Reddit's most upvoted post of 2019 was a clever protest of Chinese censorship

Reddit users criticized the platform's massive investment from a Chinese tech giant with a photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, an event that China censors all mention of to this day. It's now the site's most upvoted post of 2019.

"Given that Reddit just took a $150 million investment from a Chinese censorship powerhouse, I thought it would be nice to pots this picture of 'Tank Man' at Tiananmen Square before our new glorious overlords decide we cannot post it anymore," u/FreeSpeechWarrior captioned the photo.

Reddit received a $150 million investment from Tencent in February, the Chinese company behind WeChat and League of Legends. It's the world's largest gaming company, and very much compliant with China's censorship. Although they aren't within Chinese borders, WeChat users in the United States can have blocked keywords or certain messages filtered if their IDs were created in mainland China. China continues to block American platforms like Twitch, Google, Facebook, and intermittently blocks Reddit as well.

In protest of the deal with Tencent, Reddit users flooded the site with images of Winnie the Pooh, whose image is used to mock Chinese president Xi Jinping because of their visual similarities. Winnie the Pooh's likeness is banned in by China's censors.

The 1989 photo of a lone protestor blocking a tank convoy near Tiananmen Square in Beijing was also repeatedly posted on Reddit. Known as the "Tank Man" photo, it became a symbol for student protestors rallying for freedom of speech and freedom of press in China. Now, 30 years later, it's become a symbol of protesting Chinese censorship online.

A single protestor stood in the way of a tank convoy near Tiananmen Square. It has become a rallying cry against Chinese censorship. Credit: Bettmann Archive / getty images

Fear of Chinese censorship and propaganda is still a concern among Reddit users. About a month after the Tank Man photo became Reddit's most upvoted post of the year, Redditors became paranoid that trolls were flooding the site with pro-China comments and posts.

“Ironically, our freedom of press and an open internet is being exploited by an adversary to subvert democracy," one Reddit user told BuzzFeed.

But as the Verge reported, Spotify, Epic Games, and Snap have all received funding from Tencent. None have had issues with censorship. Epic Games, unlike Blizzard, even pledged to not ban players for supporting Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests.

"Redditors have never shied away from discussing the tough issues, and the community turned out for it in 2019," Reddit staff said in an end-of-year round up post, adding a cheeky note that the top was was "uncensored by us overlords."