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Researchers Put Numbers On China's Microblog Censorship
eldavojohn writes "One of China's main microblogging services used by 30% of all Chinese internet users is called Sina Weibo (weibo is the Chinese word for 'microblog') and something that is quite different from the West's twitter is, of course, the enforced censorship. Researchers at Rice University in Houston have estimated numbers for how censorship works and identifies the 'velocity of censorship' in China's microblogging censorship. Most of the posts are marked as 'permission denied' between the five minute and ten minute marks after posting. Their research shows that 'If an average censor can scan around 50 posts a minute, that would require some 1400 censors at any instant to handle the 70,000 posts pouring in. And if they work 8 hour shifts, that's a total of 4200 censors on the payroll each day.' The research indicates you would need a small army to meet stringent censorship policies when servicing China and to avoid being shutdown like Fanfou (another weibo). Keep in mind that this is not simply identifying keywords and blocking the post based on those words. The researchers noted that a phrase like 'Secretary of the Political and Legislative Committee' will result in you being unable to submit your post to Sina Weibo. So the research examines the speed of ex post facto censorship which presumably requires an employee or perhaps government employee to identify 'non-harmonious' posts based on their intrinsic content."
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. --CS Lewis
This seems appropriate to the situation, as a good many in that culture genuinely believe that the censorship performed is not only necessary, but beneficial to their society.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Sorry to sound rude but "Secretary of the Political and Legislative Committee"! I'm "Secretary of the Political and Legislative Committee" tired of this "Secretary of the Political and Legislative Committee" censorship!!!
How do you prefer your censorship?
Overt or covert?
And the same could be asked of surveillance.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/82701103/Analyst-Desktop-Binder-REDACTED
Plomo o plata, I think journalism/blogs/social media are as censored in Russia, Europe and America as it is in China.
The tactics might differ but the strategy is consistent.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
"Keep in mind that this is not simply identifying keywords and blocking the post based on those words. The researchers noted that a phrase like 'Secretary of the Political and Legislative Committee' will result in you being unable to submit your post to Sina Weibo."
Yeah, because computers can find keywords, but throw in a couple spaces, and then it's impossible.
Seriously, there seems to be a great oversight among certain old-school folks that computers can do this kind of mass searching in support of oppression perfectly fine. The argument that "it would take a huge army of men to do all that surveillance" does not hold water anymore.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
And each message will be read by (at most) one person. Not a terribly efficient way to spread ideas.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Were these acts of censorship instigated by decree of the US GOVERNMENT or a choice made by the COMPANY? We can be against both sources of censorship, but I think we can also understand the fundamental differences, and the fact that the one which is more pervasive and more broad in its coverage is more threatening to the individual.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Seriously, there seems to be a great oversight among certain old-school folks that computers can do this kind of mass searching in support of oppression perfectly fine.
That's why it takes five to ten minutes? Yeah? I don't know what sort of improvements you've made on top of latent semantic analysis or if you've completely scrapped that and revolutionized natural language parsing but, by all means, publish your work so the rest of us can bask in your divine glory. A job at Google should be the least of your goals -- usurping Google as an advertising giant would flow naturally from being able to automatically "understand" with a high recall and accuracy rate what people are writing in microblogs.
The argument that "it would take a huge army of men to do all that surveillance" does not hold water anymore.
It's funny you should use the phrase "hold water" when discussing how viable a large army of mindless internet users would be.
My work here is dung.
This. I've seen the moderation triggers implemented in a Spanish-speaking forum but you could work around it with misspellings and leetspeak. I'm not familiar with Chinese but there may be less ways to put a concept in ideograms furtively, perhaps with homophones, and those can be covered too.
Maybe with pictures, Instagram-like?
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Lenny Bruce
“If you can't say "Fuck" you can't say, "Fuck the government.”
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
(Besides the obvious political ones.)
In the US, this would be viewed as something requiring A.I. research. In China, another 5,000 or even 10,000 people get an "iron rice-bowl."
Foxcon could handle this with their staff on break.
slashdot does not delete comments. Click on the "Load all comments" button, and move the slider to -1... all the crap is still there.
That's why it takes five to ten minutes?
It takes 5-10 minutes because the automatic scanner sorts into three categories:
1. Stuff that clearly violates the rules.
2. Stuff that may violate the rules.
3. Stuff that looks okay.
So anything in (1) gets banned by the computer. (2) and (3) get posted, but (2) is flagged for a human to look at. The human censor queue is a few minutes long, thus the delay. There is no need for a human to look at everything.
I have no first hand knowledge that it works this way, but it seems to me that this is the way any non-moron would design it, rather than hiring 4000 humans to do what a small perl script could do.
Not true. I have had several comments deleted and they did not exist after moving the slider either.
Seems like a small number of new party employees when you have a population of 1.3 billion.
Morons think Google has 'algorithms' that do the clever stuff, but Google's success in the search-engine business is down to legions of Human operators who constantly create 'semantic hints' from daily mined data flowing from the search terms people are using.
Are they headquartered in China?
It's probably marketing spam. I believe that does get deleted.