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China Is Censoring People's Chats Without Them Even Knowing About It (qz.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: A new study from The Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto, reveals that censorship on WeChat occurs primarily in group chats rather than one-on-one chats between two people, and often in such a way where the sender of a text isn't even aware a piece of text has been scrubbed. The discoveries illuminates how China's government attempts to keep its citizens blind to the scope of its censorship regime. The researchers set out find the extent to which certain keywords got scrubbed from conversations between two or more users in WeChat. To do this, in June 2016 the team posed as a Chinese WeChat user and sent out 26,821 keywords containing terms that had been censored on other apps, including Tom-Skype (a made-for-China version of Skype) and YY (a live broadcast app). A corresponding Canadian user in the two-way chat would then report back to say whether or not the message had been received. The report states that out of the entire sample, only one term -- Falun Gong -- had been scrubbed. When they ran an identical test in August, even that text mysteriously passed without censorship. Yet when they tested group chats, they found multiple cases in which certain keywords triggered a removal. Specifically, while sensitive terms used in isolation were unlikely to trigger censorship (say "June 4th," a reference to the Tiananmen Square protests, brutally put down on June 4, 1989), it took effect when they were used in a full sentence or with other keywords. The researchers also discovered that when WeChat censored a message, the sender received no notice informing him that his text had not reached the intended recipient. The study also notes that "WeChat only censors content for users who bind their account to a mainland Chinese phone number when they first register to use the app." The censorship is still applied even if Chinese residents move to different countries or change phone numbers.
The words "orange" "tiny" and "bankruptcy" will all similarly be removed without any notice.
The real first post was censored.
1: Censors remove all references to June 4th, no matter what context
2: Any plans for business to take place on June 4th disappear
3: Eventually nothing gets done on June 4th because nobody can plan for it
4: It turns into a holiday, and nobody can remember why.
It's spelt "Britain", genius. And we plan to modify the filters to censor posts by lamebrains who can't spell, thus improving the quality of discourse on the Internet a thousandfold.
You're welcome.
Some 15 years ago I ran a messageboard for a popular game. It suffered from some persistant trolls and spammers. When they were banned they would come back with a new account, all the time from different IP's. After some time I made it so that instead of blocking access for the banned accounts or IP's, I hid their posts for all other users. Some clued in, but it did work against most. Later I made it so that the moderators would still see the banned posts and I asked them to "feed" the trolls, to make it harder for them to realise something was wrong.
It was quite a lot of work to adapt the code, but it was an interesting experiment. I always thought it would be a quite useful tool for bigger sites, so I'm surprised I never saw it used anywhere else.
Wasnt that a feature another messenger had already implemented here in the US?
I faintly recall that mentioning the name of the competing product would cause the message to not be sent and some URLs to be rewritten.
Unfortunately I cannot remember the name of that messenger. Was it Skype? Whatsapp?
I'm pretty sure they do know about it. Some of them accept it. Some of them are even for it.
Not everything about the Chinese internet is "say something wrong and you'll immediately be sent to a labour camp". Letting people vent but limiting their effective range to zero is much more efficient at quieting dissent.
Even the US government is trying very hard to follow in China's footsteps.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
I really hate that website Slash[removed for your protection].
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
when is brittain planning to copy this one?
Maybe they could add a spelling corrector while they're at it.
No sig today...
No, it isn't. In fact, the two are not even mutually exclusive.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Paul Brittain? From Saturday night live? Yeah, they're trying to censor him too!
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
According to Snopes they have balls.
http://www.snopes.com/humor/jo...
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Just sayin.
Additional mandatory text to let me post.
-Styopa
I find it instructive that "shadowbanning," a tactic already in use by Twitter and Reddit, has been adopted by a Communist dictatorship.
Time for a re-evaluation.
You fucking idiot. The very fact you can come on this blog and spout your brainless drivel makes you a liar.
I find it hard to believe that these simple keyword filters have much effect IRL, they'd be trivially defeated by codewords which would be easy to update when the codewords get banned. Here are some freebies in case they're needed:
Falun Gong = Fallen Gong
Southern Weekend = Leftymag
Tiananmen Square / June 4th Incident = Shoot n' squish day
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you can censor conversations by muting specific words, can you replace those words as well?
*shudder* ...
The year 2016 appears to be ending in utter despair for those who believed in the idea of internet freedom with mass take-downs, bulk data collection, extreme state sponsored censorship , authorized government hacking, privacy erosion, porn restrictions, huge curtails on freedom of speech, all happening with greater frequency and intent.
The most ironic thing about the above, is that this is all happening in 'liberal western democracies'....
That's why they don't let the sender know they've been blocked. It takes longer before they realize that their messages are blocked.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
As long as we depend on the ISP, we are all being censored without even knowing it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
At least the Chinese don't EDIT what you write. Reddit putting words in your mouth is literally "next level shit".
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
You fucking idiot. The very fact you can come on this blog and spout your brainless drivel makes you a liar.
Hush! You were supposed to tell him his ideas are intriguing and try to subscribe to his newsletter. Dammit, you might have scared this weekend's entertainment away. I wanted to find out his views on the dildobergers.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
As a western liberal I of course object censorship in all of its forms, but at the same time I understand the mindset that the Chinese establishment has: they cannot prevent the inevitable spread of communication technology, so more and more Chinese people are becoming networked. This means that the potential for massive protests of millions of people over any number of subjects ranging from food prices to air quality to an outrage over public transit prices can occur more and more easily as these ideas are free to spread.
Take something like the 2013 Turkey protests as an example. The estimates of how many people were on streets ranger from 3,5 to 7,5 million people. As I was in a relationship with a Turkish woman at the time, I know the effect social media had. People were sharing the locations data with each other; locations of other protesters, riot cops, locations of where to get gas masks/first aid, and in general coordinating the movement of the masses to try and evade the rather over the top fascist measures that the government pretty much immediately chose to resort to. Now 3,5 million people is a lot, but percentage-wise it's less than 5 % of the total population. China has approximately 721 million online users and growing. Even if only 0,5 % of that population gets together and starts organizing protests movements, we're talking about over 3 and a half million people, around the same scale as the protests in Turkey.
From the perspective of the Chinese government the situation is tricky: lowering censorship would be a good PR move and make people happier, but it has the potential to trigger situations in which Tianmen square will look like a peaceful and orderly event. The path of least resistance is thus to allow people to yell about their dissatisfaction online, but just make sure the information never reaches a critical mass of people to trigger major social instability and havoc. Put another way: giving total freedom of communication to the Chinese people has the possibility of sending the country into major internal turmoil, possibly even civil war, because the internet can be used - both by ethical and unethical instances - to leverage the power of the mobs at much faster speeds than any other communication technology up until this point.
From this perspective I understand why they're doing it, even though I do not condone it.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Last I heard they've been doing this all along. They'll swap in characters that sound or look the same, or use "referential" ones. Their ideograms often have multiple meanings and "readings" (pronunciation) allowing an extra layer of subtlety.
Well, Twitter is already doing it, in America too — an early bird, so to speak. But, hey, they are a private company, so we have no need to worry, right?
Well, the new generation of citizens is being accustomed to censoring selves and others in colleges — including professors — so, in 10-20 years, you'll have it world-wide, US and other elements of the British empire included.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The grass mud horse and the river crab can be censored in China.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu