Top of the Great Era

Chapter 3052: Cannot Break the Circle

Many people have a bit of blind trust in Boss Zhou and think he can handle everything.

Indeed, he has something to say.

With his current influence and voice, he can communicate with the authorities to preserve the secret circle, or slow down the rectification of products such as Weibo and Toutiao, and reserve a certain amount of space for serious discussion on such social platforms.

But this is only temporary after all.

Internet products have become fully popularized, which is different from the beginning. This is destined to make Internet media increasingly similar to television media, either all about singing and dancing, or entertainment to death.

Fu Hongliang said: "I've noticed a phenomenon that I don't quite understand. There are many domestic legal publications, such as magazines, books, newspapers, and so on. Many Weibo posts will be restricted just because they quote some sentences from them."

Zhou Buqi said: "Because the influence is different, the content lies in the influence of dissemination. In China, the vast majority of people do not read paper books, and no more than 5% of people read more than 10 books a year. Therefore, the books published are not spreadable enough. Because of the lack of spreadability, you can see many books that criticize current social problems and participate in discussions on some serious topics. These books are originally aimed at the 10% of the elites in the 10% of the reading group. Some things are not forbidden to be spread, but they cannot be spread on a large scale."

Older executives may have an impression of this topic, as Boss Zhou talked about it many years ago.

Guo Pengfei was deeply impressed and nodded. "The Internet in the past few years also followed the same logic. The Internet was not widely used, and most people did not have access to the Internet. Most of the real Internet addicts were white-collar workers, civil servants, and college students. Because the Internet was not widely spread, the content was very broad and there was a lot of room for discussion. But now it is different. There are 10 billion Internet users in the country, and the spread of Internet media has caught up with television stations."

Zhou Buqi said: "To cultivate the best scientists, the best scholars and the top entrepreneurs, we must have in-depth and thoughtful media communication. However, this is ultimately a small group. For the larger group, we need to control it."

He Yang said: "To put it bluntly, it's still about different treatments. We need to let some people get rich first. If we want to get rich... we don't have to build roads first, we have to learn first and improve our cognitive level first. We all know this when we do business. It's much easier to make money from simple-minded people than from smart people."

Zhou Buqi said: "In fact, it is necessary to segment the audience. It is certainly possible for a university professor or doctoral supervisor to talk about something in the classroom. This is aimed at college students and doctoral students. This is the inevitable way to cultivate outstanding talents. However, if this kind of thing is given as an open class, it will definitely not work."

At this point, he immediately thought of an ongoing acquisition in the United States. Zhou Buqi continued, "It just so happens that Ziweixing International is going to acquire an online education website called Coursera in the United States. It has cooperated with Tsinghua University and Peking University in China, and uploaded videos of some professors and famous teachers. From this, we can actually see that the uploaded courses have been reviewed by the school. Some courses can be uploaded to the Internet and can be watched by students all over the world. Some courses can only be taught in small classrooms and are not suitable for public viewing. This is not only the case in China, but also in foreign university courses."

For example, Google’s former CEO Schmidt discussed and guided young college students in small circles at the university to start their own businesses in Silicon Valley.

He just told the truth.

For example, he said that there is a core rule for starting a business in Silicon Valley, which is to break the rules.

  After breaking the rules, if you fail, it won’t cause any waves anyway, and no one will care about you; if you succeed in starting a business, and many of the rules you broke may be illegal, that’s okay, just spend more money to hire some more big lawyers, and if it doesn’t work, just pay the money. Since you have succeeded in starting a business, why should you care about that little bit of compensation?

It can be said that there is no morality at all.

But it is the underlying logic of real Internet entrepreneurship.

But unexpectedly, this discussion was broadcast live by the students, which immediately caused an uproar... Schmidt had spoken the truth and said nothing wrong, but he still had to stand up and apologize to the public.

It’s similar both at home and abroad.

It’s not that some content cannot be spread, but it can only be spread within a small circle. You cannot spread it beyond the circle to the mass level.

He Yang said: "That's true. The Internet has been developing for so many years. It has grown from a small group of individuals to a nationwide coverage. The coverage is the same as that of TV stations, and the influence is even greater than that of TV stations. The same content could be spread on the Internet back then, but it won't be spread in the future. We already have very strict content review, and now the Internet has developed to this extent. Strict supervision is an inevitable trend."

Zhou Buqi said: "So, struggling is useless, this is the general trend. Even if I can withstand the pressure in the short term, what about next year? Two years later, three years later? Some things have to be acknowledged and accepted. Larry Page also has to cooperate and ask content reviewers to supervise the content on Twitter."

Speaking of this, he immediately thought of Musk, and he felt guilty.

Damn!

  Forget about this guy!

In his previous life, one of the important reasons why Musk acquired Twitter was that he could no longer tolerate the censored content on Twitter. He was fed up with the remarks of the white left and the extreme left, but the neutral and right-leaning remarks were banned or restricted by Silicon Valley content reviewers.

This is really crazy.

It was so crazy that even his son was influenced by "awakeningism", had his sex changed to that of a daughter, and broke up with his billionaire father, believing that the wealth of capitalists came from exploiting the poor and that his father was not a good person.

Musk burst into tears and bought Twitter at all costs.

After buying Twitter, as if for revenge, it laid off nearly 80% of Twitter's employees and completely relaxed the censorship of speech on Twitter. Not only were political views no longer restricted, but even large amounts of adult content were no longer restricted.

The only one who dares to "go against the wind" in Silicon Valley is Musk.

He even moved Tesla's headquarters from California, a Democratic stronghold, to Texas, a Republican-leaning state, and wanted to move Twitter there as well...

But not anymore.

  In this life, with the intervention of Zhou Buqi, he sold Twitter to Google!

Musk wants to buy Twitter from Google, which is impossible.

I really don’t know how he will take revenge after his son “dies”.

Now that things have come to this, no one has any objections.

Guo Dan smiled and said, "I have many friends who work in TV stations, including producers, directors, and reporters. They actually have the same problem. I know a producer who always talks about this kind of thing when we have dinner together. He said that many of his colleagues are also indignant. They have worked so hard and traveled all over the country to produce a program, but it was cancelled when it was about to go online. They are all very painful. Those media people are all from orthodox education, and they all have a moral obligation to spread information and protect the public's right to know. No one wants to sing praises every day."

Meng Houkun also thought of a point, "Yes, I also know a TV director, he told me that there are policies from above and countermeasures from below. You may have noticed that when you are watching TV, something happening in the United States will suddenly pop up, such as a kindergarten shooting, a homeless robbery, a funeral home hiding a body... Many times, you will feel that it is very abrupt and inexplicable. The content before and after is not coordinated at all, and it does not conform to the rules of TV flow at all."

Guo Dan pointed at him and said, "Yeah, I know."

But others didn't know what it meant, so they went to ask.

Meng Houkun smiled and said, "If you are not allowed to report in China, you can only report on the United States. Just like Weibo is hiring reviewers, you can take another way to report. For example, Twitter is hiring a large number of content reviewers. In the future, Americans' space for speech on the Internet will be greatly limited, and then you can criticize the United States harshly. The TV stations are all top students, and the elites in the media industry are all there. There are plenty of ways. Those who understand it will understand it tacitly, and those who don't understand will applaud."

Zhou Buqi laughed, "Don't try that on me!"

The atmosphere of the meeting was very harmonious.

It has been a long time since Boss Zhou hosted such an executive meeting at Ziweixing. It feels very comfortable, much better than at Ziweixing International.