
China scours social media, erases thousands of accounts - dustinmoris
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-censorship/china-scours-social-media-erases-thousands-of-accounts-idUKKCN1NI0CG
======
steenreem
So, what would be an effective way of making censorship impossible?

I imagine a system where you publish news using your device (a mobile phone),
and encrypted in a way so that only a small group of other devices, which you
have explicitly trusted in an earlier step, can decrypt it, allowing only them
to trace that the news came from you.

Then those trusted devices will decrypt and re-encrypt the news in such that
they can forward it with only their trusted devices. When a device receives
news from another, then it won't know whether the sender published that news,
or is merely forwarding it.

Because all communication between devices is encrypted, a device can not be
confirmed to be using this system, except by a device who he trusts.

When a device is compromised, he will only be able to see if another device is
part of the system, if that device has trusted him. Also the compromised
device will be able to read news shared to him, but he won't be able to see
what device that news originates from.

To make sure that readers can filter news based on what publishers they like,
there is the concept of a publisher.

Apart from news, devices can also share publishers. An publisher is a name
plus public key. The creator of the publisher has the private key with which
he can encrypt news (even before it encrypted for sharing), allowing readers
of that news, who have the publisher's public key, to verify that the news
came from that publisher. If a publisher is shared with a device while the
device already knows a publisher with the same public key, then the device
must chose which publisher to keep and which to delete.

~~~
apatters
It bears mentioning that services like Radio Free Asia have been broadcasting
into China via shortwave and have been an uncensored source of news for
decades. Tuning into a shortwave broadcast is more anonymous than the Internet
will ever be and easily accomplished with a cheap common, legal device... a
radio. The Chinese government has gone to great lengths to jam these
broadcasts, I'm not sure how successful those efforts are in 2018. I suspect
more funding for these organizations can only help however.

(Bonus fact: Radio Free Asia contributed most of the initial funding for the
development of the Signal protocol!)

~~~
eiaoa
> Tuning into a shortwave broadcast is more anonymous than the Internet will
> ever be and easily accomplished with a cheap common, legal device... a
> radio.

My sense is that analog methods are the best response to authoritarian
regimes; and the best way to prepare for the advent of one is to familiarize
yourself with analog spy trade-craft (and analog response to digital spying,
like disguise).

Speaking of which, does anyone have any non-fiction book recommendations about
analog spycraft and responses to authoritarianism? Things like how to do dead
drops, samizdat, clandestine distribution of literature and the like?

~~~
lic-defender
I'd like to hear more about this, too. I would probably start looking for non-
fiction about the Soviet Union and East Germany. My intuition is that the
human factor is more important than the spycraft. In other words, how do you
know who agrees with you politically? How do you know if you can trust them?
They could be an informant for the police.

There's a scene from The Man In The High Castle season 1 where some of the
Japanese are trying to figure out if the antique salesman shares their
political beliefs. To give an opening, they ask questions sort of in the
subject area, but plausibly deniable. He fails the test, but even if he
passes, he can't just come straight out. It would be based on subtleties of
words, facial expressions, attitude, maybe a joke in response. Even then, he's
better off if there's not a Nest or an Alexa recording the whole thing.

Related, I heard about a man who was handing out political brochures on a
street in the Soviet Union. Before too long, the police came and took him into
custody. To their surprise, the brochures were blank inside. When they asked
the man what was going on, he said, "everyone already knows!". But they can't
talk about it.

------
prolikewh0a
USA is doing this too, but it gets reported on entirely differently. Facebook
& Twitter are banning domestic American citizen accounts for simply acting
like "Russians", whatever that means. They aren't claimed to be hate accounts
either, it's just raw censorship. They won't provide example accounts so we
can research what they're banning specifically.

I'm not sure why everyone thinks this is OK, but coddles their cozy propaganda
blankets when China is doing it.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/technology/fake-news-
onli...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/technology/fake-news-online-
disinformation.html?module=inline)

~~~
pas
Twitter and FB are private businesses, China is a state. The US state is not
deleting nor forcing or requesting deletion of accounts.

Russian propaganda bots are that, propaganda bots. Hate speech is a different
issue.

~~~
tabtab
In the USA we let capitalism do our dirty deeds so that gov't doesn't have to
:-)

~~~
prolikewh0a
Exactly. These are enormous private governments at this point and should be
treated like government.

They partnered with the Atlantic Council which is essentially a board the most
evil capitalistic & imperialistic motherfuckers from past US government to
decide what to censor. It's essentially state censorship and it's worrying to
me.

~~~
tabtab
I'm not sure how to fix such without getting the gov't involved, except maybe
splitting Big Media (BM) per anti-trust laws. Either you regulate BM by
policing their speech filtering or you regulate them by splitting them. And
splitting BM won't guarantee their smaller versions won't do the same thing.

------
threatofrain
> The term “self-media” is mostly used on Chinese social media to describe
> independent news accounts that produce original content but are not
> officially registered with the authorities.

------
majia
Another way to make censorship impossible: Ask all governmental, educational
and technological websites to provide VPN services or links to other VPN
services. If China wants to implement censorship, it has to ban all these
websites that are essential for its economic development.

~~~
eiaoa
> Another way to make censorship impossible: Ask all governmental, educational
> and technological websites to provide VPN services or links to other VPN
> services. If China wants to implement censorship, it has to ban all these
> websites that are essential for its economic development.

Censorship is always possible. You can make it more expensive, but the
censoring regime could just decide to bear the cost.

The PRC government may decide that China has developed enough that they no
longer need to provide _any_ access to the worldwide internet to their general
population. They could switch the Great Firewall to default-deny mode, and
only whitelist the _minimum_ number of services they need to keep their
economy running. I think that list is much smaller than a lot of people would
assume, given the domestic coercive power of the Chinese state and willingness
of foreign businesses to bend to its rules.

~~~
pas
Chinese providers' external connections are already shit, firewall or not.
Foreign language knowledge is not important for most of the population, and
thus the Chinese internet simply gets more and more isolated.

------
paraditedc
Reuters shortened version:

> _The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said in a statement that the
> campaign, launched on Oct. 20, had erased the accounts for violations that
> included “spreading politically harmful information, maliciously falsifying
> (Chinese Communist) party history, slandering heroes and defaming the
> nation’s image.”_

Full paragraph [1] translated from Google Translate:

> _According to the investigation, most of these dispositioned self-media
> accounts are on the WeChat Weibo platform, and some of them are also
> installed on today 's headlines, Baidu, Sohu, Phoenix, UC and other
> platforms. Some spread politically harmful information, maliciously
> tampering with the history of the party history, smashing heroes, and
> discrediting the image of the state; some making rumors, spreading false
> information, acting as a "heading party" to profit, to attract attention,
> and to disrupt normal social order. Some arbitrarily spread vulgar
> pornography, violate public order and good customs, challenge the moral
> bottom line, and damage the healthy growth of the majority of young people;
> some use the hands of a large number of self-media account malicious
> marketing, engage in "black public relations", extortion, infringement of
> normal business or individual legality Equity, challenge the legal bottom
> line; some arbitrarily plagiarize infringement, smear the powder, build
> false traffic, and disrupt the normal order of communication. These self-
> media chaos seriously violated the dignity of laws and regulations, harmed
> the interests of the broad masses of the people, undermined the ecology of
> good network public opinion, and the society reflected strongly._

[1] Source in Chinese:
[http://www.cac.gov.cn/2018-11/12/c_1123702179.htm](http://www.cac.gov.cn/2018-11/12/c_1123702179.htm)

------
claydavisss
In the West meanwhile, most internet firms have permitted the Southern Poverty
Law Center, a private, partisan organization to define "hate" online, and to
help purge it.

Be careful, you could end up raising the ire of a lawyer at the SPLC, like the
British (Muslim) academic who was researching radicalization of youth in his
own culture [0]

Oddly enough in most of the US now, allowing private organizations to squelch
legit free expression is considered a progressive victory.

[0]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/maajid-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/maajid-
nawaz-v-splc/562646/)

~~~
tabtab
You have to admit that open-ended free speech that allows one to say, "Your
culture/people are inferior lazy violent criminals" is disturbing. Such is
rarely constructive and just stokes sectarian divides. The worse wars often
start that way, and Europe had the living daylights bombed out of them because
of such. I can understand why they'd ban it. It's pretty close to yelling
"fire" in a crowded theatre. A slow fire is still a fire.

I will agree it may not be enforced evenly by the big social media companies.
If one rants about "gun-crazy ignorant rednecks", that should be treated just
as ethnically offensive as the usual culprits. The left can be hypocrites that
way.

However, equal enforcement would require banning the Orange Guy.

~~~
lic-defender
Listen to yourself: "We have to censor all possible communication methods and
imprison people for words because jokes about Montenegrins being lazy are
going to cause World War 3". "Calling a gun-crazy redneck a gun-crazy redneck
is hate speech and subject to a fine of no greater than $5000 or no greater
than 30 days in jail".

~~~
tabtab
You don't have to jail people immediately. Give them a stern warning. If they
do it again, THEN jail them.

Re: "[Silly that] jokes about Montenegrins being lazy are going to cause World
War 3" \-- A line has to be drawn somewhere. If the context is jokes, maybe
let it go. But if it's part of a political rant that certain people should be
discriminated against or removed, then a line is crossed.

Maybe if you had the daylights bombed out of your community like in WW2, you'd
have a different perspective. Fully free speech is nice, but so is being
alive. Dead people have no speech.

~~~
claydavisss
Please tell us how your experience of being bombed in WW2 shape your posts on
HN!

If people valued safety over freedom, the war would not have been fought at
all...the Allies would have simply signed over Hitler's gains to him in
exchange for a cessation of hostilities. Oops they tried that at first. Didn't
work.

I think we can safely conclude that you do not speak on behalf of WW2
survivors

~~~
tabtab
I'm just trying to put myself in their shoes. Your other statement appears to
be "if they had strategically been better, the war wouldn't happen." That
perhaps may be true, but moot as far as I can tell. Humans mess "strategery"
up because they are humans. An argument based on humans being perfect is an
imperfect argument.

------
21
It's comming. The left in the west is demanding laws to ban anonymous social
media posting, to stop online abuse.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/angela-
rayner...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/angela-rayner-ban-
anonymous-social-media-abuse-labour-facebook-twitter-a8551716.html)

------
echevil
The problem of individual news media accounts in China is that they are a
major source of fake news, disinformation, and often uses exaggerated titles
or suggestive images. I’ve seen too many of those articles floating around
social networks.

When a western media reports this, of course it is yet another way that
Chinese government “suppresses information”. But the reality is, the effort of
fighting these content just what Facebook is doing right now.

~~~
educationdata
It is so ridiculous to claim individual news media accounts in China as "a
major source of fake news, disinformation", when in fact the government
official news media is shamelessly spreading fake news every single day on TV
and newspaper, and they have the total control over how you report major
events.

The government controls what can be reported, how it shall and shall not be
reported. You blame individual news media accounts?

For example, the government is sending massive amount of people (village by
village) to reeducation camps in Xinjiang province. Do you think the official
news media will report any of this? Do you think any formal report from
serious journalists will be allowed to appear on news media? Of course not! So
yes, there are all kinds of rumors about Xinjiang in individual news media
accounts. Who should we put the blame on?

~~~
echevil
If you ever actually read the articles published from these media accounts,
you'll easily see how "Not ridiculous" the claim is. (Of course there're
plenty good ones, I'm not blaming all news media accounts, but there're way
too many harmful ones)

The problem of these media in China is not exactly the same as the those on
Facebook, but it's way more common and cause lots of harm - e.g. a large
portion of these articles are influencing people to buy / not buy certain
product in a very problematic way.

There is no reason these news media accounts should not be regulated. e.g. You
should not publish fake news intentionally misleading the public. (Otherwise
why not just let Russians publish whatever ads they want to influence American
election whichever way they want?) In western news reports, this is of course
"controlling what can be reported and what cannot", and they won't tell you
the full story. I just wanted to point out, a large part of this is actually
fighting a real problem for the good.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> If you ever actually read the articles published from these media accounts,
> you'll easily see how "Not ridiculous" the claim is.

Rather than denying they exist, they said they are hardly "major" in contrast
to what the the CCP is doing, which your reply completely ignores.

~~~
echevil
> "they" said they are hardly "major"?

Why would I care what "they" say if I have first hand knowledge about whether
it's major or not?

> For example, the government is sending massive amount of people (village by
> village) to reeducation camps in Xinjiang province. Do you think the
> official news media will report any of this?

The government actually publicly addressed that a while ago and I've seen it
in news. It's very different from what the western media claims of course, and
it's a complicated issue like the fake news.

Also, it's mostly western media that cares the most about these topics, not
the "individual self media".

~~~
PavlovsCat
> Why would I care what "they" say if I have first hand knowledge about
> whether it's major or not?

"Major" and "major in contrast" are two very different things.

Why would I care about your assessment of a situation when I see how you play
fast and loose here?

> The government actually publicly addressed that a while ago and I've seen it
> in news. It's very different from what the western media claims of course,
> and it's a complicated issue like the fake news.

It's too complicated to explain, so I take your word for it?

> Also, it's mostly western media that cares the most about these topics, not
> the "individual self media".

Any intelligent human with a backbone cares about people murdered en masse,
over decades, or put into concentration camps that grow like mushroom in mere
months, including people you cannot tie the shoelaces of. You don't measure
the importance of this by how many people care about it (how convenient for
you to claim by the way, since anyone who disagrees, might have to fear for
their life), you find out the importance of a person by their stance on this,
among other things.

edit: I didn't mean to have a go at you. I'm kinda sorry for that, but I also
have to weigh between not offending you, and not spitting on the people who
get murdered, and which you downplay. Can't make everyone happy, and that's
not really my fault either.

I'll just note that so far you aren't really speaking for yourself, but refer
to Chinese media, without even stating their explanation, and bring up
"Western media". Our media don't speak for us just like your media can't speak
for you. Yes, Western media also sweeps Western atrocities under the rug
(though not uniformly), and that's very deplorable. That just means we're not
really better, maybe even worse when it comes to wars of aggression -- but
that makes none of it okay, it's not a contest.

~~~
echevil
Well, thank you for the detailed explanations, and I think I owe you some more
explanation.

I'm not sure how different are "Major" and "major in contrast". Sorry about my
English, it's not my first language. It is my opinion that fake news and such
are an important problem and it's prevailing in Chinese social media. I do
believe freedom in press is great but freedom with no regulation would be very
dangerous. I don't remember how many times I need to tell my parents "don't
listen to that, that's completely fake" "seaweeds on the market are not made
of plastic bags", "it's fine to eat persimmon",...

> It's too complicated to explain, so I take your word for it? It's just
> something I don't feel like arguing, because why would you trust me instead
> of those news reports you've been reading all the time.

> Any intelligent human with a backbone cares about people murdered en masse,
> over decades...

I'd feel terrible about those people, of course, but ONLY IF THOSE CLAIMS ARE
TRUE. I don't really buy their claims because the reporters themselves are
very unlikely to have investigated the situations in person, and the stories
are most likely coming from sources that either are anti-Chinese government
themselves or seeking personal gains (like getting refugee visa in US). And
the stories don't really make sense.

The official claim from Chinese government is: those are re-education centers
trying to train muslim extremists so that they have enough skills to get a job
and live a normal life instead of becoming terrorists.

While I won't simply just believe the Chinese government's claim as it is, but
it is much more plausible and much more likely to be truth adjacent. If you
know more about China, you'll know there are actually quite many muslims
living in peace in China, and you can easily find muslim restaurants in most
cities. Why would Chinese government even care about put muslims in Xinjiang
into concentration camps? What would they gain from that? The background is
that there had been more terrorist activities in the past few years in that
region, and it's becoming more unsafe, especially for Han ethnic group to live
there. That's what the government is most worried about. Re-educations are
just a way of making extremists less extreme.

> I'll just note that so far you aren't really speaking for yourself, but
> refer to Chinese media, without even stating their explanation, and bring up
> "Western media"

I do bring up "Western media" a lot because I am so frustrated with them bull-
shitting about China and that they successfully influenced people's opinions
with tons of single sided stories and disinformation. I had friends asking me
about whether I have need to worry about social credit score, and what can I
say? "It's at most a proposal yet and it's far from being established" "How
can there be so many creepy rules before it's established?" "You can't just
believe whatever NPR says because you think it's neutral. Their sources could
lie"

~~~
PavlovsCat
Your English is very, very good. And thank you for not being offended by me
snapping at you.

> It is my opinion that fake news and such are an important problem and it's
> prevailing in Chinese social media. I do believe freedom in press is great
> but freedom with no regulation would be very dangerous.

I agree with that, but of course, it then depends on what the regulations are.

> I'd feel terrible about those people, of course, but ONLY IF THOSE CLAIMS
> ARE TRUE.

Fair enough. Even if we may disagree about what is or isn't happening, I'd
rather we agree on that and not the rest, than the other way around.

> Why would Chinese government even care about put muslims in Xinjiang into
> concentration camps? What would they gain from that?

To practice things that can be extended to the wider population maybe?

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/china-s-
xinjiang-p...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/china-s-xinjiang-
province-a-surveillance-state-unlike-any-the-world-has-ever-
seen-a-1220174.html)

What would anyone gain from making all that up?

> Re-educations are just a way of making extremists less extreme.

How come people just disappear and nobody knows what happens to them?

Okay, so you don't think that's what's happening, but can you say how many
people have been re-educated? How long does it take on average, how many are
currently detained, how many have been released? Have there been any injuries
or deaths? Are these questions even raised, much less answered? You don't owe
me an answer to any of that, but that's why I think what I think.

> I do bring up "Western media" a lot because I am so frustrated with them
> bull-shitting about China and that they successfully influenced people's
> opinions with tons of single sided stories and disinformation.

I don't like what many major media are doing in general, so I don't really
disagree. But saying it's _all_ biased and therefore made up, could also be
used against anything the Chinese or any other government says.

~~~
echevil
It turned into an interesting discussion actually, thank you!

> To practice things that can be extended to the wider population maybe?

I didn't read the full article you referenced, but from what I know it is true
that surveillance has tighten up in Xinjiang. Why do you think that happened?
Why does Chinese government needs to "control" Uighurs, and not other
minorities that are living peacefully in other regions of China.

I don't know what exactly is happening out there, but naturally you'd need
more security when the there's danger to public safety. I wouldn't say there's
no wrong-doing of the government, but bottom line is, I don't really doubt the
primary goal is just anti-terrorism and make that region safe.

> How come people just disappear and nobody knows what happens to them?

Well I don't know how could people just disappear in Xinjiang.

But it reminds me that, recently a friend of mine asked me "How could a person
just disappear? How scary is that" after she read this article.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/world/asia/china-fan-
bing...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/world/asia/china-fan-
bingbing.html)

Apparently it sounds like the Chinese government "made" her disappear. Well, I
only found it funny and I told her "It's fine, she just disappeared from
media. Her agent probably knows her whereabout but won't tell the media as
she's being investigated and there's no official result." Fan Bingbing
reappeared just a few days later when the investigation ended, as most of us
expected, and she made an official announcement about her tax evasion.
Throughout the entire time I didn't feel anything scary at all, but that's not
the impression if you only read the NYTimes report.

> But saying it's all biased and therefore made up

I wouldn't say they all made up facts, but simply selecting the truth to
report and finding a way to report it that supports their existing belief can
also make a huge impact on people's perception.

I also don't believe most professional news reporters would just make up
facts. (The "Self-individual media" in China is way too different, plenty of
them do make up facts;) So, a much more likely scenario in my mind, is that
they interviewed unreliable sources. To depict that in a more extreme but easy
to understand way, just imaging if reports interviewed a terrorist in middle
east, and ask them about America. Plenty of people left China in the past
century (very small in percentage but still a big number because of the large
population base) because either they really hate Chinese government or they're
trying to get refugee visa. They also have much closer relations with western
media. But anyway, it's just my guess.

