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Internet censors demand that AI and algorithms point users towards 'mainstream values
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12th September 2019
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| See article from
scmp.com |
China's internet censor has ordered online AI algorithms to promote 'mainstream values':
- Systems should direct users to approved material on subjects like Xi Jinping Thought, or which showcase the country's economic and social development, Cyberspace Administration of China says
- They should not recommend content that undermines
national security, or is sexually suggestive, promotes extravagant lifestyles, or hypes celebrity gossip and scandals
The Cyberspace Administration of China released its draft regulations on managing the cyberspace ecosystem on Tuesday in another sign of how the ruling Communist Party is increasingly turning to technology to cement its ideological control over
society. The proposals will be open for public consultation for a month and are expected to go into effect later in the year. The latest rules point to a strategy to use AI-driven algorithms to expand the reach and depth of the government's
propaganda and ideology. The regulations state that information providers on all manner of platforms -- from news and social media sites, to gaming and e-commerce -- should strengthen the management of recommendation lists, trending topics, hot
search lists and push notifications. The regulations state: Online information providers that use algorithms to push customised information [to users] should build recommendation systems that promote mainstream values,
and establish mechanisms for manual intervention and override.
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| 9th June 2019
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A Fascinating article from a BBC reporter based in Beijing who became a marked man when posted images from a Hong Kong vigil remembering the Tiananmen Square massacre See
article from bbc.com |
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China censors news websites over Tiananmen Square massacre and financial websites over US trade war issues
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| 8th June 2019
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| See article from theintercept.com
See article from ft.com |
The Chinese government appears to have launched a major new internet purge, blocking users from accessing The Intercept's website and those of at least seven other Western news organizations. People in China began reporting that they could not access
the websites of The Intercept, The Guardian, the Washington Post, HuffPost, NBC News, the Christian Science Monitor, the Toronto Star, and Breitbart News. It is unclear exactly when the censorship came into effect or the reasons for it. But
Tuesday marked the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and Chinese authorities have reportedly increased levels of online censorship to coincide with the event. On a second front censors at two of China's largest social media
companies appear to have taken aim at independent financial bloggers, as Beijing continues pumping out propaganda to garner public support for its trade dispute with the US. At least 10 popular financial analysis blogs on social media app WeChat
had all present and past content scrubbed, according to screenshots posted by readers. The Weibo accounts of two non-financial popular bloggers, including Wang Zhian, a former state broadcast commentator who wrote about social issues, were also blocked.
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| 2nd
February 2019
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New Website Exposes How Apple Censors Apps in China See article from theintercept.com |
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China fines internet user for using a VPN to elude state censorship
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7th January 2019
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| See article from
scmp.com |
A Chinese VPN user has been fined for accessing overseas websites censored by the government. Chinese authorities have issued a disciplinary warning to a Guangdong man and ordered him pay a fine of 1,000 yuan (US$164) for setting up (presumably
meaning using) an unauthorised Virtual Private Network (VPN) service to connect to international websites. The man, surnamed Zhu and from Shaoguan city in Guangdong province, was punished on December 28 because his behaviour violated censorship
rules. Individuals and organisations can only connect to international networks through channels provided by the government, according to regulations listed on the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's website. |
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Chinese rules requiring internet companies to record all users online activity have commenced
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| 1st December 2018
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| See article from edition.cnn.com |
Chinese internet companies have started keeping detailed records of their users' personal information and online activity. The new rules from China's internet censor went into effect Friday. The new requirements apply to any company that provides
online services which can influence public opinion or mobilize the public to engage in specific activities, according to a notice posted on the Cyber Administration of China's website. Citing the need to safeguard national security and social
order, the Chinese internet censor said companies must be able to verify users' identities and keep records of key information such as call logs, chat logs, times of activity and network addresses. Officals will carry out inspections of companies'
operations to ensure compliance. But the Cyber Administration didn't make clear under what circumstances the companies might be required to hand over logs to authorities.
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| 4th July 2018
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China has the world's most centralised internet system See article from economist.com
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China blocks HBO and social media comments after John Oliver mocks Xi Jinping
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| 26th
June 2018
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| See article from theguardian.com See
Xi Jinping: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) from YouTube |
An item mocking China, Xi Jinping and Trump on John Oliver's HBO show Last Week Tonight seems to have wound up China's censors. HBO's website has been blocked in China and social media censors have been working hard to eliminate
comments about the show. According to the anti-censorship and monitoring group Greatfire.org, HBO's website was completely blocked within China as of Saturday, days after media reports emerged that Weibo had censored new posts mentioning Oliver or
his HBO show Last Week Tonight. In the show, Oliver made fun of the Chinese president's apparent sensitivity over comparisons of his figure with that of Winnie the Pooh. Images of the AA Milne character, used to mock Xi, have been censored in
China. Oliver also took a serious tone in the show, criticising Xi for the removal of term limits from the Chinese constitution, the use of political re-education camps in the Muslim province of Xinjiang, and a crackdown on civil society. Oliver noted
the continued house arrest of Liu Xia, wife of Chinese dissident and nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo who died last year while serving an 11-year prison sentence. |
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| 17th June 2018
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A remarkable new book by Margaret Roberts reveals a detailed picture of networked authoritarianism in action. Roberts's book is a magisterial summary of what we have learned so far. See
article from theguardian.com |
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Chinese video hosting website purges the Peppa Pig family
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2nd May 2018
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| See article from theguardian.com |
The wildly popular children's character Peppa Pig was recently scrubbed from Douyin, a video sharing platform in China , which deleted more than 30,000 clips. The hashtag #PeppaPig was also banned, according to the Global Times, a state-run tabloid
newspaper. Chinese authorities have claimed that Peppa pig has become associated with low lifes and slackers. The Global Times whinged: People who upload videos of Peppa Pig tattoos and merchandise and make
Peppa-related jokes run counter to the mainstream value and are usually poorly educated with no stable job. They are unruly slackers roaming around and the antithesis of the young generation the [Communist] party tries to cultivate.
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| 28th April 2018
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Chinese internet censors ban four news aggregation apps whose algorithms put jokes ahead of government propaganda See
article from page1.theindependent.sg |
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Chinese social media site Weibo launches a 3 month campaign against gay content
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| 17th April 2018
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| 15th April 2018. See article from dw.com |
Chinese users of the Twitter-like Weibo have started an online protest with the hashtag I am gay in response to a recent government ban of gay content. About 170,000 Weibo members had used the protst hashtag by midday Saturday before they were
censored.. Weibo announced on Fridaythat it has launched a three-month clean-up campaign to get rid of illegal posts including manga and videos with pornographic implications, promoting violence or (related to) homosexuality. It is also targeting
violent video games, like Grand Theft Auto. Weibo's move is perceived as a crackdown by President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party on ideas. There can be no homosexuality under socialism? a Weibo user wrote, according to AFP. It is
unbelievable that China progresses economically and militarily but returns to the feudal era in terms of ideas. Update: Backtracking 16th April 2018. See
article from bbc.com Chinese social media network Sina Weibo has backtracked from a controversial gay content ban after a massive outcry. Last
Friday the microblogging platform said that posts related to homosexuality would be taken down. It prompted a deluge of posts from outraged netizens protesting against the decision. On Monday, Sina Weibo said it would reverse the ban. Over the
weekend many in the LGBT community took to the network to protest against the decision, using hashtags such as #IAmGay# and #ScumbagSinaHelloIAmGay#.
Some tried testing the ban and uploaded pictures of themselves with partners or gay friends or relatives. Among them was LGBT rights activist Pu Chunmei, whose impassioned post accompanied with pictures of her with her gay son quickly went viral. The
picture was captioned: Be yourself, don't hide. As of early Monday morning many such posts were still online, as censors appeared to struggle to keep up with the deluge. Then Sina Weibo made another announcement: it said its clean-up
would no longer apply to homosexual content. We thank everyone for their discussion and suggestions, the company added. |
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| 15th April 2018
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China's internet censorship should be lifted for the sake of the economy and innovators See article from scmp.com
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The Chinese VPN ban hasn't kicked in yet
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| 6th April 2018
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| See article from zdnet.com |
China's VPN ban came into effect on March 31, 2018, but virtual private network providers are still claiming their users have access to their services in the country. NordVPN has reportied a lack of information from Chinese authorities about
how and when exactly the ban will be implemented. The company also said businesses have reported that so far there have been no announcements from authorities about the ban. The company commented: We understand the
concern of local and international businesses in China, as well as the needs of scholars, scientists, students, and others who vitally need VPNs to freely access the World Wide Web,
Perhaps the rest of the world would well appreciate
Chinese VPN blocking, it must surely make trade a bit tougher for Chinese companies to be cut off from the world. |
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| 12th March 2018
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And a little humorous criticism seems sure to warrant a police visit See article
from theglobeandmail.com |
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China gets even for aggressive in trying to stifle internet debate about a proposal to let the president reign for life.
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| 1st
March 2018
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| 28th February 2018. See article from
theguardian.com
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Chinese censors are battling to silence criticism of Xi Jinping's bid to set himself to reign over China for the rest of his life. The Communist party claim that the move is an acknowledgement of overwhelming support for Xi. However, there has been
widespread online push-back in China since it was announced on the eve of an annual political congress in Beijing. So the Chinese censors have ramped up their efforts to stifle discontent with the proposal. In a blog post, Victor Mair, a
University of Pennsylvania China expert, said censors had taken quick, drastic action after the internet was flooded with complaints. For instance the following earch terms have been blocked on Twitter-like Weibo:
- Ten thousand years, used as a term like Long live!
- Disagree
- Xi Zedong, a hybrid of the names of Xi and Chairman Mao Zedong
- Shameless
- Lifelong
- 'Personality cult'
- Emigrate
- Immortality
- the letter N, for unknown reasons, perhaps even a typo
China has also been aggressive in criticising the west for joining in the debate.
Update: The amazing banned memes from China 1st March 2018. See article from indexoncensorship.org China is having a meme
moment and it's driving the censors mad See article from indexoncensorship.org |
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China official bans censor evading VPNs from the end of March
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| 1st February 2018
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| See article from
rfa.org |
China will begin blocking overseas providers of virtual private networks (VPN) used to circumvent its Great Firewall of government censorship at the end of March, official media reported. Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) chief
censor Zhang Feng said VPN operators must be licensed by the government, and that unlicensed VPNs are the target of new rules which come into force on March 31. He said that China wants to ban VPNs which unlawfully conduct cross-border operational
activities. Any foreign companies that want to set up a cross-border operation for private use will need to set up a dedicated line for that purpose, he said. They will be able to lease such a line or network legally from the telecommunications
import and export bureau. Meanwhile, the American Chamber of Commerce in China said it had carried out a recent survey of U.S. companies in the country that showed that the inability to access certain online tools, internet censorship, and
cybersecurity were impeding their operations. An internet user surnamed Zeng told RFA that the new regulations could also hit any Chinese businesses that need unimpeded communications with the outside world. He explained:
I have a friend who is a businessman, and makes things mainly for export, and this has already affected his order book. He usually uses WhatsApp to communicate [with customers] and now it's very hard to log on, and this has really
affected business. In future, he won't be able to log on at all, so he told me he will likely have to shut down his factory. |
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Chinese internet censor closes Weibo's trending and most searched sections
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| 29th
January 2018
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| See article from
scmp.com |
China's internet censor has shut down some of the most popular sections of Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform, saying that the website had failed in its duty to censor content. The Beijing office of the Cyberspace Administration of China
summoned a Weibo executive, complaining of its serious problems including not censoring vulgar and pornographic content. The censor said: Sina Weibo has violated the relevant internet laws and regulations and spread
illegal information. It has a serious problem in promoting 'wrong' values and has had an adverse influence on the internet environment.
It highlighted as problematic sections of the platform such as the hot topics ranking, most
searched, most searched celebrities and most searched relationship topics, as well as its question-and-answer section. Other problems on Weibo included allowing posts that discriminated against ethnic minorities and content that was not in line
with what it deemed appropriate social values. Weibo said it had since shut down a number of services, including its list of top searches, for a week. |
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Chinese internet company hires an army of snitches and snoopers for a pittance
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| 6th January 2018
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| See article from
qz.com |
China's social media giants are ramping up efforts to get their users to snitch on people circulating taboo content. China's tech giant Tencent said it was hiring 200 content censors to form what the company is calling a penguin patrol unit, after the
company's penguin mascot. The brigade, made of 10 journalists, 70 writers who use Tencent's content platforms, and 120 regular internet users, will flag content that transgresses China's repressive censorship rules. Reviewers will be required to
make at least 300 snitch reports each month about transgressive information, including porn, sensational headlines, plagiarism, fake news, or old news. Those who complete the mission will get 30 virtual coins which can be used to purchase items on
Tencent's QQ chat app. Those who fail to meet the reporting quota three times will be booted from the unit. |
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China follows Europe's lead and steps up the censorship of Facebook-like news feed
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| 30th
December 2017
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| See article from reuters.com
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China's internet censor has ordered two top news feed sites to temporarily suspend parts of their platforms for broadcasting supposedly vulgar content and failing to implement censorship measures. Toutiao and Phoenix News, which hosts news feeds
similar to Facebook will suspend current affairs and Q&A sections from Friday evening for up to 24 hours, as ordered by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). The censor claimed that the two platforms broadcast pornographic and vulgar
information, had serious issues of misguiding people, and had an evil influence on the ecosystem of online public discourse. China recently upped internet recently be demanding that internet that internet news providers had to appoint
state-approved editors. The censors claim the measures are designed to maintain social stability as well as stamp out violence, nudity and fake news. |
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20th December 2017
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China's banning of VPNs may make it harder to work around internet censorship but it is also causing China's business community significant hardship See
article from vpncompare.co.uk |
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| 2nd October 2017
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In a glass tower in a trendy part of China's eastern city of Tianjin, hundreds of young people sit in front of computer screens, scouring the internet for videos and messages that run counter to Communist Party doctrine See
article from japantimes.co.jp |
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China's internet censor hands out maximum fine to companies not censoring enough
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| 28th
September 2017
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| 26th September 2017. See article from
cnbc.com |
Chinese internet censors have handed down maximum fines to the operators of three major social-media platforms in the country for failing to deal with pornography, violence and other banned content on their sites. The affected platforms are Baidu's
online forum Tieba, microblogging site Weibo and Tencent's massively popular social app WeChat. The Cyberspace Administration of China issued a notice saying the companies were fined for failing to fulfill their management duties in dealing with
pornographic and violent content, as well as information that promotes ethnic hatred. Separately, Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp seemed to be functioning properly after it earlier appeared to have been blocked again on the
mainland. However WhatsApp was totally blocked again a few days later. In recent months, China has raised the pressure on the country's internet space in what some say is an attempt to exert control in the lead up to the Communist Party
Congress next month. Update: Weibo recruits an army of snitches 28th September 2017 See article
from sixthtone.com Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo has said that it wants to hire a team of social media vigilantes to help identify and stamp out supposedly 'inappropriate' online content. The company said the scheme was designed to
strengthen supervision of netizens and to more effectively rid the platform of what it referred to as pornographic, illegal, and harmful information. Those selected for what appear to be part-time roles will be compensated for their efforts if
they achieve certain monthly targets, such as reporting at least 200 valid cases of inappropriate content. These supervisors will be given VIP membership, paid 200 yuan ($30) in online credits, and may qualify to receive a special orange electronic badge
displayed on their Weibo accounts. For social media sleuths whose prowess at sniffing out undesirable content ranks them among the company's top 10 supervisors, the rewards will be even greater, potentially including Apple smartphones and laptops.
Weibo said it was introducing the program in response to guidelines issued by the Beijing office of the Cyberspace Administration of China. On Monday, the same office announced that it had fined Weibo and other online platforms for neglecting to
prevent users from spreading pornographic content and ethnic hate speech.
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| 25th September 2017
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An article outlining many of the new censorship rules restricting internet content creators See article from nytimes.com
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Euphemisms for criticism of islam are banned by Chinese social media
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21st September 2017
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| See article from globaltimes.cn |
Allegedly Islamophobic terms used by Chinese Internet users to stigmatize Muslims have been censored by authorities on Chinese social media amid a backlash against national policies considered overly favorable to Muslim minorities. Searches for
green religion and peaceful religion , often used by Internet users to refer to Islam and to circumvent censorship of online speech, showed no results on China's Weibo microblog. Posts containing the phrases cannot be posted for violations of
Weibo's complaints related rules. Worse insults against Islam are also blocked in Weibo's search engine. Discontent and fears of Muslims have been on the rise on China's Internet in recent years. There is unease at Chinese authorities'
discrimination policies in favour of ethnic minorities, especially Muslim groups. To achieve national unity and social stability , ethnic minorities including Hui and Uyghur people enjoy favorable policies including receiving extra points
in China's college entrance examinations, more lenient family planning policies and securing a certain ratio of positions in government. The favorable policies are aimed at helping ethnic minorities who lag behind in economic and educational development.
They are intended to accelerate development toward greater ethnic unity, Xiong said.
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China jails seller of VPNs
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| 5th September 2017
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| See article from torrentfreak.com
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A man who sold VPN software via a website has been sentenced to nine months in prison by China's Supreme People's Court. The decision otes that the software supplied by the man allowed the public to circumvent China's Great Firewall while granting access
to foreign websites. Back in January, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that it would take measures to strengthen network information security management and would embark on a nationwide Internet network access services
clean-up. One of the initial targets was reported as censorship-busting VPNs, which allow citizens to evade the so-called Great Firewall of China. Operating such a service without a corresponding telecommunications business license would
constitute an offense, the government said. Then early July, a further report suggested that the government would go a step further by ordering ISPs to block VPNs altogether. Apple then banned VPN software and services from its app store.
With an effort clearly underway to target VPNs, news today from China suggests that the government is indeed determined to tackle the anti-censorship threat presented by such tools. According to local media, Chinese man Deng Mouwei who ran a small
website through which he sold VPN software, has been sentenced to prison. He set up a website to sell VPNs. Just two products were on offer but this was enough to spring authorities into action. |
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China's real name verification system for comments coupled with its economically unviable fees will spell an end to online comments
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| 1st
September 2017
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| See article from advox.globalvoices.org
by Oiwan Lam |
As of October 1, 2017, Chinese netizens who have not registered their user accounts with online platforms under a new real name system will not be able to post comments on online content, while bans await trouble-makers. The Regulation on the Management of Internet Comments
was announced by the Cyberspace Administration of China on August 25. The regulation specifies that platforms that provide services for netizens to comment on original content, including films, posts, online games or news, should force users to
provide their authentic identity via an individual user account system before posting. Platform operators should not offer such services to those who have not verified their identity. The regulation will dramatically reduce space
for online comments as large number of unauthenticated users will not be able to write original posts and leave comments. Moreover, many platforms will be unable to bear the burden of the identity verification system. According to
Article 2 of the regulation, commenting services refer to websites, mobile applications, interactive platforms, news sites, and other social platforms that allow or facilitate users to create original content, reply to posts, leave comments on news
threads or other items in the form of written text, symbols, emojis, images, voice messages or video. The responsibilities of comment service operators, according to Article 5, include the verification of user identities, the
setting up of a comment management system to pre-screen comments on news, preventing the spread of illegal information and reporting comments to the authorities. Controversially, the regulation also specifies in Article 9 that
comment service operators should manage their users by rating their social credit, an algorithm to measure a person's overall 'goodness' as a citizen. Those with low credit should be blacklisted from posting and prevented from
registering new accounts to use the service. At the same time, state, province and city-level cyberspace affairs offices will set up a management system to evaluate the overall social credit of comment service operators on a regular basis.
The Orwellian social credit system for regulating internet users' activities was revealed in 2014 and the Chinese government authorized a number of credit service agencies to collect, evaluate and manage peoples's credit information
the following year. According to the Chinese government's Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System , the system aims to measure and enhance 'trust' between and among government, commercial sectors and
citizens and to strengthen sincerity in government affairs, commercial sincerity, social sincerity and the construction of judicial credibility. However, the allocation of individual credit is not transparent and the current regulation on comment
services indicates that individual online speech is a key factor in its calculation. Thus far only national and large-scale social media and content service operators have implemented real name registration and they have not
introduced measures to penalize unauthenticated users beyond limiting the circulation of their posts. The majority of small-to-medium-size local websites and forums have not implemented real name registration because they simply
don't have the capital and infrastructure to do so. The new regulation compels such websites to shut down their interactive features. Tech-blogger William Long who has discussed the issue with regulators in the past wrote in his
blog: I have discussed with the relevant authorities how small forums and websites can implement real name registration. Their view is, they can either shut the comment section down or ask their users to verify their
identity by providing mobile phone verification codes. Owners of small websites can only afford a few hundred yuan to hire a server. The cost of mobile verification is RMB 6 cents per message. They would have to spend RMB 6 yuan
per 100 comments. If their competitors deliberately overload them by posting a few thousand comments a day, they will not be able to afford the cost [of verification]. In the end they will be forced to ban comments.
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19th August 2017
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China launches criminal investigation of major internet companies suspecting that they are not censoring social media users enough See
article from sputniknews.com |
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31st July 2017
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Apply complies with Chinese order to ban unapproved VPNs from the Apple app store See article from bbc.co.uk |
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| 16th
July 2017
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China moves towards banning VPNs use to circumvent internet blocking but say that this is not a total ban on all VPNs See
article from torrentfreak.com |
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China bans homosexuality, prostitution and drug addiction from online videos
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4th July 2017
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| See article from independent.co.uk |
New censorship rules issued by Bejing will prohibit portrayals of homosexuality, prostitution and drug addiction in online videos. The China Netcasting Services Association (CNSA) is targeting what they consider abnormal sexual activity. The rules
which were issued on Friday demand that online video platforms hire at least three professional censors. They were ordered to view entire programmes and take down any considered not sticking to the correct political and aesthetic standards. Those
who don't adhere to the new rules face being reported to the police for further investigation, according to Xhinua state news agency.
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China extends repressive online news censorship to smaller entities
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| 4th May
2017
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| See article from screenrant.com |
The Chinese government has issued new censorship rules extending its repressive control over online news content. Companies that publish, share or edit news will need a government licence, and senior editors must be approved by the authorities.
Other staff will be required to undergo government training and assessment, and receive official accreditation. The legislation will bring online news providers into line with traditional news media operating in the country. From 1 June,
when the rules come into force, they will be expected to follow information security protocols , including emergency response measures such as increased vetting following disasters. The list of providers and platforms covered
includes websites, applications, forums, blogs, microblogs, public accounts, instant messaging tools and internet broadcasts . Organisations that do not have a licence will not be allowed to post news or commentary about the government,
economy, military, foreign affairs, or other areas of public interest .
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18th April 2017
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China's precision censorship machine allows some controversial keywords, but blocks combinations of them See
article from techdirt.com |
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China bans people from posting their own social media videos about current affairs
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| 23rd
December 2016
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| See
article from economictimes.indiatimes.com |
China has banned its internet users from sharing on the social media videos about current events that are not from official sources, media reports said. The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (China), in a
notice, said Chinese social media platforms WeChat and Weibo were not allowed to disseminate user-generated audio or video programmes about current events. The news landed quietly among China's internet users, with only a handful discussing the
new rules on Weibo, many seemingly resigned to ever increasing censorship.
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China's masses enriched by even more internet censorship law
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8th November 2016
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| See article from theregister.co.uk |
China has passed a new internet censorship law mopping up a few more prohibitions somehow overlooked by previous censorship laws. The legislation takes away the last vestiges of anonymity for China's 710 million internet users, and ensures that
the state has the right to censor certain types of content -- or even shut down large sections of the local internet -- in the name of national security. Internet users must not engage in such activities as the overturn of the socialist system,
disseminating violent, obscene or sexual information, or disseminating false information to disrupt the economic or social order. All network operating companies in China will have to store users' logs for six months and pass a
security check if they want to take that data outside national borders. They must also give technical support and assistance to public security organs and state security organs, when preserving national security and investigating crimes.
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China gets a new internet censor
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| 1st
July 2016
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| See article from
gadgets.ndtv.com |
China has replaced its internet censor, Lu Wei, the hard-liner responsible for an effectively oppressive censorship system. Lu wielded expansive powers as head of the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs since 2014, dictating what 700 million
Chinese Internet users may view online and acting as gatekeeper for technology companies wishing to do business in China. His successor will be his deputy, former propaganda official Xu Lin, the official Xinhua News Agency has reported. Lu will
keep his concurrent position as deputy head of the party's propaganda department. Observers believe that the general direction of Chinese technology policy will not change under the Xi administration. |
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Chinese internet censors set to introduce real name requirements for apps and app stores
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| 30th
June 2016
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| See article from en.yibada.com
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China has released a new set of oppressive rules that require all mobile app users as well as the App Store to have a real name registration and to maintain activity logs from users for a period of 60 days. According to Reuters , the Cyberspace
Administration of China (CAC) wants to get a full censorship grip on the rapidly expanding app market. According to the South China Morning Post, the new rules cover information services through mobile Internet apps as well as app store
services on the Chinese mainland. Based on the new rules, users are required to register their real names with the app provider before they will be allowed a public alias or username. The app provider then verifies all the information
collected by mobile numbers or any other means. They are also required to regulate accounts or user profiles that violate the rules on the publishing anything that the state does not like. A anonymous app operator commented to the South
China Morning Post: Many users like to comment on social and political news on live-streaming and news apps. Now they will need to think twice before making any comment that authorities could claim spurred public
scares or rumors.
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China bans erotic banana eating on streamed web cams
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7th May 2016
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| See article from
telegraph.co.uk |
Eating a banana in an erotic manner while being broadcast on live-streams has been banned in China. Wearing stockings and suspenders during a live-stream is also now prohibited. Hosts of the live-streaming sites are now required to monitor all
their output every minute of the day, but it is not clear how they will be able to enforce the ban. The move comes a month after the Ministry of Culture announced it was investigating several live-streaming sites, including Douyu, Panda.tv, YY,
Zhanqi TV, and Huya, for allegedly hosting pornographic or violent content that harms social morality . The move has bemused many social media users, with some wondering how authorities decide what is seductive . How do they
decide what's provocative when eating a banana? one person asked, according to the BBC . Another wondered: Can male live-streamers still eat them? |
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Chinese architect of internet censorship less on gives lesson on how to work around it
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| 6th
April 2016
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| See article from theguardian.com
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Fang Binxing is known as the 'father' of Chine's repressive censorship infrastructure known as the Great Firewall of China. He has been caught evading his own monstrosity during an institute lecture on South Korean internet censorship. According to local reports, Binxing attempted to display a South Korea website, which he said showed the views of South Koreans attempting to build similar infrastructure to China's firewall, but was blocked by said censorship system. Fang then had to resort to setting up a virtual private network (VPN) to circumvent the censorship, in full view of the lecture attendees, to display the site.
Ming Pao, a Hong Kong-newspaper, said that the university terminated a planned discussion session after Fang was criticised within the lecture and later resoundingly mocked online for having to circumvent his own creation, labelling it as an
embarrassing display of the Chinese mainland's censorship regime |
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| 30th March 2016
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A round up of recent Chinese internet censorship. By Jeremy Luedi See article from globalriskinsights.com |
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4th March 2016
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A new report peels back the curtain on how the Twitter-like service Weibo handles Chinese censorship requests See
article from blogs.wsj.com |
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Chinese TV censors ban gay online drama
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26th February 2016
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| See article
from en.yibada.com |
Chinese censors at the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) have banned a popular gay-themed online drama titled Addiction from the streaming sites this week after 12 episodes. Audiences, who will now
miss the last three episodes of the drama involving a gay relationship between two Chinese teenage boys, are enraged over the censorship. Addiction had, became hugely popular garnering over 10 million viewers. However, the show, involving the lives of
four high school students portrayed by new actors, stopped streaming on various sites including v.qq.com and iqiyi.com on Monday, reported Global Times , a media outlet closely associated with the country's Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily.
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21st January 2016
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China is Blocking Circumvention Tools With Help of Cloud Service Providers. By Oiwan Lam See
article from advox.globalvoices.org |
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China's chief internet censors claims that censorship is merely 'management'
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10th December 2015
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| See article from foxnews.com
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China's chief internet censor has ludicrously claimed that the country's oppressive censorship of th einternet is merely 'management' of the internet. The comments by Lu Wei, head of the Cyberspace Administration of China, came ahead of next
week's state-sponsored World Internet Conference in the town of Wuzhen. Lu claimed that China does not censor but manages Internet content, the Hong Kong Free Press reports: Lu said: It is a misuse of
words if you say 'content censorship. But no censorship does not mean there is no management. The Chinese government learnt how to manage the internet from Western developed countries, we have not learnt enough yet.
During the
briefing, Lu defended the blocking of some websites and censoring of online posts, according to Reuters . He said that if the Chinese government were being too restrictive with the Internet, China's online market would not be experiencing such rapid
growth.
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China dreams up social network to record and monitor behaviour that the state considers errant and then make it available to employers and service providers
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| 28th
October 2015
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| See article from edition.cnn.com |
China has been thinking up a nasty twist to their surveillance society predicted to result in a significant increase in internet censorship. It is called Internet Plus and combines repressive censorship and content monitoring with social media
style aggregation of people's internet life. At the core of China's Internet agenda lies the so-called social credit system . This system, which is currently in the planning phase, seeks to leverage the explosion in personal data generated
through smartphones, apps and online transactions in order to improve citizens' behaviour. According to a planning document published by the State Council last year , its objective is to improve sincerity in government affairs, commerce and
social interactions. Individuals and businesses will be scored on various aspects of their conduct -- where you go, what you buy and who you know -- and these scores will be integrated within a comprehensive database that not only links into
government information, but also to data collected by private businesses. An individual's credit score might then be used in granting or withholding particular social services, or being made available to employers. The State Council plan, for
instance, mentions rumor-mongering as an example of behavior to be sanctioned and recorded. It is this part of the plan that has led many commentators to describe it as an Orwellian tool of individual control. |
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China looks to identify internet users by demanding that they use an ID card to log on
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2nd October 2015
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| See article
from rfa.org |
China's public security ministry is pressing ahead with repressive moves to force more of the country's 668 million netizens to use their real names and a digital ID card online. The move is part of a raft of Internet controls enshrined in the draft
Cybersecurity Law being debated in China's parliament. While officials claim the new system will improve the security of users' personal data and help fight cybercrime, online activists say it is yet another way for the ruling Chinese Communist
Party to keep tabs on who is saying what online. An online activist nicknameed Xiaofei Riyetan told RFA: The overall aim of the Chinese Communist Party is to further tighten control on dissidents,
including democracy activists. This will add greater weight to their attempts to accuse these people of crimes, and enable them to lock them up in the name of the rule of law.
He said recent surveys showing that netizens feel less
safe online than they did previously have more to do with a sense that everything they do or say is being watched, than with cybercrime. The activist said: The crackdown on dissents has got worse and worse since
[President] Xi Jinping came to power. The space for free expression is getting smaller and smaller, and ever more tightly managed; that's why we feel more and more unsafe, he said.
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17th September 2015
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China Tries to Extract Pledge of Compliance From U.S. Tech Firms See article from
nytimes.com |
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China to set up censorship offices in major internet companies
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| 5th
August 2015
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| See article from
theguardian.com |
China is planning to set up censorship offices in major internet companies and for websites so authorities can move more quickly against internet content that it does not like, the ministry of public security said in a statement. The deputy minister,
Chen Zhimin, told a conference: Police should take a leading role in online security and work closely with internet regulators. We will set up network security offices inside important website and internet firms, so
that we can catch criminal behaviour online at the earliest possible point.
The government published a draft cybersecurity law last month consolidating its control over data, with significant potential consequences for internet
companies and multinational firms doing business in the country. The law will strengthen user privacy protection from hackers and data resellers but elevates the government's powers to obtain records on, and block dissemination of, private information
deemed illegal.
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Weibo bans lingerie and swimwear in the latest ratchet of Chinese internet censorship
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2nd June 2015
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| See article from
ibtimes.com |
The Twitter-like popular Chinese microblogging platform Weibo has just announced it will censor posts featuring images of women in lingerie or swimwear, as part of an effort to erase erotic images. The move, announced by CEO Wang Gaofei, is
seen as Weibo's move to comply with larger restrictions proposed by the government against vulgar and pornographic content circulating online. Wang said that 'modeling agencies' that posted images of [models] in swimwear or black lace
would be removed from accounts effective immediately. On Weibo, modeling agency is an umbrella term used to describe a variety of services and businesses. 'Modeling agencies' who want to continue to have a social media presence on the
website must submit accreditation and other identification of a legitimate business. Those who do not go through this approval process will be banned from the site. |
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| 23rd May 2015
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Wikipedia is yet again being censored by China's Great Firewall. The Chinese-language version of the site has been blocked for the last three days See
article from forbes.com |
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China threatens to punish internet news service that does not censor enough
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| 12th
April 2015
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| See article from
telegraph.co.uk |
China's government has threatened to shut down Sina , one of the country's most popular news websites unless it improves censorship , state media reported via the Xinhua news agency. Sina is the fourth most visited website in China, according to
ranking service Alexa. The censors whose job it is to officially distort news facts, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), claimed that Sina: Distorted news facts, violated morality and engaged in media
hype.
The CAC will seriously punish Sina, with possible measures including a complete shut down of its Internet news services , Xinhua added. The report did not provide specifics on which of Sina's news offerings
had fallen foul of censors, but said the CAC accused Sina of spreading illegal information related to rumors, violence and terrorism , and advocation of heresies . |
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China shows off it technical capability to censor and take down international websites
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| 11th
April 2015
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| 5th April 2015. See article from
theregister.co.uk |
The open source code sharing depository, GitHub, has been put under a prolonged distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack seemingly from China. It seems likely that the attack were targeting GitHub projects that help circumvent the Great Firewall of
China. It appears a JavaScript file served from within China by Baidu's advertising network was intercepted such that internet browsers in China would fire repeated HTTP requests at GitHub.com rather than the usual Baidu advertising servers that
are built to cope with the massive load. Anti-censorship campaign group Greatfire.org said in a blog post the attacks are an effort to shut down its GitHub-hosted project , and an extension of an attack on anti-censorship groups by Chinese
authorities. Greatfire goes on to point the finger for the attacks directly to the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). The group argues that the CAC is deliberately trying to weaponize its Great Firewall to perform international attacks. The
Greatfire team wrote: This is a frightening development and the implications of this action extend beyond control of information on the internet. In one quick movement, the authorities have shifted from enforcing
strict censorship in China to enforcing Chinese censorship on internet users worldwide.
Update: The Great Cannon 11th April 2015. See
article from theregister.co.uk
China has upgraded the website-blocking systems, dubbed The Great Firewall, so it can blast foreign businesses and organisations off the internet. Researchers hailing from the University of Toronto, the International Computer
Science Institute, the University of California Berkeley, and Princeton University, have confirmed that China is hijacking web traffic and redirecting advert server requests so as to overpower sites critical of the authoritarian state.
This weaponized firewall has been dubbed the Great Cannon by the researchers, and typically hijacks requests to Baidu's advertising network in China. Anyone visiting a website that serves ads from Baidu, for example, could end up
unwittingly silencing a foreign site disliked by the Chinese authorities. ...Read the full article |
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China censors website helping to workaround Chinese censorship
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23rd March 2015
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| See article from bbc.co.uk
See also en.greatfire.org |
A campaign organisation that circumvents Chinese website blocks has said it has come under a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) instigated by the Chinese authorities. Greatfire called the attack an attempt to enforce censorship and noted
in a tweet: China internal docs show military, Ministries of State & Public Security and rogue operators used to wage cyberwar
Greatfire has tracked which sites are blocked in China and recently
began offering a mirroring service to try to restore them for Chinese users. Similar to the campaign started by Reporters Without Borders last week, it set up content distribution networks (CDNs) using the same hosting services as many entities on which
China relies. In a statement published on its website, Greatfire said the attacks started on 17 March and added: We are receiving up to 2.6 billion requests per hour which is about 2,500 times more than normal levels.
Likely in response to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) , we've experienced our first ever distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
In theory, the method provided protection to Greatfire because, to be sure that the
blocked websites remained inaccessible, attackers would have to take down the whole hosting service - including many sites that China wanted to remain live. However, in practice, the attackers managed to find the individual URLs of the sites the
authorities sought to block and bombarded them, in a more targeted attack, said Prof Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey. He added that keeping the sites online would require the purchase of more bandwidth, adding that he consequently believed the
Chinese authorities wanted to put financial pressure on Greatfire. |
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2nd March 2015
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Repressive Chinese requirements to register real names takes its toll on micro blogging See article from bbc.co.uk |
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China blocks VPNs
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1st February 2015
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| 23rd January See article from
ctvnews.ca |
China is blocking VPN services that let users skirt online censorship of popular websites such as Google and Facebook. The virtual private network provider Golden Frog wrote on its blog that the controls have hit a wide swath of VPN services. The
popular provider Astrill informed its users this week that the controls have started hitting iPhone access to services such as Gmail this year. China-based entrepreneur Richard Robinson said the controls have particularly hurt small- and
medium-sized foreign companies that depend on VPNs. Many larger companies can afford direct connections to servers outside the country, he said. Over the past weeks, Chinese censors have already blocked what remaining access there is to Gmail and
other Google products. Google services have been periodically blocked or limited since 2010 when the company said it would no longer co-operate with China's censors. Robinson explained: These smaller businesses,
they're dependent on Gmail. And it's all in the Google services that people are really screwed.
Xiao Qiang, a professor with UC Berkeley's School of Information gave a little insight into the stepped up censorship.
We all know that China is in the middle of a very ferocious power struggle or political cleansing under the name of an anti-corruption campaign, Xiao said. That to me is a very clearly related fact with the amount of political rumours
and information related to China's high politics showing up in websites outside of China. And while the controls hurt businesses that depend on online information and tools, Chinese censors are more worried about restricting
political information Update: Not all VPNs 1st February 2015. See article from
mashable.com Not all hope is lost for Chinese users trying to get around the Great Firewall. In fact, the block has affected only popular, commercial VPNs such as Astrill,
StrongVPN and Golden Frog. Other alternative, less widespread tools, such as Psiphon, Lantern, Tor, and other VPN services, in fact, remain active. Moreover, on Friday, two of the affected VPNs announced that they were able to fight back and restore
their services, at least partially. China has always had the ability to block at least some VPN traffic, according to experts consulted by Mashable, so the reasons behind this latest crackdown might be political. And perhaps it was something to do
with the VPNs getting a little cocky. Astrill, a service that suffered disruptions, seemed to mock China's censorship system just last week. Perhaps, this was all just a warning to VPNs operating in China, just a way for the Chinese government to
assert its power and show that, if they want, they can block some of these services. Tools like Psiphon and Lantern were perhaps spared by obfuscation techniques, which makes it harder for censors to detect the use of these tools. Other VPNs, if they
haven't already, will have to follow suit in a seemingly never-ending cat and mouse game. |
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A simple idea to work round Chinese internet censorship of BBC news
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| 28th
November 2014
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| See article
from slate.com See also en.greatfire.org |
Transparency group GreatFire.org is working with the BBC to deliver the news organization's Chinese-language reporting to people censored by the country's Great Firewall. The Chinese government has been censoring BBC China content for years and also
began blocking most of the English-language version last month during pro-democracy rallies in Hong Kong. But working with GreatFire.org should increase the availability of BBC content in China. The group uses a method it calls collateral freedom to serve content through a network of mirror sites that the group claims is
unblockable. The idea is to host the mirror sites through services that are so ubiquitous that it would be difficult, even for China to justify blocking the entire domain. GreatFire.org uses hosting options like Amazon Web Services to keep
its mirror sites going. GreatFire.org explained that its partnership with the BBC is specifically pegged to elections in Taiwan on Nov. 29. The goal is to present diverse information that's written in Chinese for Chinese audiences. As
GreatFire.org points out, a lot of English speakers in China already use VPNs and other workarounds to access foreign media, but if they don't know how to do this or speak only Chinese, these backdoors don't help much. |
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Citizen Lab reveals a little about keyword censorship used in China to block Line app messages
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23rd October 2014
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| See article from
zdnet.com |
Messaging app Line started has increased censorship in China by adding more keywords to its region-based block list. However researchers have revealed an increased sophistication to the system making it less noticeable to users, as edgecastcdn.net
reported. The censorship software now allows users to use these words separately but not in phrases. Similar techniques have also been implemented in social media sites such as Weibo. Censorship becomes more meticulous and does not block
everything completely, said Wu Qianhua, researcher at the university. He said he thinks the new tactic is helping the regime. For example, under the new system, users could send messages that include Xinjiang or independence , but not
two at the same time: If you only hide a small part, instead of everything that is relative to a certain topic, then fewer people would be affected by censorship and more will be interested to talk about topics such as
Xinjiang in a 'legal' way, Wu said. But when you hide everything, people will be more curious about how the censorship works and why it exists.
The researchers found out that if users set China as their country, the app's censorship
functionality will be triggered and automatically download a bad words list from a website named Naver . However, users could also learn from a post on the lab's website on how to change their location settings and bypass the region-focused
system that applies to China. |
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Chinese internet censorship may be blocking dissent but it also blocking business opportunities too
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| 2nd
October 2014
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| See article from
nytimes.com |
China's government has tightened its control over the Internet so much recently that businesses, researchers and ordinary people are finding it hard to complete basic and innocuous tasks, like placing ads on websites, sharing documents and reading
technical documents. It seems the government of President Xi Jinping is so determined to crack down on dissent that it is even willing to stifle commerce and scientific research. The country has imposed burdensome controls on the Internet in
recent months by blocking online libraries, text messaging applications and cloud computing services, including those provided by American companies like Google. For example, the government has made it very hard to use web services that were previously
available, like Google Drive, which many businesses use to share documents among employees. And virtual private networks that allow employees to log on to their corporate servers remotely have also come under attack. The tougher line will
certainly make it harder for foreign companies to do business in China -- one American executive told The Times the new controls were a frustrating and annoying drain on productivity. Most Chinese people and businesses, however, cannot
easily get around these controls. They will have a harder time getting access to information stored on foreign computer servers or communicating with people outside China.
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China takes offence at search engine that does not snoop on users
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| 27th
September 2014
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| See article from
ibtimes.com See also duckduckgo.com |
A U.S.-based search engine that had been gaining popularity in China for its privacy-protected search results has become a target of Chinese censors. According to Tech In Asia , a technology news blog, Chinese authorities have not only blocked
access to DuckDuckGo from Chinese servers, but they even appear to be censoring any mentions of the search engine online as well. Founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg explained that DuckDuckGo is a search engine that boasts real privacy by not
collecting or sharing personal information from its users. On Weinberg's personal blog , he goes into a little bit more depth about how important Internet privacy is to him, even opting out of the commonly used Google services, not only because
they are competition but because he believes in privacy policies that do the minimum collection needed as opposed to the maximum collection possible. |
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Researchers find that Chinese censorship of social media is more about preventing organised protests rather than blocking personal opinions:
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26th August 2014
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| See article from
sciencemag.org |
A research article has appeared in the journal Science . It is titled Reverse-engineering censorship in China: Randomized experimentation and participant observation by Gary King, Jennifer Pan and Margaret E. Roberts. The abstract
reveals that the censorship of people's social media posting is more about preventing organised protests than censoring personal opinions: Chinese censorship of individual social media posts occurs at two levels:
(i) Many tens of thousands of censors, working inside Chinese social media firms and government at several levels, read individual social media posts, and decide which ones to take down. (ii) They also
read social media submissions that are prevented from being posted by automated keyword filters, and decide which ones to publish.
To study the first level, we devised an observational study to download published Chinese social media posts before the government could censor them, and to revisit each from a worldwide network of computers to see which was censored.
To study the second level, we conducted the first large scale experimental study of censorship by creating accounts on numerous social media sites throughout China, submitting texts with different randomly assigned content to each, and detecting from a
worldwide network of computers which ones were censored. To find out the details of how the system works, we supplemented the typical current approach (conducting uncertain and potentially unsafe confidential interviews with
insiders) with a participant observation study, in which we set up our own social media site in China. While also attempting not to alter the system we were studying, we purchased a URL, rented server space, contracted with Chinese firms to acquire the
same software as used by existing social media sites, and---with direct access to their software, documentation, and even customer service help desk support---reverse engineered how it all works. Results
Criticisms of the state, its leaders, and their policies are routinely published, whereas posts with collective action potential are much more likely to be censored---regardless of whether they are for or against the state (two
concepts not previously distinguished in the literature). 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. We clarify the internal mechanisms of the Chinese censorship apparatus and show how changes in censorship behavior reveal government intent by presaging
their action on the ground. That is, it appears that criticism on the web, which was thought to be censored, is used by Chinese leaders to determine which officials are not doing their job of mollifying the people and need to be replaced.
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Chinese news websites remove story about a giant inflatable toad after it was likened to a former president
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| 26th
July 2014
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| See article from
bangkokpost.com |
Chinese reports about a giant inflatable toad have been deleted from the Internet after social media users compared the puffed-up animal to former President Jiang Zemin. A 22-metre-high toad, appeared in a Beijing park last weekend, but after much
mockery, the website of China's official Xinhua news agency and popular web portal Sina had deleted their reports on the animal. A spokesman for Yuyuantan park in Beijing said there were no immediate plans to remove the toad. |
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China closes 20 million accounts using the messaging app, WeChat
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| 11th June
2014
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| See article from
qz.com |
Chinese internet giant Tencent has closed 20 million accounts on its messaging app WeChat, 5% of the total, because they supposedly offered prostitution services, according to Chinese state media, who dubbed the campaign operation Thunder Strike. +
Last month, when announcing that messaging app platforms like WeChat and others would be cooperating, Chinese authorities threatened that police would hold service providers responsible if they do not fulfill their duty. +
qz.com speculates that the action may be more to do with reminding the country's growing privately owned internet companies to toe the government line. Pursuing prostitution may simply be the
best way to rein in the most successful social media giants. The fact that millions of Chinese internet users are turning to WeChat to post their thoughts, chat, and keep up with the news may be one reason for more scrutiny. China's censorship regime is
still figuring out how to keep tabs on the increasingly popular chat app, which is taking internet users away from the microblog Weibo, a platform authorities have spent years monitoring and censoring relatively successfully. |
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9th June 2014
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The Chinese Government Got Wise To The Social Media Memes See article from huffingtonpost.co.uk |
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It is one of the fundamental tenets of censorship that the censors are somehow more moral than the rest of us
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| 31st March 2014
|
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| See article from
boingboing.net |
Chinese authorities have prosecuted an Internet policeman who took payments from companies in return for censoring unfavorable remarks about them on social media. He's accused of censoring more than 2,500 posts in return for over $300K in
payments. He also collaborated with another official to censor critical remarks about government officials. It seems unlikely that Gu, the Internet policeman who was arrested, and Liu, his collaborator, were the only two censors-for-hire in the
Chinese system. |
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China to initiate a new training programme for 2 million propaganderists and 'opinion monitors'
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26th March 2014
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| See article from
indexoncensorship.org |
The Chinese government has revealed an expansion of internet censorship with a new training programme for the estimated two million opinion monitors Beijing organised last year. Training will target the whole range of state workers
including law enforcement, academia and state businesses. The training course will reportedly cost 6,800 yuan ($1,108) and graduates will receive a certificate according to one of five levels -- assistant analyst, analyst, senior analyst, manager
and senior manager. The test will take three hours and participants will be required to take a refresher course at a later date. Once trained, monitors will supervise the posting of social media messages, deleting those that are
deemed harmful. Beijing claims to have deployed advanced filtering technology to identify problematic posts, and will need to rapidly filter out false, harmful, incorrect, or even reactionary information, according to state press agency
Xinhua. Alongside the announcement about the training course, the government emphasised its concern over the spreading of rumours, which have recently become a euphemism for political discussion, including possible corruption of senior
officials online. Those who spread rumors would be severely punished, the statement confirmed.
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| 20th March 2014
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The design of the WeChat website meant that free speech was for a while preserved because messages between users remained relatively private and insulated from the wider internet. But Beijing wasn't impressed. See
article from indexoncensorship.org |
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App that worked around Chinese internet censorship soon blocked by Apple
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| 14th
December 2013
|
|
| See article from
techpresident.com |
GreatFire.org's Free Weibo, a tool that allows you to search and find censored tweets on China's popular microblogging platform, Sina Weibo, was temporarily made available in the Apple apps store in China after being previously blocked. Charlie Smith,
who along with Martin Johnson created Great Fire, a website that monitor's censorship in China explained that Great Fire had recently updated the app, which threw the Apple censors off for a short period of time. But only a day later, the app was
blocked again. The app is only blocked in the Chinese Apple store but it can be downloaded everywhere else. Furthermore, says Smith, those who were able to download Free Weibo before it was blocked are still able to use the app, problem-free.
Apple has censored a number of applications before, most recently a popular censorship circumvention tool called OpenDoor, usually pulling them quietly without much warning. With Open Door, the developers learned about the censorship only after users
brought it to their attention. |
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Chinese newspaper reports on the country's army of internet censors
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5th October 2013
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| See article from
bbc.co.uk |
More than two million people in China are employed by the government as internet censors or propagandaists. The Beijing News says the censors, described as internet opinion analysts , are on state and commercial payrolls. The report by
the Beijing News said that these monitors were not required to delete postings. They are strictly to gather and analyse public opinions on microblog sites and compile reports for decision-makers . Tang Xiaotao has been working as a monitor
for less than six months, the report says, without revealing where he works. He sits in front of a PC every day, and opening up an application, he types in key words which are specified by clients.
He then monitors negative opinions related to the clients, and gathers (them) and compile reports and send them to the clients.
China rarely reveals any details concerning the scale and sophistication of its
internet police force. It is believed that the two million internet monitors are part of a huge army which the government relies on to control the internet. |
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Chinese internet censors target mobile apps that publish news and information not sanctioned by the state
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| 2nd
October 2013
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| See article from
itproportal.com
|
A Chinese media censor has threatened to shut down mobile apps that don't comply with repressive government restrictions. The State Internet Information Office claimed that some mobile apps were vehicles for pornography and obscene information, and
harm the physical and mental health of youngsters . The censorship will also affect apps that provide access to foreign news outlets blocked by Chinese authorities. Under fire are apps like Zaker, China's most popular news aggregator
with 17.5 million users, and Chouti, whose slogan is Publish what shouldn't be published . While the government has previously urged service providers to self-regulate to avoid the spreading of rumours , this latest more hard-line
approach is a sign of diminishing patience. From today, the government will shut down and ban any apps that fail to maintain order in news dissemination on the mobile Internet . In the last two months, over 1,000 people have been
arrested in China for crimes related to internet use. [ This equates to 4.4 arrests per million population per year. This compares with 28.3 arrests per million population per year in the UK (for just malicious
communications)]. [I guess that if the size of the population is taken into account, this could be less than number of internet arrests in Britain]. Apple Duly Purges
Anti-Censorship Browser from China App Store See article from
theepochtimes.com
The strict regime of Internet censorship and surveillance enforced by the Chinese authorities drives many Internet users to seek out tools they can use to get around the restrictions, programs like OpenDoor, a browser that was available recently from
the App Store in China. Until Apple removed it.The removal of OpenDoor follows a pattern of Apple bowing to pressure from Chinese authorities, removing content from the Chinese version of its App Store to conform to the regime's demands for
censorship. The removal took place in July of this year, according to the Chinese edition of Radio Netherlands Worldwide. OpenDoor has 800,000 users on Apple devices; one third of them were or are from China, according to OpenDoor developers.
Users from Iran and Pakistan, states that also practice Internet censorship, give the app high praise on its Facebook page. |
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China realises that internet censorship censorship can be a burden in business and is set to allow social network websites in a new free trade zone
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27th September 2013
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| 25th September 2013. See article from
en.rsf.org |
Reporters Without Borders takes note of a report in today's South China Morning Post revealing that leading foreign social networks and news websites will be accessible in the Shanghai free trade zone that is to be inaugurated at the end of the month.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a government source told the newspaper that, as an experiment, the authorities were on the point of allowing access to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and the New York Times website in the Shanghai
business district of Pudong, where the free trade zone will be located. Reporters Without Borders said: By taking this decision, the Chinese government is acknowledging that Internet censorship is bad for
business. We regret that this lifting of censorship will apply to just a limited part of the country and that the reasons behind it are purely economic. Targeted mainly at foreigners, this measure will probably not benefit the
Chinese population. It should be extended to all Chinese Internet users, who are now the victims of discrimination in access to information.
As in the Hong Kong free trade zone, the Chinese authorities want the Shanghai free trade
zone to attract foreign telecommunications companies that will offer their Internet connection services to companies based in the zone. The restrictions on Internet access are being lifted with the chief aim of attracting additional foreign investment,
and the measure will apply only to an area of some 30 square kilometres centred on Pudong. Update: Just a rumour. Censorship continues unabated 27th September 2013. See
article from theverge.com
China's regime doesn't want visitors reading The New York Times after all, even in the free trade zone. The People's Daily is disputing those initial reports, insisting that internet management measures inside the Shanghai zone will be
identical to those elsewhere in China. The state-run media outlet also emphasized that the government plans to clamp down on any pornography, gambling, drugs, and smuggling within the Shanghai free trade zone, according to The Register.
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China confirms the rumours that China is a nasty place to live
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| 11th September 2013
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| See article from
theguardian.com
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China has unveiled repressive new measures to stop the spread of what the government calls irresponsible rumours, threatening offenders with three years in jail if untrue posts online are widely reposted, drawing an angry response from Chinese internet
users. China is in the middle of yet another crackdown on what it terms online rumours , as the government tries to further repress social media and the discussion of politics. According to a judicial interpretation issued by China's
top court and prosecutor, people will be charged with defamation if online rumours they create are visited by 5,000 internet users or reposted more than 500 times. That could lead to three years in jail. Users of China's popular Twitter-like Sina
Weibo microblogging site expressed anger about the new rules. It's far too easy for something to be reposted 500 times or get 5,000 views. Who is going to dare say anything now? wrote one Weibo user.
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Chinese authorities shut down websites related to legal rights and anti-corruption reporting
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7th August 2013
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| See article from
advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org
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Over 100 illegal websites have been shut down by Chinese authorities since early May. Many believe that the crackdown is aimed at independent watchdog sites in mainland China. According to the State Internet Information Office, the 107
websites were shut down for failing to obtain official permission to establish and run sites, allegedly blackmailing government and corporate officials, and using terms such as China and people in their names. However the Chinese
authorities didn't mention the onerous expense and conditions that make it nearly impossible for small websites to actually obtain such permission. For individuals or small groups wanting to start their own websites, these regulations create
large, often insurmountable obstacles. Many do not have the resources to comply with government requests for content removal and user data, which can easily become a full-time job for one or more people. Others are unable to obtain the costly business
licenses needed to apply for an online content provider license. To get around these bureaucratic procedures, some choose to affiliate themselves with established institutions or corporations so that they can register as a web-branch of a
legitimate entity. Currently, there are many privately-run websites registered as web-branches of established institutions. A crackdown on these web-branches would be disastrous. A handful of sites on the crackdown list are indeed
linked to corporate extortion. But most of the so-called blackmailing activities are citizen initiatives that uncover corruption of government officials and party members. Websites that use terms such as people , China and Chinese
to name themselves are considered fraudulent and thus deemed illegal . The Chinese authorities claimed that websites such as People's Voices or People's shopping , People's News mislead the public, giving the false
impression that these sites are affiliated with the Party's mouthpiece, the People's Daily. Among the sites recently taken down are several devoted to citizen legal rights and anti-corruption efforts, including China Legal Rights Net, Xiaoxiang
Anti-corruption Forum, Legal Rights Defense Net, China Legal System Monitor, People's Rights Monitor, Legal Report, People's Petition, and many other similar organizations.
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China censors Winnie the Pooh picture over resemblance to premier
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14th June 2013
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| See article from
indexoncensorship.org
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China has censored an image of Winnie the Pooh strolling with Tigger, after it went viral on popular Chinese microblogging site, Sina Weibo. The image was circulated after bloggers noticed the similarities between a photo snapped this week of
President Barack Obama and Chinese premier Xi Jinping and an illustration of the cartoon characters.
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5th June 2013
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Or Internet Maintenance Day as cover for the inevitable website blocking See article from indexoncensorship.org |
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China tries and new more subtle approach to hide its internet censorship
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2nd June 2013
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| See article from
businessinsider.com
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China is reported to be trying to be more subtle in its internet censorship and is trying to hide it a bit. In the past, a search for keywords in China related to the events of June 4, 1989 at Tiananmen Square, came up with a message saying:
According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, search results for Tiananmen Square can not be displayed.
GreatFire.org said in the lead up to the anniversary of the massacre certain searches,
such as June 4 incident , had been intermittently returning a series of carefully selected results , though it was impossible to click through to the actual webpages. GreatFire.org said searches for Tiananmen incident returned links
to an unrelated happening in the square from 1976. The organisation said this was an example of censorship at its worst , with users duped into believing the keyword they were searching for was not a sensitive topic. It said the changes
were not applied consistently, concluding that the authorities were conducting tests on the new approach.
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China closes the microblogging accounts of influential intellectuals
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16th May 2013
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| See article from
guardian.co.uk See The Accident by Murong Xuecun from
guardian.co.uk
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China has launched a new drive to silence its boisterous microblogging culture by closing influential accounts belonging to writers and intellectuals who have used them to highlight social injustice. Attention has turned to the country's opinion
formers. A recent commentary in the state-run Global Times newspaper warned that Big Vs -- meaning verified accounts with millions of followers -- had become relay stations for online rumours and accused them of harming the dignity of
the law . State news agency Xinhua claimed the account of He Bing, a well known professor, was suspended because he had purposely spread rumours . Other intellectuals have seen accounts deleted outright.
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24th April 2013
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How does China censor the internet? See article from economist.com |
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One of China's army of self censorers reveals all
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10th January 2013
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| See article from
advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org by Oiwan Lam
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In the past few days, China's most influential microblogging platform, Sina Weibo, has been deleting posts related to a controversial editorial, known as the Southern Weekly's New Year Greeting incident . All the related keywords, and even terms
like the South (??), the first part of the newspaper's name, are unsearchable. Outraged micro-bloggers keep yelling and cursing at Sina Weibo's managers. However, a Sina Weibo's manager, @geniune_Yu_Yang, frustrated by the pressure the
Propaganda Department imposed upon him and his colleagues, came out and wrote an inside story to explain Sina's difficult position. Below is a quick translation of what he wrote: Last night in [Sina] Weibo, apart from the
Propaganda Department, my work unit was the second most popular target of netizens' verbal attack. The screen was full of the terrifying note: The micro-blog has been deleted. The platform looked like a sinking ship with thousands of holes on it.
My boss, Lao Shen's [Sina] Weibo's page is full of cursing. In particular, after the Southern Weekly incident had been reported by Netease [a popular web portal] extensively yesterday, attacks on Sina's cowardice and its role as the running dog [of the
Propaganda Department] reached a climax. I was so frustrated and finally fought with a famous online script-writer. After I cooled down, I reflected upon the whole thing, feeling the urge to write a long micro-blog to explain the situation in detail.
Very often, you can't see the truth when you just see the phenomena and when you are overwhelmed with anger. 1. If we don't delete your post, the alternative is that your account will be banned. This platform
belongs to the public. It has changed our life and can exercise influence on the society and government through the spread of opinion. On the one hand, we have millions of netizens, on the other hand, we have, not Sina [Weibo, but the government and the
authorities]. Since the day [around the end of March 2012] when Sina Weibo suspended its comments function for three days, a special group of people have the authority to decide on the criteria for giving out alert signals, and can make [Sina] Weibo go
game-over as simply as treading on some ants without giving a damn about people's needs. When they issue urgent orders (like the Emperor's 18 golden orders in ancient time), you have to execute them. We need [Sina] Weibo to
deliver voices. But a hand is manipulating behind us. Someone is doomed to be sacrifice in this game. We live in a country full of special and sensitive barriers and we have to operate within a set of rules. 2. With such
background, we have the second thesis: The strategy on deletion and distribution. Please think about this: You guys keep posting messages like machines, and the micro-blog secretaries keep deleting them. If we don't delete messages one by one and suspend
accounts, we could have saved more time and energy. We could have served better as the running dog. You can see the messages before they are deleted, right? You still have your account functioning, right? You are all experienced netizens, you know that
the technology allows us to delete messages in a second. Please think carefully on this. 3. In some cases, other platforms have more space than Sina. Sina is the biggest tree and everyone is using the platform. Classmate Xuan
[, nickname for the Propaganda Department,] will watch every single act. Once the leaves of the tree move, the bell rings. The way we receive orders is similar to the way the Catholic Father in the movie Cinema Paradiso rings his hand bell whenever
there is a kissing scene. We have to take orders whenever we hear the ringing bell. Before this incident occurred, and at its very early stages, we were under a lot of pressure. We tried to resist and let the messages spread. This
is our accomplishment already. Our official account @Sina_Media reported on the suspension of the Southern Weekly instantly, and the news was retweeted by @headline_news, which was again retweeted again 30,000 times in 10 mins. Then we got the order from
Classmate Xuan and we had to delete it. Fortunately, the message had been distributed. A friend from Penguin website left a warm message in my microblog: This is a battle. Sina [Weibo] is a human flesh shield. It is a courageous act.
4. Expectedly, my bosses have to go through tea session [euphemism for police interview] again. I have to stop here.
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China strengthens measures requiring companies to extract real names from web users
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| 29th December 2012
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| See article from
voanews.com
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China's legislature has approved new rules that will further tighten government control of the Internet by requiring users to register their real names, and demanding Internet companies censor online material. The state-run Xinhua News Agency says
lawmakers approved the measures Friday at the closing meeting of a five-day session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. The move seems to be in response to the runaway success of Weibo, a micro-blogging service similar to
Twitter, which has exposed corruption and other abuses of official power. China has long tried to get Internet users to register their real names rather than pseudonyms with service providers without total success. The new rules lay the groundwork
to police companies that are not complying with the government's censorship policies
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China finds technologies to block the VPNs used to work around internet censorship
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| 17th December 2012
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| See article from
guardian.co.uk
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China appears to be tightening its repressive control of internet services that are able to burrow secretly through what is known as the Great Firewall , which prevents citizens there from reading supposedly inappropriate overseas content. Both companies and individuals are being hit by the new technology deployed by the Chinese government. A number of companies providing
virtual private network (VPN) services to users in China say the new system is able to learn, discover and block the encrypted communications methods used by a number of different VPN systems. China Unicom, one of the biggest
telecoms providers in the country, is now killing connections where a VPN is detected, according to one company with a number of users in China. Users in China suspected in May 2011 that the government there was trying to disrupt VPN use, and now
VPN providers have begun to notice the effects. Astrill, a VPN provider for users inside and outside China, has emailed its users to warn them that the Great Firewall system is blocking at least four of the common protocols used by VPNs,
which means that they don't function. But the company added that trying to stay ahead of the censors is a cat-and-mouse game -- although it is working on a new system that it hopes will let it stay ahead of the detection system.
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Blogger in trouble for joking about the deaths of Chinese communists
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| 22nd November 2012
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| See
article from
dailymail.co.uk
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A blogger is facing five years in prison after he was arrested for writing a joke on Twitter about the deaths of Chinese Communist Party delegates. Zhai Xiaobing, from Beijing, has received the support of hundreds of internet users following the
joke about the party's congress on November 8. Mr Xiaobing's tweet on November 5 suggested the next movie in the Final Destination horror film franchise would be about the Great Hall of the People collapsing on party delegates. He posted on
Twitter: An earth-shaking debut will be seen at the global premiere on Nov. 8! Family members said that Miyun county police had taken him away on November 7 and seized his computer. A Miyun county police officer said that Zhai was
being investigated for spreading terrorist information .
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Facebook and Twitter are widely used in China despite being blocked by the Great Firewall
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| 7th
October 2012
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| See article from
itproportal.com
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Despite the fact that Twitter and Facebook are technically blocked in China, the two services are still widely used, according to data from market researcher GlobalWebIndex (see graph, bottom). When asked which services they had contributed to in
the last month, 25% of surveyed Chinese users said they had used Google+, 15% used Facebook, and 8% accessed Twitter. Local equivalents are Qzone (66%), followed by Sina Weibo (61%), and Tencent Weibo (56%). GlobalWebIndex has been tracking the
growth of social media use in China since 2009. At that point, there were 11.8 million Twitter users there, a number that grew to 35 million in the second quarter of 2012. Facebook use, meanwhile, jumped from 7.9 million to 65.2 million during the same
time period, said GlobalWebIndex founder Tom Smith. So how do Chinese users access Facebook and Twitter? According to Smith, people are using virtual private networks (VPNs), virtual cloud networks (VCNs), or internationally routed connections,
meaning users won't be picked up by analytics and won't actually register as being in a Chinese location. In short, Smith said, the 'Great Firewall' is not as solid as many people think.
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18th August 2012
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| The mechanics of China's internet censorship See article from
uncut.indexoncensorship.org |
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Tweeting 'the truth' is banned
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15th July 2012
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| See article from
dailymail.co.uk
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Chinese internet users were barred from searching the truth on its leading social media website. Attempts to search for the phrase were blocked on the Twitter-like site Weibo.com, which boasts 300million users. Users noticed that if they
typed in the Chinese characters for the truth , they received a message refusing to display any results. It read: According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, search results for 'the truth cannot be displayed.' It is not
known how long the phrase search was blocked and if China's controlling Communist government intervened. But under Chinese law, social media firms are also required to self-censor. Qi Zhenyu, head of social media for iSun Affairs, a Hong
Kong-based current affairs online magazine that is banned in China, said of Weibo: It is not unusual but it is quite ironic this time -- you can't simply block the truth. Whenever there is a
word that upsets them, they just go ahead and block [but] most of the time you can't really explain why they censor a certain word.
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| 11th
July 2012
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| Collapse of Great Firewall of China is inevitable, Google Chairman predicts See
article from computerworld.com |
1st April 2012 | |
| China suspends Twitter-like sites for allowing rumours, no doubt caused by China's own repression of news
| 31st March 2012. See
article from forbes.com
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China has suspended comments on two popular Twitter-like microblogs until April 3. The state-run Xinhua news service in a report said the two were being punished for allowing rumors to spread. Some 16 websites have been closed and
six people have detained for supposedly fabricated rumors about military vehicles entering Beijing and something wrong going on in Beijing. . A spokesman for the censors at the State Internet Information Office said the two big microblogs
have been criticized and punished accordingly. Update: Rumours of Coup 1st April 2012. See
article from guardian.co.uk
China has intensified online censorship by closing 16 websites and detaining six people for spreading rumours of a coup amid Beijing's most serious political crisis for years. The moves underline official anxieties ahead of this year's leadership
transition, particularly since the sacking of Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai led to widespread speculation about infighting at the top. As the mood on microblogs grew increasingly febrile, there were even claims of an attempted coup in the
Chinese capital, complete with photographs of military vehicles that turned out to be from a parade three years ago. Property tycoon Zhang Xin, who has more than 3 million microblog followers, wrote: What is the best way to stop 'rumours'? It
is transparency and openness. The more speech is discouraged, the more rumours there will be. The underlying problem is that you can't get the truth out of the government, so you might as well believe stuff flying around on the internet,
agreed Jeremy Goldkorn, who runs the Danwei website on Chinese media.
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25th March 2012 | |
| Chinese internet users develop coded language to work around banned words
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Thanks to Nick 15th March 2012. From rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com |
| Don't look at me.. I was just out getting soy sauce |
Scaling the wall. Buying soy sauce. Fifty cents. A mild collision. May 35. Mayor Lymph. River crab. These words --- mild, silly, inoffensive --- are part of the subversive lexicon being used by Chinese bloggers
to ridicule the government, poke fun at Communist Party leaders and circumvent the heavily censored Internet in China. A popular blog that tracks online political vocabulary, China Digital Times, calls them part of the resistance discourse on the
mainland. ... Perry Link, the author of Liu Xiaobo's Empty Chair , described the use of code words and Aesopian allegory by Mr. Liu and other popular bloggers like Han Han: Harmony, for
example, is a key word used in the government's rhetoric, and Internet writers use hexie, or river crab, which is a near-homonym of the Chinese word for harmony, to mean repression. To be harmonized, these days, is to be
censored. Officials are aware, of course, of its barbed meaning on the Internet, said the Chinese writer Yu Ha in an essay in the IHT Magazine, but they can hardly ban it, because to do so would outlaw the 'harmonious
society' they are plugging. Harmony has been hijacked by the public. Offsite: Naming the Unnameable 25th March 2012. See
article from
watoday.com.au
[A few] days ago, Beijing was hosting an innovative tug-of-war for the elderly; this game has nine contestants in all, wrote one internet user, in a thinly veiled reference to the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the country's
top political body. The first round of the contest is still intense. The teletubby team noticeably has the advantage and, relatively, the Master Kong team is obviously falling short. Teletubby is code for Wen Jiabao, who
chided Bo publicly before his ousting - the Chinese version of the children's TV show, Tianxianbaobao, shares a character with the Premier's name. The popular instant noodle brand Master Kong is known as Kang Shifu in Chinese and stands in for Zhou
Yongkang, who is reportedly supportive of Bo. ...Read the full article
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14th March 2012 | |
| A study of Chinese censorship of a Twitter like service shows that the system is agile, priority driven and seems
likely to employ a high degree of human intervention
| See
article from newscientist.com
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The New Scientist has reported on a study into the way that that Great Firewall of China censors internet users and particularly how this has been adapted to social networking sites. As expected, the communists are hypersensitive to criticism of
the state - but also to people slating internet censorship itself. The US study also shows Beijing's censorship machine adapts quickly to emerging issues. It's also location-dependent, being far more active, when required, in dissident regions.
David Bamman, a computer scientist and linguist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, got the idea for the research last summer when he noticed how quickly false rumours of the death of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin disappeared from
China's Twitter equivalent Sina Weibo. So with colleagues Noah Smith and Brendan O'Connor he decided to study the censorship mechanism more closely. They studied the Twitter like Sina Weibo and download nearly 57 million messages for a snapshot of
3 months. They then compared these with Sina Weibo's archive to see which tweets were deleted. As might be expected, criticism of state propaganda was not tolerated. Messages attacking China's Ministry of Truth were zapped, as were ones
involving calls for the resignations of incompetent government officials, such as that of the railways minister after a horrific train crash . Complaints about Fang Binxing - architect of the web censoring Golden Shield Project, nicknamed the
Great Firewall - were also highly deleted - as were mentions of a pair of Communist Party meetings which became a code word for arranging pro-democracy protests last spring. The researchers suggest that this agility and infrequent updates to more
background censorship issues points to a high level of human involvement and a nuanced approach, rather than total automation. There also seems to be a priority system by location. Bamman explained: In Tibet there was an overall deletion rate of 53% -
against 12% in Beijing and 11% in Shanghai. The research will be published in a forthcoming issue of the open access journal First Monday.
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30th January 2012 | |
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Inside China's censorship machine See fullcomment.nationalpost.com |
17th December 2011 | |
| China demands ID to use local versions of Twitter
| See
article from bbc.co.uk
Authorities in Beijing have issued new rules requiring users of microblog sites to register personal details. New users of Weibo - Chinese equivalents of Twitter - will now have to submit their real names. Existing users have to register in three
months. Those who refuse to do so will lose the ability to post tweets. The move comes with Chinese people increasingly using Weibo platforms to criticise government policies or vent anger over particular incidents. Chinese authorities have
accused netizens of spreading rumours on Weibo in the past and have long been discussing putting in place a real name mechanism . The new regulations - which take effect immediately - were issued jointly by Beijing's information,
communication and police authorities, and published on the city's official news portal. Some users on Sina Weibo have expressed unhappiness at the new rule, posting messages such as goodbye Weibo and time to move on and calling on
friends and followers to migrate to other social media sites such as Twitter and Google+ instead.
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