Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy remember how
Speaker 3: like in the late.
Speaker 2: Nineties, like the Internet was starting to become a thing,
Speaker 2: and people thought it would bring like liberalism and democracy utopia.
Speaker 2: I totally bought into that, Like I you know, people
Speaker 2: look back at that and like, oh, they were naive,
Speaker 2: Like I don't blame them, Like, I think I bought
Speaker 2: into that too.
Speaker 4: I mean, there was something very wholesome about the sort
Speaker 4: of mid nineties internet culture where you could go to
Speaker 4: everyone's like little individual blog and people were mostly talking
Speaker 4: about their hobbies and things like that, or at least
Speaker 4: that was my experience of it, probably colored by the
Speaker 4: fact that I was in middle school at the time,
Speaker 4: but it seemed very innocent.
Speaker 3: It was very cool.
Speaker 2: It was very decentralized, right, So now we associate the
Speaker 2: Internet with a handful of tech oligarchs that control various kingdoms.
Speaker 2: Maybe you could even say within the Internet, whether it's
Speaker 2: the medic Kingdom or the Amazon Kingdom or whatever. But
Speaker 2: it was very decentralized. Everyone with their own little sites
Speaker 2: cobbled together and so forth, and I totally bought that idea.
Speaker 3: It's just like, Oh, we're all going to talk to
Speaker 3: each other, we're going to work.
Speaker 2: Things out, and there's no way that authoritarian governments could
Speaker 2: ever control this, and it will finally realize the true
Speaker 2: promise of democracy and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: I totally bought into it.
Speaker 4: Fast forward to twenty twenty six. How would you describe
Speaker 4: the Internet now?
Speaker 2: I mean, the word that always comes to my mind,
Speaker 2: and there are many words, is just this sort of
Speaker 2: like sheer like sort of tribalism and conflictualism on every level,
Speaker 2: right nationalism, racism, bigotry, anti semitism, sexism, et cetera. It's
Speaker 2: just like riven with that, it's riven with conflict and
Speaker 2: so forth. It's heavily centralized. All of the sort of
Speaker 2: utilh and promise I'm like, didn't really pan out that way.
Speaker 4: I would say Cesspool one too. You have to try
Speaker 4: really really hard nowadays to find good and useful corners
Speaker 4: of the Internet. I'm not saying that they're not out there,
Speaker 4: but it is interesting how far we've deviated from that
Speaker 4: initial utopian premise of the Internet. The other thing that's happening.
Speaker 4: We're recording this on let's see January twenty seventh. What's
Speaker 4: interesting is that we're starting to have even more discussion
Speaker 4: about the power of the platform. So over the weekend
Speaker 4: there have been some allegations that TikTok, for instance, is
Speaker 4: censoring Minneapolis video or video of the Minneapolis shooting. And
Speaker 4: that's just after the new ownership took control of the platform, right,
Speaker 4: so they spun off the US business, and now it
Speaker 4: has all these new owners and people are starting to
Speaker 4: talk about, well, maybe they're censoring or even if they're
Speaker 4: not directly censoring some stuff, maybe the algorithm is influencing
Speaker 4: what people see totally.
Speaker 2: And then there's one other dimension before we getting into
Speaker 2: the conversation that I think is very important here, which
Speaker 2: is that the Internet is splintering geographically. Right, So we've
Speaker 2: known for a long time. Of course, people talk about
Speaker 2: the firewall in China and the Chinese Internet, but it's
Speaker 2: not just China, right. We see the UK establishing its
Speaker 2: own rules, We see Australia establishing its own rules. We
Speaker 2: saw the thing a couple of years ago with Brazil
Speaker 2: temporarily banning Twitter, et cetera. And so there's all these
Speaker 2: sort of intermingling of digital platforms and national sovereignty, and
Speaker 2: I really do believe to some extent that a lot
Speaker 2: of the leaders around the world are looking at China
Speaker 2: and a seemingly more controlled Internet like with jealousy, right,
Speaker 2: and oh, we would love to have this level of
Speaker 2: control over our sort of town square, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: you know, some countries of the First Amendment, so that
Speaker 2: makes it very tough, et cetera. But it really feels
Speaker 2: like there's so many aspects of the Internet that are
Speaker 2: sort of not panning out, and people like, we want
Speaker 2: to constrict what people could see, we want to tighten
Speaker 2: the algorithms, we want to curb some kind of discourse,
Speaker 2: et cetera.
Speaker 3: And I think this is going to be one of
Speaker 3: the biggest stories of our time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, with China specifically, there's still a big question, which
Speaker 4: is whether or not the censorship of the Internet basically
Speaker 4: allows it to act as a sort of like safety
Speaker 4: valve that lets people, you know, blow off some steam,
Speaker 4: but not enough steam to actually threaten the regime over there,
Speaker 4: or whether it's actually a tool or could be a
Speaker 4: tool of social change. Because people are to some extent
Speaker 4: allowed to say some stuff. I think that question is
Speaker 4: like still kind of unanswered.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm very excited to say.
Speaker 2: We really do have the perfect guest, someone who has
Speaker 2: written a fascinating new book all about the Chinese Internet.
Speaker 2: We're going to be speaking with Yiling Lui is the
Speaker 2: author of the new book The Wall Dancers. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for coming on odd.
Speaker 5: Lots, Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 3: What is this book and why is it called The
Speaker 3: Wall Dancers?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the Wall Dancers. The comes from this term
Speaker 5: in Chinese which is called dancing in shackles, and it
Speaker 5: was first used in the early two thousands by journalists
Speaker 5: to describe what it means to write and report under
Speaker 5: state constraints, but slowly became viral as a term that
Speaker 5: was used by I've seen like software engineers use it,
Speaker 5: musicians use it, science fiction writers use it. And it
Speaker 5: really resonated with me, this idea of the dance, because
Speaker 5: it captured this idea that to live and navigate Chinese
Speaker 5: society is a dance. It's this dynamic push and pull
Speaker 5: between state and society. It means living in this place
Speaker 5: that's on one hand rich with innovation and yet on
Speaker 5: the other hand, rigidly constrained, and I came to see
Speaker 5: that this dance was most dynamic on the Internet. What
Speaker 5: we know is the space behind the great firewall, and
Speaker 5: the people that I thought were really good and adept
Speaker 5: at navigating this terrain, I came to know them and
Speaker 5: call them dancers.
Speaker 4: So this was the really interesting thing about your book
Speaker 4: and the reason we wanted to talk to you. You
Speaker 4: tell this story of the Chinese Internet through the perspective
Speaker 4: of individuals, rather than say, the Internet platforms that have
Speaker 4: come to dominate the space, or even from a sort
Speaker 4: of state centric point of view. What do you get
Speaker 4: out of interviewing or following individuals versus taking that other approach,
Speaker 4: which you know there are plenty of books out there
Speaker 4: about the rise of Wabo and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: I think the main reason behind this choice was if
Speaker 5: you look at Western news headlines or headlines in general
Speaker 5: about China and trades's technology, it almost always falls under
Speaker 5: one of two binaries. It's reduced to very simple terms.
Speaker 5: One is China the kind of sprawling economic juggernaut that's
Speaker 5: building humanoids and high speed rail and it's place of
Speaker 5: boundless opportunity. And then you have the like techno authoritary
Speaker 5: and oppressive regime where mindless people have no agency of
Speaker 5: their own. And I think the big issue here is
Speaker 5: that the Chinese Internet is always framed through and seen
Speaker 5: through the lens of American national security and economic interests.
Speaker 5: And I wanted to force people out of these tropes.
Speaker 5: And the way to see kind of China and the
Speaker 5: Chinese Internet and all its complexity and contradictions is through
Speaker 5: people and through individual lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you start the book by telling the story of
Speaker 2: a gay man who is able through the Internet to
Speaker 2: build community, find people eventually at a time when, of
Speaker 2: course there was extreme repression. Homosexuality was I think illegal
Speaker 2: at the time. You know, again, this seems both in
Speaker 2: China and the US what probably a lot of people
Speaker 2: were very hopeful for with the Internet, this idea that
Speaker 2: people were going to be able to find community, like
Speaker 2: minded individuals find acceptance in these digital spaces. And I
Speaker 2: suppose in many cases since this happened, But it is
Speaker 2: interesting how in both the global context and the Chinese
Speaker 2: specific context there were similar stories being told.
Speaker 3: There were similar hopes.
Speaker 5: Definitely, I think of the story of the Internet in China,
Speaker 5: at least as a romance. But I'm realizing, you know,
Speaker 5: as you discussed earlier, the story of the global Internet
Speaker 5: was also a romance. The story of the World Wide
Speaker 5: Web was also a romance. I certainly bought into the
Speaker 5: narrative that you bought into. I thought we were on
Speaker 5: this like teleological arc too, towards liberalization, and I think
Speaker 5: a lot of people bought into that narrative, this idea
Speaker 5: that you know, the Chinese Internet, despite the fact that
Speaker 5: the firewall existed very early, was going to push people
Speaker 5: towards greater openness, greater freedom, greater connection, and it would
Speaker 5: just keep going on from there and there.
Speaker 4: So talk to us about what is and isn't allowed
Speaker 4: on the Chinese Internet then, because as you say, it's
Speaker 4: more nuanced than just like outright censorship in many ways,
Speaker 4: although sometimes it is just out censorship and you can't
Speaker 4: say a specific word like tan and men or something
Speaker 4: like that. And I remember, actually now that i'm thinking
Speaker 4: about it, in the early two thousands, when I was
Speaker 4: in Beijing, like the censorship was very obvious, like certain
Speaker 4: sites were just outright blocked. On TV, you'd be watching
Speaker 4: CNN and suddenly it would go black during a news
Speaker 4: story or you get newspapers delivered to you that had
Speaker 4: literally physical like sentences crossed out with a black marker.
Speaker 4: But what isn't isn't allowed.
Speaker 5: I will start off by saying that if I could
Speaker 5: answer that question really accurately, I would be a very
Speaker 5: rich woman right now. I think the reason being, like,
Speaker 5: the censorship ecosystem thrives off of vagueness, right the fact
Speaker 5: that it's vague, the fact that there are no red
Speaker 5: lines is what allows it to function so effectively. I
Speaker 5: will say that it's changed quite dramatically over the last
Speaker 5: few decades, especially since you were last Thera Tracy. So
Speaker 5: you know, back in the day, I would say the
Speaker 5: lines were much clearer. A lot of people would say
Speaker 5: things like no Tianan Men, no Tibet, no Taiwan. They
Speaker 5: would call them the three t's. So censorship back then
Speaker 5: was very much allowed about a dissent against the government,
Speaker 5: criticism of the government, but most importantly, anything that would
Speaker 5: provoke collective action. So if there was you know, news
Speaker 5: of a protest or news of people gathering, or any
Speaker 5: type of unease that might boil into something bigger and
Speaker 5: bring people together into a physical town square, that got censored.
Speaker 5: But over the years, I would say, particularly in the
Speaker 5: mid twenty tens, that's come to encompass also anything that
Speaker 5: veers from the party's ideological agenda. So this is where
Speaker 5: you have statements coming out saying we don't want unhealthy
Speaker 5: marital values appearing on the internet, like we don't want
Speaker 5: I think recently in twenty twenty one, sissy boys caught
Speaker 5: added two things that got needed to be taken down
Speaker 5: the Internet.
Speaker 4: No cissies allowed. I'm imagining like a hand drawn sign
Speaker 4: on a tree house or something.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know, like everything that comes, you know,
Speaker 5: everything that's part of its ideological agenda is now scrubbed off.
Speaker 5: And another thing that to add on there is like
Speaker 5: the excessive flaunting of wealth. You know, that's something that's
Speaker 5: new that used to be all over the interest back
Speaker 5: in the day.
Speaker 3: We need that here.
Speaker 2: It's driving people crazy because they look on Instagram. And
Speaker 2: I remember being, you know, during COVID, and I was
Speaker 2: like in my house and seeing like all these people
Speaker 2: like flying around.
Speaker 3: I got very resentful.
Speaker 2: What about criticisms of the government, But not from an
Speaker 2: ideological perspective per se, because sometimes you read a story
Speaker 2: like someone will have gotten hit by a train or
Speaker 2: a car and maybe the police like didn't do an investigation.
Speaker 2: You see this big uproar. Talk to us about what's
Speaker 2: allowed and how they how the managers of the firewall
Speaker 2: are managers of the rules, not the firewall per se.
Speaker 2: Think about these incidents like just yeah, criticism of government handling.
Speaker 5: Of things again, like I can't say with you know,
Speaker 5: definitively taken down and what's now taken down. I would
Speaker 5: veer on saying that whenever there's any criticism of any
Speaker 5: kind of local official, local government, that's technically looked on
Speaker 5: with great caution and taken down. But how it actually
Speaker 5: works behind the scenes is that some higher level top
Speaker 5: regulators say that the Chinese Cyberspace Administration the CAC will
Speaker 5: write a directive. So maybe there's local corruption in some
Speaker 5: county and news starts spilling out, and whoever is part
Speaker 5: of that regulatory committee will be writing a directive that says, hey,
Speaker 5: downplay this, let's not have this appear on way BOA.
Speaker 5: That will then get passed on to WAYBOS sensors who
Speaker 5: then start scrubbing that off their newsfeed, or it happens
Speaker 5: the other way where WAYBOS sensors aren't even receiving that directive,
Speaker 5: but kind of proactively, like a student who is really
Speaker 5: nervous about upsetting their teacher in advance will just go
Speaker 5: and scrub that off even before receiving that directive.
Speaker 4: Oh interesting, so self censorship basically, yes, So how labor
Speaker 4: intensive is the censorship process nowadays? Because you know, I imagine,
Speaker 4: as you said, directives get made and someone has to
Speaker 4: enact them. But on the other hand, so much of
Speaker 4: the Internet nowadays is ruled by algos and most recently
Speaker 4: AI you could just you know, design an algorithm that
Speaker 4: always downplays political scandal or something like that.
Speaker 5: I would say, hugely labor intensive.
Speaker 4: Armies of wu maao, that's what they're called, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So that specifically refers to the fifty cent army umao,
Speaker 5: but that specifically refers to not necessarily state sponsored actors
Speaker 5: or not necessarily state paid individuals, but people who are
Speaker 5: kind of pumping patriotic content.
Speaker 4: Hobbyist nationalists exactly exactly.
Speaker 5: So you know, there's actually not too much of a
Speaker 5: difference between the wum maao and maybe some of the
Speaker 5: patriotic trolls and insults that you see you next today,
Speaker 5: right to what extent is are some of the people
Speaker 5: who are posting like pro Trump propaganda on Twitter essentially
Speaker 5: the same as Umao. There's this dynamic called flooding, which
Speaker 5: refers to when in cells or a particular group of
Speaker 5: online individuals are pumping just content onto a news feed
Speaker 5: to try to get rid of news that they don't
Speaker 5: want people to look at. And that takes place in
Speaker 5: China all the time. But I think that's different from
Speaker 5: actual employees who work at places like Waybul or Doeing,
Speaker 5: who are just spending every single day deleting stuff off
Speaker 5: the web. And you know, when I interviewed, actually for
Speaker 5: the book, a censor for Wayboo and he started working
Speaker 5: there in twenty eleven. I think he was one of
Speaker 5: one hundred and fifty employees. This is right when waybul
Speaker 5: was founded, and he said, you know, by twenty twenty
Speaker 5: he had left already. They're probably like ten thousand.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is sort of what I was
Speaker 2: struck by reading your book, which is that you know,
Speaker 2: you talk about these people who are maybe they're bots,
Speaker 2: maybe they're paid, maybe they're just naturally impelled to join
Speaker 2: a mob and want to flood something. But some of
Speaker 2: these patterns do not seem distinct to China. It's almost
Speaker 2: like they're endemic to the Internet itself, regardless of what
Speaker 2: the official rules are.
Speaker 5: Absolutely right, we have no sense of whether or not
Speaker 5: these are kind of homegrown, grassroots patriotic flames that are
Speaker 5: just amplified. And you know when I say that, doesn't
Speaker 5: that sound very similar to what's taking place on the
Speaker 5: American Internet. I forget the name of that one in
Speaker 5: Twitter influencer who's kind of been talked about. It's Trump's
Speaker 5: right hand women. Do you know who I'm talking about?
Speaker 3: Laura Lumer?
Speaker 5: Yes, Laura Lumer really isn't there.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna say you have to be more specific because
Speaker 4: there's quite a few nowadays.
Speaker 5: But yeah, Laura Lumer, you know when we read news
Speaker 5: articles on her, it's is she being paid out? Is
Speaker 5: she not being paid out? And you know, that very
Speaker 5: much reminds me of the dynamic with a lot of
Speaker 5: Chinese patriotic influencers, Like they very much earnestly hold the
Speaker 5: views that they're sharing, but is there a cut being
Speaker 5: taken by amplifying those views and supporting those views?
Speaker 4: Since we've mentioned Wabo a couple times now and you know,
Speaker 4: you just gave us that anecdote about the number of
Speaker 4: sensors they had, and they have experienced phenomenal growth. One
Speaker 4: thing I never understood about Wabo is the kind of
Speaker 4: origins story, because my understanding is they were basically born
Speaker 4: out of censorship. So there was unrest in a room
Speaker 4: cheet I think it was, and so a bunch of
Speaker 4: existing Internet platforms either got you know, repressed, or taken
Speaker 4: down completely. And then the founder of Wabo was like,
Speaker 4: I know, this is an opportunity for me to get
Speaker 4: in and start my own platform. I never understood that mindset.
Speaker 4: What was it that he thought he could do that
Speaker 4: other platforms had failed to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So Wayble actually means little blog or microblog, and
Speaker 5: Wabo is shorthand for Sino Weboa, which is the full
Speaker 5: company's name. But before two thousand and nine, honestly, before
Speaker 5: twenty eleven, there were many, many way boys, or there
Speaker 5: were dozens of companies that were all trying to be
Speaker 5: microblogging platforms. So there was a platform called Fanfu, there
Speaker 5: was a whole bunch. There's a platform called renren which
Speaker 5: was not really a micro bloging platform, is kind of
Speaker 5: like a Chinese Facebook, so to say back people people right,
Speaker 5: exactly exactly. And the founder of Sino Weibo actually founded
Speaker 5: what is now known as Weboa in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 5: and he did a sally the same thing as all
Speaker 5: these other companies. He just did a better job of censoring.
Speaker 5: That's really what happened, as you mentioned during the protests
Speaker 5: in Urumji in two thousand and nine. He just did
Speaker 5: a much better job of scrubbing information off the wavebood
Speaker 5: feed and the time and didn't get shut down where
Speaker 5: all of these other companies got shut down.
Speaker 3: It's interesting hearing you describe.
Speaker 2: We did an episode actually his last March with Kaiser
Speaker 2: Quo of the Seneca Podcast. We're talking a little bit
Speaker 2: about how Chinese policy making works and this idea of
Speaker 2: this sort of decentralized centralized like KPIs right. So Beijing, well,
Speaker 2: this was in the industrial policy context. Beijing says we
Speaker 2: want more solar production or more electric vehicle production, and
Speaker 2: then all the provincial leaders figure out what that means
Speaker 2: in the context of their region and then work closeta
Speaker 2: autonomously to satisfy that. It sounds similar to some extent
Speaker 2: with the rules around censorship, especially when you describe some
Speaker 2: of that preemptive self censorship of everyone trying to figure
Speaker 2: out the right level or approach that is consistent with
Speaker 2: the broader level mandate.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: No, that's a really good point and definitely a parallel
Speaker 5: that I would draw. You know, For example, if they
Speaker 5: were to release industrial policy, a tech company ceo will
Speaker 5: then like read that policy very carefully and be like, Okay,
Speaker 5: how can we align our companies direction with the rhetoric
Speaker 5: of this policy directive. The same goes with censorship, you know.
Speaker 5: So one of the subjects that I profile is the
Speaker 5: CEO or was the CEO of this skating dating app Blued.
Speaker 5: And so if they release a censorship directive saying we
Speaker 5: don't want cissy boys on our platform, he's going to
Speaker 5: go and look very carefully at the platform and see
Speaker 5: how are we going to make sure there are no
Speaker 5: cissy boys on our app?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: And so there is definitely this sense of I don't know,
Speaker 5: if you have read Harry Potter, I never.
Speaker 4: Did, I did?
Speaker 6: Did you not?
Speaker 3: I never did? I never did?
Speaker 2: But Tracy will get listeners will get it.
Speaker 5: This analogy really hit it home for me. But you
Speaker 5: remember Dolores's umbrage.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh, she was creepy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: You remember how she would like post these decrees and
Speaker 5: then all of the and she would just post them
Speaker 5: on the wall and then they would be kind of vague,
Speaker 5: and then students would freak out and scramble, and you know,
Speaker 5: people like Malfoy would aggressively over and interpret that. I
Speaker 5: think that's the dynamic.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Think this is an underappreciated point sometimes, but like the
Speaker 4: vagueness in the decrees is done on purpose, right, It's
Speaker 4: so that like you're never really sure what is and
Speaker 4: isn't allowed, and so you do start self censoring. And
Speaker 4: also you know, if the government wants to go after you,
Speaker 4: they can do it because the rule is purposely vague.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And it also means that, like each of these companies
Speaker 5: have these huge keyword databases of censored words, and those
Speaker 5: are extremely valuable. They're like proprietary assets, where you know,
Speaker 5: they that is how they keep their company alive essentially. Right,
Speaker 5: if you have a better keyword database than the company
Speaker 5: down the road, you're gonna have a better chance of surviving.
Speaker 4: So just on the keywords. This is one of the
Speaker 4: most fascinating things about the Chinese Internet, and I think
Speaker 4: a lot of people know about it at this point.
Speaker 4: But you know, internet users are very creative in bypassing
Speaker 4: the sensors, so they're always coming up with codes, some
Speaker 4: of which sound very funny if you don't know the context,
Speaker 4: Like isn't there one horse mud horse mud or mud
Speaker 4: grass horse or something fighting a crab exactly the poo, Yeah,
Speaker 4: there we go. Winnie the Pooh would be the obvious one.
Speaker 4: This is sort of tangential. But do you think that,
Speaker 4: I guess, do you think that kind of creativity or
Speaker 4: like code wording, do you think that's related to the
Speaker 4: Chinese language itself and the fact that a lot of
Speaker 4: the words are very literal and also you have a
Speaker 4: lot of homonyms.
Speaker 5: Definitely, Like a huge part of it is like each
Speaker 5: character can have multiple meanings. So for example, the most
Speaker 5: famous one that you mentioned that emerged as early as
Speaker 5: the early two thousands was this idea of the grass
Speaker 5: mud horse, right, and so grass mud horse in Chinese
Speaker 5: is tall nim mah and just depending on the tones,
Speaker 5: you shift the tones, it becomes taalnima, which means basically
Speaker 5: your mom, And so you know, it became this like
Speaker 5: rally because ironic rallying cry pushing back against you know, authorities,
Speaker 5: her being who overstepping their bounds. But it's funny and
Speaker 5: punny at the same time.
Speaker 2: I do think even like on Twitter, you see certain communities,
Speaker 2: particularly more extremist ones, like you see their esoteric communications
Speaker 2: and you see their code words. But it does seem like,
Speaker 2: especially with the prevalence of very subtle hominems, et cetera,
Speaker 2: the creativity for esoteric expression probably gets taken to.
Speaker 3: The whole new level.
Speaker 5: Definitely, definitely. Though, an interesting dynamic that I'm now seeing
Speaker 5: is that a lot of the terms that are being
Speaker 5: used on the Chinese Internet are actually, you know, echoing
Speaker 5: a lot of the sentiment that of the terms that
Speaker 5: are being used in the American Internet. One term that
Speaker 5: I've noticed come up, it's not hugely viral in either
Speaker 5: place yet, is this idea of the NPC? Oh yeah,
Speaker 5: the non player character. And I didn't realize this was
Speaker 5: like resonating on both sides.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Do you know that when the big Chess party or
Speaker 2: are you familiar with that term, or the three D
Speaker 2: Chess party or something like that.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure There's.
Speaker 2: One I like that I saw that I started using,
Speaker 2: which is people who are so defensive of the leadership
Speaker 2: that every everything they say, it's like, no, no, you
Speaker 2: don't get it. They're playing five D chess, right, And
Speaker 2: so I think the term was a big chess party
Speaker 2: or something like that.
Speaker 3: I think we need to we need to start incorporating
Speaker 3: that war because.
Speaker 4: It's a good one.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But actually, on this note, how difficult is it to
Speaker 4: keep track of all the different code words or to
Speaker 4: learn the new code words? Because you know, on the
Speaker 4: one hand, if you're saying Winnie the Pooh and instead
Speaker 4: of sheshin ping or something like that, it allows you
Speaker 4: to perhaps bypass censorship. But on the other hand, if
Speaker 4: you're talking in code constantly, I imagine it means some
Speaker 4: people like just aren't getting the message. It's not resonating
Speaker 4: with a certain sector of society. So how difficult is
Speaker 4: it and what are the pros and cons of having
Speaker 4: to keep up with all these keywords constantly?
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I mean it's hugely difficult. It just means that
Speaker 5: these words become more and more obscure. You know, I'm
Speaker 5: someone who has made a career out of studying the
Speaker 5: Chinese Internet, and I'll often read social media posts and
Speaker 5: have no idea what's going on, and their entire teams.
Speaker 5: There's actually this excellent team called China Digital Times, nonprofit
Speaker 5: organization that they have a lex icon exactly exactly, and
Speaker 5: I have to consult that because sometimes I'm reading stuff
Speaker 5: and I have no idea what it's referring to.
Speaker 6: Huh.
Speaker 2: I want to get into more of this sort of
Speaker 2: like understand especially like how American or internationally we might
Speaker 2: learn more generally about what's going on the Chinese Internet.
Speaker 3: But before we get to that, I.
Speaker 2: Want to ask, there is this trope or this thing
Speaker 2: that gets repeated a lot, and you heard it a
Speaker 2: lot in the TikTok debates, and it's smacks of a
Speaker 2: certain racism or exoticism or orientalism, et cetera, where people say, oh,
Speaker 2: on American TikTok, they're all like, it's all a bunch
Speaker 2: of garbage and rage, bait and slop. But on the
Speaker 2: equivalent in China, it's they're learning mathematics and learning how
Speaker 2: to play violin and all these sort of stereotypical things.
Speaker 2: Can you talk to us just a little bit about
Speaker 2: like how similar dissimilar. Do these platforms feel from a
Speaker 2: sort of day to day content standpoint setting aside sensitivity
Speaker 2: is about politics.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I'm like kind of torn about that
Speaker 5: statement because on one hand, it kind of like glorifies.
Speaker 5: I mean, depending on who you're like at who's saying
Speaker 5: those statements, right, you're either glorifying and kind of like
Speaker 5: projecting a lot to the Chinese. And it really reveals
Speaker 5: more about I would say, like American conservative anxiety about
Speaker 5: what's appearing on their own Internet and projections, because the
Speaker 5: Chinese Internet is full of like crazy slop too, at least, is.
Speaker 3: What I'm like get.
Speaker 2: My assumption is that the gap is like massively overstated.
Speaker 2: But I've never you know, exactly seen whatever the Chinese
Speaker 2: version the original tiktoge, so I just have no sense
Speaker 2: like how real these stereotypes.
Speaker 5: Are whatever exactly Like when a young student, you know,
Speaker 5: in China is just like scrolling through Doeing, They're not
Speaker 5: just getting wonderful math content. It's going to like help
Speaker 5: them excel at school. But what I will say is
Speaker 5: that definitely within the Chinese censorship context, there is this
Speaker 5: emphasis on what the party likes to call positive energy
Speaker 5: so it is definitely much more sanitized than American social
Speaker 5: media platforms, Like you are not going to see quote
Speaker 5: unquote unhealthy marital values or like that is taken down right.
Speaker 5: And so while on one hand, I don't want to
Speaker 5: say like they're completely different, they definitely are different in
Speaker 5: terms of, you know, what appears there and what does.
Speaker 4: It Since you mentioned students, have we seen any efforts
Speaker 4: by the party to I guess crack down on internet
Speaker 4: use in general? And I'm thinking back to, you know,
Speaker 4: the video game crackdown, where there was, you know, a
Speaker 4: sense or a directive that kids were spending too much
Speaker 4: time playing video games and they should be learning important
Speaker 4: and useful things. Do you see a similar attitude towards
Speaker 4: the internet just out of curiosity?
Speaker 5: Not as much, but I would say the video game
Speaker 5: piece is the one that you know comes to mind
Speaker 5: when you bring it up. I think the issue being
Speaker 5: the Internet is just such a vital part of daily
Speaker 5: operation and just getting around. Like you can't really tell
Speaker 5: a young person to get off we chat if that's
Speaker 5: both how he communicates with his mom and his teacher,
Speaker 5: you know, and to buy basic goods. But you can say, well,
Speaker 5: let's get rid of video games for X amount of
Speaker 5: hours every weekday. Because that's clearly.
Speaker 2: That if I spoke Chinese, could I open up a
Speaker 2: Weba account from here? Would it be easy to just
Speaker 2: start joining us posting with them?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, definitely talk to.
Speaker 3: Us about I should do that.
Speaker 2: That's a good reason to learn Chinese, which is one
Speaker 2: of my twenty twenty six goals is to start taking lessons.
Speaker 3: So thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: Talk to us about that five minute period in history
Speaker 2: in which TikTok was banned in the United States and
Speaker 2: suddenly there was a flood of American users to that
Speaker 2: other red note or something like that.
Speaker 3: I forgot what was called.
Speaker 2: Well, talk to us about that experience and whether anything
Speaker 2: interesting emerged from that. There was ten days where that.
Speaker 3: Happened or whatever.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was an incredible moment. I remember it very clearly.
Speaker 5: But essentially there was news impending news that TikTok would
Speaker 5: get banned in the US and all these teto.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but in.
Speaker 5: Lead up to that, TikTok users were freaking out, and they,
Speaker 5: essentially I think millions of American TikTok users started to
Speaker 5: flood red Note or as it's known in China's Yahongshu,
Speaker 5: which is you know, people call it China's Instagram, but
Speaker 5: that's not quite the right equivalent. It's almost this Instagram
Speaker 5: meets Pinterest meets Yelp type social media platform mostly used
Speaker 5: by young urban women. It has a slightly more liberal
Speaker 5: bent to like catch up on lifestyle and news. Now
Speaker 5: it's all kinds of news. But I was both on
Speaker 5: one hand, struck by the irony of the situation. You know,
Speaker 5: that the American Internet had somehow become so closed and
Speaker 5: siloed and controlled that the way to escape it was
Speaker 5: to then jump to argue because it's sort of like it.
Speaker 2: Was sort of like a reverse Berlin Wall moment in
Speaker 2: which the West, the West Germans were the ones flooding
Speaker 2: into the other side after this, uh, I don't know,
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 3: It was very yeah, exactly exactly right.
Speaker 2: It's like these were the ones that had the restriction
Speaker 2: placed on US America, and so then there suddenly like
Speaker 2: we spill out, find a new hole in the wall
Speaker 2: to spill over onto the other side.
Speaker 5: Exactly, which is why they were you know, like I
Speaker 5: think American users were looking for their Chinese spies kind
Speaker 5: of ironically and Chinese users were teaching them how to
Speaker 5: get around red note sensors. But I think like key
Speaker 5: to that was just like I felt a lot of
Speaker 5: delight from that moment because it was the first time
Speaker 5: there was this like really sincere and earnest exchange between
Speaker 5: users on both sides of the Internet, and I hadn't
Speaker 5: felt that and seen that in years, if not decades.
Speaker 4: So one of the debates that's constantly ongoing when it
Speaker 4: comes to TikTok is what the algorithm is doing and
Speaker 4: what can it's actually surfacing. What are the like parallels
Speaker 4: with I guess censorship in China or where do you
Speaker 4: see key differences in terms of what the algo can
Speaker 4: do to influence the general population.
Speaker 5: So you mean, like between the algorithm in China and
Speaker 5: the algorithm in the US, I would say that, you know,
Speaker 5: the algorithms, it's always really hard to say to what
Speaker 5: extent the algorithm is playing a role in censorship censorship
Speaker 5: of the content, right, And I think that's one of
Speaker 5: the big issues or that the big criticisms it's playing
Speaker 5: out right now with this TikTok sale. Even though vast
Speaker 5: majority of the ownership is American, the algorithm is still
Speaker 5: owned by Byte Dance. So to what extent does bite
Speaker 5: Dance still have influence over what American users are seeing.
Speaker 5: That's up to question. I think the difference is in
Speaker 5: China there's just a lot more tools externally to kind
Speaker 5: of control at what happens after that. It doesn't matter
Speaker 5: how the algorithm is dictating what appears on the feeds.
Speaker 5: You know, there's still content moderators who can come in
Speaker 5: and deal with the content that is posted online after
Speaker 5: you know it's already posted.
Speaker 4: Joe, I feel like I need to make a public
Speaker 4: service announcement, actually a public service announcement recognizing someone for
Speaker 4: their public service, which is Sam Row, who does the
Speaker 4: dirty work of trawling through TikTok on a daily basis
Speaker 4: and then cross posting the good videos onto Instagram for
Speaker 4: everyone who doesn't actually have TikTok like.
Speaker 3: Me, people should follow him.
Speaker 4: He'd genuinely a public service.
Speaker 2: Genuinely, I want to go back to this sort of
Speaker 2: kind of where we started at the beginning. But I
Speaker 2: think it's a question of some pretty significant stakes, you know.
Speaker 2: So you talk about the rise of the sort of
Speaker 2: like very nationalistic impulse that you see on the Chinese
Speaker 2: Internet these days. She again very similar to here, And
Speaker 2: I would say, and many people would agree that if
Speaker 2: you look at the US government right now, you're like
Speaker 2: the pathologies, the dysfunctions, et cetera. It's like almost downstream,
Speaker 2: like the Internet has shaped the US government in many respects.
Speaker 2: Max Reid, who we've had on the podcast, who has
Speaker 2: a really good newsletter, talked about how it's like the
Speaker 2: comment section is one and all of the people who
Speaker 2: are in power in the US government are the people
Speaker 2: who like ten years ago were angry about having been
Speaker 2: banned from the comment section, and now they have the
Speaker 2: last laugh on everyone else because now they hold the
Speaker 2: levers of power. Talk to us about the emergence of
Speaker 2: the sort of strong nationalistic undercurrent on the Chinese Internet.
Speaker 2: When did that like start to emerge and how does
Speaker 2: that sort of like reinforce the political direction of travel
Speaker 2: within Chinese politics.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would say, similar to what has happened in
Speaker 5: the US, that patriotic undertone has always been there as
Speaker 5: early as like the pre Internet period of like the
Speaker 5: eighties and nineties of people who you know, perhaps we're
Speaker 5: speaking of a patriotic China in the more a liberal sense.
Speaker 5: They wanted strong men rule. They didn't want you know,
Speaker 5: a lot of the leftists in China, as we think
Speaker 5: about them in China and not in the US, wanted
Speaker 5: you know, China not to be kind of swept up
Speaker 5: by liberal influence. It needed a strong state to be
Speaker 5: in charge of the economy. But I would say, similar
Speaker 5: to the US, that nationalist voice was very fringe. It
Speaker 5: was niche. It was kind of seen as radical. So
Speaker 5: you know, as early as two thousand and eight, for example,
Speaker 5: there where as you mentioned, like the fifty cent army,
Speaker 5: but also what was known is like angry youth or finching.
Speaker 5: So two thousand and eight was like a hugely pivotal
Speaker 5: moment for China in that the country was stepping onto
Speaker 5: the world on the global stage as this international presence,
Speaker 5: and it wanted to present itself as super liberal. But
Speaker 5: at the time there were these like very angry youth
Speaker 5: who were online and being like, look at how China
Speaker 5: is being presented by CNN. We're being kind of smeared
Speaker 5: by westerners. But they were small. I would say today
Speaker 5: the Chinese internet is largely fencing. They're no longer called that.
Speaker 5: But you know, I would say in twenty sixteen, there's
Speaker 5: an emergence of what we now call Little Pinks or
Speaker 5: self and Home, and it's like you merged the fencing
Speaker 5: or you merged the patriot with the stan or the
Speaker 5: online found where you know, like.
Speaker 4: What they softer nationalism exactly or.
Speaker 5: Not even softer, but they use the tactics of online fandom,
Speaker 5: so you know, like they use the same tactics of
Speaker 5: like a group of Justin Bieber fans would do to
Speaker 5: take down Justin Bieber's nemesis, where except they're doing that
Speaker 5: with maybe like Taigwan, who's the who was the leader
Speaker 5: of Taiwan. And so I would say there's this like
Speaker 5: fusion of online internet celebrity culture with online patriotism, and
Speaker 5: you know it's not so much different from like the
Speaker 5: Reddit insult.
Speaker 2: Yes, it feels very similar. I just want to just
Speaker 2: to go down this road a little bit further. Last
Speaker 2: year I read Kevin Rudd's book about Shijinping, and one
Speaker 2: of the points that he makes, you know a lot
Speaker 2: of people think of, Okay, she gets into power and
Speaker 2: then sort of takes this nationalist turn, and he makes
Speaker 2: the point that actually the sort of more nationalist turn
Speaker 2: in Chinese politics, some of the anti liberal started under
Speaker 2: the late Hu Jintao years, which makes me again wonder
Speaker 2: whether there was this brewing force, partly cultivated by the
Speaker 2: Internet that was starting. You know that rather than okay,
Speaker 2: Shijhinping comes in and presses the button and turns the
Speaker 2: Internet in a more nationalist direction, that this was already
Speaker 2: an emerging thing, and helps explain Hijinping's durability and ability
Speaker 2: to consolidate power and so forth. That there's sort of
Speaker 2: that it's a bottom up phenomenon is as much as
Speaker 2: it is a top down thing.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, And this is why I keep coming back to
Speaker 5: two thousand and eight, is this huge turning point. And Kaiser,
Speaker 5: who's one of your guests, has made this point a
Speaker 5: few times, which is, you know, in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 5: I think the big thing that happened at the time
Speaker 5: was a the Beijing Olympics and be the financial crisis.
Speaker 5: So at this moment when you know, Chinese people were
Speaker 5: standing up and for the first time, a lot of
Speaker 5: like the Great Firewalls was getting taken down, so a
Speaker 5: lot of Chinese Internet users in Beijing could see the
Speaker 5: news for the first time. They were seeing two things
Speaker 5: they were seeing CNN, you know, posting news about the
Speaker 5: Tibet protests and not covering the Olympics, and they're also
Speaker 5: seeing eventually news of the financial crisis. So there was
Speaker 5: this sense of like, well, you know, we expected to
Speaker 5: engage with the outside world, and instead the West is
Speaker 5: criticizing China and can't get its own ship in order.
Speaker 5: And so there is a sense both among kind of
Speaker 5: ordinary people of this growing patriotism but also the leader,
Speaker 5: which the leadership itself, because they were thinking, well, maybe
Speaker 5: liberalization is not the way to go right, maybe like
Speaker 5: liberalization leads to unruly financial markets, and we need to
Speaker 5: steer this ship in a different direction. And so we
Speaker 5: see both kind of a nationalistic turn but also in
Speaker 5: a liberal turn, and that very much precedes Sejenpingg's rise
Speaker 5: to power.
Speaker 4: I think people forget what a huge moment the two
Speaker 4: thousand and eight Olympics actually were, like actually physically changed
Speaker 4: Beijing and then also changed a lot of Chinese society.
Speaker 4: But I'm still I'm still annoyed that they got rid
Speaker 4: of all the fake DVD stores because those were fun. Anyway,
Speaker 4: we have to get in an ai question. So with
Speaker 4: the advent of AI. A lot of the technology which
Speaker 4: is coming out of China is very impressive. Does censorship
Speaker 4: become easier?
Speaker 5: I would say yes. I mean AI has always been
Speaker 5: It has been long used in Chinese censorship capacity, not
Speaker 5: just with the advent of generative AI. So, you know,
Speaker 5: the sensor that I interviewed, he said that, you know,
Speaker 5: before he even goes in and looks at what's being
Speaker 5: taken down, a you know, automated process first flags all
Speaker 5: of the sensitive words. I imagine that just makes that
Speaker 5: process significantly easier.
Speaker 2: Is there any way to gauge sort of public opinion
Speaker 2: about the Internet or like, because I think there are
Speaker 2: a lot of people in the US again who would say, like, yes,
Speaker 2: this would be great. I would love to make rage
Speaker 2: bait illegal. I would love it if people weren't flaunting
Speaker 2: their wealth. I would love it if there were not
Speaker 2: pornography easily available on the Internet, et cetera. I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people hear this and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: sounds pretty good. Is there discontent with the state of moderation?
Speaker 2: Is there discontent with some of the restrictions? Is there
Speaker 2: no like, is there way to gauge some of these questions?
Speaker 5: They're certainly discontent, but I think it's just very hard
Speaker 5: to gauge public opinion in China in general. I would say,
Speaker 5: broadly speaking, there is like embrace of technological change and
Speaker 5: embrace of technological progress that's more elevated in China than
Speaker 5: in the US. But you know, there are people who
Speaker 5: are unhappy with the censorship regime and people who like
Speaker 5: having those controls. I will say, at the heart of
Speaker 5: that kind of debate or that envy is just like,
Speaker 5: what are the governance mechanisms that we can put in
Speaker 5: place at this moment with AI? Right, I think everyone's
Speaker 5: freaking out about this uncontrollable new technology. In China at
Speaker 5: the very least seems to have a governance mechanism in place. So,
Speaker 5: for example, there is a algorithm registry where essentially every
Speaker 5: single company that has an AI tool needs to submit
Speaker 5: their algorithm to authorities and that is then listed in
Speaker 5: a public registry. And no equivalent of that exists in
Speaker 5: the US. And that's actually I think, you know, that's
Speaker 5: actually a pretty interesting form of governance and maybe something
Speaker 5: that other countries can learn from.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, people have criticized algoes here for being
Speaker 4: essentially black boxes just coming. I guess, full circle back
Speaker 4: to our intro. The surprising thing here is, you know,
Speaker 4: the US and the Chinese Internet have followed a very
Speaker 4: similar evolution, despite very different governance regimes. So I think
Speaker 4: to some extent, you could imagine, all right, Chinese Internet
Speaker 4: heavily censored. Obviously there's going to be a surge of nationalism, right,
Speaker 4: whereas in the US. I guess maybe it's more surprising.
Speaker 4: But what's your overarching thesis for why we sort of
Speaker 4: ended up in the same place despite having very different systems.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean that's a good question. I would say, first,
Speaker 5: we were pretty naive about the fact that technology even
Speaker 5: moves in the direction of freedom, Right, that's kind of
Speaker 5: like based on the assumption that's just the direction that
Speaker 5: we're going to go in. I would say probably my
Speaker 5: overarching thesis is that we've allowed too much of technology
Speaker 5: to be centralized within the hands of a few people.
Speaker 5: And it doesn't matter, you know, the US and American systems.
Speaker 5: People often talk about the differences, but actually they're remarkably similar.
Speaker 5: It doesn't matter if it is government that has centralized,
Speaker 5: it's you know, the power of technology in its hands
Speaker 5: or as you mentioned like a handful of tech oligarchs
Speaker 5: right at the end of the day. How different is
Speaker 5: Elon Musk's control over x or Twitter different from you know,
Speaker 5: the Chinese government's control of Weiboa. The whims of one
Speaker 5: man essentially dictates the way a platform plays out. And
Speaker 5: I think that's the key problem, is that we've taken
Speaker 5: this like decentralized technology and made it highly centralized and
Speaker 5: it doesn't matter under what political system that actually takes place.
Speaker 2: One thing that I think anyone who again, the word
Speaker 2: that always pops into my head, is sort of the
Speaker 2: tribalizing effect of the Internet. People start to they hate
Speaker 2: each other, they hate start to hate people who aren't
Speaker 2: exactly like them. Are there cleavages within Chinese society that
Speaker 2: are deepening or widening because of everyone in the mix together.
Speaker 2: Are there sort of demographic aspects or whatever in which
Speaker 2: you could see these sort of team tensions build and
Speaker 2: sort of domestic stability, because I think you see that
Speaker 2: all the time on the American Internet.
Speaker 5: I think the biggest cleavage that I've observed is just
Speaker 5: along the lines of wealth and inequality. And that's like
Speaker 5: another parallel that I'm seeing today. And yeah, the biggest
Speaker 5: parallel that I see is between those who are building
Speaker 5: the new technologies and those who are using and being
Speaker 5: used by it. So, you know, funnily enough, when I
Speaker 5: visit China, I have a very similar experience of when
Speaker 5: I visit Silicon Valley, where everyone who is talking about
Speaker 5: or building or investing in these new AI tools are
Speaker 5: really hyped or you know, like there there's like an
Speaker 5: occasional doomer in the mix, but they're very excited about it.
Speaker 3: They're to build it exactly.
Speaker 5: Like, there's this sense of agency, there's a sense of competition,
Speaker 5: like we are the builders and makers of the future,
Speaker 5: whereas when you talk to just anyone who is just
Speaker 5: using the technology is not aware of how it's built
Speaker 5: or involved in that process. There's this kind of deep
Speaker 5: sense of pessimism or a lack of agency, you know,
Speaker 5: which brings me back to this like NPC meme, there's
Speaker 5: a sense of well, I don't actually have a role
Speaker 5: in this process, like I'm a non player character and
Speaker 5: you know, I have no say, And so that actually
Speaker 5: is the biggest cleavage that I'm seeing, both in China
Speaker 5: and in the US.
Speaker 2: All Right, Elinglu, author of The Wall dancers graduations. Phenomenal book,
Speaker 2: and I really appreciate you coming on outlines.
Speaker 6: Thanks so much for having me, Tracy.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed that conversation a lot, and it really
Speaker 2: was not until.
Speaker 4: I know you like talking about the Internet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love talking.
Speaker 2: About the I love the Internet, even though it is
Speaker 2: to your words, and I would agree in many respects Sussesspool.
Speaker 3: But thinking about how.
Speaker 2: Similar the American and Chinese internets are despite ostensibly being
Speaker 2: very different in this in the legal sense, is like
Speaker 2: probably one of the more fascinating threads I've thought about
Speaker 2: in a while.
Speaker 4: I think, Yeah, I was thinking during that conversation, I
Speaker 4: was going to ask what's scarier an army of Little
Speaker 4: pinks coming after you or an army of K pop fans.
Speaker 4: And it's sort of a facetious question, but on the
Speaker 4: other hand, it highlights this point, right, which is the
Speaker 4: Internet and the way people behave on the Internet has
Speaker 4: been remarkably similar across geographies. It doesn't really matter like
Speaker 4: what group you're in.
Speaker 2: No, I think that's one hundred percent correct. And you know, again,
Speaker 2: the K pop stands as their own tribe, but.
Speaker 3: Probably one of the less harmful ones, right, like probably.
Speaker 4: Like they are vicious when they want to be.
Speaker 2: Joe, I never write I actually I think I tweeted
Speaker 2: about K pop once and I.
Speaker 4: Was like, I'm gonna mute never again.
Speaker 3: I'm muting this thread right away.
Speaker 2: But this is what we do, right, I mean, it
Speaker 2: feels like we as people naturally are drawn to this
Speaker 2: sort of I would say mob behavior, right when presented
Speaker 2: with these new technologies in which we can connect with
Speaker 2: like minded people, whether they share or tastes for music,
Speaker 2: or whether they share sort of national impulses or whatever else,
Speaker 2: this is what most people, a lot of people fall into, maybe,
Speaker 2: And so I think it's like really interesting that for all, yeah,
Speaker 2: for all of this like talk of different rules and
Speaker 2: so forth, that the patterns just sort of propagate everywhere.
Speaker 4: The other thing that struck me, and this has come
Speaker 4: up before in other episodes, but it's the sort of
Speaker 4: you know, people think about China as this big centralized entity,
Speaker 4: and it is to some extent, but the way that
Speaker 4: centralized entity actually executes policy ends up being very decentralized. Yeah, right,
Speaker 4: And I think that's kind of underappreciated how much scope
Speaker 4: individual sensors or individual local governments have to enact specific
Speaker 4: directives and how they go about doing it.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that webo's competitive edge was essentially, yeah, being
Speaker 2: the best at censorship, right, and that was the one
Speaker 2: that survived and sort of anticipating and so forth. And
Speaker 2: so let's say I liked the decentralized internet. That was
Speaker 2: fun going to different people's websites and seeing what they're
Speaker 2: all about. And you could theoretically still do it, but
Speaker 2: it takes effort in a way that doesn't feel worth
Speaker 2: it when you could just have an algorithm deliver straight
Speaker 2: what your sort of ID peels to you, like directly
Speaker 2: in the moment.
Speaker 4: It was a great time. Late nineteen nineties were the
Speaker 4: peak of humanity.
Speaker 3: On ironically unronically.
Speaker 4: That are you really going to learn Chinese?
Speaker 2: So yeah, one of my New Year's resolutions is to
Speaker 2: take Mandarin classes this year, and I will do that.
Speaker 4: I really liked learning Mandarin back way back in the
Speaker 4: day when I did it, because there's very little grammar,
Speaker 4: and I hate grammar because it's nice. I had to
Speaker 4: learn German and German grammar is the worst. And also
Speaker 4: as you learn words, one thing I really like about
Speaker 4: it is it's very literal, so a lot of words
Speaker 4: have meanings that sort of reflect the thing being talked about. So,
Speaker 4: for instance, if you're talking about America, so America is maguo,
Speaker 4: which means beautiful country. So that's sort of like interesting
Speaker 4: meaning is imbibed into these individual words. Or Austria because
Speaker 4: that's my other half, is Audili, which means Eastern Empire,
Speaker 4: which you know, again descriptive of what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Well it wasn't the German is right, Yeah, yeah, it means.
Speaker 4: It's a literal translation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: You know, both of us are pretty big followings on
Speaker 2: social media, particularly Twitter. Wouldn't it be fun as this
Speaker 2: personal challenge? So like, let's start from zero again on
Speaker 2: Waibo and see if we could do it all over again.
Speaker 2: It's like we weren't just lucky, we were really good.
Speaker 2: Let's start from zero and make names for ourselves on
Speaker 2: the Chinese Internet.
Speaker 4: I think your definition of fun maybe differs from mine.
Speaker 4: Show it's like I need to.
Speaker 2: Prove to myself that it wasn't just luck, and I
Speaker 2: need so I need to start from zero and try again.
Speaker 4: Oh man, do it in Mandarin, do a real challenge, do.
Speaker 3: It on hard mode?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, where I have to do it in a different language.
Speaker 4: All right, shall we leave it there?
Speaker 3: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 4: This has been another episode of the au Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 4: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: And I'm Jill Wisanthal. You can follow me at The Stalwart.
Speaker 2: Follow ye Ling Lu. She's at yee Linglu ninety five,
Speaker 2: and definitely check out her new book, The Wall Dancer,
Speaker 2: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet. Follow
Speaker 2: our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen armand Dashel Bennett at
Speaker 2: dashbot and Kelbrooks at Kelbrooks. And for more odd Laws content,
Speaker 2: go to Bloomberg dot com, slash odd Lots were at
Speaker 2: Daily Newsletter and all of our episodes, and you can
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Speaker 4: we talk about the Internet, then please leave us a
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Speaker 6: In