在北京“字節跳動”總部工作的人們。周二，中國最高媒體監管機腹命令這家公司關閉旗下分享笑話和搞笑視頻的應用軟件。

在北京“字節跳動”總部工作的人們。周二，中國最高媒體監管機腹命令這家公司關閉旗下分享笑話和搞笑視頻的應用軟件。 GIULIA MARCHI/BLOOMBERG

BEIJING — A Chinese start-up that appears to have mastered the art of keeping people glued to their smartphones also has a knack for something else: drawing the ire of China’s censors.

北京——中國一家初創企業似乎已經掌握了讓人們的眼球離不開智能手機的技巧。不過，它還有另一個本事：激怒中國的審查者。

The country’s top media regulator on Tuesday ordered the company, Bytedance, to shut down its app for sharing jokes and silly videos. Vulgar content on the Neihan Duanzi app had “caused strong dislike among internet users,” a brief notice from the State Administration of Radio and Television said. The company was told to clean up its other platforms, too.

周二，中國最高的媒體監管機腹要求該公司關停其用於分享笑話和荒唐視頻的應用程序。國家　電總局發布的一份簡短公告稱，“內涵段子”應用內容低俗，“引發網民L烈反感”。該公司也被要求整改它的其他平台。

The shutdown was only the latest blow for Bytedance, one of the world’s most successful technology start-ups. Just a day earlier, its flagship app, a popular news aggregator called Jinri Toutiao, was pulled from app stores for unspecified reasons.

這次關停是對北京字節跳動科技有限公司的最新打擊，這家公司是世界上最成功的科技初創企業之一。就在一天前，該公司　受喜愛的旗艦應用新聞匯總客戶端軟件“今日頭條”被有關部門從應用商店下架，沒有具體原因。

And last week, Huoshan, the company’s platform for sharing slice-of-life video clips, vanished from app stores after China’s official television broadcaster rapped it for glorifying underage pregnancy.

上周，中國官方的電視　播公司譴責火山小視頻美化未成年人懷孕後，這個分享生活視頻片段的平台從應用商店消失。

In a statement posted Wednesday morning, Zhang Yiming, Bytedance’s founder and chief executive, said he had spent the previous, sleepless night in deep reflection, gnawed by “a guilty conscience.”

字節跳動創始人兼首席執行官張一鳴在周三早間發布的一則聲明中說，他接到通知後一夜未眠，一直在反思，處在“內疚之中”。

“Content had appeared that did not accord with core socialist values and was not a good guide for public opinion,” Mr. Zhang wrote. “Over the past few years, we put more effort and resources toward expanding the business, and did not take enough measures to supervise our platform.”

“出現了與社會主摰痐葋痍觀不符的內容，沒有貫秘n輿論導向，”張一鳴寫道。“過去幾年間，我們把更多的精力和資源，放在了企業的增長上，沒有採取足{措施，來補上我們在平台監管上欠下的功課。”

He added that Bytedance would expand its team for monitoring content to 10,000 people from 6,000 presently.

他還說，字節跳動將馬上把其現有6000人的審核隊伍擴大到10000人。

The company’s travails show how the government in Beijing has broadened its restrictions on what people see and say on the internet. Regulators are increasingly suppressing content that they deem pornographic or in poor taste, and not merely material that touches on politically sensitive topics such as regime change or personal freedoms.

字節跳動的困境，顯示了北京在如何擴大政府對人們在互聯網上能看什厶、說什厶所做出的限制。監管者正越來越多地壓制在他們眼裡屬於色情或低俗的內容，而不僅限於觸及政治敏感話題的內容，譬如政權更迭或個人自由。

The authorities are also scrambling to keep up as a new wave of Chinese apps, many of them built around short, spontaneously recorded video clips or live streams, helps people communicate and express themselves in new and hard-to-supervise ways.

中國政府也在努力跟上技術發展的步伐。國內新一波應用中，有許多是圍繞茼發錄製的短視頻片段或直播而設計的，這些應用韺U人們以新的、難以監管的方式進行交流和自我表達。

Bytedance — which investors valued at more than $30 billion recently, putting it more in the financial league of Airbnb or SpaceX than of Buzzfeed or Vice — has assembled a confederation of these buzzy new apps. And it has made no secret of its desire to dominate phone screens across the rest of the world, too.

字節跳動已擁有各種各帚熒s應用程序，投資者最近對其的估值超過300億美元，使其的金融級別超越了Buzzfeed或Vice，可與Airbnb或SpaceX相比Q。而且，字節跳動也毫不掩飾自己想要主宰世界其他地區手機屏幕的願望。

The company says it uses artificial intelligence technology to figure out what users like, then makes sure they are fed more and more of it. Read a few articles on the trade spat between the United States and China, and soon your Toutiao feed will be populated with news on international relations. Watch a bunch of stand-up comedy shows, and before long, the app will suggest new comics who might appeal.

該公司說，他們使用人工智能技術來找到用戶喜歡的東西，然後確保用戶得到越來越多的這些東西。讀一篇有關中美貿易爭端的文章，你的今日頭條中很快就會充斥國際關係方面的新聞；看幾個脫口秀節目之後不久，這款應用就會向你推薦一些你可能會喜歡的新喜劇演員。

Bytedance has spent top dollar hiring engineers and software experts to fine-tune its recommendation technology.

為了對公司的推薦技術進行更細微的調整，字節跳動已高薪聘請了工程師和軟件專家。

“It’s like having a chef in your house who knows what kind of food you like,” said Xu Qinglu, a 22-year-old student and Toutiao user in Beijing.

“就像你家裡有個師一屆A他知道你的口味，”22歲的許清露說，她是北京的一名學生和今日頭條用戶。

“I think the app is not harmful,” she added. “The people who use it should be responsible for their own behavior.”

“我覺得這個app　害，”她補充道。“用戶應該自己有能力控制自己的行為。”

At an event in Beijing last month, Mr. Zhang said he hoped that more than half of the company’s users would come from outside China within the next three years. At the moment, he said, one in 10 of its users were overseas.

上個月在北京舉行的一次活動中，張一鳴說，他希望在未來三年內，公司一半以上的用戶將來自中國大陸以外的地方。他說，目前十分之一的用戶來自海外。

First, though, the company needs to continue thriving in China. Bytedance’s detractors say that salty, unwholesome material

— the sort that has the Chinese government on edge these days — is exactly what the company’s apps have specialized in, and is a major reason for its popularity.

不過，公司首先需要在中國能繼續蓬勃發展。字節跳動的批評者說，那些有趣而略嫌粗俗的、不健康的材料，正是公司的應用所擅長的，也是它受歡迎的主要原因，但這些都屬於讓中國政府最近不高興的種類。

“Will a cleaned-up Toutiao still have an edge?” said Neil Arora, an American investor who previously worked in venture capital in Beijing.

“整頓乾淨了的頭條還會優勢嗎？”曾在北京從事風險投資的美國投資者尼堙P阿羅拉(Neil Arora)問道。

“Toutiao’s strong team, refined algorithms and locked-in users may help it adapt,” said Mr. Arora, who is not a Bytedance shareholder. “However, the bigger danger is that all news apps may lose out, with users pulling away from sanitized news feeds for entertainment elsewhere.”

“頭條L大的團隊、改進的算法，以及已經擁有的用戶群可能會韺U它適應，”阿羅拉說，他不是字節跳動的股東。“但是，更大的危險是，所有的新聞應用都可能是輸家，因為用戶不想看淨化了的新聞匯總，他們會轉向別的娛樂平台。”

Hans Tung of GGV Capital, a venture firm that operates in both China and the United States and is a Bytedance shareholder, said he is confident the company will continue to add more types of material — not just the lowbrow kind — to its platforms. “The Toutiao we see today is not the Toutiao it will be five years from now,” he said.

在中國和美國都有業務的風險投資公司紀源資本(GGV Capital)的童士豪(Hans Tung)是字節跳動的持股人。他說，他相信字節跳動將繼續在其平台上增加更多類型的內容，而不僅僅是低層次的那種。“我們今天看到的頭條不是今後五年的頭條。”

“It’s better to go through this rodeo a few times,” Mr. Tung said of the latest rebuke from regulators. This way, he said, the company will be motivated to move more quickly in courting users who want higher-minded stuff.

“最好經歷幾次這帚風波，”童士豪在提到監管者最近的指責時說。他說，這岸~能讓公司有動力迅速採取行動，去吸引那些想得到更高品位內容的用戶。

Toutiao aside, three other popular news apps — including one run by Tencent, the giant Chinese conglomerate — were also taken down from stores this week.

除了頭條，另外三個熱門的新聞應用本周也從應用商店下架，其中包括中國互聯網巨頭騰訊旗下的一個應用。

Another fast-growing video app, Kuaishou, was removed last week alongside Huoshan, and also for featuring videos made by teenage mothers. In response, Kuaishou’s parent company said it would increase the size of its content-monitoring team to 5,000 from 2,000.

上周，另一個快速增長的客戶端視頻應用“快手”與火山一起被撤下，同帕O因為平台上推出了少女媽媽製作的視頻。快手的母公司在回應中表示，將把其內容監管團隊的規模從2000人擴大到5000人。

A posting from Kuaishou on one hiring website last week says the company is looking for people with bachelor’s degrees or higher. Candidates with “good political awareness” and “strong political sensitivity and discernment” are preferred. Being a member of the Communist Party or Communist Youth League is also a plus, the listing says.

上周，快手在一個招聘網站上發布信息說，公司正在尋找擁有本科及以上學歷的人。有“良好的政治覺悟”和“較L的政治敏感度與鑑別能力”的應聘者優先。招聘信息還表示，黨員和共青團員優先。

Duanzi, Bytedance’s now-shuttered humor app, trafficked in dirty jokes, goofy comedy sketches and well-worn but persistent gender stereotypes. One post that appeared on the app before it was closed down declared that the way to know that a man won’t cheat on his wife is to place a beautiful woman before him — but the way to test a woman’s fidelity is to try seducing her with a lot of money.

字節跳動目前已被關停的幽默應用“內涵段子”，販賣的是骯髒的笑話、滑稽的喜劇小品，以及性別刻板印象的老生常談。在被關閉之前，這個平台上曾有這岸@個帖子：想知道一個男人是否會對妻子不忠的方法是，讓一個漂亮女人出現在他面前；而考驗一個女人是否忠誠的方法是，試茈峇@大筆錢來引誘她。

Another post, unprintable in a family newspaper, was a ribald joke involving a seller of fried dough sticks, his wife and an irate customer.

還有一個不宜在家庭報紙上刊登的下流笑話，涉及一個賣油條的小販、他的妻子和一名憤怒的顧客。

Even Bytedance’s news app, Toutiao, featured plenty of edgy material that kept users coming back, sometimes reluctantly, for more. Xiao Lin, a 29-year-old programmer in Beijing, called the app “spiritual opium.”

就連字節跳動的新聞應用今日頭條，也有大量打擦邊球的內容，這些內容讓用戶不斷地回來看更多的東西，儘管他們有時並不情願。29歲的北京程序員霄林稱，這個應用是“精神鴉片”。

“On a typical night, I would keep clicking on news items the app recommended to me while telling myself, ‘After this, I will sleep,’” Mr. Xiao said. “But I ended up reading more and more, for hours. I couldn’t stop.”

“經常的，我晚上一邊點擊app推薦給的文章，一邊告訴我自己，‘看了這個就睡覺’，”霄林說。“但是常常是越看越停不下，好幾個小時就浪費在它上面，很晚睡。”

He deleted the app in January.

今年1月，他刪除了這個應用。

Shostakovich :    Symphony   No.   11     The   Year   1905

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