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Researchers Made a Fake Social Network To Infiltrate China's Internet Censors

Posted by Soulskill on from the inside-job dept.

Jason Koebler writes: In order to get inside China's notorious internet filter, Harvard researcher Gary King created his own fake social network to gain access to the programs used to censor content, so he could reverse-engineer the system. "From inside China, we created our own social media website, purchased a URL, rented server space, contracted with one of the most popular software platforms in China used to create these sites, submitted, automatically reviewed, posted, and censored our own submissions," King wrote in a study published in Science. "We had complete access to the software; we were even able to get their recommendations on how to conduct censorship on our own site in compliance with government standards."

28 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. I skipped to the ending by paiute · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...and then we publicized the hell out of it to make sure that the Chinese government would see it and crack down even harder on net access. But I got to write this paper and put it on my CV.

    --
    If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
    1. Re:I skipped to the ending by i+kan+reed · · Score: 4, Interesting

      the Chinese government would see it and crack down even harder on net access

      Um, how, exactly?

      It's not like they're going to change their standards over this. What allowed this to happen is that the task of censorship is so time consuming and broad that the government had to outsource some of the work to the site runners.

      (Government) censorship is always top-heavy, and always relies on a degree of volunteerism from the populace. The most this researcher did is made the government a bit more paranoid about the actions of foreign nationals.

      Studying governments and cultures is an important branch of academia, and while it was ethically questionable, it's still entirely within the domain of critical examination.

    2. Re:I skipped to the ending by i+kan+reed · · Score: 1

      The paper isn't a security research paper. They're social scientists trying to put a tighter pinpoint on the behaviors and methods of the Chinese government.

    3. Re: I skipped to the ending by gabebear · · Score: 1

      Espionage is not science. blah blah blah...

      Espionage can be science!

      "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'" - Isaac Asimov

    4. Re: I skipped to the ending by KamikazeSquid · · Score: 1

      How on earth does this make him a "scumbag" and why do you want his career to fail, exactly?

    5. Re:I skipped to the ending by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The end of paywalls is near

    6. Re:I skipped to the ending by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If that's the ultimate censorship case for China? Air-Gapping the whole world and using its own countrywide Intranet?

      No. China is not going to do that. People in the West often misunderstand the Great Firewall of China (GFoC). It is relatively easy to bypass, and Chinese people are generally better informed about what is going on in the world than people in most other countries. Keeping information out is not really the point. In the West, there are three types of information: 1) Information that the government approves of and promotes, 2) Information that the government prohibits (child porn, holocaust denialism, videos of journalist beheadings, etc), and 3) information that the government tolerates or just doesn't care about. But in China (and many other countries) the third category doesn't exist. If people see something, and the government isn't banning it, then they assume it has the government's approval. So part of the reason for the GFoC is to say "This isn't official information". People can bypass the GFoC, and see the information, but they know the government has disapproved. Chinese people also have a very different view of dissent. in the West, toleration of dissent is a symbol of strength, and being thin skinned about criticism is viewed as weakness. When Obama lashed out at Fox News a few years ago, he was factually correct, but it still made him look small and petty. But in other countries, including China and Russia, if someone in power is criticized, and they don't fight back, they are viewed as weak. The Chinese Communist Party has no democratic mandate, and no legitimacy other than power, so they cannot afford to look weak. So the GFoC is really a symbol of strength and power rather than an attempt to actually block information.

    7. Re: I skipped to the ending by KamikazeSquid · · Score: 2

      What? Dude, no. Government censorship is a huge human rights issue. Any research or investigative journalism that uncovers more details about it in any context is a good thing.

    8. Re:I skipped to the ending by wooppp · · Score: 2

      Ha ha, beware of what you are doing by bypassing the GFoC. The Chinese government can keep track of your escaping access, but they won't use it to victimize you until they have a political need to do so.

    9. Re:I skipped to the ending by Dan+East · · Score: 2

      Wow, how did this bit of nonsense get modded up.

      Chinese people are generally better informed about what is going on in the world than people in most other countries.

      Do you care to back this statement up? In what way are they better informed, and which countries fall into the "most other countries" category that are less informed than the Chinese public in general? I can only think of a few countries with more censorship then China.

      Information that the government prohibits (child porn, holocaust denialism, videos of journalist beheadings, etc)

      You're only one for three there. That's worse than dumb luck.

      --
      Better known as 318230.
    10. Re: I skipped to the ending by Teranolist · · Score: 1

      I don't know why, but I fell an urgent itch to say "fuck you"

    11. Re:I skipped to the ending by zaphirplane · · Score: 1

      Wow, how did this bit of nonsense get modded up.

      Chinese people are generally better informed about what is going on in the world than people in most other countries.

      Do you care to back this statement up? In what way are they better informed, and which countries fall into the "most other countries" category that are less informed than the Chinese public in general?

      I like what you did there, with the pointless yet seemingly going somewhere questions, can I try.

      I can only think of a few countries with more censorship then China.

      Do you care to back this statement up ? how many is a few countries ? which countries are they ?
      Do you care to back this statement up ? in what way is the censorship more in those countries, how is the censorship measured, where is your citation ?

      err probably made a mortal enemy for life, but though it was funny. !

      Information that the government prohibits (child porn, holocaust denialism, videos of journalist beheadings, etc)

      You're only one for three there. That's worse than dumb luck.

    12. Re: I skipped to the ending by JasonGoatcher · · Score: 1

      The scientific method doesn't cover all science, just things like physics and chemistry. There's also things like detective work, which is more about predicting behavior based on past behavior.

  2. Of course by penguinoid · · Score: 2

    If you want random strangers to do your censoring for you, expect random strangers to know the details on what you want censored.

    --
    Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    1. Re:Of course by i+kan+reed · · Score: 1

      The abstract linked in the summary doesn't even suggest the paper contains a list of "what" is censored. It's more about "how" its supposed to be censored.

      Qualifications about processes for popular users, manual deletion, automatic deletion, when to user ban, when to IP ban. They only briefly mention a few specific keywords: riot, terrorism, masses.

    2. Re:Of course by penguinoid · · Score: 1

      The abstract linked in the summary doesn't even suggest the paper contains a list of "what" is censored. It's more about "how" its supposed to be censored.

      If the censor doesn't censor it, then it's not censored. The keywords tell you what the government wishes to censor, the algorithms tell you what the government does censor. If the two don't match, it means either the government is failing to censor stuff it wishes to censor, or is incidentally censoring stuff it doesn't want to censor.

      --
      Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
  3. !infiltration by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

    They didn't "infiltrate" the censors, they just got the same standard access to tools and communication channels as any other random social network site in China. This tells us absolutely nothing that isn't already public information if you simply read Chinese posts by people who have used the system.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    1. Re:!infiltration by i+kan+reed · · Score: 2

      Research in general isn't "real" until it's in a published journal someone can cite in the future. There's like a "purity of information" thing.

      Also: social and political science isn't humanities.

    2. Re:!infiltration by zlives · · Score: 1

      "Also: social and political science isn't humanities" or science

    3. Re:!infiltration by i+kan+reed · · Score: 1

      or science

      Not absolutely in a purist sense, no. It's less oriented on documenting fundamental and immutable phenomena that the universe operates on.

      Howerver:
      It certainly uses the scientific method. Modern social science(less so political science) is predicated on using objective measures, falsification, and experimentation.
      It definitely is intended to provide useful predictive models.
      There is the expectation of academic rigor, peer review, and ideas standing with respect to tradition(except inasmuch as tradition itself is studied).
      It's not the "social studies" you were forced to write dozens of boring papers on in high school, actual modern social scientists are much more interested in fact that opinion.

  4. People of China by mdsolar · · Score: 1

    Unite! There, now this won't be seen for sure.

  5. purchased a URL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "purchased a URL"

    Where do they sell URLs?

    I've only ever managed to buy domains.

    1. Re:purchased a URL by watcher-rv4 · · Score: 1

      I thought the same. Purchase a URL. By this statement you can see the level of the research.

    2. Re:purchased a URL by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 2

      Or you could, you know, see the level of research by actually reading the paper.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  6. Re:misleading? by magarity · · Score: 1

    WOW, what a shock, they helped you enforce their laws?

    No, laws are made by statute which are passed by the governing assembly bodies when those are in session, Statutes are almost always available to the public with only modest effort or even published freely. These censorship standards are regulatory in nature which means not only do they change at the whim of the administering beaurocrats but also (especially in less democratic countries like China) unpublished to the public and either require significant effort to obtain or aren't available at all.

  7. good point by neoedmund · · Score: 1

    There is the very point where Chinese get punished without knowing why, an area where law not reached *yet*.

  8. How to organise a protest by paj1234 · · Score: 1

    From the article: "Chinese people can write the most vitriolic blog posts about even the top Chinese leaders without fear of censorship, but if they write in support of or opposition to an ongoing protest—or even about a rally in favor of a popular policy or leader—they will be censored."

    That is interesting. I am glad someone has discovered this. So perhaps the way to organise a protest, is to use secret messages coded in the form of vitriolic comments. Eg, "Mao Tsedong is an idiot" = Meet at Tiannamen Square.

    1. Re:How to organise a protest by Jumunquo · · Score: 1

      What's the secret message for "remember to bring the anti-tank explosives?"