Complementing Online Censorship With Peer Pressure And Happy Topics
from the all's-well-that-says-it's-well dept
One of the interesting things about the great firewall of China is how much of the work involved is actually distributed outside of the official internet police. Yes, there have been stories about the 30,000 people hired to police the internet, but recent stories have shown how a lot of the effectiveness may come from a more distributed nature. A few weeks ago, for example, a story came out talking about how the government has basically told ISPs that they had better ban the bad stuff, or they'd get punished -- and that has resulted in the ISPs simply guessing about what should be banned -- and erring on the side of banning more, rather than less, to avoid punishment. A new story highlights even more of how the system works (while also pegging the number of Internet police employed in China at 50,000, rather than 30,000), talking about a university that employs 500 students to act as online moderators. While the role does include hunting down "bad" content for deletion, the more important part is trying to start, maintain and guide discussions around "nice" topics. Professors and administrators suggest to these students topics they might want to talk about (an example given is "what actors make the best role models?") -- and the students post those discussions online. They also take part in other discussions, always trying to keep the topic on "good" content, or moving the conversation in that direction should it stray. Of course, none of these students reveal that they're part of the official, student-run, internet monitoring group. What may be most interesting, though, is the response from other students -- who can't believe how many students are involved in the monitoring/guided conversation role, along with others who think it's laughable that the University and the government think they can control the internet: "If you're not allowed to talk here you just go to another place to talk, and there are countless places for your opinions. It's easy to bypass the firewalls, and anybody who spends a little time researching it can figure it out." And, of course, that's going to keep getting easier, as new tools show up.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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As opposed to our system?
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Re: As opposed to our system?
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"... anybody who spends a little time researching
If the government has control over network, how do you know you're in fact "bypassing" the firewalls and reaching Canada?
Talk about honeypots...
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Chinese System will collapse
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Re: Chinese System will collapse
The internet in the Western world is increasingly censored too, as completely open forums are rare today. Most forums are run by moderators with the power to censor stuff -- I've had posts deleted or edited on here before.
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Re: Re: Chinese System will collapse
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commenting on dorpus' comment
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The energy coming from the local common people cannot be crushed or even regulated by ANY government, theirs or ours. The global tsunami of the chinese common man is coming.
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