shaming sessions, celebrities being “disappeared” (see below), and on and off blanket bans on entire mediums of media among other things.

Source: Financial Times.

The irony in all of this? Most of this is barely being covered by western media, while as you’ll see below, Chinese investment firms are slowly eating up the major players of Big Tech themselves. At the same time, we here in the US complain about the violations done to us by our own natively housed companies, who seem to have developed a sudden censorship-happy streak as well.

This is where we get into the true meat of things. Essentially, there’s been an oddly increasing number of incidents related to so-called “problematic content” being stripped from or outright barred from a number of sites. However, when looking into it deeper, there seems to be a simple, central trait shared by all of these incidents; Chinese Investment, or entrance into the Chinese Market. All of this also corresponds to reports that cross-border investment from China is reaching new levels, as there is proof of China actively attempting to move their money overseas. What’s terrifying about this revelation is, as you’ll see, the issue with censorship does not come simply from Chinese companies buying out firms so they can censor them; it comes, sometimes, from companies simply wanting to expand into the Chinese market themselves, and be compliant in doing so.

Let’s take a look into some of these examples, and how they tie into the greater scheme of things here.