Recently, this year, Reddit took into the platform’s massive investment from a Chinese censorship powerhouse of $150 Million. So, users of Reddit started to criticize this investment with a photo of Tiananmen Square protests from the year 1989. The picture depicts an event of China censors, each specifying regarding this day and now is the site’s most upvoted post in 2019.
A Reddit user, u/FreeSpeechWarrior, has uploaded the job, and here comes the most fantastic part. See how this user has captioned the post in a sarcastic tone.
“Given that Reddit just took a $150 million investment from a Chinese censorship powerhouse, I thought it would be nice to post this picture of “Tank Man” at Tienanmen Square before our new glorious overloads decide we cannot post it anymore.”
– captioned by the user.
The post visualizes the 1989 picture of a lonesome protestor obstructing the door of a tank convoy at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The photo has been repeatedly posted on the Reddit under the title “Tank Man.” And soon, the picture became the symbol for protestors protesting Chinese censorship online back after 30 years.
Earlier, in 1989, the photo became the symbol for protesters fighting for the freedom of speech as well as press in China.
It’s been a month after the image has become the most upvoted Reddit post of the year, the fear of Chinese censorship and propaganda is still a concern among Reddit users. Redditors became paranoid after they found that the trolls were overflowing with pro-China comments and upvotes.
The reason behind it?
China continues to boycott and block American floors inside China, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Reddit, which was also a part of it. Now, after indulging in a cold war with American platforms, Chinese giant tech companies, Tencent still invests in Reddit with a massive amount of $150 million.
Fun Fact: “Tencent is the world’s largest gaming company with hands behind platforms such as WeChat and League of Legends, and very much compliant with Chinese censorship.”
While the deal was moving further with Tencent, Reddit users, in protest, start to flood the website with different images of ‘Winnie the Pooh.’ This image is used to mock the Chinese president Xi because of their facial proportions. The noticeable part, Winnie the Pooh images, is already banned in China by Chinese censors.
An image of Chinese Xi president Jinping compared with ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ image
Read on the further news by Mashable:
“Ironically, our freedom of the press and open internet is being exploited by an adversary to subvert democracy,” one Reddit user told BuzzFeed.
But as the Verge reported, Spotify, Epic Games, and Snap have all received funding from Tencent. None have had issues with censorship. Epic Games, unlike Blizzard, even pledged not to ban players for supporting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests.
“Redditors have never shied away from discussing the tough issues, and the community turned out for it in 2019,” Reddit staff said in an end-of-year round-up post, adding a cheeky note that the top was “uncensored by us overlords.”
