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INTEREST: Virtual YouTuber Agency hololive Announces 'Graduation' of China Talent




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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings



Joined: 04 Jul 2013
Posts: 1000
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 2:47 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
although the individual members will still be allowed to retain their names, Live2D models, and identities as they continue as independent streamers.


iirc, doesn't "graduation" mean you essentially aren't allowed to keep any of this?
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Gasero



Joined: 24 Jul 2009
Posts: 939
Location: USA
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 3:37 pm Reply with quote
Companies think they can have it both ways with China, but they cannot. Speech is limited and highly regulated in the Chinese market. Doing business in China means following those strict limitations in freedom of speech. The Chinese government is watching.
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AmpersandsUnited



Joined: 22 Mar 2012
Posts: 633
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 4:07 pm Reply with quote
Gasero wrote:
Companies think they can have it both ways with China, but they cannot. Speech is limited and highly regulated in the Chinese market. Doing business in China means following those strict limitations in freedom of speech. The Chinese government is watching.


It's not like the vtubers were soapboxing political views on stream or anything, this all stemmed from a YouTube chart that showed Taiwan and China being sepárate. Nothing really to do with 'freedom of speech' from what it sounds like, just an unfortunate mishap that snowballed.
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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4410
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 4:08 pm Reply with quote
ThatGuyWhoLikesThings wrote:
Quote:
although the individual members will still be allowed to retain their names, Live2D models, and identities as they continue as independent streamers.


iirc, doesn't "graduation" mean you essentially aren't allowed to keep any of this?


That's a fair question since it looks like the part where they said they would retain those things was retracted. It would be a nice move of the company to let them keep that stuff, but I'm skeptical that they would be that generous with what I'm sure is contractually company property.
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Gasero



Joined: 24 Jul 2009
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 5:21 pm Reply with quote
AmpersandsUnited wrote:
It's not like the vtubers were soapboxing political views on stream or anything, this all stemmed from a YouTube chart that showed Taiwan and China being sepárate. Nothing really to do with 'freedom of speech' from what it sounds like, just an unfortunate mishap that snowballed.

Showing China and Taiwan being separate is the type of speech that the Chinese government highly regulates. I understand what the vtubers were not necessarily making a political statement, but if you want to produce media for China, all of your statements should be carefully curated to avoid offending China's government.
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Hoppy800



Joined: 09 Aug 2013
Posts: 3331
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 7:00 pm Reply with quote
Gasero wrote:
AmpersandsUnited wrote:
It's not like the vtubers were soapboxing political views on stream or anything, this all stemmed from a YouTube chart that showed Taiwan and China being sepárate. Nothing really to do with 'freedom of speech' from what it sounds like, just an unfortunate mishap that snowballed.

Showing China and Taiwan being separate is the type of speech that the Chinese government highly regulates. I understand what the vtubers were not necessarily making a political statement, but if you want to produce media for China, all of your statements should be carefully curated to avoid offending China's government.


Or better yet, not work with mainland China in the first place, Taiwan was a better bet for a Chinese speaking branch of Hololive, then you have other countries in Asia that are lacking in big time Vtuber talent such as Thailand or Vietnam.
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Misharu



Joined: 29 Aug 2020
Posts: 4
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:10 pm Reply with quote
I don't know about the other girls but Artia is with the antis. She encouraged the Chinese side to "Hold the base line" right after Kyriu Coco and Haachama was suspended. Before she even became a Vtuber for hololive she have participated in spamming forums spreading extreme patriotism as "war".
The antis are on Artias side and continue to defend her. If you think she is innocent in any of this you just need to look harder to find the evidence.
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bennyl



Joined: 06 Apr 2019
Posts: 123
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 9:06 pm Reply with quote
The hang up was rumored to be that the Chinese middleman company that is required to do business in China wasn't satisfied with just getting the girls avatars and names, but also wanted the tech. Cover was willing to part with the avatars and names (because what good are they to cover now anyway) and not the tech. Hopefully Cover was smart enough to fill those apps with enough remote kill switches to brick every bit of tech they shipped into China.
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xxmsxx



Joined: 06 Sep 2017
Posts: 556
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 9:28 pm Reply with quote
Hoppy800 wrote:
Or better yet, not work with mainland China in the first place, Taiwan was a better bet for a Chinese speaking branch of Hololive, then you have other countries in Asia that are lacking in big time Vtuber talent such as Thailand or Vietnam.


Most companies walk into the Chinese market with their eyes on the big lump of cash they will get instantly. They don't think about the nature of communism, that is everything is political at all hours or politics is omnipresent. "Making a small political mistake" does not exist as a concept.

By the numbers stated in the article, 4.4 million on YT and 4 million on bilibili, you can see why they target a single market like China because it can rake up a huge baseline viewership faster than so many international markets combined.

The fact that so many Japanese companies in so many different types of industries spend so much time targeting the Chinese audience is because they think they can get away with not dabbling into politics. But proven again and again, they already do dabble into politics the moment when they dip their toes into this market. It is fundamentally the state ideology they do not understand and think can side-step.

I would love for Japanese companies big and small to consider other markets too, but China is so juicy so close and so big, they are just not going to get it regardless how many times this kind of stuff happens.
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teferi



Joined: 16 May 2006
Posts: 400
PostPosted: Sun Nov 15, 2020 9:34 am Reply with quote
Quote:
By the numbers stated in the article, 4.4 million on YT and 4 million on bilibili, you can see why they target a single market like China because it can rake up a huge baseline viewership faster than so many international markets combined.


Those numbers are pretty old. They're probably close to four times that on youtube at this point.
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Fwolf#917615



Joined: 18 Nov 2020
Posts: 1
PostPosted: Wed Nov 18, 2020 1:22 pm Reply with quote
The pressure the chinese government puts on content creators is very large.

There have also been many web novelists forced to seize their web novels just because the motherland wasn't depicted as perfect in one of its chapters. This is also the reason you see many chinese novels repeatedly mention how great China is and how terrible other countries are at a rate that it almost feels like a silent protest.

(By saying how good China in such ridiculous and over the top ways, one has no choice but to see it as sarcasm.)

Speech can never be truly suppressed, it will always find its way.
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Thaumana



Joined: 08 Jul 2017
Posts: 120
PostPosted: Fri Nov 20, 2020 11:29 pm Reply with quote
Misharu wrote:
I don't know about the other girls but Artia is with the antis. She encouraged the Chinese side to "Hold the base line" right after Kyriu Coco and Haachama was suspended. Before she even became a Vtuber for hololive she have participated in spamming forums spreading extreme patriotism as "war".
The antis are on Artias side and continue to defend her. If you think she is innocent in any of this you just need to look harder to find the evidence.


I read the pdf which went around the youtube and twitter communities about those reasonings and I have to admit I consider the gathered information rather fishy overall. No one can say for sure at the end if their account was the real deal and the whole dynamics back then when Aloe Mano was doxxed showed me how easily people can put certain statements out of context that can serve a certain narrative. In the end I am absolutely not interested into the whole drama baggage and rather decided not take any stance here because it has already reached an unnecessarily emotive and politically overloaded boiling point.

I don't think that this is an obvious matter with clear white and black categorization since we are talking about the Chinese government here. I learned about some sick shit that is going on from my local native friends there and that has taught me what a tough spot it can be as soon as everyone is expecting from you to take a side, be it for or against the government. Whatever you do or say, you can only loose.

The situation was already complicated and overheated enough, so it is kinda understandable that Cover Corp tried to avoid any more turmoil and only addressed this graduation on their twitter account.
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