| Title | China’s Internet Censors Try a New Trick: Revealing Users’ Locations | |
| Date | Friday May 20 2022, @09:10PM | |
| Author | hubie | |
| Topic | ||
| from the all-that-my-eyes-are-revealing dept. | ||
For years China's censors have relied on a trusted tool kit to control the country's internet. They have deleted posts, suspended accounts, blocked keywords, and arrested the most outspoken.
Now they are trying a new trick: displaying social media users' locations beneath posts:
Authorities say the location tags, which are displayed automatically, will help unearth overseas disinformation campaigns intended to destabilize China. In practice, they have offered new fuel for pitched online battles that increasingly link Chinese citizens' locations with their national loyalty. Chinese people posting from overseas, and even from provinces deemed insufficiently patriotic, are now easily targeted by nationalist influencers, whose fans harass them or report their accounts.
The tags, based on a user's Internet Protocol, or I.P., address that can reveal where a person is located, were first applied to posts that mentioned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a topic authorities said was being manipulated with foreign propaganda. Now they are being expanded to most social media content, further chilling speech on a Chinese internet dominated by censorship and isolated from the world.
The move marks a new step in a decade-long push by Chinese officials to end anonymity online and exert a more perfect control over China's digital town squares.
[...] Those who appear to be getting online from abroad, even if they're just using a virtual private network or VPN that cloaks their location in China, are treated as foreign agitators and spies. After being reported by the trolls, some accounts are deleted by the platforms for violating "community regulations."
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printed from SoylentNews, China’s Internet Censors Try a New Trick: Revealing Users’ Locations on 2024-04-28 23:22:01