Researchers Say Chinese Government Now Censoring Images In One-To-One Chat
from the shot-spotters dept
It looks like China is continuing to set the gold standard for internet censorship. For a long time, the Great Firewall has been actively censoring content based on keywords. Activists and dissidents have worked around this filtering by placing text in images, but that doesn't appear to be working nearly as well as it used to.
Toronto's Citizen Lab noticed some unusual things happening in days surrounding the death of China's only Nobel Peace Prize winner (and longtime political prisoner), Liu Xiaobo.
On WeChat, we collected keywords that trigger message censorship related to Liu Xiaobo before and after his death. Before his death, messages were blocked that contained his name in combination with other words, for example those related to his medical treatment or requests to receive care abroad. However, after his death, we found that simply including his name was enough to trigger blocking of messages, in English and both simplified and traditional Chinese. In other words, WeChat issued a blanket ban on his name after his death, greatly expanding the scope of censorship.
We documented censorship of images related to Liu on WeChat after his death, and for the first time found images blocked in one-to-one chat. We also found images blocked in group chat and WeChat Moments (a feature that resembles Facebook’s Timeline where users can share updates, upload images, and short videos or articles with their friends), before and after his death.
China has tackled image censorship before, but it hasn't been able to achieve this in one-to-one chat until now. And it's being done stealthily to prevent senders or receivers from knowing their images have been blocked.
Similar to keyword-based filtering, censorship of images is only enabled for users with accounts registered to mainland China phone numbers. The filtering is also not transparent. No notice is given to a user if the picture they sent is blocked. Censorship of an image is concealed from the user who posted the censored image.
The censorship is only apparent to international users without registered Chinese phone numbers. And, like most blanket censorship efforts, it's far from perfect.
The exact mechanism that WeChat uses to determine which images to filter is unclear and in our testing sample we found unexpected results. Blocked images included screenshots of official government statements on Liu Xiaobo’s death, which we did not expect to be censored. We also found images that were not blocked that could be seen as sensitive, such as an image of book covers of “Charter 08” and a Biography of Liu Xiaobo, which are both banned in mainland China.
As Citizen Lab points out, this censorship effort is especially concerning, as it indicates the Chinese government is possibly in the business of internet-enabled retroactive amnesia. If it leaves the filtering in place long enough and censors enough websites and personal chats, the history of Liu Xiaobo will be slowly rewritten with narratives approved by the Chinese government.
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Filed Under: censorship, chat, china, free speech, images, messaging, one on one
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China censors.
America punishes and takes down.
China does it for good reason, to protect their sovereignty from proven spy agencies like Google and Facebook.
America does it for business aka greed and to protect its secrets that give them political coercion/military advantage.
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"America does it for business aka greed and to protect its secrets that give them political coercion/military advantage."
That's funny ... you can't be serious.
Yeah, petty bullshit never enters into the equation because politicians would never overstep their boundaries attempting to do things outside standard protocol, ethics or other such silly things. And certainly monetary concerns would never drive any censorship attempts.
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Er.. China does for the exact same reason you say the US does. Two sides of the same coin.
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So, like all such blocking, it's not going to be 100% accurate and is guaranteed to affect perfectly legitimate content, even that supplied by the people advocating for the block.
Or, as we call it in every other thread where someone advocates for blocks of some kind of content, the exact, predictable, unavoidable outcome. The only difference is that at least the Chinese government are apparently performing the block themselves rather than demand 3rd parties do it for them and attack them when the predicated outcome happens.
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On the other hand, US government attacks individuals such as Assange and Snowden mainly for whistle blowing aka revealing wrong doings of the US gov.
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Since you can't forget present or future, isn't amnesia "retroactive" by definition?
// This comment brought to you by UUEERR, United Union for Exterminating and Eliminating Redundancy and Repetition.
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I think retrograde is the past relative to the time of an amnesiac event, and anterograde amnesia where you stop forming new memories from the time of onset. (Technically, this isn't forgetting the future: that's only possible when it involves Terminators and Terminator-related events.)
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Get over your moral superiority.
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Neither am I but I still comment on articles about that country. Are you saying that people shouldn't criticise other countries, or that they should just ignore them when they're doing something that they would not like their own country to follow? What's your point?
"China is still a communist party"
Country....
"They have also existed for a whole hell of a lot longer than the United States"
Not in its current form as a communist country. So, what are you saying? Who gets the right to talk about another country - the one that's been around for longest, the one with the longest running political system, what?
"Get over your moral superiority."
You first. I'd start by having some logical consistency in your arguments.
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That is not criticizing WITH FACTS AND DATA...that is just again, as he said, an opinion on a pretentious moral superiority. How do you know "they would not like their own country to follow?"
"Who gets the right to talk about another country"
No of course you have your right to your opinion, but do it with FACTS not with "they woulds.." and crap like that. Otherwise you are just a propagandist. And if you really like to criticize wrong doings, why don't you focus in your own country and actually TAKE ACTION and change things in your country first before giving opinions about others?
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"How do you know "they would not like their own country to follow?""
Because after reading this site for a number of years and understanding the opinions of its staff, I can presume that one reason Tim Cushing is writing about these actions is that he would not like his own country to follow suit with what China are doing here. Do you honestly have a problem with me stating that?
"why don't you focus in your own country and actually TAKE ACTION and change things in your country first before giving opinions about others?"
Why don't you? Are you honestly saying that your country has to be perfect before you make any comment on another? Because, in a wholly laughable comment, that's the silliest thing you've said.
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And if you really like to criticize wrong doings, why don't you focus in your own country and actually TAKE ACTION and change things in your country first before giving opinions about others?
One can take the view that the elites of all countries to some extent form a conspiracy against the rest of us.
to paraphrase a famous quote
First it happened in China - but I wasn't Chinese so i didn't bother about it.
Then it happened in Pakistan - but I wasn't Pakistani so I didn't think I had the right to protest about it.
Then It happened in Germany... etc etc
...
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The it happened in my own country - so I protested and my government said "every other country in the world does it so we have to follow suit- just accept it like everyone else does.
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And I would say with pretty high certainty that Paul does the same with his own country much like I do. When there happen to be articles criticizing (or the rare ones praising) my own country I also contribute with my critique or ideas if I can add to the discussion somehow.
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As they say, before start pointing your finger at others, clean your goddamn backyard first.
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You must be one of those students who graduated from an "alternative school" where they teach alternative history.
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When will you realize that the US is a sovereign country, China's censorship rules don't apply here, and that we can damn well criticize the Chinese government if we want to?
And sink to your level? No thanks. Go home, comrade.
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United States of America - 1776
People's Republic of China - 1949
Chinese math?
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cHINA HAS BEEN AROUND ALONG TIME, INCLUDING all the uprisings..and changes in the last 150 years, AFTER WHITE MEN tried to take over China..
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Yeah, that whole "Lost Generation" thing y'all had - that was some damn fine knowing better how to run your own damn country...
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You can't punish everyone all at the same time ... or can you? What would that look like?
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What is better for the oligarchs than censorship? SELF CENSORSHIP.
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As if they had it to begin with.
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THE amount of tech..
I wonder how much is automated?
pre-judged Pics Stored and replace ones THEY dont want seen? Would be easiest..
I dont think they have FOUND ALL the chat channels yet.
its not easy to find a SMART person, that knows HOW to hide.
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