Reddit users criticized the platform’s massive investment from a Chinese tech giant with a photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, an event that China censors all mention of to this day. It’s now the site’s most upvoted post of 2019.
“Given that Reddit just took a $150 million investment from a Chinese censorship powerhouse, I thought it would be nice to pots this picture of ‘Tank Man’ at Tiananmen Square before our new glorious overlords decide we cannot post it anymore,” u/FreeSpeechWarrior captioned the photo.
Reddit received a $150 million investment from Tencent in February, the Chinese company behind WeChat and League of Legends. It’s the world’s largest gaming company, and very much compliant with China’s censorship. Although they aren’t within Chinese borders, WeChat users in the United States can have blocked keywords or certain messages filtered if their IDs were created in mainland China. China continues to block American platforms like Twitch, Google, Facebook, and intermittently blocks Reddit as well. Read more…
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