SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the keep-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer dept.
The New York Times has an article about China's online censorship factories and how they operate. Censors are specially educated accurately in history and politics so that they have mastery over how to spot and eliminate references, even indirect ones, to forbidden topics. Potential employees for censorship factories have to cram for two weeks for a comprehensive exam which they must pass in order to begin work. This education is followed by ongoing training which includes regularly visiting and reviewing web sites normally blocked by the Great Firewall of China.
Li Chengzhi had a lot to learn when he first got a job as a professional censor.
Like many young people in China, the 24-year-old recent college graduate knew little about the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. He had never heard of China’s most famous dissident, Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died in custody two years ago.
Now, after training, he knows what to look for — and what to block. He spends his hours scanning online content on behalf of Chinese media companies looking for anything that will provoke the government’s wrath. He knows how to spot code words that obliquely refer to Chinese leaders and scandals, or the memes that touch on subjects the Chinese government doesn’t want people to read about.
Previously:
Censorship a Trojan Horse (2018)
Unpublished Chinese Censorship Document Reveals Effort to Eradicate Online Political Content (2018)
The "Great Cannon" of China (2015)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @03:40PM (5 children)
Didn't Winston work in the continuity department of the ministry of truth? He got to see real history, but he was also training himself to forget.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Monday January 07 2019, @04:16PM (3 children)
Winston was only supposed to know what previous versions of history said, not necessarily the truth. But yeah, the parallel there is pretty obvious.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @05:37PM
You want the truth? No problem. Just go down to the cellar. Look in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'. Don't forget to knock loudly, you know, just in case the leopard is asleep.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @06:36PM (1 child)
How does this job in China compare to the
censormoderator jobs at, eg, Facebook?The FB worker probably didn't need to bone up on history, but equally has a list of bad words and code words to watch for.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:05AM
Fortunately the entire internet is not filtered through Facebook. Your ISP is far more dangerous.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @08:05PM
I remember one passage where Winston was privately proud of his BS skills, almost like a fiction artist writing a great story. We in the West know them as "marketers" or "lobbyists".