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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.
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.
when is brittain planning to copy this one?
Maybe they could add a spelling corrector while they're at it.
No sig today...
I was in China a few years ago, we had a young Chinese woman serve as a tour guide during one excursion near Chongqing. She was quite aware of the censorship and very frustrated by it. They know practically everything going on despite the censorship. I got the impression they are waiting for the current "leadership generation" to expire before taking charge and initiating change.
That is very similar to our situation in the US. We need to wait for the baby boomers to vacate positions of authority, then maybe we can start making some improvements.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
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'....
You know, I'm not a big fan of Trump. He's got tons of flaws and does and says crazy shit pretty regularly. Still, he's just the President. He's got some power and influence but ultimately everything he does has to go through Congress and then the Supreme Court has a shot at making sure it's in line with the Constitution. One thing justices appointed by both Republican and Democratic administrations have in common is that they support free speech. They do this because the First Amendment to the Constitution is one of the clearest, most unambiguous statements in US law. No matter how you try to twist it the freedom of speech is written in stone. It's the First of the the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights. If Trump attacks it he'll begin to lose support among his base because tearing out that pillar of freedom will hurt all Americans.
I find it instructive that "shadowbanning," a tactic already in use by Twitter and Reddit, has been adopted by a Communist dictatorship.
It gets worse! You know what the Chinese censors eat? Food. You know what the reddit AND twitter admins eat? Also food. I think it's also instructive that both also do their censoring on IP based networks. Will the similarities never end???!?
IOW Holy false equivalence, Batman!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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
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.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu