Currently, users on Reddit’s r/pcgaming are fearing censorship as the mega Chinese gaming company Tencent has invested 150 million dollars into Reddit.
For those unsure why this could mean censorship, Tencent owns 40 percent of Epic Games, the makers of the Epic Games Store which is hugely unpopular on many subreddits including r/pcgaming.
Tencent is known for their strong censorship stances in China.
There are a lot of hot-button topics surrounding the Epic Games Store right now, and Tencent’s connections to both Epic Games and now Reddit is a fair reason to be concerned that the Chinese company could be silence criticism.
Tencent is extremely close with the Chinese governent, and Epic Games Store has already been criticized over the fact that their launcher technically gave them rights to send your data to China.
With this new Reddit deal, Tencent (and therefore the Chinese government) could be gaining another huge pool of data and influence, and Redditors could be 100 percent right about incoming censorship.
Many in this post’s comments are waiting for comments and posts to be locked or deleted at Tencent’s will. While it may all end up being conspiracy, it’s a very reasonable concern to have.
Just like those in the post’s comments, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.