Liu Xiaobo’s Death Pushes China’s Censors Into Overdrive
In one experiment, researchers at the Citizen Lab found
that a photo of Liu Xiaobo posted to an international user’s WeChat social media feed was visible to other users abroad but was hidden from users with Chinese accounts.
On the day after Mr. Liu’s death, one user posted on his WeChat feed: "‘Did you see what I just sent?’ ‘No, I can’t see it.’ For the last two days, this has been the constant question
and answer among friends." Please verify you’re not a robot by clicking the box.
But systematic research from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs shows
that there was a "significant shift" in censorship techniques in the days after Mr. Liu’s death, particularly on WeChat, the popular messaging app from Tencent.
By AMY QINJULY 17, 2017
BEIJING — It came as little surprise when, after the death of the dissident Liu Xiaobo last week, China’s vast army
of censors kicked into overdrive as they scrubbed away the outpouring of grief on social media that followed.
Over the years, the constant cat-and-mouse game between Chinese censors
and internet users has led to the rise of a robust internet culture in which censorship is normalized and satire and veiled references are par for the course.
In addition to automatically filtering certain keywords
and images, internet companies like Baidu, Sina and Tencent also employ human censors who retroactively comb through posts and delete what they deem as sensitive content, often based on government directives.
