To Beijing, all the censorship is not enough

China’s powerful cyberspace administration announced Tuesday that it had ordered Weibo to “rectify” its content moderation and fined the platform $471,135 for the latest instance of laxity, citing the Cybersecurity Law and the Law on the Protection of Minors.

• The Cyberspace Administration of China also said it had fined Weibo 44 times between January and November, totaling $2.25 million.
• Before Weibo, Douban was the first social media platform that the CAC called out for the same offense.

The question is, how far must companies go? Chinese social platforms like Weibo are already trying pretty hard to censor their users.

• Censorship in China is mostly outsourced to tech companies, which create their own keyword blacklists and hire thousands of employees and contractors across multiple offices to police what users are saying.
• ByteDance, for example, employs about 20,000 “content moderators,” a February Protocol investigation found.
• Not all content moderation is aimed at political speech, of course, but that is a major part of the work.

In fact, tech’s censorship efforts seem successful. Depending on how you measure success, at least.

• In 2013, Lu Wei, then China’s internet czar, sat down with social platforms and ordered them to step up their censorship efforts.
• They complied, and Chinese social media, which used to be full of comments that either ignored speech prohibitions or easily dodged censorship, hasn’t really been the same since.
• It also “helped” that Beijing has increasingly targeted influencers, and has stepped up criminal and extrajudicial penalties for online speech it doesn’t like. It began with what was called the “Big V Crackdown” in 2013; it’s never really stopped.
• In this context, it’s rather remarkable to see Beijing essentially declaring the status quo unacceptable. Then again, Beijing surely believes eternal vigilance is required to “manage” public opinion.

But maybe Beijing can never have “enough” censorship.The Peng Shuai fallout is a reminder: As the world keeps asking about the well-being of Chinese tennis star — who accused former Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of sexually assaulting her — Beijing must continue to work to suppress any mention of her.

• A joint investigation by The New York Times and ProPublica has found that Beijing not only censored discussion of Peng, but unleashed nearly 100 fake Twitter accounts saying Peng was fine.
• One telltale sign it was state-led: The bot-like accounts did most of their posting during work hours on weekdays in China, with a slight dip in activity during lunch hours.

Beijing can’t make Peng’s accusation disappear, and it’s a dangerous one for the Party precisely because it was not made with political intent. As the 2022 Beijing Olympics move further into the headlines, Beijing will double down on the only solution it knows: more online repression.

On Protocol | China

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