Porous censorship

Molly Roberts pointed out in her new book Censored Speech: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall ( Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall ): China's censorship is porous . Most of the censorship methods are not strictly prohibited (ban), but more like taxing information (tax), that is: forcing netizens to pay extra money or time to obtain censored information.

The author pointed out that even the most notorious form of censorship, the Great Firewall, can be bypassed by citizens through VPN service functions, but the government sometimes increases the waiting time of Internet users by deliberately slowing down the Internet speed (throttling) and kills their time to obtain information. patience. Even more surprising is the fact that the Chinese government, which could have been able to enforce stronger censorship (such as by banning VPNs), seems to have deliberately chosen not to do so.

Traditional communication theory believes that "porosity" censorship is useless: because citizens can quickly learn how to bypass censorship, and information is non-exclusive (non-excludablility), those who first obtain information can share and disseminate information at low cost . But the author pointed out that such a porous censorship method is a deliberate strategy chosen by the Chinese government.

First, most citizens have insufficient interest in political or sensitive information, and a small cost (time or money) is enough to make them forego obtaining information. And studies have shown that a qualitative change in price from free to paid (even at a low price) can significantly change people's behavior.

The authors summarize three elements of the Chinese government's censorship approach:

Fear: Direct threat of loss of job or personal safety, intended to induce self-censorship by subject. The negative side of this type of censorship is that the implementation process is too obvious and may lead to backlash, which instead arouses people's interest in the censored information.

Friction: increase the time or money cost of obtaining information, and increase the information threshold. Such as rearranging search engine results, lagging the ranking of sensitive content, slowing down the browsing speed of specific websites, etc. Compared with fear, this method is less detectable and has concealment.

Flooding: including organized and unified posting (“Water Army Action”), etc. The purpose is to divert attention, conduct mouthpiece propaganda, and cause confusion.

The authors argue that the latter two approaches are more effective because they can split society into multiple groups: Those elites with technology have greater access to sensitive information, while other citizens lack the incentive to obtain more information. Splitting the information circles of the two makes it easier for the government to isolate the core of citizens from the periphery and avoid coordinated collective activities.

On the contrary, repressive coercive means will highlight the weakness of the government, and because of the high exposure, it is easy to cause a backlash, making people more interested in the blocked information, and the gains outweigh the losses.

The author finds that the Chinese government’s censorship of speech is individualized and tailor-made: because the methods of flooding and friction are ineffective for social elites (whose ability to discriminate is higher), the government can focus on Target journalists, dissidents, and other social elites with precision and fear to prevent them from disseminating information widely.

The author believes that speech censorship is not only limited to the content, but also includes the way of information dissemination - the "Water Army" (Fifty Cent Party) and other operating methods cause information congestion and confusion, pollute the speech space, and thus damage the reputation and credibility of those news media that the government does not recognize.

The author further points out that understanding the ways in which the Chinese government censors speech can also be used as a reference for improving the way information is diffused in a democratic system. In the West, a small number of social media network companies and information providers have considerable control over the speed and convenience of information dissemination, and are easily exploited by political forces. In an environment of opaque operations and a lack of potential competition, bots and cheap online commentators make it difficult for citizens to separate valuable information from noise. When these characteristics of social media are exploited by political operators, it will also form a certain sense of information interference and censorship-even in democratic countries that nominally have a space for free speech.