Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Censors Are Being Watched
Rambo Tribble writes "The Economist is reporting on two research teams, one at Harvard and another at the University of Hong Kong, who have developed software to detect what posts to Chinese social media get censored. 'The team has built up a database comprising more than 11m posts that were made on 1,382 Chinese internet forums. Perhaps their most surprising result is that posts critical of the government are not rigorously censored. On the other hand, posts that have the purpose of getting people to assemble, potentially in protest, are swept from the internet within a matter of hours.' Chinese censors may soon have to deal with an unprecedented transparency of their actions."
The other first posts must have already been censored.
Here come the false equivalencies getting +5 in a matter of hours, too.
If you're in America, see if any of these sites are blocked
http://thepiratebay.se/
http://www.mininova.org/
http://isohunt.com/
http://www.demonoid.me/
http://www.torrentreactor.net/
No? Then your claim that "in america posts of copyrighted music are swept from the internet within hours" is false.
And the audacity of equating people who want to assemble and find redress with their local governments with those who want to get free mp3s. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this sad joke of a comparison. You'll only find naivete like this in the West. If you want to make some accurate comparisons, talk about police brutality in both countries, or maybe talk about Assange if he's ever extradited. In the meantime, get some perspective.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Perhaps their most surprising result is that posts critical of the government are not rigorously censored. On the other hand, posts that have the purpose of getting people to assemble, potentially in protest, are swept from the internet within a matter of hours.
That's not surprising. By leaving the critical posts up the government gives the illusion they aren't as oppressive as they are on free speech. The rally to protest on the streets is a much more public thing. The last thing the Chinese government wants is another "international news incident". Keeping the revolutionaries in their parents' basements is how they do that.
Talk is cheap, so they let it run.
Yea, but most Chinese are far better off now than they were just a generation ago. A woman I worked with returned to her grandparents' village in China a few years ago; she thought it was unbelievably primitive - but they told her of all the improvements: a road to the village that you could ride a bicycle on instead of walking. Good water in the community well, etc. etc. Their biggest complaint was that all the younger generation had left the village for the cities to work; nobody wanted to work in the rice paddies anymore.
If you RTFA (no really), one of the conclusions is that the goal of the censorship is to provide a form of safety value. Let the people criticize the party/government, and even let that root out corruptions and law breaking. But when the discussion turns to protest or other forms of mass action, start censoring and nip it in the bud.
Not in favor of censorship, but I have to admit it is a pretty effective strategy.
How about this one?
http://megaupload.com/
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
But when the discussion turns to protest or other forms of mass action, start censoring and nip it in the bud.
To add to that, and to show why the censors aren't shaking in their little space boots, a discussion of censorship would also trigger the censorship. This is how the censors "deal" with transparency of their actions, they hide it from The People. They don't really care if the rest of the world knows about it.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
" " - that's the posting of words which are often edited ("assembly", "protest") in baidu after baidu, tweet after tweet. A billion people sending false positives, like "assemble a sandwich" or "protest the car engine" will make it extremely difficult for the censors to see what they are blocking. (I have posted the Simplified Chinese translation of "False Positive" at the beginning of this post, but it appears to be censored).
Gently reply
The cynic might suggest that the Chinese have caught on to the existence of 'slacktivists', who find bitching on the internet to be cathartic; but are generally quite harmless, especially if you don't bother them in their favorite hobby.
(Says the guy whose username is 'fuzzyfuzzyfungus', on Slashdot, before no doubt going back to working for world peace or something...)
China's a country of over a billion a people of different ethnicities and cultures, which you can't really look at it through the lens of averages or generalisations. The difference between rural China and Shanghai is far greater than the difference between Shanghai and Hong Kong. You might as well ask: why don't the people of the US rise up and demand better when their is so low?