Net Censors Arrested In China For Taking Bribes To Delete Unflattering Posts As Well As The 'Harmful' Ones
from the gaming-the-system dept
Techdirt has run a number of stories about China's increasingly pervasive Net censorship, which operates both domestically and further afield. According to this story in Index on Censorship, China seems to think its system still needs bolstering:
The Chinese government has revealed it is expanding their censorship of the internet with a new training programme for the estimated two million "opinion monitors" Beijing organised last year.
That fluid situation and the huge numbers of people involved mean that it's hard to monitor the monitors -- generally a problem with censorship. So it was probably inevitable that some Net censors would start taking advantage of their power to earn a little extra money:
...
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 Xinhua.
Internet monitoring in China is an intensive process. Censored search terms are often placed on the list and then removed as a situation develops.Beijing police have detained at least 10 people, including employees at Baidu, the leading Chinese-language Internet search provider, over allegations of abusing their positions to delete online posts in return for money, the Beijing News reports.
The idea was simple, as the China News post quoted above explains:
staff searched for unfavorable posts about enterprises and government departments, then charged hundreds of yuan to delete the posts.
Combined with the millions who will be censoring a changing list of forbidden topics, this will make it even harder for Chinese citizens to find out what's going on from the mainstream Internet sites. That might encourage users to explore less well-known services in an effort to avoid such massive censorship, causing the Chinese authorities to recruit even more "opinion monitors."
...
The posts covered a wide range of issues, including forced demolitions, pollution problems, extramarital affairs and bribery by officials, as well as product quality and companies in financial crises
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+
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.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: bribes, censorship, china, corruption, free speech, great firewall
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Throwing a few under the bus
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Throwing a few under the bus
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Throwing a few under the bus
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Who could've predicted this would happen?
It is simply mind boggling that human nature would corrupt such a pure endeavor ... LOL
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
China Censor
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Political Oxidation
It appears that the infection starts at a low level, and grows exponentially with ascent. The underlings made the serious mistake of not passing appropriate shares upwards. Hence the smack-down.
Absolutely!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
A difference between China and the US
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: A difference between China and the US
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So how does a Chinese Snowden look like?
So what happens when China gets a Snowden?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: So how does a Chinese Snowden look like?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]