Just Earth News | @justearthnews | 11 Nov 2021, 11:33 pm Print
Chinese Tech Companies Image: Pixabay
Two Chinese companies, which claim to boast their commitment to diversity, seemed to have removed Uyghur and Tibetan language offerings, a move seen by experts as Beijing's way of implementing tech-enabled suppression of minorities.
First it was Talkmate, a language-learning app that partners with UNESCO, that posted via its official Weibo account that it had 'temporarily' taken down Tibetan and Uyghur language classes 'due to government policies', reports Protocol.
This announcement was posted last Friday but appears to have been removed. Talkmate is developed by Beijing CooLanguage Times Education Science and Technology Company, a private company.
The app, which appears to champion linguistic diversity, offers courses in nearly 100 languages, from Urdu and Montenegrin to Creole and Slovak, reports the news portal.
A few days later, web users noticed that popular Chinese streaming service Bilibili had banned comments posted in Uyghur and Tibetan, reports Protocol.
Bilibili also promotes itself for its inclusivity.
A former ByteDance worker told Protocol earlier this year that the company's software engineers had received requests from in-house content moderators to develop an algorithm that could detect Uyghur in a Douyin live stream and then automatically cut the stream off.
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