I built ByteDance's censorship machine
&gt; As a young unicorn, ByteDance does not have strong government relationships like other tech giants do, so it&#x27;s walking a tightrope every second.<p>For those in free countries: when you build moderation tools and use them to silence political dissent &quot;because you have to &#x2F; to play the game&quot; the game plays you.  There is no one &quot;too big&quot; to be crushed by those with the material source of political power [1] and everyone tells themselves that they &quot;have to&quot; build the tools because they don&#x27;t have the &quot;power&quot; to push back or because &quot;it really is that bad this time&quot;.  But some things don&#x27;t have to be built (or built in the centralized, controllable way that they are).  And when centralization is required or &quot;it really is that bad this time&quot;, censorship should be widely publicized and discussed both in real time and with regular retrospectives on decisions to censor that are _public_.<p>For those in dictatorships: All is not lost, regardless. [2][3]<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Political_power_grows_out_of_the_barrel_of_a_gun" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Political_power_grows_out_of_t...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20120107141633&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vaclavhavel.cz&#x2F;showtrans.php?cat=clanky&amp;val=72_aj_clanky.html&amp;typ=HTML" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20120107141633&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vaclav...</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Power_of_the_Powerless" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Power_of_the_Powerless</a>