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by 0815test 2622 days ago
It's not even "China" that's directly responsible for most of these decisions, really. It's each private company individually trying to figure out how to keep the Chinese government happy and on their side. That's why these things are inherently unpredictable. Sometimes you can even see seemingly-coordinated behavior that's actually the result of bandwagoning - e.g. if one company bans "Leica" on their social media site, then everyone else will feel like they have to follow suit. It's quite a mess.
2 comments
rebuilder 2622 days ago
That's a good point. What would it even look like if there was an official, authoritative list of things to be censored, with draconian enforcement? Xi Jinping isn't going to personally decide what goes on the list. He's certainly not going to personally adjudicate the myriad edge cases. Inevitably the system must devolve into a lot of individuals making conflicting decisions.

I see no way to have a cohesive, official censorship apparatus with centralized control, unless the method employed simply involves cutting cables. That would be pretty unambiguous.

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vageli 2622 days ago
> That's a good point. What would it even look like if there was an official, authoritative list of things to be censored, with draconian enforcement? Xi Jinping isn't going to personally decide what goes on the list. He's certainly not going to personally adjudicate the myriad edge cases. Inevitably the system must devolve into a lot of individuals making conflicting decisions.

> I see no way to have a cohesive, official censorship apparatus with centralized control, unless the method employed simply involves cutting cables. That would be pretty unambiguous.

Social control and censorship is far more effective than governmental censorship. Being "excommunicated" or ostracized from your social group is enough to prohibit many people from making political expressions (or otherwise).

For a dumb but illustrative example, think about how your posting habits on social media might change if your relatives were receiving those posts.

The best part is that it allows the government to indirectly encourage practices and behavior that would likely receive criticism in the global community if done directly.

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malwarebytess 2622 days ago
It doesn't seem all that different from some similar events in our corporate internet ecosystem.
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