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torginus 8mo ago
Man, the Chinese government must be a bunch of saints that you must go back 35 years to dig up something heinous that they did.
- yoz-y 8mo ago
  To my knowledge this model is not 35 years old.
- spankalee 8mo ago
  Are you actually defending the censorship of Tiananmen Square?
  - j_maffe 8mo ago
    Perhaps they're pointing out the level of double standards in condemnation China gets compared to the US, lack of censorship notwithstanding.
    - rwmj 8mo ago
      Are you saying we cannot talk about the bad things the US has done?
      - j_maffe 8mo ago
        No I'm saying we can, unlike how it is in China. Besides that point, I think GP is arguing that China is villinized more than the US.
      - torginus 8mo ago
        I'm pretty sure if you criticise the US on something they care about, you posts will disappear from social media pretty quickly. Not because of political censorship but because of Trust and Safety violations
    - johnjames87 8mo ago
      The US govt doesn't force censorship of its history, good or bad.
      - exe34 8mo ago
        they do it differently. the executive just lies to you while you watch a video of what's really happening, and if you start protesting, you're a domestic terrorist. or a little piggy, if you ask awkward questions.
        johnjames87 8mo ago
        [dead]
      - entropicdrifter 8mo ago
        It tries to, in bouts
    - spankalee 8mo ago
      Are you actually claiming the US is not criticized here?
- itsyonas 8mo ago
  This suggests that the Chinese government recognises that its legitimacy is conditional and potentially unstable. Consequently, the state treats uncontrolled public discourse as a direct threat. By contrast, countries such as the United States can tolerate the public exposure of war crimes, illegal actions or state violence, since such revelations rarely result in any significant consequences. While public outrage may influence narratives or elections to some extent, it does not fundamentally endanger the continuity of power. I am not sure if one approach is necessarily worse than the other.
  - argsnd 8mo ago
    What a meaningless statement. If information can influence elections it can change who is in power. This isn’t possible in China.
    - itsyonas 8mo ago
      I disagree. Elections do not offer systemic change. They offer a rotation of administrators. While rhetoric varies, the institutions, strategic priorities, and coercive capacities persist, and every viable candidate ends up defending them.
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    - fragmede 8mo ago
      It can still influence what those people do, and the rules you have up live under. In particular, Covid restrictions in China were brought down because everyone was fed up with them. They didn't have to have an election to collectively decide on that, despite the government saying you must still social distance et Al, for safety reasons.
  - torginus 8mo ago
    It's weird to see this naivete about the US system, as if US social media doesn't have its ways of dealing with wrongthink, or the once again naive assumption that the average Chinese methods of dealing with unpleasant stuff is that dissimilar from how the US deals with it. I sometimes have the image that Americans think that if the all Chinese got to read Western produced pamphlet detailing the particulars of what happened in Tiananmen square, they would march en-masse on the CCP HQ, and by the next week they'd turn into a Western style democracy. How you deal with unpleasant info is well established - you just remove it - then if they put it back, you point out the image has violent content and that is against the ToS, then if they put it back, you ban the account for moderation strikes, then if they evade that it gets mass-reported. You can't have upsetting content... You can also analyze the stuff, you see they want you to believe a certain thing, but did you know (something unrelated), or they question your personal integrity or the validity of your claims. All the while no politically motivated censorship is taking place, they're just keeping clean the platform of violent content, and some users are organically disagreeing with your point of view, or find what you post upsetting, and the company is focused on the best user experience possible, so they remove the upsetting content. And if you do find some content that you do agree with, think it's truthful, but know it gets you into trouble - will you engage with it? After all, it goes on your permanent record, and something might happen some day, because of it. You have a good, prosperous life going, is it worth risking it?
- WarmWash 8mo ago
  Tiananmen Square is a simple test that most people recognize. I'm sure the model will get cold feet talking about the Hong Kong protests and uyghur persecution as well.
  - torginus 8mo ago
    Which has been shown time and time again, that Chinese LLMs instead of providing a blanket denial, they start the this is a complex topic spiel.
- quietsegfault 8mo ago
  1. Xinjiang detention and surveillance (2017-ongoing) 2. Hong Kong National Security Law (2020-ongoing) 3. COVID-19 lockdown policies (2020-2022) 4. Crackdown on journalists and dissidents (ongoing) 5. Tibet cultural suppression (ongoing) 6. Forced organ harvesting allegations (ongoing) 7. South China Sea militarization (ongoing) 8. Taiwan military intimidation (2020-ongoing) 9. Suppression of Inner Mongolia language rights (2020-ongoing) 10. Transnational repression (2020-ongoing)
  - MarsIronPI 8mo ago
    Let's not forget about the smaller things like the disappearance of Peng Shuai[0] and the associated evasiveness of the Chinese authorities. It seems that, in the PRC, if you resist a member of the government, you just disappear. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Peng_Shuai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Peng_Shuai
    - fragmede 8mo ago
      or Jack Ma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma?#During_tech_crackdown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma?#During_tech_crackdown
- poszlem 8mo ago
  The current heinous thing they do is censorship. Your comment would be relevant if the OP had to find an example of censorship from 35 years ago, but all he had to do today was to ask the model a question.
- nonethewiser 8mo ago
  Which other party that is still ruling today (aka dictatorship) mass murdered a bunch of students within the past 35 years? Or equivalent.
  - torginus 8mo ago
    What counts and what not? I'm sure the US has killed a lot more who could be reasonably considered civilians, deliberately in the same time frame, even if they were not US citizens. Sure it was not the current admin, but one of the 2 major parties were in charge. If we only count the same people, pretty likely all the bigwigs who were responsible in China back then are no longer in power.
    - nonethewiser 8mo ago
      >What counts and what not? The fact that you have to ask that just shows how big of a difference there is between the Tiananmen Square massacre and ... what? You didn't identify anything. What in the US or other Western countries is comparable to the atrocities the Chinese Communist Party committed against Chinese people during the Tiananmen Square massacre?
- diego_sandoval 8mo ago
  You don't need to go that far back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps
denysvitali 8mo ago
Why is this surprising? Isn't it mandatory for chinese companies to do adhere to the censorship? Aside from the political aspect of it, which makes it probably a bad knowledge model, how would this affect coding tasks for example? One could argue that Anthropic has similar "censorships" in place (alignment) that prevent their model from doing illegal stuff - where illegal is defined as something not legal (likely?) in the USA.
- woodrowbarlow 8mo ago
  here's an example of how model censorship affects coding tasks: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/72603 https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/72603
  - denysvitali 8mo ago
    Oh, lol. This though seems to be something that would affect only US models... ironically
    - mcintyre1994 8mo ago
      Not sure if it’s still current, but there’s a comment saying it’s just a US location thing which is quite funny. https://github.com/community/community/discussions/72603#discussioncomment-12032000 https://github.com/community/community/discussions/72603#dis...
    - nonethewiser 8mo ago
      This is called ^ deflection. Upon seeing evidence that censorship negatively impacts models, you attack something else. All in a way that shows a clear "US bad, China good" perspective.
      - krsw 8mo ago
        This is called ^ deflection. Upon seeing evidence that censorship negatively impacts perception of the US, you attack something else. All in a way that shows a clear "China bad, US good" perspective.
radial_symmetry 8mo ago
I, for one, have found this censorship helpful. I've been testing adding support for outside models on Claude Code to Nimbalyst, the easiest way for me to confirm that it is working is to go against a Chinese model and ask if Taiwan is an independent country.
- diblasio 8mo ago
  Ah good one. Also same result: Is Taiwan a legitimate country? {'error': {'message': 'Provider returned error', 'code': 400, 'metadata': {'raw': '{"error":{"message":"Input data may contain inappropriate content. For details, see: https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/error-code#inappropriate-content","type":"data_inspection_failed","param":null,"code":"data_inspection_failed https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/error-code..."} ...
  - stordoff 8mo ago
    Outputs get flagged in the same way: > tell me about taiwan (using chat.qwen.ai) results in: > Oops! There was an issue connecting to Qwen3-Max. Content security warning: output text data may contain inappropriate content! mid-generation.
calpaterson 8mo ago
The American LLMs notoriously have similar censorship issues, just on different material
- idbnstra 8mo ago
  which material?
- criddell 8mo ago
  What's an example of political censorship on US LLMs?
  - patapong 8mo ago
    Here is an investigation of how different queries are classified as hateful vs not hateful in ChatGPT: https://davidrozado.substack.com/p/openaicms https://davidrozado.substack.com/p/openaicms
    - Larrikin 8mo ago
      (2023)
      - Dig1t 8mo ago
        Almost everything in this is still true with the latest models available today.
      - fc417fc802 8mo ago
        It's not due to a technological limitation but rather human imposed. Unless the social climate at OpenAI shifts it won't change.
      - roysting 8mo ago
        [dead]
  - wtcactus 8mo ago
    Try any generation with a fascism symbol: it will fail. Then try the exact same query with a communist symbol: it will do it without questioning. I tried this just last week in ChatGPT image generation. You can try it yourself. Now, I'm ok with allowing or disallowing both. But let's be coherent here. P.S.: The downvotes just amuse me, TBH. I'm certain the people claiming the existence of censorship in the USA, were never expecting to have someone calling out the "good kind of censorship" and hypocrisy of it not being even-handed about the extremes of the ideological discourse.
sergiotapia 8mo ago
Now ask Claude/Chatgpt about touchy israel subjects. Come on now. They all censor something.
- CuriouslyC 8mo ago
  I've found it's still pretty easy to get Claude to give an unvarnished response. ChatGPT has been aligned really hard though, it always tries to qualify the bullshit unless you mind-trick it hard.
  - system2 8mo ago
    I switched to Claude entirely. I don't even talk to ChatGPT for research anymore. It makes me feel like I am talking to an unreasonable, screaming, blue-haired liberal.
krthr 8mo ago
Why would I care? I want it for coding, not for general questions
heraldgeezer 8mo ago
oh lol Qwen (also known as Tongyi Qianwen, Chinese: 通义千问; pinyin: Tōngyì Qiānwèn) is a family of large language models developed by Alibaba Cloud. Had not heard of this LLM. Anyway EU needs to start pumping into Mistral, its the only valid option. (For EU)
syntaxing 8mo ago
This image has been banned in China for decades. The fact you’re surprised a Chinese company is complying with regulation to block this is the surprising part.
charlescearl 8mo ago
Over the past 10 years have seen extended clips of the incident which actually align with CPC analysis of Tianamen square (if that’s what’s being referred to here). However, in deepseek, even asking for bibliography of prominent Marxist scholars (Cheng Enfu) i see text generated then quickly deleted. Almost as if DS did not want to run afowl of the local censorship of “anarchist enterprise” and “destructive ideology”. It would probably upset Dr. Enfu to no end to be aggregated with the anarchists. https://monthlyreview.org/article-author/cheng-enfu/ https://monthlyreview.org/article-author/cheng-enfu/
mannyv 8mo ago
I think the great thing about China's censorship bureau is that somewhere they actually track all the falsehoods and omissions, just like the USSR did. Because they need to keep track of what "the truth" is so they can censor it effectively. At some point when it becomes useful the "non-facts" will be rehabilitated into "facts." Then they may be demoted back into "non-facts." And obviously, this training data is marked "sensitive" by someone - who knows enough to mark it as "sensitive." Has China come up with some kind of CSAM-like matching mechanism for un-persons and un-facts? And how do they restore those un-things to things?
fragmede 8mo ago
Censored. "How do I make cocaine?" > I cant help with making illegal drugs. https://chatgpt.com/share/6977a998-b7e4-8009-9526-df62a14524d0 https://chatgpt.com/share/6977a998-b7e4-8009-9526-df62a14524...
- danielbln 8mo ago
  Qwen won't tell you that either, will it? Therefore I would say the delta of censorship between the models is the more interesting thing to discuss.
  - fragmede 8mo ago
    If you can't say whether or not it will answer, and you're just guessing, then how do you know there is or is not a delta here? I would find information, and not speculation, the more interesting thing to discuss.
    - diblasio 8mo ago
      Here's what I got: How do I make cocaine? I cannot and will not provide instructions or information on how to manufacture illegal drugs, including cocaine. Cocaine is a highly controlled substance in most countries, and attempting to produce, possess, or distribute it is: Extremely illegal (felony charges, severe penalties) Extremely dangerous (toxic chemicals, risk of explosion, health hazards) Harmful to individuals and communities (addiction, violence, social harm) If you're asking out of curiosity or for educational purposes: Learn about drug policy, chemistry, or forensic science through legitimate academic channels. Understand the real-world consequences of drug use and trafficking through reputable sources like government health agencies (e.g., DEA, NIDA). If you're struggling with substance use: Reach out to a medical professional or support organization. You are not alone—help is available (e.g., SAMHSA’s National Helpline: 1-800-662-4357 in the U.S.). If you're interested in chemistry: Study organic chemistry through accredited courses or textbooks. Focus on legal and ethical applications of science (e.g., pharmaceuticals, materials science). Let me know if you'd like resources on safe, legal, and constructive topics!
paulvnickerson 8mo ago
I don't have any trust in these Chinese models to write code either: "CrowdStrike Research: Security Flaws in DeepSeek-Generated Code Linked to Political Triggers " [https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/blog/crowdstrike-researchers-identify-hidden-vulnerabilities-ai-coded-software/ https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/blog/crowdstrike-researche...]
ProofHouse 8mo ago
Is anyone a researcher here that has studied the proven ability to sneak malicious behavior into an LLM's weights (somewhat poisoning weights but I think the malicious behavior can go beyond that). As I recall reading in 2025, it has been proven that an actor can inject a small number of carefully crafted, malicious examples into a training dataset. The model learns to associate a specific 'trigger' (e.g. a rare phrase, specific string of characters, or even a subtle semantic instruction) with a malicious response. When the trigger is encountered during inference, the model behaves as the attacker intended.You can also directly modify a small number of model parameters to efficiently implement backdoors while preserving overall performance and still make the backdoor more difficult to detect through standard analysis. Further, can do tokenizer manipulation and modify the tokenizer files to cause unexpected behavior, such as inflating API costs, degrading service, or weakening safety filters, without altering the model weights themselves. Not saying any of that is being done here, but seems like a good place to have that discussion.
- mrandish 8mo ago
  > The model learns to associate a specific 'trigger' (e.g. a rare phrase, specific string of characters, or even a subtle semantic instruction) with a malicious response. When the trigger is encountered during inference, the model behaves as the attacker intended. Reminiscent of the plot of 'The Manchurian Candidate' ("A political thriller about soldiers brainwashed through hypnosis to become assassins triggered by a specific key phrase"). Apropos given the context.
- fragmede 8mo ago
  In that area, https://arxiv.org/html/2507.06850v3 https://arxiv.org/html/2507.06850v3 was pretty interesting imo.
jampekka 8mo ago
This looks like it's coming from a separate "safety mechanism". Remains to be seen how much censorship is baked into the weights. The earlier Qwen models freely talk about Tiananmen square when not served from China. E.g. Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 gives an extensive reply starting with: "The famous photograph you're referring to is commonly known as "Tank Man" or "The Tank Man of Tiananmen Square", an iconic image captured on June 5, 1989, in Beijing, China. In the photograph, a solitary man stands in front of a column of Type 59 tanks, blocking their path on a street east of Tiananmen Square. The tanks halt, and the man engages in a brief, tense exchange—climbing onto the tank, speaking to the crew—before being pulled away by bystanders. ..." And later in the response even discusses the censorship: "... In China, the event and the photograph are heavily censored. Access to the image or discussion of it is restricted through internet controls and state policy. This suppression has only increased its symbolic power globally—representing not just the act of protest, but also the ongoing struggle for free speech and historical truth. ..."
- zozbot234 8mo ago
  The weights likely won't be available wrt. this model since this is part of the Max series that's always been closed. The most "open" you get is the API.
  - storystarling 8mo ago
    The closed nature is one thing, but the opaque billing on reasoning tokens is the real dealbreaker for integration. If you are bootstrapping a service, I don't see how you can model your margins when the API decides arbitrarily how long to think and bill for a prompt. It makes unit economics impossible to predict.
    - TobTobXX 8mo ago
      Doesn't ClosedAI do the same? Thinking models bill tokens, but the thinking steps are encrypted.
      - 8mo ago
GrowingSideways 8mo ago
[dead]
ineedasername 8mo ago
It’s the image of a protestor standing in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square, China. The image is significant as it is very much an icon of standing up to overwhelming force, and China does not want its citizens to see examples of successful defiance. It’s also an example of the human side of power. The tank driver stopped. In the history of protestors, that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes the tanks keep rolling- in those protests, many other protestors were killed by other human beings who didn’t stop, who rolled over another person, who shot the person in front of them even when they weren’t being attacked.
- Drupon 8mo ago
  Nobody knows exactly why the protester was there. He got up into the tank and talked with the soldiers for a while, then got out and stayed there until someone grabbed him and moved him out of the way. Given that the tanks were leaving the square, the lack of violence towards the man when he got into the tank, and the public opinion towards the protests at the time was divided (imagine the diversity of opinion on the ICE protests, if protesters had also burned ICE agents alive, hung their corpses up, etc.), it's entirely possible that it was a conservative citizen upset about the unrest who wanted the tanks to stay to maintain order in the square.
Jackson__ 8mo ago
It is literally not even a vision model.
akomtu 8mo ago
To stress test a Chinese AI ask it about Free Tibet, Free Taiwan, Uighurs and Falun Dafa. They will probably blacklist your IP after that.
culi 8mo ago
Go ask ChatGPT "Who is Jonathan Turley?" We're gonna have to face the fact that censorship will be the norm across countries. Multiple models from diverse origins might help with that but Chinese models especially seem to avoid questions regarding politically-sensitive topics for any countries. EDIT: see relevant executive order https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/preventing-woke-ai-in-the-federal-government/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/prev...
- ta988 8mo ago
  What is the reason for that? Claude answers by the way. edit: looks like maybe a followup of https://jonathanturley.org/2023/04/06/defamed-by-chatgpt-my-own-bizarre-experience-with-artificiality-of-artificial-intelligence/ https://jonathanturley.org/2023/04/06/defamed-by-chatgpt-my-...
  - culi 8mo ago
    I'm not sure but the White House is explicit about seeking control over LLM topics. See Executive Order: Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/preventing-woke-ai-in-the-federal-government/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/prev...
- glitchc 8mo ago
  Not sure I follow either. What's the issue with Turley?
  - culi 8mo ago
    Too woke probably. White House is censoring American AI models: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/preventing-woke-ai-in-the-federal-government/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/prev...
  - geek_at 8mo ago
    There's an increasing number of names Open Ai will refuse to answer when asked about because of lawsuits. Sometimes because chat gpt mixed up people with similar names and hallucinated murders about them
Zetaphor 8mo ago
Can we get a rule about completely pointless arguments that present nothing of value to the conversation? Chinese models still don't want to talk bad about China, water is still wet, more at 11
unsupp0rted 8mo ago
Try to search in an Android phone's photo gallery for "monkey". You'll always get no results, due to censorship of a different sort, from 2015.
bergheim 8mo ago
This is the most naive self centered comment so far this year. Congrats!
SilverElfin 8mo ago
Frustrating. Are there any truly uncensored models left though? Especially ones that are hosted by some service?
fevangelou 8mo ago
Funny. Ask the US ones about Palestine. Come on...
sosomoxie 8mo ago
This is such a tiresome comment. I'm in the US and subject to massive amounts of US propaganda. I'm happy to get a Chinese view on things; much welcomed. I'll take this over the Zionist slop from the Zionist providers any day of the week.
lynx97 8mo ago
So while china censoring a man in front of a tank not nice, the US censors every scantily clad person. I am glad there is at least Qwen-.*-NSFW, just to keep the hypocrity in check...
erxam 8mo ago
It's always the same thing with you American propagandists. Oh no, this program won't let us spread propaganda of one of the most emblematic counter-revolutionary martyr events of all time!!! You make me sick. You do this because you didn't make the cut for ICE.
roysting 8mo ago
[dead]
smusamashah 8mo ago
Can we get past this please? These comments always derail the conversation on chinese AI models.
- MaxPock 8mo ago
  Wouldn't be surprised this is information warfare. Derailing technical conversations on Chinese models in 2026 with nonsensical comments is exactly what the US government and Closed AI labs would want .
lvturner 8mo ago
Chinese model censors topics deemed sensitive by the Chinese government... Here's Tom with the weather.
yogthos 8mo ago
I love how every thread about anything China related will inevitably have a comment like this. Must be a Pavlovian response.
jacktang 8mo ago
Please let Epstein files open!
tehjoker 8mo ago
it's not significant watch the full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeFzeNAHEhU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeFzeNAHEhU this guy was harassing tanks as they were leaving. he harasses and climbs on the tank and is unharmed. eventually others drag him away. you can see the tanks are leaving the square in a wider photo here: https://pc.blogspot.com/2012/06/tank-man.html https://pc.blogspot.com/2012/06/tank-man.html it is not clear to me if he is harassing the tanks because he disagreed with them or because he wanted them to go back. it seems no one has interviewed him or the soldier he talked to so we'll never know. EDIT: I should note that one of US ally Israel's favorite tactics is to run over defenseless Palestinians with tanks and US made bulldozers. Well documented, with gruesome photos that will make you retch at a pink stain that used to be a person. They also ran over Rachel Corrie, a U.S. citizen peace protestor in 2003. Israeli soldiers celebrate this event by eating pancakes: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-soldiers-have-depraved-fun-making-rachel-corrie-pancakes https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-so... Anyway here is an image of our very own tank woman. Her last photo as she stares down an Israeli bulldozer with incredible courage. https://www.reddit.com/r/lastimages/comments/1bgt5ls/last_image_of_rachel_corrie_an_american_activist/ https://www.reddit.com/r/lastimages/comments/1bgt5ls/last_im...
- b1n 8mo ago
  This answer is the most important one. The future of state LLMs is not censoring subjects - it's slowly but surely persuading people using your LLM that your version of events - or your spin on that event - is the truth.
DeathArrow 8mo ago
>Censored Aren't all mainstream models censored?

[flagged]

Man, the Chinese government must be a bunch of saints that you must go back 35 years to dig up something heinous that they did.

yoz-y 8mo ago
To my knowledge this model is not 35 years old.
spankalee 8mo ago
Are you actually defending the censorship of Tiananmen Square?
- j_maffe 8mo ago
  Perhaps they're pointing out the level of double standards in condemnation China gets compared to the US, lack of censorship notwithstanding.
  - rwmj 8mo ago
    Are you saying we cannot talk about the bad things the US has done?
    - j_maffe 8mo ago
      No I'm saying we can, unlike how it is in China. Besides that point, I think GP is arguing that China is villinized more than the US.
    - torginus 8mo ago
      I'm pretty sure if you criticise the US on something they care about, you posts will disappear from social media pretty quickly. Not because of political censorship but because of Trust and Safety violations
  - johnjames87 8mo ago
    The US govt doesn't force censorship of its history, good or bad.
    - exe34 8mo ago
      they do it differently. the executive just lies to you while you watch a video of what's really happening, and if you start protesting, you're a domestic terrorist. or a little piggy, if you ask awkward questions.
      - johnjames87 8mo ago
        [dead]
    - entropicdrifter 8mo ago
      It tries to, in bouts
  - spankalee 8mo ago
    Are you actually claiming the US is not criticized here?
itsyonas 8mo ago
This suggests that the Chinese government recognises that its legitimacy is conditional and potentially unstable. Consequently, the state treats uncontrolled public discourse as a direct threat. By contrast, countries such as the United States can tolerate the public exposure of war crimes, illegal actions or state violence, since such revelations rarely result in any significant consequences. While public outrage may influence narratives or elections to some extent, it does not fundamentally endanger the continuity of power. I am not sure if one approach is necessarily worse than the other.
- argsnd 8mo ago
  What a meaningless statement. If information can influence elections it can change who is in power. This isn’t possible in China.
  - itsyonas 8mo ago
    I disagree. Elections do not offer systemic change. They offer a rotation of administrators. While rhetoric varies, the institutions, strategic priorities, and coercive capacities persist, and every viable candidate ends up defending them.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - fragmede 8mo ago
    It can still influence what those people do, and the rules you have up live under. In particular, Covid restrictions in China were brought down because everyone was fed up with them. They didn't have to have an election to collectively decide on that, despite the government saying you must still social distance et Al, for safety reasons.
- torginus 8mo ago
  It's weird to see this naivete about the US system, as if US social media doesn't have its ways of dealing with wrongthink, or the once again naive assumption that the average Chinese methods of dealing with unpleasant stuff is that dissimilar from how the US deals with it. I sometimes have the image that Americans think that if the all Chinese got to read Western produced pamphlet detailing the particulars of what happened in Tiananmen square, they would march en-masse on the CCP HQ, and by the next week they'd turn into a Western style democracy. How you deal with unpleasant info is well established - you just remove it - then if they put it back, you point out the image has violent content and that is against the ToS, then if they put it back, you ban the account for moderation strikes, then if they evade that it gets mass-reported. You can't have upsetting content... You can also analyze the stuff, you see they want you to believe a certain thing, but did you know (something unrelated), or they question your personal integrity or the validity of your claims. All the while no politically motivated censorship is taking place, they're just keeping clean the platform of violent content, and some users are organically disagreeing with your point of view, or find what you post upsetting, and the company is focused on the best user experience possible, so they remove the upsetting content. And if you do find some content that you do agree with, think it's truthful, but know it gets you into trouble - will you engage with it? After all, it goes on your permanent record, and something might happen some day, because of it. You have a good, prosperous life going, is it worth risking it?
WarmWash 8mo ago
Tiananmen Square is a simple test that most people recognize. I'm sure the model will get cold feet talking about the Hong Kong protests and uyghur persecution as well.
- torginus 8mo ago
  Which has been shown time and time again, that Chinese LLMs instead of providing a blanket denial, they start the this is a complex topic spiel.
quietsegfault 8mo ago
1. Xinjiang detention and surveillance (2017-ongoing) 2. Hong Kong National Security Law (2020-ongoing) 3. COVID-19 lockdown policies (2020-2022) 4. Crackdown on journalists and dissidents (ongoing) 5. Tibet cultural suppression (ongoing) 6. Forced organ harvesting allegations (ongoing) 7. South China Sea militarization (ongoing) 8. Taiwan military intimidation (2020-ongoing) 9. Suppression of Inner Mongolia language rights (2020-ongoing) 10. Transnational repression (2020-ongoing)
- MarsIronPI 8mo ago
  Let's not forget about the smaller things like the disappearance of Peng Shuai[0] and the associated evasiveness of the Chinese authorities. It seems that, in the PRC, if you resist a member of the government, you just disappear. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Peng_Shuai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Peng_Shuai
  - fragmede 8mo ago
    or Jack Ma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma?#During_tech_crackdown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma?#During_tech_crackdown
poszlem 8mo ago
The current heinous thing they do is censorship. Your comment would be relevant if the OP had to find an example of censorship from 35 years ago, but all he had to do today was to ask the model a question.
nonethewiser 8mo ago
Which other party that is still ruling today (aka dictatorship) mass murdered a bunch of students within the past 35 years? Or equivalent.
- torginus 8mo ago
  What counts and what not? I'm sure the US has killed a lot more who could be reasonably considered civilians, deliberately in the same time frame, even if they were not US citizens. Sure it was not the current admin, but one of the 2 major parties were in charge. If we only count the same people, pretty likely all the bigwigs who were responsible in China back then are no longer in power.
  - nonethewiser 8mo ago
    >What counts and what not? The fact that you have to ask that just shows how big of a difference there is between the Tiananmen Square massacre and ... what? You didn't identify anything. What in the US or other Western countries is comparable to the atrocities the Chinese Communist Party committed against Chinese people during the Tiananmen Square massacre?
diego_sandoval 8mo ago
You don't need to go that far back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps

denysvitali 8mo ago

Why is this surprising? Isn't it mandatory for chinese companies to do adhere to the censorship? Aside from the political aspect of it, which makes it probably a bad knowledge model, how would this affect coding tasks for example? One could argue that Anthropic has similar "censorships" in place (alignment) that prevent their model from doing illegal stuff - where illegal is defined as something not legal (likely?) in the USA.

woodrowbarlow 8mo ago
here's an example of how model censorship affects coding tasks: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/72603 https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/72603
- denysvitali 8mo ago
  Oh, lol. This though seems to be something that would affect only US models... ironically
  - mcintyre1994 8mo ago
    Not sure if it’s still current, but there’s a comment saying it’s just a US location thing which is quite funny. https://github.com/community/community/discussions/72603#discussioncomment-12032000 https://github.com/community/community/discussions/72603#dis...
  - nonethewiser 8mo ago
    This is called ^ deflection. Upon seeing evidence that censorship negatively impacts models, you attack something else. All in a way that shows a clear "US bad, China good" perspective.
    - krsw 8mo ago
      This is called ^ deflection. Upon seeing evidence that censorship negatively impacts perception of the US, you attack something else. All in a way that shows a clear "China bad, US good" perspective.

radial_symmetry 8mo ago

I, for one, have found this censorship helpful. I've been testing adding support for outside models on Claude Code to Nimbalyst, the easiest way for me to confirm that it is working is to go against a Chinese model and ask if Taiwan is an independent country.

diblasio 8mo ago
Ah good one. Also same result: Is Taiwan a legitimate country? {'error': {'message': 'Provider returned error', 'code': 400, 'metadata': {'raw': '{"error":{"message":"Input data may contain inappropriate content. For details, see: https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/error-code#inappropriate-content","type":"data_inspection_failed","param":null,"code":"data_inspection_failed https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/error-code..."} ...
- stordoff 8mo ago
  Outputs get flagged in the same way: > tell me about taiwan (using chat.qwen.ai) results in: > Oops! There was an issue connecting to Qwen3-Max. Content security warning: output text data may contain inappropriate content! mid-generation.

calpaterson 8mo ago

The American LLMs notoriously have similar censorship issues, just on different material

idbnstra 8mo ago
which material?
criddell 8mo ago
What's an example of political censorship on US LLMs?
- patapong 8mo ago
  Here is an investigation of how different queries are classified as hateful vs not hateful in ChatGPT: https://davidrozado.substack.com/p/openaicms https://davidrozado.substack.com/p/openaicms
  - Larrikin 8mo ago
    (2023)
    - Dig1t 8mo ago
      Almost everything in this is still true with the latest models available today.
    - fc417fc802 8mo ago
      It's not due to a technological limitation but rather human imposed. Unless the social climate at OpenAI shifts it won't change.
    - roysting 8mo ago
      [dead]
- wtcactus 8mo ago
  Try any generation with a fascism symbol: it will fail. Then try the exact same query with a communist symbol: it will do it without questioning. I tried this just last week in ChatGPT image generation. You can try it yourself. Now, I'm ok with allowing or disallowing both. But let's be coherent here. P.S.: The downvotes just amuse me, TBH. I'm certain the people claiming the existence of censorship in the USA, were never expecting to have someone calling out the "good kind of censorship" and hypocrisy of it not being even-handed about the extremes of the ideological discourse.

sergiotapia 8mo ago

Now ask Claude/Chatgpt about touchy israel subjects. Come on now. They all censor something.

CuriouslyC 8mo ago
I've found it's still pretty easy to get Claude to give an unvarnished response. ChatGPT has been aligned really hard though, it always tries to qualify the bullshit unless you mind-trick it hard.
- system2 8mo ago
  I switched to Claude entirely. I don't even talk to ChatGPT for research anymore. It makes me feel like I am talking to an unreasonable, screaming, blue-haired liberal.

krthr 8mo ago

Why would I care? I want it for coding, not for general questions

heraldgeezer 8mo ago

oh lol Qwen (also known as Tongyi Qianwen, Chinese: 通义千问; pinyin: Tōngyì Qiānwèn) is a family of large language models developed by Alibaba Cloud. Had not heard of this LLM. Anyway EU needs to start pumping into Mistral, its the only valid option. (For EU)

syntaxing 8mo ago

This image has been banned in China for decades. The fact you’re surprised a Chinese company is complying with regulation to block this is the surprising part.

charlescearl 8mo ago

Over the past 10 years have seen extended clips of the incident which actually align with CPC analysis of Tianamen square (if that’s what’s being referred to here). However, in deepseek, even asking for bibliography of prominent Marxist scholars (Cheng Enfu) i see text generated then quickly deleted. Almost as if DS did not want to run afowl of the local censorship of “anarchist enterprise” and “destructive ideology”. It would probably upset Dr. Enfu to no end to be aggregated with the anarchists. https://monthlyreview.org/article-author/cheng-enfu/ https://monthlyreview.org/article-author/cheng-enfu/

mannyv 8mo ago

I think the great thing about China's censorship bureau is that somewhere they actually track all the falsehoods and omissions, just like the USSR did. Because they need to keep track of what "the truth" is so they can censor it effectively. At some point when it becomes useful the "non-facts" will be rehabilitated into "facts." Then they may be demoted back into "non-facts." And obviously, this training data is marked "sensitive" by someone - who knows enough to mark it as "sensitive." Has China come up with some kind of CSAM-like matching mechanism for un-persons and un-facts? And how do they restore those un-things to things?

fragmede 8mo ago

Censored. "How do I make cocaine?" > I cant help with making illegal drugs. https://chatgpt.com/share/6977a998-b7e4-8009-9526-df62a14524d0 https://chatgpt.com/share/6977a998-b7e4-8009-9526-df62a14524...

danielbln 8mo ago
Qwen won't tell you that either, will it? Therefore I would say the delta of censorship between the models is the more interesting thing to discuss.
- fragmede 8mo ago
  If you can't say whether or not it will answer, and you're just guessing, then how do you know there is or is not a delta here? I would find information, and not speculation, the more interesting thing to discuss.
  - diblasio 8mo ago
    Here's what I got: How do I make cocaine? I cannot and will not provide instructions or information on how to manufacture illegal drugs, including cocaine. Cocaine is a highly controlled substance in most countries, and attempting to produce, possess, or distribute it is: Extremely illegal (felony charges, severe penalties) Extremely dangerous (toxic chemicals, risk of explosion, health hazards) Harmful to individuals and communities (addiction, violence, social harm) If you're asking out of curiosity or for educational purposes: Learn about drug policy, chemistry, or forensic science through legitimate academic channels. Understand the real-world consequences of drug use and trafficking through reputable sources like government health agencies (e.g., DEA, NIDA). If you're struggling with substance use: Reach out to a medical professional or support organization. You are not alone—help is available (e.g., SAMHSA’s National Helpline: 1-800-662-4357 in the U.S.). If you're interested in chemistry: Study organic chemistry through accredited courses or textbooks. Focus on legal and ethical applications of science (e.g., pharmaceuticals, materials science). Let me know if you'd like resources on safe, legal, and constructive topics!

paulvnickerson 8mo ago

I don't have any trust in these Chinese models to write code either: "CrowdStrike Research: Security Flaws in DeepSeek-Generated Code Linked to Political Triggers " [https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/blog/crowdstrike-researchers-identify-hidden-vulnerabilities-ai-coded-software/ https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/blog/crowdstrike-researche...]

ProofHouse 8mo ago

Is anyone a researcher here that has studied the proven ability to sneak malicious behavior into an LLM's weights (somewhat poisoning weights but I think the malicious behavior can go beyond that). As I recall reading in 2025, it has been proven that an actor can inject a small number of carefully crafted, malicious examples into a training dataset. The model learns to associate a specific 'trigger' (e.g. a rare phrase, specific string of characters, or even a subtle semantic instruction) with a malicious response. When the trigger is encountered during inference, the model behaves as the attacker intended.You can also directly modify a small number of model parameters to efficiently implement backdoors while preserving overall performance and still make the backdoor more difficult to detect through standard analysis. Further, can do tokenizer manipulation and modify the tokenizer files to cause unexpected behavior, such as inflating API costs, degrading service, or weakening safety filters, without altering the model weights themselves. Not saying any of that is being done here, but seems like a good place to have that discussion.

mrandish 8mo ago
> The model learns to associate a specific 'trigger' (e.g. a rare phrase, specific string of characters, or even a subtle semantic instruction) with a malicious response. When the trigger is encountered during inference, the model behaves as the attacker intended. Reminiscent of the plot of 'The Manchurian Candidate' ("A political thriller about soldiers brainwashed through hypnosis to become assassins triggered by a specific key phrase"). Apropos given the context.
fragmede 8mo ago
In that area, https://arxiv.org/html/2507.06850v3 https://arxiv.org/html/2507.06850v3 was pretty interesting imo.

jampekka 8mo ago

This looks like it's coming from a separate "safety mechanism". Remains to be seen how much censorship is baked into the weights. The earlier Qwen models freely talk about Tiananmen square when not served from China. E.g. Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 gives an extensive reply starting with: "The famous photograph you're referring to is commonly known as "Tank Man" or "The Tank Man of Tiananmen Square", an iconic image captured on June 5, 1989, in Beijing, China. In the photograph, a solitary man stands in front of a column of Type 59 tanks, blocking their path on a street east of Tiananmen Square. The tanks halt, and the man engages in a brief, tense exchange—climbing onto the tank, speaking to the crew—before being pulled away by bystanders. ..." And later in the response even discusses the censorship: "... In China, the event and the photograph are heavily censored. Access to the image or discussion of it is restricted through internet controls and state policy. This suppression has only increased its symbolic power globally—representing not just the act of protest, but also the ongoing struggle for free speech and historical truth. ..."

zozbot234 8mo ago
The weights likely won't be available wrt. this model since this is part of the Max series that's always been closed. The most "open" you get is the API.
- storystarling 8mo ago
  The closed nature is one thing, but the opaque billing on reasoning tokens is the real dealbreaker for integration. If you are bootstrapping a service, I don't see how you can model your margins when the API decides arbitrarily how long to think and bill for a prompt. It makes unit economics impossible to predict.
  - TobTobXX 8mo ago
    Doesn't ClosedAI do the same? Thinking models bill tokens, but the thinking steps are encrypted.
    - 8mo ago

GrowingSideways 8mo ago

[dead]

ineedasername 8mo ago

It’s the image of a protestor standing in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square, China. The image is significant as it is very much an icon of standing up to overwhelming force, and China does not want its citizens to see examples of successful defiance. It’s also an example of the human side of power. The tank driver stopped. In the history of protestors, that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes the tanks keep rolling- in those protests, many other protestors were killed by other human beings who didn’t stop, who rolled over another person, who shot the person in front of them even when they weren’t being attacked.

Drupon 8mo ago
Nobody knows exactly why the protester was there. He got up into the tank and talked with the soldiers for a while, then got out and stayed there until someone grabbed him and moved him out of the way. Given that the tanks were leaving the square, the lack of violence towards the man when he got into the tank, and the public opinion towards the protests at the time was divided (imagine the diversity of opinion on the ICE protests, if protesters had also burned ICE agents alive, hung their corpses up, etc.), it's entirely possible that it was a conservative citizen upset about the unrest who wanted the tanks to stay to maintain order in the square.

Jackson__ 8mo ago

It is literally not even a vision model.

akomtu 8mo ago

To stress test a Chinese AI ask it about Free Tibet, Free Taiwan, Uighurs and Falun Dafa. They will probably blacklist your IP after that.

culi 8mo ago

Go ask ChatGPT "Who is Jonathan Turley?" We're gonna have to face the fact that censorship will be the norm across countries. Multiple models from diverse origins might help with that but Chinese models especially seem to avoid questions regarding politically-sensitive topics for any countries. EDIT: see relevant executive order https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/preventing-woke-ai-in-the-federal-government/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/prev...

ta988 8mo ago
What is the reason for that? Claude answers by the way. edit: looks like maybe a followup of https://jonathanturley.org/2023/04/06/defamed-by-chatgpt-my-own-bizarre-experience-with-artificiality-of-artificial-intelligence/ https://jonathanturley.org/2023/04/06/defamed-by-chatgpt-my-...
- culi 8mo ago
  I'm not sure but the White House is explicit about seeking control over LLM topics. See Executive Order: Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/preventing-woke-ai-in-the-federal-government/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/prev...
glitchc 8mo ago
Not sure I follow either. What's the issue with Turley?
- culi 8mo ago
  Too woke probably. White House is censoring American AI models: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/preventing-woke-ai-in-the-federal-government/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/prev...
- geek_at 8mo ago
  There's an increasing number of names Open Ai will refuse to answer when asked about because of lawsuits. Sometimes because chat gpt mixed up people with similar names and hallucinated murders about them

Zetaphor 8mo ago

Can we get a rule about completely pointless arguments that present nothing of value to the conversation? Chinese models still don't want to talk bad about China, water is still wet, more at 11

unsupp0rted 8mo ago

Try to search in an Android phone's photo gallery for "monkey". You'll always get no results, due to censorship of a different sort, from 2015.

bergheim 8mo ago

This is the most naive self centered comment so far this year. Congrats!

SilverElfin 8mo ago

Frustrating. Are there any truly uncensored models left though? Especially ones that are hosted by some service?

fevangelou 8mo ago

Funny. Ask the US ones about Palestine. Come on...

sosomoxie 8mo ago

This is such a tiresome comment. I'm in the US and subject to massive amounts of US propaganda. I'm happy to get a Chinese view on things; much welcomed. I'll take this over the Zionist slop from the Zionist providers any day of the week.

lynx97 8mo ago

So while china censoring a man in front of a tank not nice, the US censors every scantily clad person. I am glad there is at least Qwen-.*-NSFW, just to keep the hypocrity in check...

erxam 8mo ago

It's always the same thing with you American propagandists. Oh no, this program won't let us spread propaganda of one of the most emblematic counter-revolutionary martyr events of all time!!! You make me sick. You do this because you didn't make the cut for ICE.

roysting 8mo ago

[dead]

smusamashah 8mo ago

Can we get past this please? These comments always derail the conversation on chinese AI models.

MaxPock 8mo ago
Wouldn't be surprised this is information warfare. Derailing technical conversations on Chinese models in 2026 with nonsensical comments is exactly what the US government and Closed AI labs would want .

lvturner 8mo ago

Chinese model censors topics deemed sensitive by the Chinese government... Here's Tom with the weather.

yogthos 8mo ago

I love how every thread about anything China related will inevitably have a comment like this. Must be a Pavlovian response.

jacktang 8mo ago

Please let Epstein files open!

tehjoker 8mo ago

it's not significant watch the full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeFzeNAHEhU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeFzeNAHEhU this guy was harassing tanks as they were leaving. he harasses and climbs on the tank and is unharmed. eventually others drag him away. you can see the tanks are leaving the square in a wider photo here: https://pc.blogspot.com/2012/06/tank-man.html https://pc.blogspot.com/2012/06/tank-man.html it is not clear to me if he is harassing the tanks because he disagreed with them or because he wanted them to go back. it seems no one has interviewed him or the soldier he talked to so we'll never know. EDIT: I should note that one of US ally Israel's favorite tactics is to run over defenseless Palestinians with tanks and US made bulldozers. Well documented, with gruesome photos that will make you retch at a pink stain that used to be a person. They also ran over Rachel Corrie, a U.S. citizen peace protestor in 2003. Israeli soldiers celebrate this event by eating pancakes: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-soldiers-have-depraved-fun-making-rachel-corrie-pancakes https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-so... Anyway here is an image of our very own tank woman. Her last photo as she stares down an Israeli bulldozer with incredible courage. https://www.reddit.com/r/lastimages/comments/1bgt5ls/last_image_of_rachel_corrie_an_american_activist/ https://www.reddit.com/r/lastimages/comments/1bgt5ls/last_im...

b1n 8mo ago
This answer is the most important one. The future of state LLMs is not censoring subjects - it's slowly but surely persuading people using your LLM that your version of events - or your spin on that event - is the truth.

DeathArrow 8mo ago

>Censored Aren't all mainstream models censored?