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China's Censors Can Now Erase Images Mid-Transmission (wsj.com)
Eva Dou, reporting for WSJ: China's already formidable internet censors have demonstrated a new strength -- the ability to delete images in one-on-one chats as they are being transmitted, making them disappear before receivers see them. The ability is part of a broader technology push by Beijing's censors to step up surveillance and get ahead of activists and others communicating online in China (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). Displays of this new image-filtering capability kicked into high gear last week as Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo lay dying from liver cancer and politically minded Chinese tried to pay tribute to him, according to activists and a new research report. Wu Yangwei, a friend of the long-jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said he used popular messaging app WeChat to send friends a photo of a haggard Mr. Liu embracing his wife. Mr. Wu believed the transmissions were successful, but he said his friends never saw them. "Sometimes you can get around censors by rotating the photo," said Mr. Wu, a writer better known by his pen name, Ye Du. "But that doesn't always work." There were disruptions on Tuesday to another popular messaging app, Facebook's WhatsApp, with many China-based users saying they were unable to send photos and videos without the use of software that circumvents Chinese internet controls. Text messages appeared to be largely unaffected.
The left wing in various contexts throughout history can censor things, yes, but here in the US at the moment? The right wing is the one that is in any power. States, federal, media... the struggle is between far right and center. We're debating how much religious organizations are allowed to discriminate against gays and contribute to political campaigns, not whether or not they should be taxed and prevented from addressing politics. There's a ban on federal funds going to health organizations that mention the word "abortion."
The closest thing I can see to left-wing censorship is a handful of relatively powerless college students acting rashly. And in each of those cases, the conservative outrage has been many times greater in magnitude.
Liberals and centrists sitting on the fence and saying "Now now, both sides can be equally bad" when clearly they're not BEING anywhere near equally bad is what's causing us to run into disaster.