[keewee7]

>Peng's social media post was quickly deleted by government censors. Her social media account disappeared hours after her post. China's state media outlets have not mentioned her accusations at all.

>Screenshots of Peng's original post continued to circulate widely on the Chinese internet even as censors scrambled to delete any references to her allegations within group chats and blogs, a sign of the immense public interest in her allegations. The speed with which her post was deleted also reflects the extreme sensitivity of her remarks, which come just as Communist Party leaders convene in Beijing for the Sixth Plenum, an important political meeting during which the state is on high alert for any sign of discord.

Chinese internet censorship is insane. How many people work as censors?

[archibaldJ]

Just recently I posted about looking for a lawyer on my WeChat (I wanted to file a lawsuit against the quarantine hotel I was in).

Right after I posted it, my WeChat started to take longer to load incoming messages, and my messages took longer to be sent. (I did a test with a phone logged into another account in the same wifi environment.)

This phenomenon disappeared a few days later though. I still wonder if I'm now in some watchlist or something.

[LurkingPenguin]

In a surveillance state like China, technically everyone is on a "watchlist".

[bobthepanda]

The State Department estimated that tens of thousands are directly employed by the state: https://share.america.gov/chinese-censorship-is-global-probl...

There are also censors within companies since media is expected to be vigilant about it as well, so probably thousands more on top.

[yftsui]

Byte Dance (TikTok’s parent company) has about 10k content moderator (excluding contractors) from the 2019 reports, should be much more by now.

[unityByFreedom]

Everyone was informing on everyone during the "revolutionary" days. Time will tell. Social credit + 1

[mensetmanusman]

An interesting stat I saw is that they spend, as a percentage of GDP, about as much on their internal looking police state as the US does on their military…

[dirtyid]

No, the meme claim is PRC spends roughly the same on domestic security as military (sub 2%). Which relative to GDP is about how much US spends on policing and homeland security without considerations of special budgets. US and PRC has comparable police state expenditures, US just also spends vastly more on military.

[stickfigure]

Do you have a reference for this? It seems hard to believe. But if it's true, it's mind-boggling.

[baybal2]

> Chinese internet censorship is insane. How many people work as censors?

Literal armies of them https://theglobalobservatory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/...

[seoulmetro]

Just reminds me of Google, Facebook, etc. censors. Lots and lots of people work on those. I'd guess it's probably a similar amount given that Facebook and Google are worldwide, Chinese sites are not.

[true_religion]

It’s not really that people work as censors, but that the government is the media. No one has to be told to take down material that is anti government, because everyone’s team lead is a communist party member and those are the obvious rules.

[mensetmanusman]

This is not true, they have censors as you describe and those that censor all citizens who communicate digitally with anyone.