Dissenting from China's Censorship with Jiajun Zeng | Layer Zero
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Bankless
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 30 August 2022
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
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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
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Resources:
Jiajung Zeng
https://twitter.com/zengjiajun_eth
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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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Layers0. Layers0 is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that |
| 0:11.5 | make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but is composed by people, and |
| 0:16.1 | each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell. CypherPunks |
| 0:20.8 | understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it, and Layers0 focuses |
| 0:24.6 | on the people behind the code, because Ethereum is people all the way down, and always has |
| 0:28.6 | been. Today on Layers0, I'm speaking with Jia Zhang, who I'm sure I just butchered |
| 0:32.7 | his name, but Jia Zhang previously worked in China during COVID, and came to America |
| 0:37.0 | a little bit thereafter. But Jia Zhang has this incredible story of working for what we |
| 0:43.0 | would call a Silicon Valley tech company, but in China, but specifically on the content |
| 0:48.2 | moderation team. And you tell the story of how content moderation actually works in China. |
| 0:54.7 | And the level and the degree that these Chinese tech companies must go through in order |
| 1:00.0 | to moderate and censor their content in order to even operate as a business. We go through |
| 1:04.9 | for about 45 minutes to an hour of the whole complex of industry behind content moderation |
| 1:11.3 | in China. And then we explore a little bit of just the Chinese people and how they think |
| 1:16.8 | about content moderation in China and how they accept it and what they do about it. And |
| 1:21.5 | also a little bit is a Layers0 of the people of China and censorship. But of course we |
| 1:26.7 | ultimately converge on the topic of Ethereum, how Xi Jinping thinks about Ethereum and how Ethereum |
| 1:32.2 | relates to the people of China. So I hope you enjoy this fantastic episode, diving into |
| 1:36.4 | a part of the world that the West doesn't really get to get too much of a peak of here |
| 1:40.2 | in there. But before we get to our conversation with Jia Zhang, we'll hear from a few of our |
| 1:44.9 | sponsors to make going bankrupt a little bit easier. |
| 1:48.2 | Lens Protocol is an open source tech stack for building decentralized social media applications. |
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