Dissenting from China's Censorship with Jiajun Zeng | Layer Zero

Before coming to the U. S., Jiajung Zeng lived in China and worked as a Product Manager for TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. Jiajung worked specifically on the content moderation team that was heavily censored by the Chinese government. Jiajung tells the story of how content moderation actually works in China. He shares the hoops these Chinese tech companies must go through to even operate as a business. And towards the end of the conversation, Jiajung shares the overall sentiment of the people of China on content moderation and what they do about it. Ultimately the conversation converges on the topic of Ethereum, decentralization, and crypto writ large in China. This is a special Layer Zero as it shows a side of China many of us don’t typically get a chance to experience and it highlights the importance of crypto fundamentals. ------ 📣 Chainlink | Register for SmartCon 2022 with promo code “BANKLESS” https://bankless.cc/smartcon ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🌱 LENS | ACCESS CODE: MINTME https://bankless.cc/Lens 🚀 ROCKET POOL | ETH STAKING https://bankless.cc/RocketPool ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🦁 BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave 🌉 JUNO | BRIDGE FIAT TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Juno ⚡️ ZKSYNC | THE LAYER 2 SCALING ENDGAME https://bankless.cc/zkSync ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 4:15 Jiajung Zeng’s Background 5:38 ByteDance Explained 8:30 ByteDance Content Moderation 11:11 Political Content Moderation 16:00 Moderation Resource Consumption 20:49 Consequences of Mistakes 22:47 Who is at Risk? 25:47 China’s Content Moderation Army 27:53 AI’s Role 31:35 Uyghurs & China 41:16 Dialect Suppression 43:53 Sentiment of the Chinese People 46:55 The Pushback 50:55 The Positives of China 53:54 Sentiment of the Future of China 57:32 Jiajung’s Ethereum Familiarity 59:47 ByteDance & Ethereum 1:01:52 Chinese People’s Thoughts on Crypto 1:03:11 China’s Crypto Scene 1:04:28 Jiajun’s Message to the Bankless Nation ------ Resources: Jiajung Zeng https://twitter.com/zengjiajun_eth ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02David Hoffman?

  Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but is composed by people. And each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell. Cypher punks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it. And Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code. Because Ethereum is people all the way down and always has been. Today on Layer Zero, I'm speaking with Jia Zhang, who I'm sure I just butchered his name. But Jia Zhang previously worked in China during COVID and came to America a little bit thereafter. But Jia Zhang has this incredible story of working for what we would call a Silicon Valley tech company, but in China, but specifically on the content moderation team.

• 0:45David Hoffman?

  And he tells a story of how content moderation actually works in China. And the level and the degree that these Chinese tech companies must go through in order to moderate and censor their content in order to even operate as a business. So we go through for about 45 minutes to an hour of the whole complex of industry behind content moderation in China. And then we explore a little bit of just the Chinese people and how they think about content moderation in China and how they accept it and what they do about it. And also a little bit is a Layer Zero of the people of China and censorship. But of course, we ultimately converge on the topic of Ethereum.

• 1:27David Hoffman?

  How Ji Zhang thinks about Ethereum and how Ethereum relates to the people of China. So I hope you enjoy this fantastic episode, diving into a part of the world that the West doesn't really get to get too much of a peek of here and there. But before we get to our conversation with Jia Zhang, we'll hear from a few of our sponsors to make going bankless a little bit easier. ZK Sync is an Ethereum Layer 2 network that is pushing the frontier of high-performance blockchains that don't compromise on security or decentralization. ZK Sync has combined the power of zero-knowledge rollups in the Ethereum virtual machine, enabling developers to build the greatest Web3 projects possible, ones we haven't even seen yet. Crypto needs its killer applications to onboard the world, but crypto killer apps need ZK Sync as a platform to build on first. It's generally accepted that

• 2:10David Hoffman?

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• 2:55David Hoffman?

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• 3:39David Hoffman?

  Lens isn't a social media app. It's a protocol to let 1,000 Web3 social apps bloom. Lens is a permissionless and transparent social graph that is owned by the user. In crypto, we say "not your keys, not your crypto", and on Lens, we say "not your keys, not your profile". With Lens, your followers go with you to whatever social media application you want to use. And instead of being trapped by an algorithm chosen by that app, Lens lets you choose the way you want to experience your social media. Lens is the last social media handle that you'll ever need to create. So in order to get started, there's a secret code word in the show notes. Enter that code word in the Google form links, and you'll be well on your way to entering the world of Web3 social. What's up, Jajin? How's it going?

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Hey, hey, David. I'm good. How are you?

• 4:20David Hoffman?

  I'm doing really good. You have a fantastic story that I definitely want to get into, but maybe just to tell the Bankless listeners, the Bankless audience, who you are, could you just tell us, who are you?

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Oh, hi, Bankless fans. I'm also a huge Bankless fan. So, who am I? Good question. Well, I would consider myself as a huge fan of Ethereum first. And I get into Ethereum like most of us, maybe during the DeFi summer. So after that, I'm really passionate about Ethereum overall. So I hang out with a bunch of friends on crypto Twitter every day. So yeah, I would consider myself a huge fan of Ethereum. And nowadays, I'm trying to be a builder, trying to build a smart contract wallet

• 5:18Speaker 01

  that support EIP ERC for 337. Yeah, so before Ethereum, I was a product manager at Meituan. It's like a Uber, Uber Eats in the US. Also, I'm a product manager at BIDance, the parent company of TikTok.

• 5:39David Hoffman?

  BIDance, the parent company of TikTok. And I believe that's where the super interesting parts of your background, I think that a lot of the people in the West won't be familiar with. And part of the reason why I want to pull you onto the show today. But can you tell the listeners a little bit more? What is BIDance, other than just being the parent company of TikTok? What do they do?

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Okay, BIDance is like the Facebook or like Facebook of in the US. So their main business consists of a few parts. First is the TikTok that everybody use. TikTok is the name, the brand they use in the West. And in China, they use another brand called Douyin. Yeah, this is where their most revenue comes from. And they also have another news aggregator app. It's called... Like headline daily.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  So which is how they comes from, like how their business started from. Yeah, which aggregate huge traffic for them to also help them to get familiar with AI and recommendation algorithm for them to build the TikTok to be the video business later today.

• 7:05David Hoffman?

  And that really seems to be kind of the new meta in a lot of these apps that are coming about these days is it's really the power of that recommendation algorithm. Does TikTok especially that has really elevated some of this newer generation of TikTok apps or TikTok like apps or these newer generation of apps in general. How were you involved in that side of the business or what were you doing when you were working for ByDance?

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Okay, so when I work at ByDance, I'm not involved in the recommendation part. I'm mainly focused on the moderation part. So the difference is that the recommendation part is trying to

• 7:48Speaker 01

  pick up the best content for you to be additive, to interact with the app more often, to spend as long as as much as time as you can. But most of my time, I'm focusing on the moderation part or they call a trust and safety nowadays. So our job is, yes, our job is mainly to

• 8:16Speaker 01

  to censor or moderate that kind of content that we don't want you to see or we would like to let you see less.

• 8:28David Hoffman?

  And so what, how did you, how was the company deciding what content to moderate? Like, was it like pornography, child pornography? Or was it like, what was the categories of content that BIDANCE would moderate?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Oh, I think just like most of the web two company or a content platform, there are several category of content that they won't like to let the user see. For example, the most common one is just spam. Like Twitter is doing terrible on anti spamming. And yeah, the most part is spam and also pornography. That's, that's, that's another huge part. And also in terms of TikTok, they have huge amount of users that are like under eighteen.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  So child, child related, you need to be more sensitive about that kind of content. And also violence. For example, you are definitely not allowed to kill yourself or suicide or shoot someone and put some very bloody content online. Yeah, that would be the most, most part. And also for, for China and maybe some more restricted country like in India or Middle, Middle, Middle East, we have some different kind of political specific rules that was not allowed to post.

• 10:10David Hoffman?

  And that, that part, the political specific stuff, that would you say that that part is the difference between the content moderation in the Western apps like Twitter versus the content moderation apps that you would see out of China?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's definitely the most uh different part. For example, in in China, uh in order to let the company to survive, you are not allowed to let the user to use your uh platform to advocate any uh political disobedience uh to have their own political agenda. All you can do is to be a good uh propaganda. You either allow the the state to publish their own agenda or you can only have some uh some very

• 11:05Speaker 01

  like soft or entertainment content that is harmless.

• 11:12David Hoffman?

  Okay, so how that that's that could break basically question is like, how does an app actually detect uh political content that is against the political parties of uh the Chinese Communist Party, right? So like I'm I'm assuming it's relatively easy to detect porn or nudity, for example. I feel like that's just a generic, you know, scanning of the video and seeing if it's looks like a an image that's banned. How how does content moderation look like when it's something a little bit more just generalized like political speech? How how does that work?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Oh, good question. So um yeah, political content is um well, you can do it the hard way and the easy way. The the easy way is uh well, there are several ways for you to uh scan or to understand the content, right? So first is the the the the graphic site. So like what's in this video? And uh for example, Uh it's easy to analyze, for example, if there's a uh picture of the uh political leader like uh uh President Xi Jinping, so if his uh picture is

• 12:31Speaker 01

  uh in the in some at some frame, then it's easy to detect. So uh this part of the graphic will be recalled uh back to the moderator. So the moderator will take a look at this like video to check whether it's uh it's it's spreading some political rumor, quote unquote, or uh uh other things they are dis- discrediting the uh political leader. Yeah, uh so this is the graphic part. Yeah, so you you can detect what's in in the video. Also, uh we are because, you know, China, because of the Tiananmen Square uh protest uh oh ma- massacre,

• 13:15Speaker 01

  uh they will censor like tank uh during the uh in in June every year. Yeah, so uh this is from the graphic side and also uh from the and s- uh sound is another uh huge part of a video, right? So what what will you speak uh during the video? Or uh uh what's the voice content in the video? So uh we will like uh we will uh use some uh voice detection uh tech- technology to translate those voice into text. And then we will match those texts with some keywords to

• 13:59Speaker 01

  to to trying to uh understand what are you speaking? So if your your speech hits some or match some keywords, then yeah. Uh again, this part of content will be recalled and will be uh moderated.

• 14:15David Hoffman?

  And so it's really just about flagging the content that picks up like, okay, this is a picture of Xi Jinping, or this is words that are saying the name Xi Jinping. And then it goes for manual review and then like people manually review it and check it out. Is that what's next in the flow here?

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Yes, people will manually like check it. Yeah, and also, well, we will have some like algorithm that to detect if this speech is spoken by some sensitive people. For example, like Dalai Lama, or maybe speaker Nancy Pelosi, I assume, recent days. So if there's any sensitive political celebrity that maybe you are not allowed to put their voice into the public platform.

• 15:16David Hoffman?

  And so what would happen next if it was deemed that it needs to be censored? What does that censorship actually looks like? Are we just deleting the videos or what happens to these video files or audio files?

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there are several options for the moderator or nowadays, maybe the moderator's moderation system. They will automatically decide what to do next depends on which kind of policy you apply or this content being applied to. So either this content will be taken down or this content will be hide. Or even worse, this account will be deleted.

• 16:02David Hoffman?

  And how is this? How much of a tech company in China? How much of their resources have to go into doing this? Like, is this like a small part of their team? Is this like a large part of their team? Like, how much resource consumption does this take up?

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Huge, huge. I would say maybe like two years ago, at least we have.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Twenty K to thirty K moderators that is moderating the content daily.

• 16:36David Hoffman?

  There's wait twenty to thirty thousand individual employees that are doing this?

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Yes, and they are spreading all around China, like some some are in the northern part, some in the southern part. We are trying just trying to build a distributed base or system to to handle the business. Well, just in case if we have one base, well, base is the place people do the moderation like uh uh job. Yeah, so we have different base in different regions, so just to avoid single point of failure. Yeah, they they know this, uh they use anti sen anti fragile to censor. So in case uh one place uh was done, then they can use another place.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, but usually their daily work is pretty occupied since it's uh there are so many content and uploaded daily.

• 17:33David Hoffman?

  Okay, so there's tens of thousands of people in multiple different spots, all doing this content moderation. And you and you're saying that that needs to be having a very high uptime because we have to the the company by dance has to actually be ensuring that the content going out is appropriately filtered. Like uh we like saying telling me that like twenty to thirty thousand employees are moderating content on a daily given basis is like, damn, that's insane. I'm pretty sure that's more total employees than like Twitter has. And it's just doing content moderation, but also they're in multiple different geographic locations so that they don't get,

• 18:14David Hoffman?

  they don't so they can always remain uh what why is it important that there are so many people that are like working on making sure that the content moderation uptime is like at a hundred percent? Like, why so much energy is going into this?

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Well, uh, this is how business can survive in the uh.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  In the authoritarian country, it's a hard, it's a sad truth. That you you have to keep like ninety nine percent, ninety nine point ninety nine percent of our time just to minimum, to minimize the risk of leaking any political sensitive speech. Authoritarian regimes are very like fragile, even though they had, they control the, they control like everything. They control the media, they control the army, they control like even the land is a state owned. But they they are afraid, they are so afraid that even we let the free media or

• 19:18Speaker 01

  uh free uh user uh content that got leaked that might that might spread maybe the spirit of freedom. So, yeah, so the art time must be very high. So and there are often some like uh unexpected events, for example, maybe some like uh fiber network was uh cut uh for some uh for some reason, but uh so maybe one of our base will be down. So it will create a huge panic, even the like the CEO or maybe one level down the at the executive.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  They will intervene, they will moderate, they will check the progress like when the moderation system will go back online.

• 20:12David Hoffman?

  Oh, my God. So uh so this is a cost that the business takes on of itself. Like this, this isn't the government paying these companies to do this. This is a cost that the business is doing because they are so fearful of accidentally accidentally letting some politically sensitive speech through their system and onto the app. That's right?

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. So US uh corporate uh companies should feel, especially those are social media companies. They should feel very lucky to operate in in the US. They they don't need such a huge burden to run their daily business.

• 20:50David Hoffman?

  So what happened, what would happen if um some video got through the system that was politically sensitive? What would the Chinese government do?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Well, uh, Chinese government, uh, they have a special office to handle this like cyberspace uh administration uh office. So, uh, they will, they have several ways to uh to to monitor. Well, they will like go through the social media like like by themselves to check whether those uh social media platform are uh following the rules, following the order. Yeah, another way is that they will receive some like reports or like flag.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  So if they receive those, they will uh uh so they will gather those case they receive to uh send back to the social media company to like ask why this content or this video about this specific issue was leaked, why you failed to stop it from uh spreading.

• 22:01David Hoffman?

  And is is there something in the laws of China that says like you cannot, you, what's it? Or is it just implied as in like, is it actually illegal to have politically sensitive speech out there from uh like an individual or business standpoint? Or is it just kind of implied that if you do this, the Chinese government is going to do bad things to you? Like, what's the actual legal precedent here?

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Oh, well, um, I don't think there's any legal precedent here. Well, the constitution of China is like the best. But you know, it's all come down to the uh im- implement. They can always try to find some like law to to punish you.

• 22:47David Hoffman?

  Uh huh. And so who's at who's at risk? So say ByteDance, this uh ByteDance accidentally lets uh accidentally let some content through its system that's politically sensitive. It's talking crap about Xi Jinping, uh saying China's bad. Uh, and and maybe that happens a second time or a third time. And then all of a sudden, like, what would the Chinese government do to ByteDance? Like, what would it, how would it react?

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Good question. Like. Uh, a few, a few years ago, at that time, I think uh restriction on moderation is not that uh strict. So uh, so Biden's just saying that um um like recommendation algorithm is not political. Uh, but a lot of like uh political sensitive content are uh recommended or spread uh on their platform. So the authority just uh just have some police go straight to their, to their office.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Uh, require some reports or they will intervene directly. And even those, those of, those uh police will even set an office directly at Biden's uh headquarters. Uh, and also the, all the apps uh uh built by Biden's will be taken down from the app store. Uh, yeah, and they say, I think recently there's a uh company called Didi and they are the Uber of China. So they go, they listed in the, in the US uh without the direct permission from the Chinese authority.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  So their app has been taken down for, I guess, already one year.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  So.

• 24:46David Hoffman?

  And does the, what, so the revenue of that business just drops to zero?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Yes, so only existent, so only existent users can you, can access their app. Since uh app store can no longer distribute those uh app ins, ins, install uh, uh, yeah, installation.

• 25:06David Hoffman?

  And so this kind of feels like a fine, a temporary fines, like your revenue is going to drop for a year. Is it possible to recover from that?

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you comply or if you apply very strict moderation policy. So that's why we need twenty or thirty people, thirty thousand people to do the daily job. And to apply maybe a stricter or you have very strong self. You need to have a very strong self-discipline to to moderate the content, even though sometimes maybe the the state or the authority only require you to go to go fifty mile, but you have to go one hundred mile just to be sure you are safe.

• 25:53David Hoffman?

  Mm hmm. And you said it's twenty to thirty thousand people of moderators, content moderators for Bydance. But I'm assuming there's another, it's like each app or each company has their own army of moderators. And so that, you know, you multiply this by like the number of companies that that are in this game. Like, how many, how many companies out there in China do you think have this like army of content moderators?

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Well, another huge, huge content platform is WeChat or Tencent. Yeah, they have even stricter rules. So Tencent run WeChat, so it's like the an instant message, message app like, like what what's up in in the US? Yeah. So if you criticize Xi Jinping or any leader in the WeChat group, the police can directly intervene and ask you to go to the police office to have a cup of coffee.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  It's that kind of serious.

• 27:04David Hoffman?

  And is that because WeChat reported the transaction, not the transaction, reported the text message or the message to the authorities saying, hey, this person just said something negative about about the government?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Uh, I think the local, e- even the local police, they have direct access to, to, to, to moderate uh, like what's happening in the local area. So, a- and they, since your WeChat account is linked to your, uh, linked to your, uh, cellphone, your phone number, so they can reach out to you, uh, easily. Yeah, you don't even need the Tencent to do that kind of, uh, like reporting stuff. The, the local police will, will do it themselves.

• 27:54David Hoffman?

  Okay, so, uh, Bydance has like twenty to thirty thousand content moderators, maybe something like Tencent has thirty, forty, fifty thousand moderators. I think if you add up a number of apps, we're gonna quickly get past a hundred, maybe two hundred thousand content moderators. If you add them all up, maybe way more. Like, at some point, the topic of like automation comes into play because that's really expensive. Like, that's, uh, you know, a hundred to two hundred thousand content moderators that are manually scouring content. How, how does this thing scale out? Is, is trying to like, trying to like, make this thing, uh, automated so we can start saving some costs?

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, we are, yeah, that's where AI play the, play the roles. So, uh, we always say like AI goes to the left and crypto goes to the right. So AI is kind of like a tool that's, uh, authoritarian regime like since it can easily to, uh, to, um, to figure out the, the pattern. So they can, uh, figure out like, uh, what, what kind of content it is. So, uh, other companies are heavily, heavily using the, the AI model

• 29:11Speaker 01

  to, to help the moderator, uh, to be more efficient, finding out the, the content we don't like.

• 29:22David Hoffman?

  And so where, where does this go when like the algorithms, the AI algorithms get like really, really, really good at their job? And like, I mean, I mean, imagine like we don't need so many content moderators, it's just so effectively streamlined. Do people, are people like concerned about the logical conclusion of this?

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Um, I'm, I'm, what do you mean?

• 29:44David Hoffman?

  Like, uh, i- is like, how, how good at its job is the AI content moderation? Is it like really good?

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Well, uh, well, it really depends on like what kind of content you are trying to moderate. For example, uh, if you pull out a gun and put it into in front of the camera, then like it will be detected easily, like within, within seconds. And this kind of a frame or this kind of graph will be reported and goes to the, to the moderator. Yeah, but most of their company are trying to find a good balance between, uh, between user experience and, uh, and, uh, uh, compliance.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  So that's why they are hiring so many, uh, moderator to, to do the manual, uh, check. The, yeah, of course you can use AI to, uh, to do the automation, to do the, uh, moderation automatically, but yeah, there's a trade off. If there's a huge like mistake, then maybe a lot of content will be deleted and a lot of, uh, account will be banned. So it's hard to find those, uh, uh, balance. But I guess they are getting better on this gradually.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  So we can, like, even though our business is growing like 10s, but we can try to keep our moderator, uh, headcount, uh, the same.

• 31:24David Hoffman?

  Hmm, okay, so moderator headcount stays the same, content grows, uh, and like it's AI that's really filling that gap to really allow for the scaling of this moderation.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:36David Hoffman?

  What what happened, I remember a few years ago and probably still going on to this day, but there was this big controversy with the Uighurs and the Uighurs were being like oppressed and censored. What's their story with this with content in inside of China? Like, how how did the Uighur and content moderation intersection interact with each other?

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, good, good question. Well, I think dialect is kind of a in Christian. So if you speak English, I speak Chinese, then the moderator who only know Chinese, they cannot figure out what like what David is speaking, right? So in in China, most of the people speak Mandarin. Yeah, and most of our moderator only know Mandarin or maybe their own local diet. But dialect, but there are a lot of dialects in in China. So it's so some people speak Cantonese and some people speak like Shang- uh uh uh Uighur language.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Uighur and Tibetan area are like very political sensitive in in China. So, uh, well, first, people from that kind of region, from uh Uighur and Tibet, they are not allowed to like live stream. So because live streaming is very dangerous because every content you upload is uh is uh going out without moderation in advance. So they are not allowed to live stream at that kind of region. Yeah, and also, uh, whenever the

• 33:27Speaker 01

  but of course, there are maybe some Uighur and Tibetan. They live in the Chinese mainland, like in Beijing and Shanghai.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  They can uh continue to live stream. But whenever they speak the local language.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Their live streaming uh uh will be will be stopped. Because the moderator cannot understand what they are saying. So it put a huge risk uh to the to the platform. Uh because like if we cannot understand what they're uh speaking, then what if they say something political, politically sensitive? Then maybe our platform will be in trouble. So, yeah, people just brutally uh stop all their live streaming or even some like video content that speak in some uh Uyghur or Tibetan language.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  So uh I encountered one case during my work at Baidan. So so this kind of process is kind of quite quite stressful and tiring for the for the moderators. Uh because they will, because the rules is so simple, right? Whenever you speak Uyghur or Tibetan or any local dialect that a moderator don't understand, uh you can just cut it or you can just you can just stop it. So I received some requests from the moderator uh management.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  So they asked us to develop an algorithm that can automatically detect the people who speak in Uyghur or Tibetan language. So our system can automatically cut those live streaming. Yeah.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  But we we didn't do that. I I feel it's inappropriate for a company to do this kind of things. Uh, even though in in in China. But so I just use a excuse uh saying that uh we don't have enough data points. So uh we cannot do this just to uh uh push it through, yeah.

• 36:05David Hoffman?

  Well, what is this? Uh, what what were you not wanting to do? Like, uh, like, cut down the live stream or create the algorithm?

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, cre- create the algorithm because uh the the policy part is not uh. I I'm not responsible for the policy part and I can't I I I have no power to to change it. All I can do is me as a product manager at uh Badens. All I can do is to like um request some uh al- algorithm uh uh needs or requests to our engineer and build a product and process to to moderate. Yeah, so I'm just trying to do my best to like stop the the harm.

• 36:54David Hoffman?

  And if but uh so you you were were you like in protest? As in, you're saying that you are not going to take part in building this algorithm?

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's it's not a it's not a protest. It's more like a passive way to uh trying to new not do some dirty job.

• 37:15David Hoffman?

  Sure. But if you did it, did that job get finished anyways? I'm assuming if you didn't do it, somebody else would.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Uh, I guess, yeah, I guess, uh.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  They just believe what I say to them because we don't have enough data. Because you know, algorithm require huge amount of data to be more precise and uh yeah, to be more precise. If you don't have enough data, then you can easily make a mistake.

• 37:49David Hoffman?

  Yeah, right. Okay, so you were just saying that we don't have enough of like audio data of the Uyghur language to be able to put this into an algorithm?

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 38:00David Hoffman?

  And was that true?

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Uh, no. I mean, for a big company, if you really want to do something, you can always do something. It's just a like a trade off. It's just about the cost, like how badly do you want to do something?

• 38:18David Hoffman?

  Right. Did other tech companies do this as in automatically take down the live streams of people who spoke Uyghur?

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Hmm, to my knowledge, uh, no.

• 38:29David Hoffman?

  No?

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:31David Hoffman?

  Do you know why they haven't had that ability yet?

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Hmm, hmm.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Oh, good question.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I don't know how, how other company do this kind of product and process stuff.

• 38:53David Hoffman?

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• 39:38David Hoffman?

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• 40:22David Hoffman?

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• 41:06David Hoffman?

  and access all of Arbitrum's apps at portal.arbitrum-one in order to experience DeFi and NFTs the way it was always meant to be: fast, cheap, secure, and fiction-free. One thing that stands out to me is that the tech companies, the private sector, if you can really call it the private sector in China, it wasn't done out of racism. It was done out of a need to be compliant. Yes, exactly. And so, it wasn't like there's this systemic racism against the Uighurs. It's just that we, the private sector, has this fear of accidentally putting out politically dissident content.

• 41:48David Hoffman?

  And it just so happens that they weren't able to moderate the Uighur language.

• 41:54David Hoffman?

  Like, and so my mind goes to, well, then the, if that is the policy that really forces a lot of China to stick to like the conventional dialects, like traditional, or again, I'm not sure if I'm using the right words, traditional, but like conventional Mandarin. Like, I'm assuming there are thousands and thousands of dialects in China, or at least a very large number. Does that kind of mean that the, the smaller, more peripheral dialects get more oppressed than like the more canonical like languages? As if you are like a speaker of a, you know, a smaller dialect, you don't have the same access and services that you do if you speak Mandarin. Is that, is that a fair assumption?

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, that's true. Nowadays, most of the kids grow up speaking Mandarin even in, in school. So they only speak their own local dialect at their, at their own house. Yeah, even, but yeah, I think gradually people are speaking more and more Mandarin even at home.

• 43:02David Hoffman?

  Right. And is that an explicit desire of the Chinese government as in they want to funnel everyone into this like same homogeneous culture?

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Well, I would think so, yes. Yeah, of course, this have a lot of huge benefit because people in the same region can communicate better, easily. And it's also easier for the, for the government to, to control because they're always trying to know, trying to moderate what people are thinking, what people are speaking. Yeah, if you use another Inquisition or Ingration algorithm or local dialect, then it's hard to, yeah, it's hard to govern.

• 43:51David Hoffman?

  Um, that's nuts. Uh, is there any sort of sentiment of like, do the people, uh, do the Chinese people like this? Or do they accept this? Or like, what is the positive to negative sentiment of the Chinese people about like this extreme level of like content moderation?

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Well, oh, good question. Of course, nobody like it, but.

• 44:16David Hoffman?

  Everyone, every, uh, it's like universally accepted that no one likes it.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Yes, no, no one likes it. You always feel frustrated whenever like, uh, the thing you post got deleted or the thing you, uh, retweet, uh, got deleted. So Chinese government, Chinese people become like really good first at self moderating. We know what to say and we know what should, should not say. And if we really wanna say something that is not allowed, we will create our own language to,

• 44:58Speaker 01

  to, to, to this, to describe it. And every, everybody just know that, uh, the, the meaning. So, yeah, this is, uh, one thing, uh, how, when, how to express yourself, uh, uh, in such a harsh environment. And also, uh, we know when to save the content that will be possibly, uh, censored. So we always like screenshot everything, like whenever there's a hot take or popular article that, uh, regarding maybe some social event or criticizing the government. Yeah, then people will automatically screenshot it and share it in different kind of, uh, media.

• 45:45David Hoffman?

  Because they think that it might get taken down, so they want to save it themselves?

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. So it's like everybody become a note, note in, in, in the critical world. So they will just, they will just download those content into their local device. And maybe post it or share in their small, small distribution channel with their, with their friends, family.

• 46:17David Hoffman?

  Right. They make, they make the data sharing more decentralized. Um, yeah. Uh, is the, is like the hot take or popular article, is that like a code word for this is politically dubious content? So you better like keep it, uh, perk up your ears?

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think people are just very sensitive after, I think especially after, after the COVID. People have experienced a large scale of a, um, harsh, uh, content moderation. So, yeah, people, people know what to, what to say and what to save.

• 46:55David Hoffman?

  Hmm. And so i- is there any sense of like the people pushing back against this? So if you're, if you're telling me that, uh, there's like this alternative language, like a secret language out there that like is used on social media to indicate, um, something. And that indication is like, oh yeah, you should take, take a screenshot of this. Or maybe you just want to like pay attention to this a little bit more. Is, does that mean that like the populace, the general populace is like finding ways to explicitly push back against this censorship? Or, or is it more of just people kind of want to keep their, keep their head down and not get themselves into trouble?

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, the the pushback is very, I would say, very weak and it's really event driven. So whenever there's a huge, uh, like, whenever there's a popular uh article that got deleted, people will try to fight back by posting uh like posting their own screenshot or they are trying to like, uh, that they're not trying to upload the screenshot directly. They might rotate the screenshot or they might uh draw something on the screenshot just to make the moderation much difficult.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Or they will use their like local dialect to uh translate the original article so that it's even more difficult to to moderate. Yeah, and.

• 48:31David Hoffman?

  Is it dangerous to do this?

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Uh, in general, it's it's not. Yeah, yeah, it's not very dangerous to to spread the content since you are not the original creator of this content.

• 48:46David Hoffman?

  Hmm.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:48David Hoffman?

  Interesting, interesting.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  But but if but if you are the aggregator, you aggregate all the content and share it to the public, then you will be arrested and there are already several young

• 49:05Speaker 01

  young, young, young people that are already been arrested for aggregating and spreading those content.

• 49:13David Hoffman?

  What does it mean to get arrested? Do you go to jail for like a week, a month, a year?

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I think for what I know that those people have been arrested and waiting for the for the sentence. I'm I'm not sure how long the sentence will be, but at least a few years.

• 49:37David Hoffman?

  And when when people are like face to face and they're not using their devices or the internet to communicate, do they speak more freely? Or do they do they also kind of maintain some level of self censorship?

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah, when you speak face to face, you definitely more more lose or you have more freedom to speak. So that's why maybe people authority are very afraid of huge gathering, especially during COVID. That's why maybe recently when people go to a so recently there's a web three conference or events happen in Dali. It's a place in the south, south, southwestern China. So people just gathering there to have some meeting.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  But whenever there's a like huge meeting, if a people, the attendance is seat one hundred, the police will precisely break in and ask everyone to like to record every to record information from all the for all the people who attend this kind of event.

• 50:57David Hoffman?

  Hmm, hmm, um, well, there's been a couple of people that I've talked to who who are there used to live in China or still do live in China. We we once did a show on Bankless about the Chinese CBDC with this author, Richard Turin. And the author was giving rave reviews about the CBDC, saying it was putting like financial tools in a lot more people's hands. It was doing a great job. It was just like banking the unbanked. And like I can't remember where it was. It was another crypto event where I met somebody who was from China. And they said like, yeah, like, well, the West kind of thinks China is a super oppressive authoritarian state.

• 51:40David Hoffman?

  You know, I actually like appreciate what my government does for for better or for worse. And they actually do a lot of good. And they help out with the they just they just help. I I'm wondering if if like well this so far this episode has all been about just like the insane levels of content moderation and censorship out of China, but is there also a feeling of just like, yeah, the Chinese government is like effective and and they perform well and we appreciate them just like what's the other side of of this story?

• 52:11Speaker 01

  Hmm, um, good question.

• 52:18David Hoffman?

  Or would you say it's all negative?

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Well, it definitely not all negative. For example, China have a

• 52:26Speaker 01

  great infrastructure, like we have a high speed, uh, high speed railway that goes like literally everywhere. Yeah, so sometimes you don't even want to take the plane since you know the security check, the the wait time is so is so long, sometimes you would just prefer to go to the uh, use the railway. And I think maybe the 5G infrastructure is quite stable and the internet service is quite stable. Uh, I

• 53:01Speaker 01

  it it's like I never feel any like internet shutdown in in China, but even in the Silicon Valley, I I'm now living in Silicon Valley, I'm it's like it already happened two or at least three times there in my stay here within within one year. So, uh, yeah, a a centralized and a very centralized

• 53:27Speaker 01

  government can can definitely produce something that uh, Western democracy that cannot, but uh, maybe at the price of taxpayers' money, those those project may not be very profitable. So, yeah, so it's like everybody is subsidizing for that. But, uh, yeah, and people of course can have some of benefit from that also. Yeah.

• 53:55David Hoffman?

  How would you say, uh, how do the people of China think about the future of China? Are they like optimistic about the future or are they pessimistic about the future? Like, what's their general opinion?

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Uh, I talked to a few of my friends, Chinese or American. In general, people are very pessimistic in the short run, but very optimistic in the long run. Yeah, the general feeling is that. Well, why is that?

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Why we are very pessimistic about the short run? Because, uh, I think because of the, because of the, well, first is because of the COVID, like everybody in this planet. And it feels like China is the only huge nation state that haven't recovered from the COVID or even still have very strict COVID restriction rules. And you can often hear in the lockdown news, uh, uh, now and then, here and there. And you know, the lockdown in China is different than the West. In California, during lockdown, you can still walk the dog, right?

• 55:11Speaker 01

  You can still go, go to the Costco or, uh, Target to buy your grocery. But the lockdown in China means lockdown. You are locked down in your own apartment. You are not allowed to go out. All you can do is order the, the, the delivery. But what about the poor people, right? How about the delivery man? How about their life? That's, that's very kind of suffering. So first is COVID and second is about, about our, our president. So he changed the constitution a few years ago.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  So he can be the, so he eliminate, he eliminate the term limit. So he can be the president like for life indefinitely.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's why people are very pessimistic, uh, pessimistic in the, in the short run.

• 56:09David Hoffman?

  Why were they optimistic in the long term?

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Well, hmm, I don't know. I guess we are always optimistic. Um, and.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  We have a huge domestic market and we have a huge amount of population. And I think China have a lot of similarity, just like Russia. So we all live in the authoritarian Beijing for for for now and but I mean, if you can just look at the history, for example, like

• 56:49Speaker 01

  like Math Olympics, you just take a look at the winner. They are all like Chinese, even though they might be American Chinese. So, yeah, and just just take a look like Web two.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Like during the Web two era, the only great company that is capable of competing with the with the West

• 57:16Speaker 01

  is like the Chinese company. So, yeah, so in in general, we are quite optimistic if we can live without limitation, without the burden that that is not necessary. Yeah.

• 57:32David Hoffman?

  While you lived in China, were you familiar with Ethereum or did that come after you left?

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, good question. So during COVID, I I I quit my job. I feel very pessimistic in the short in the short run. So I feel like maybe go to the US is my only way. So in the summer, so I'm just browsing on on the Twitter. I saw one of my friends post a blog regarding yield farming. So I so I found it very interesting. I mean, like amazing, how can you get like you like 20% APR unstable unstable, I mean, it's it's ridiculous. You can only get maybe 3% or 5% from the Chinese bank.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  So I feel like it's a huge arbitrage opportunity. So I put all my uh money, yeah, to the USDT, USDC and start uh e-farming with with stable. Uh with stablecoin. So first from BSC. Yeah, that's that that's another topic. I I feel like all EVN are good EVN. So it's good for onboarding new users since at that time I feel like. It just if you do a swap on Uniswap, it costs like one hundred or two hundred US US US dollar. That's uh so expensive. Yeah, yeah. So long story short, I go to BSC and I tried to do some e-farming.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  And I'm getting more comfortable. So I go to Polygon for e-farming again. Yeah, and I think uh since then, I was like uh. Uh went into the rabbit uh uh rabbit hole like most of us, uh most of the uh people who. Uh here nowadays and listen to like Bankless, Onchain, the Daily贵, those are. Amazing content you guys provided. Yeah, so uh. So I'm becoming more active in the Ethereum community, reading Vitalis' blog.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is like how I get into uh Ethereum.

• 59:47David Hoffman?

  How did you think about um or do you think about like the intersection of your previous job at Binance and Ethereum? Like, how do you think those things relate? Was that something you were thinking of while you were going down the rabbit hole?

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Yes, I think it's a huge, huge difference about this two two worlds. So why they in. In in Binance is like a moderation or censorship to be more precise. But Ethereum is like. And anti censorship. Uh so I feel like my work. In the crypto space, in the Ethereum ecosystem, is feel like a redemption. I'm trying to redeem my my seed. I'm trying to save myself from my past. Past dirty dirty work.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:43David Hoffman?

  And what?

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Oh, sorry to interrupt. Uh, I think there are only two thing in the world that authoritarian regime that cannot censor. So one is Bitcoin, of course, uh, and second is Ethereum, especially when Ethereum go to, uh, after the merge, it's like unstoppable. So I, I guess that's why I love Ethereum so much since it's focused so much on the decentralization and anti censorship. So, yeah, I feel like it's a good fit, and especially my work, uh, after my work in, in Biden's, I appreciate the, the

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  feature of anti censorship, uh, a, a lot more than, than other people, maybe especially with the people live in the US. Uh, maybe the most difficult things you ever experience is, uh, the plat- the platforming, uh, Trump, even though I think it makes sense, but it's still a big shock for lots of people.

• 1:01:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Well, what, what about, um, just, uh, the general Chinese populace? Is there like positive pro crypto sentiment among the people or neutral? Or what's the people's thoughts on Bitcoin and Ethereum in China?

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Hmm, I think for general public, I think the sentiment, I think for the general public, the sentiment would be quite similar, no matter in the, in the West or in the China. Uh, there are still a lot of speculation going on. People really don't understand the fundamental, they always consider cryptocurrency as a replacement for fiat.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Which it doesn't make sense unless it's stable coin, right?

• 1:02:47David Hoffman?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and especially, I think Chinese government like send out those kind of propaganda every year telling people to avoid to touch the cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency is a scam. I think still a lot of people have doubt about about crypto in general.

• 1:03:11David Hoffman?

  Right, but but also it kind of sounds like it's pretty similar to what it is here. Like, some people think it's a scam, like, you know, our mom's thing is like, oh, crypto is a scam. Right? Um, but then also, is there like also like the crypto scene in China or is there a crypto scene in China?

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Uh, yes, I think it's getting more and more like crypto is attracting more and more people in in China, especially after the after DeFi, uh, after uh, Gitcoin, like Refi, uh, public goods con- concept and like SoBong token concept and DAO, DAO governance. Uh, a lot of people with a social science background are trying to break in into the crypto space. Uh, I think especially uh, after all the web two company uh, got wrecked by by the authority.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  So, uh, people, it's it's getting difficult for young people to have a good job in the web two world. So people are like, uh, escaping or running to to the crypto for various of reasons.

• 1:04:28David Hoffman?

  Beautiful. Well, Ji-Jiang, now that I have you on Bankless, is there anything, uh, any message that you have for the Bankless Nation? Anything you want to say?

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I have a few things to say. Well, first, Revitalist Block, that's very important. That's the best source and best source you can get to help you to understand crypto, help you to understand Ethereum. Yeah. And the second is focus on the fundamentals, trying to understand the product and process and care less about the price movement. And I think for those people who really bullish on Ethereum or crypto in general,

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  I think the cheaper the token price gets, you should be like more happier since you can buy it in such a low price, right? Yeah.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and trying to build. I think building is super fun and it's a really good period to build, especially the VCs. I mean, there are huge amount of money from VC, no matter what you build, even though you build something extremely stupid, there are still people are willing to invest in you. So it's a really good time to build. And yeah, I think basically that's it. Thank you.

• 1:06:10David Hoffman?

  Awesome. Of course, Ji Zhang, thank you so much for coming on Bankless and telling me your story.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:06:16David Hoffman?

  Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcasts and community as a Bankless premium subscriber to get the most out of your Bankless experience. You'll get access to our market analysis, our alpha leaks and exclusive content and even the Bankless token for airdrops, raffles and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the Bankless community is where you want to be. Click the link in the description to become a Bankless premium subscriber today. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders, Ask Me Anythings and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other

• 1:07:01David Hoffman?

  fantastic content. Thanks everyone for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless nation.