• Re: China's WeChat censored thousands of keywords tied to thecoronavirus pandemic, Citizen Lab study says

    From strenght55@strenght55@gmail.com to comp.security.misc on Mon Dec 14 18:47:50 2020
    From Newsgroup: comp.security.misc

    On Friday, August 28, 2020 at 1:56:11 PM UTC-7, -=Lord=- wrote:
    <https://www.scmp.com/abacus/culture/article/3099227/chinas-wechat-censored-thousands-keywords-tied-coronavirus-pandemic>
    When the novel coronavirus first struck China, government efforts to control online discussions were mostly focused on domestic politics. But as the pandemic spread across the globe, US-related topics have borne the brunt of WeChat’s censorship, a new study found.
    Between January and May, researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab found that the Chinese app blocked more than 2,000 keywords related to Covid-19.
    Tencent, the owner of WeChat, did not respond to a request for comment.
    Since the beginning of the pandemic, early warnings about the virus were censored, as were domestic criticisms of China’s handling of the outbreak, said the report.
    One incident concerned the real estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang, who went missing after he wrote an article slamming the government. Using the keyword “Ren Zhiqiang” by itself did not trigger any censorship, however when grouped together as “cover up the facts, Ren Zhiqiang” or “Ren, missing”, the entire message was blocked.
    Starting in March, as the pandemic went global, more of the censored terms were found to focus on international criticism of China. Those keyword combinations included mentions of the World Health Organisation and Red Cross.
    The term “mask diplomacy” also hit a nerve.
    When China and other countries began offering medical help and emergency aid overseas, Beijing’s efforts raised concerns in the West. Critics decried China’s humanitarian response as an attempt to draw attention away from its initial mishandling of the virus outbreak. When keywords like “spend money, Italy” or “covid-19, impact, Belt and Road Initiative” were used in the same message, it was filtered out.
    After The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece titled “China is the real sick man of Asia”, related words were also suppressed.
    But the focus of WeChat’s censorship soon turned to the US, said researchers.
    As the US became the epicentre of the pandemic, Washington started to blame Beijing and the WHO for covering up the spread of the coronavirus. In turn, censorship of references to China’s relations with the US went into overdrive.
    Multiple keywords mentioning “Trump” were blocked. Unproven allegations that a laboratory in Wuhan leaked the novel coronavirus also led to a ban on word groupings such as “bioweapon, government, virus, officials”.
    In conducting this research, Citizen Lab said it created a WeChat group chat consisting of three dummy accounts: one registered in mainland China and the others in Canada.
    One of the Canadian accounts was used to send out excerpts of news articles from Chinese state media, news aggregators in the mainland, and websites in Hong Kong and Taiwan. If the dummy Chinese account didn’t receive a message sent by one of the Canadian accounts, it was deemed to contain censored words. Researchers then ran further tests with potentially sensitive words in that article to determine which terms were actually banned.
    Researchers said it’s unclear whether these keywords were blocked under detailed guidance from the government.
    What is known, however, is that authorities are holding WeChat and other internet platforms responsible for policing user-generated content. Failure to delete content considered undesirable can result in serious consequences, including the suspension or even removal of an app.
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