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

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

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.

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. Cipherpunks 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 Zhong, who I'm sure I just butchered his name, but Ja Zhong previously worked in China during COVID and came to America. a little bit thereafter. But Ja Zheng 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. 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. 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, how Zhuge Jung 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 peak of here and there. But before we get to our conversation with Jia Zhong, we'll hear from a few of our sponsors to make going bankless a little bit easier. Lens Protocol is an open-source tech stack for building decentralized social media applications. It is the new era for social media. We all have toxic relationships with our Web 2 apps.

We want to break up with them, but we can't. These applications own our digital lives and all the relationships that we've made. We need to break through to a new paradigm of social networking applications that we control rather than them controlling us. Lens isn't a social media app. It's a protocol to let a thousand 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 is a secret code word in the show notes. Enter that code word in the Google Forum links, and you'll be well on your way to entering the world of Web3 social. The Brave Browser is the User First browser for the Web3 internet, with over 60 million monthly active users. And inside the Brave browser, you'll find the Brave Wallet,

the secure, multi-trained crypto wallet built right into the browser. Web3 is freedom from big tech and Wall Street, more control and better privacy, but there's a weak point in Web3, your crypto wallet. And most crypto wallets are browser extensions, which can easily be spoofed. But the Brave wallet is dead. different. No extensions are required, which gives Brave browser an extra level of security

versus other wallets. Brave wallet is your secure passport for the possibilities of Web3 and supports multiple chains, including Ethereum and Salon. You can even buy crypto directly inside the wallet with RAMP. And of course, you can store, send, and swap your crypto assets, manage your NFTs, and connect to other wallets and defy apps. So whether you're new to crypto or you're a season pro, it's time to ditch those risky extensions and it's time to switch to the Brave wallet. Download Brave at brave.com slash bankless and click the wallet icon to get started. Arbitrum is an Ethereum layer two scaling solution that is going to completely change how we use defy and NFTs. Some of the coolest new NFT collections have chosen Arbitrum as their home,

while Defy protocols continue to see increased liquidity and usage. You can now bridge straight into Arbitrum for more than 10 different exchanges, including finance, FTX, Whoobie, and Crypto.com. Once on Arbitrum, you'll enjoy fast transactions with cheap fees, allowing you to explore new frontiers of the crypto universe. New to Arbitrum, for a limited time, you can get Arbitrum NFTs designed by the famous artist Ratwell and Sue. for joining the Arbitrum Odyssey. The Odyssey is an eight-week-long event where you can play on-chain activities and receive a free NFT as a reward. Find out more by visiting the Discord at discord.g.ggy slash Arbitrum. You can also bridge your assets to Arbitrum at i.o and access all of Arbitrum's

apps at portal.arbitrum. Dot one in order to experience defy and NFTs, the way it was always meant to be fast, cheap, secure, and fiction-free. What's up, Jajun? How's it gone? Hey, David. I'm good. How are you? 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?

Hi, bankless fans. I'm also a huge bankless fan. Hmm, good question. I would consider myself as a huge fan of Ethereum first, and I get into Ethereum like most of us, maybe during the device summer. After that, I'm really passionate about the Ethereum overall. so I hang out with a bunch of friends on crypto Twitter every day.

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 that support EIP, ERC 437. Before Ethereum, I was a product manager at Maituan. It's like a Uber-Eats in the US. Also, I'm a product manager at Bidance, the parent company of TikTok. 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. 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? Okay. ByDance is like Facebook in the U.S.

So their main business consists of a few parts. is the TikTok that everybody used. TikTok is the name, the brand they use in the West. And in China, they use another brand called Doin. This is where their most revenue comes from. And they also have another news aggregator app, headline daily, which is how their business started from, which aggregate huge traffic for them to also help them to get familiar with AI

and recommendation algorithms. for them to build a TikTok, the video business later today. And that really seems to be kind of the new meta in a lot of these apps that are coming about these days. It's really the power of that recommendation algorithm, 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. Were you involved in that side of the business, or what were you doing when you were working for Bidamps? 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 different is that the recommendation part is trying to pick up the best content for you to be additive, to interact with the app more often to spend as much as time as you can. Most of my time, I'm focusing on the moderation part, or they call a trust and sense. safety nowadays. Trust and safety. Yes. Our job is mainly 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. And so how is the company deciding what content to moderate? Was it like pornography, child pornography, or what was the categories of content that Bidance would moderate? Oh, I think just like most of the Webto company or Content Plus, There are several categories of content that they won't let the user see it. For example, the most common one is just spanned. Like Twitter is doing terrible on anti-spanning.

Yeah, the most part is spanned and also pornography. That's another huge part. Also, in terms of TikTok, they have huge amount of users that are like under 18. So child-related, you need to be more sensitive. about that kind of content and also violence. For example, you're definitely not allowed to kill yourself or suicide or shoot someone and put some very bloody content online. That would be the most part. And for China and maybe some more restricted country like India or Middle East, we have some different kind of political-specific rules that was not allowed to pose.

That part, the political-specific stuff, would you say that that part is the difference between the content moderation and the Western apps like Twitter versus the content moderation apps that you would see out of China? Yeah, that's definitely the most different part. For example, in China, in order to let the company to survive, you are not allowed to let the user to use your platform to advocate any political disobedience to have their own political agenda. All you can do is to be a good propaganda. You either allow the state to publish their own agenda, or you can only have some very soft or entertainment content that is harmless. Okay, so how does an app actually detect political content that is against the political parties of the Chinese Communist Party, right?

So I'm assuming it's relatively easy to detect porn or nudity, for example. I feel like that's just a generic scanning of the video and seeing if it looks like an image that's banned. How does content moderation look like when it's something a little bit more just generalized like political speech? How does that work? Oh, good question. Political content is where you can do it the hard way and the easy way. the easy way is, well, there are several ways for you to scan or to understand the content, right? So first is the graphic side.

So like what's in this video? And for example, it's easy to analyze, for example, if there's a picture of the political leader like President Xi Jinping. So if his picture is at some frame, then it's easy to detect this part of the political leader. graphic will be recalled back to the moderator. So the moderator will take a look at this video to check whether it's spreading some political rumor or other things they are discrediting the political leader. So this is the graphic part. You can detect what in the video. Because, you know, China, because of the Tiananmen Square protest massacre, they will censor like tank in June every year.

This is from the graphic side. And sound is another huge part of a video, right? So will you speak during the video or what is the voice content in the video? So we will use some voice detection technology to translate those voice into text. And then we will match those texts with some keywords to try to understand what are you speaking. So if your speech hits some or match. some keywords, then this part of content will be recorded and will be moderate. 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 people manually review it and check it out? Is that what's next in the flow here? Yes, people will manually check it. And also, we will have some, like, algorithm 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. And so what would happen next? If it was deemed that it needs to be censored, what does that censorship actually look like? Are we just deleting

the videos or what happens to these video files or audio files? So there are several options for the moderator or the nowadays maybe the 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 takedown or this content will be hide or even worse, this account will be deleted. 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?

Huge. I would say maybe, like, two years ago, at least we have 20K to 30K moderators that is moderating the content. Wait, 20 to 30,000 individual employees that are doing this? Yes, they are spreading all around China, like some are in the non-year. northern parts in the southern part. We are just trying to build it base or system to handle the business. Well, just in case if we have one bay, well, base is the place people do the moderation. So we have different bays in different regions. So just to avoid single point of failure, yeah, they know this. They use anti-fragile to sensor in case one place was done,

then they can use another place. But usually daily work is pretty. occupied since there are so many content and upload it daily. Okay, so there's tens of thousands of people in multiple different spots all doing this content moderation. And you're saying that it needs to be having a very high uptime because the company by dance has to actually be ensuring that the content going out is appropriately filtered. Like telling me that like 20 to 30,000 employees are moderating content on it at 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 they can always remain. 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 100%. Like why so much energy is going into this? Well, this is how business can survive in the authoritarian country. It's a heart. It's a statue. that you have to keep like 99.99% of time just to minimize the risk of leaking any political sensitive speech. Authoritarian regime are very, like, fragile,

even though like everything, they control the media, they control the army, they control even the land is a stay-owned. But they are so afraid that even we let the free media or free user content that got leaked, they might spread maybe the spirit of freedom. So the uptime must be very high. And there are often some unexpected events. For example, maybe some like fiber network was cut for some reason.

But maybe one of our base will be done. So it will create a huge panic, even the CEO or maybe one level down. the executive, they will intervene. They will check the progress, like when the moderation system will go back online. Oh, my God. So this is a cost that the business takes on of itself. Like, 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

letting some politically sensitive speech through their system and onto the app. That's right? Exactly. companies should feel, especially those social media companies, they should feel very lucky to operate in the U.S. They don't need such a huge burden to run their daily business. So what would happen if some video got through the system that was politically sensitive? What would the Chinese government do? Well, Chinese government, they have a special office to handle this, like, cyberspace administration

office. They have several ways to monitor. They will, like, go through, the social media like by themselves to check whether those social media platform are following the rules, following the order. Another way is that they will receive some reports or like flag. So if they receive those, they will gather those cases they receive to send back to the social media company to ask why this content or this video about this specific issue was leaked. why you fail to stop it from spreading. Is there something in the laws of China, or is it just implied?

As in like, is it actually illegal to have politically sensitive speech out there from 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? 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 countdowns to the implement. They can always try to find some law to punish you. Who's at risk?

So say Biden's accidentally let some content through its system. That's politically sensitive. It's talking crap about Xi Jinping to saying China's bad. 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 Biden's? How would it react? Good question. A few years ago, at that time, I think, to restrict.

on moderation is not that strict. So Biden is just saying that recommendation algorithm is not political, but a lot of political sensitive content are recommended or spread on their platform. So the authority just have some police go straight to their office, require some report or they will intervene directly. And even those police will. police will even set an office directly at the Bidance headquarters. And also all the apps built by Bidens will be taken down from the app store.

I think recently there's a company called D.D. And they are the Uber of China. They listed in the U.S. without the direct permission from the Chinese Authority. So their app has been taken down for, I guess, already one year. And does the way, so the revenue of that business just drops to zero? Yes. So only existing users can access their app, since App Store can no longer distribute those app installation. It kind of feels like a temporary fines, like your revenue is going to drop for a year.

Is it possible to recover from that? Yeah, if you comply or if you apply very strict moderation policy. So that's why we need 20 or 30,000 people to do the daily job, to apply maybe a stricter or you have very strong self-discipline to moderate the content. Even though sometimes maybe the stay or the authority only require you to go to 50 miles, but you have to go 100 miles just to be sure you are safe. And you said it's 20 to 30,000 people of content moderators for Bidance, but I'm assuming there's another. There's like each app or each company has their own army of moderators. And so you know, you multiply this by like the number of companies that are in this game. Like how many companies out there in China do you think have this like army of content moderators?

Well, another huge content platform is Vchats or Tencent. They have even stricter rules. So Tencent run Vchats. So it's like an instant message app like WhatsApp in the U.S. 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. It's that kind of serious. And is that because WeChat reported the text message or the message to the authority saying, hey, this person just said something negative about the government? I think even the local police, they have direct assets.

to moderate like what's happening in the local area. Since your Vichn account is linked to your cell phone, your phone number, so they can reach out to you easily. Yeah, you don't even need the 10 cent to that kind of like reporting stuff. The local police will do it themselves. Okay, so Bidance has like 20 to 30,000 content moderators, maybe something like 10cent has 30, 40, 50,000 moderators. I think if you add up a number of apps,

we're going to quickly get past 100, maybe 200,000 content moderators, if you add them all up, maybe way more. At some point, the topic of like automation comes into play, because that's really expensive. Like that's 100 to 200,000 content moderators that are manually scouring content. How does this thing scale out? Is trying to like, trying to like make this thing automated

so we can start saving some costs? Yeah, we are, that's where AI play the roles. We always say like AI goes to the left and crypto goes to the right. So AI is kind of like to that authoritarian regime like, since it can easily figure out the pattern, so they can figure out what kind of content it is. So other companies are heavily using the AI model to help the moderator to be more efficient,

finding out the content we don't like. And so where does this go when the AI algorithms get like really, really, really good at their job? And like, I mean, imagine like we don't need so many content moderators. It's just so effectively streamlined. Are people like concerned about the logical conclusion of this? What do you mean? Like how good at its job is the AI content moderation? Is it like really good?

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

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

Like even though our business is growing like 10-ness, but we can try to keep our moderator account the same. Rocket Pool is your decentralized Ethereum staking protocol. You can stake your eth in Rocket Pool and get our ETH in return, allowing you to stake your ETH and use it in Defy at the same time. You can get 4% on your ETH by staking it with Rocket Pool, but you can get even more by running a node. Rocket Pool is the only staking provider that allows anyone to permissionlessly join their network of validating Ethereum nodes. Setting up your Rocket Pool node is easier than running a node solo, and you only need 16Eth to get started. You get an extra 15% staking commission on the pooled ETH that uses your node to stake.

You also get RPL token rewards on top. So if you're bullish e-staking, you can boost your yield by adding your node to the decentralized rocket pool network, which currently has over 1,000 independent node operators. It's yield farming, but with Ethereum notes. You can get started at rocket pool.net, and you can also join the rocket pool community in their Discord. You can find me hanging out there sometimes in the chat, so I'll see you there. 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.

ZKSink has combined the power of zero-knowledge roll-ups in the Ethereum virtual machine, enabling developers to build the greatest web three projects possible, ones we haven't even seen yet. Crypto needs its killer applications to onboard the world, but crypto killer apps need ZKSink as a platform to build on first. It's generally accepted that zero-knowledge roll-ups are the conclusion of crypto blockchain scaling technology, and ZKSink is leading the charge into the final frontier of crypto economics. So if you're a developer who wants to build your app on a future-proof foundation, which gives your users the best UX possible, check out ZKSink's website at ZKSink.io. there's also going to be a token, so give them a follow on Twitter 2 at ZK Sync.

Juno is bringing crypto-friendly banking straight into your checking account. With Juno, you can send money from your Juno checking account straight onto a layer 2, like Polygon, optimism, Arbitrum, and they have ZK Sync and StarkNet support on their way. You can skip the ACH wait times, you can skip all the gas fees, and go straight from your checking account to an Ethereum layer 2 in seconds. Inside Juno, you can buy and sell crypto with $0 fees, and your Juno checking account comes with a metal master card that gives you up to 5% cashback on your spending.

Juno is also giving you $10 cash back on your first crypto deposit and $100 when you set up a direct deposit. This ad just writes itself. So go sign up at juno.finance slash bankless. Okay, so moderator headcount stays the same content grows and it's AI that's really filling that gap to really allow for the scaling of this moderation. I remember a few years ago and probably still going on to the day, but there was this big controversy with the Uyghurs.

and the Uyghurs were being like oppressed and censored. What's their story with content inside of China? Like how did the Uyghur and content moderation intersection interact with each other? Yeah, good question. Well, I think dialect is kind of an increase. So if you speak English, I speak Chinese, then the moderator who only know Chinese, they cannot figure out what David is speaking, right? So in China, most of the people speak Mandarin.

And most of our moderator only know Mandarin or maybe their own local dialects. But there are a lot of dialects in China. So some people speak Cantonese and some people speak like wigger language. And a Uyghur and Tibetan area are like very political sensitive in China. So first, people from that kind of region, they are not allowed to like live stream. So because live streaming is very dangerous because every content you upload is going out without moderation in advance. So they are not allowed to live stream at that kind of region. But of course, there are maybe some Uyghur and Tibetan.

They live in the Chinese mainland, like in Beijing and Shanghai. They can continue to live stream. But whenever they speak their local language, their live streaming will be. stop because the moderator cannot understand what they are saying. So it put a huge risk to the platform. If we cannot understand what they are speaking, then what if they say something politically sensitive, then maybe our platform will be in trouble. So yeah, people just brutally stop all their live streaming or even some video content that speak in some Uyghur or Tibetan language. I encountered one case during my work at Biden's.

So this kind of process is kind of quite stressful and tiring for the moderators. Because the rules is so simple, right? Whenever you speak Uyghur or Tibetan or any local dialect that moderator don't understand, you can just cut it or you can just stop it. I receive some requests from the moderator management. So they asked us to develop a algorithm that can automatically detect the people who is speaking wiger or Tibetan language. So our system can automatically cut those live streaming. But we didn't do that.

I feel it's inappropriate for a company to do this kind of things. Even though in China, I just use an excuse saying that we don't have enough data points. so we cannot do this just to push it through. What were you not wanting to do? Like, cut down the live stream or create the algorithm? Yeah, create the algorithm. Because the policy part is not, I'm not responsible for the policy part, and I have no power to change it.

All I can do is me as a product manager at bad-ends. All I can do is to request some algorithm needs or request to our engineer and build a product and process to moderate. Yeah, so I'm just trying to do my best to stop the harm. Were you like in protest? As in you're saying that you are not going to take part in building this algorithm? Yeah, it's not a protest. It's more like a passive way to trying to not do some dirty job.

Sure. But if you did that job get finished anyways? I'm assuming if you didn't do it, somebody else would. Yeah, I guess they just believe. believe what I say to them because we don't have enough data. Because, you know, an algorithm require huge amount of data to be more precise and, yeah, to be more precise. If you don't have enough data, then you can easily make a mistake so it's not usable. 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?

Exactly. And was that true? No. I mean, for a big company, if you really want to do something, you can always do something. It's just about the cost. Like, how badly do you want to do something? Right. Did other tech companies do this, as in automatically take down the live streams of people who spoke Uyghur?

To my knowledge, no. Do you know why they haven't had that ability yet? I'm not sure. I don't know how other companies do this kind of product and process stuff. 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. And so it wasn't like there's this systemic racism against the Uyghurs. It's just that the private sector has this fear of accidentally putting out politically dissident content.

And it just so happens that they weren't able to moderate the Uyghur language. my mind goes to, well, then if that is the policy, that really forces a lot of China to stick to, like, the conventional dialects, like traditional or conventional Mandarin. 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 smaller, more peripheral dialects get more oppressed than, like, the more canonical, like, languages? is it. If you are like a speaker of a smaller dialect, you don't have the same access and services that you do if you speak Mandarin. Is that a fair assumption? Yes, that's true. Nowadays, most of the kids grow up speaking Mandarin even in school, so they only speak their own local dialects at their own house. Yeah, I think gradually people are speaking more and more Mandarin

even at home. And is that an explicit desire of the Chinese government, as in they want to funnel everyone into this like same homogenous culture? I would think so. Yeah, of course, this has a lot of huge benefit because people in the same region can communicate better easily. And it's also easier for the government 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 in Christian or ingression algorithm or local dialect, then it's hard to govern. Is there any sort of sentiment, 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? Well, oh, good question. Of course nobody like it. It's like universally accepted that no one likes it. Yes, no one lies it. You always feel frustrated whenever the thing. your post got deleted or the thing you read tweets got deleted. So Chinese people become like really good first at self-moderating. We know what to say and we know what should not say.

And if we really want to say something that is not allowed, we will create our own language to describe it and everybody just know that the meaning. So yeah, this is one thing, how to express yourself in such a harsh environment. And also, we know when to save the content that will be possibly censored. So we always screenshot everything. Whenever there's a hot take or popular article regarding maybe some social event or criticizing the government, then people will automatically screenshot it and share it in different kind of media. Because they think that it might get taken down so they want to save it themselves? Yes. It's like everybody become a note in the critical world.

They will just download those content into their local device and maybe post it or share in their small distribution channel with their friend's family. Right. They make the data sharing more decentralized. Is like the hot take or popular article, is that like a code word for this is politically dubious content? So you better like prick up your ears? Yeah, I think people are just very sensitive, especially after the COVID. People have experienced a large scale of a harsh content moderation. So people know what to say and what to save.

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

The pushback is very weak and it's really event-driven. So whenever there's a popular article that got deleted, people will try to fight back by posting their own screenshot or they're not trying to upload the screenshot directly. They might rotate the screenshot or they might draw something on the screenshot just to make the moderation much difficult. Or they will use their local dialect to translate the original article so that it's even more difficult to moderate. Is it dangerous to do this? In general, it's not.

It's not very dangerous to spread the content since you are not the original creator of this content. Interesting. 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 people that already been arrested for aggregating and spreading those content. What does it mean to get arrested? Do you go to jail for like a week, a month, a year? For what I know, that those people have been arrested and waiting for the sentence. I'm not sure how long the sentence will be, but at least a few years.

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 also kind of maintain some level of self-censorship? Yeah, when you speak face-to-face, you definitely are more. lose or you have more freedom to speak. So that's why maybe authority are very afraid of huge gathering, especially during COVID. That's why maybe, so recently there's a Web 3 conference or events happen in Dali. It's a place in the southwestern China. So people just gathering there to have some meeting. But whenever there's a huge meeting, if people, the attendance exceed 100, the police will precisely break in and ask everyone to record information for all the people

who attend this kind of event. There's been a couple of people that I've talked to who are used to live in China or still do live in China. We wanted a show on bank lists 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. 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 the West kind of thinks China is this super oppressive authoritarian state. You know, I actually like appreciate what my government does for better or for worse and they actually do a lot of good and they just help. Is there also a feeling of just like, yeah, the Chinese government. is like effective and they perform well and we appreciate them. Just like, what's the other side of this story? Or would you say it's all negative? It definitely not all negative.

For example, China has a great infrastructure. Like we have a high speed railway that goes literally everywhere. So sometimes you don't even want to take the plane. Seems the security check, the wait time is so long. Sometimes you would just prefer to go to. to the Uster Railway. I think maybe the 5G infrastructure is quite stable and the internet service is quite stable.

It's like I never feel any like internet shut down in China, but even in the Silicon Valley, I'm not living in Silicon Valley. It already happened two or at least three times during my stay here within one year. A very centralized government can definitely produce something that Western democracy that cannot, but maybe at the price of taxpayers' money, those projects may not be very profitable. So it's like everybody is subsidizing for that, and people, of course, can have some of benefit from that also.

How do the people of China think about the future of China? Are they optimistic about the future? Are they pessimistic about the future? What's their general opinion? I taught you 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. Why is that?

Well, why we are very pessimistic about the short run? Because, well, first it's because of the COVID, like everybody in this planet. 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 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? You can still go to the Costco or targets to buy your grocery.

But the lockdown in China means lockdown. You are locked down your own apartment. You are not allowed to go. out. All you can do is order the delivery. But what about the poor people, right? How about delivery men? How about their life? That's very kind of suffering. So first is COVID. Second is about our president. So he changed the constitution a few years ago. So he made the turn limit. So he can be the president for life indefinitely. Yeah. So that's why people are very pessimistic in the short run.

Why are they optimistic in the long term? I don't know. I guess we are always optimistic. We have a huge domestic market. We have a huge amount of population. I think China have a lot of similarity, just like Russia. So we all live in the authoritarian region for now. But if you can just look at the history, for example, like math Olympics, you just take a look at the winner.

They are all Chinese. even though they might be American Chinese. Just take a look during the Web 2 era. The only great company that is capable of competing with the West is like the Chinese company. So in general, we are quite optimistic if we can live without the limitation, without the burden that is not necessary. While you lived in China, were you familiar with Ethereum or did that come after you left? During COVID, I quit my job. I feel very pessimistic 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 the Twitter. I saw one of my friends post a blog regarding yule farming. So I found it very interesting. I mean, like amazing. How can you get like you like 20% APR on stable? Unstable, I mean, it's ridiculous. you can only get maybe 3% or 5% from the Chinese bank.

So I feel like it's a huge arbitrage opportunity. So I put all my money to the USDT, USDZ and start yield farming with stable. With stable coin. So first from BSC, that's another topic. I feel like all EVN are good EVN. So it's good for onboarding new users. Since at that time, I feel like if you do a swap on unit swap, It costs like 100 or 200 US dollar.

That's so expensive. So long short, I go to BSC and I try to do some yield farming and I'm getting more comfortable. So I go to Polygon for yield farming again. Since then, I went into the rabbit hole like most of the people who are here nowadays and listen to bankless, unchain, the Daily Grey. those are amazing content you guys provided. So I'm becoming more active in the Ethereum community, reading Vitalis blog. Yeah, this is like how I get into Ethereum. How did you think about, or do you think about like the intersection of your previous job at Bidance and Ethereum?

How do you think those things relate? Was that something you were thinking of while you were going down the rabbit hole? Yes, I think it's a huge difference about this to world. So what I did in Biden's is like moderation or censorship to be more precise. But Ethereum is like anti-censorship. So I feel like my work in the critical space in the Ethereum ecosystem is feel like a redemption. I'm trying to redeem my scene. I'm trying to save myself from my past that it work.

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

the feature of anti-censorship a lot more than other people, maybe especially with the people live in the U.S. Maybe the most difficult things you ever experience is the platforming Trump, even though I think it may sense, but it's still a big shock for a lot of people. What about 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? I think for the general public, the sentiment would be quite similar, no matter in the West or in the China.

There are still a lot of speculation going on. People really don't understand the fundamental. They always consider a crypto currency as a replacement for fiat, which it doesn't make sense unless it's stable coin. And especially, I think, Chinese government, like, out those kind of propaganda every year telling people to avoid to touch the cryptocurrency, and crypto currency is a scam. I think still a lot of people have doubt about crypto in general. But also 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. Yeah, my mom.

But then also, is there a crypto scene in China? Yes, I think it's getting more and more like critical is attracting more and more people in China, especially after DeFi, after Bitcoin, like Refi, Public Goods concept, like Sobong token concept, and Dow, Dow governance. A lot of people with a social science background are trying to break into the crypto space, especially after all the web two company got wrecked by the authority. So it's getting difficult for, you. young people to have a good job in the wet-to-world. So people are escaping or running to the crypto for various reasons.

Beautiful. Well, Ji-Jong, now that I have you on bankless, is there anything, any message that you have for the Bankless Nation, anything you want to say? Yeah. I think I have a few things to say. Well, first, revitalized block. That's very important.

That's the best source you can get to help you to understand crypto, help you understand Ethereum. And the second is focus on the fundamentals, trying to understand the product and process and care less about the price movement. For those people who really bullish on Ethereum or crypto in general, I think the cheaper the token price gets, you should be more happier since you can buy it in such a low price. 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 a 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. Yeah, I say thank you, Dave. Awesome. Of course, Ji Jong, thank you so much for coming on banklist and telling me your story. Thank you.

Cheers. Cheers. Bye-bye.