Extracts from the national anthem, allusions to subversive songs: the Chinese show ingenuity to thwart online censorship and express their dissatisfaction with the restrictions against COVID-19.
China closely monitors the Internet. Censors delete content that displays state policy in a bad light or is likely to create chaos.
But censorship must now run at full speed to defend the intangible national strategy zero covidwhere most of Shanghai’s 25 million people have been incarcerated since early April.
Because of problems with the supply of fresh produce, access to non-COVID medical care and the sending of people who test positive to quarantine centers, many are venting their anger on the Internet.
For Charlie Smith, co-founder of GreatFire.org, which monitors China’s censorship, the Shanghai lockout has become a subject so important that it cannot be completely censored.
Especially since Internet users are competing with inventiveness to thwart it.
Has a photo or video been deleted? Slightly cropping the edges or inverting it as in glass is often enough to block the automated filtering software of censors that work with artificial intelligence.
Word games and hashtags to cheat filtering software
Censored a comment? Internet users use allusions or puns.
In Shanghai, instead of writing a painful review, some shared a hashtag that uses the opening words of the national anthem: standing! We don’t want to be slaves anymore.
It was eventually censored, but only after the censors were caught in the maneuver.
Another tactic: anti-containment Internet users were mobilized to the film and book review site Douban.com, in order, thanks to their online votes, to place the dystopian novel 1984 at the top of the rankings.
The goal was reached … before the censors intervened again.
To my surprise, the latter failed to curb the viral dissemination last month of a video titled voice of aprilwho compiled a six-minute Shanghainese story on anxiety in the face of incarceration.
By modifying this six-minute video slightly, Internet users were able to block the filtering software, which would initially only recognize-and therefore censor-the original version.
The battle lasted some time before the censors removed all the versions in circulation. But millions of people had time to see the video.
Outraged at the censorship, many Internet users shared clips of the two protest songs on the WeChat social network: Do you hear people singing? of musical Kawawa at Another Brick On The Wall of the band Pink Floyd.
The first is a call to rebellion. The second is criticized in particular the mind control.
Shanghainese now willing to pay the price to disseminate critical opinions on the Internet, expressed inAFP Lüqiu Luwei, a former journalist who teaches at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Difficulties, dissatisfaction and anger associated with restraint more than fear of being punishedhe believes.
A 46-year-old Chinese man, Gao Ming, toldAFP that police called him last month to ask him to delete anti-lockdown messages posted on Twitter and Facebook-all platforms inaccessible from China.
He refused, because he told himself anti-censorship at completely contrary to current policywhere the Shanghai lockout resulted in unnecessary deaths, he said, due to excessive disruption to access to non-COVID medical care.
The public media is almost exclusively on the positive aspects, while ignoring the personal difficulties of the residents.
But the Communist Party reiterated its support on Thursday immovable to zero COVID and called resolutely resist in all words and deeds who asks it.
Relaxation is more likely because China’s president himself defends this health policy, said Yaqiu Wang, China’s manager at Human Rights Watch, an American organization for the defense of human rights.
It is more difficult for the government to back down when it comes to an ideological issue personally related to Xi Jinping.
Source: Radio-Canada
