When he was a teenager, Zeng Jiajun he took advantage of his internet knowledge to watch a banned documentary in China, on the bloody repression of Tiananmen Square in 1989.

A decade later he was part of the censorship machine that suffocates Chinese cyberspacewith the task of preventing the spread of everything that the Communist Party did not want to be in the public domain.

“At first I didn’t think about it much, because a job is a job,” he says.

But deep down I knew it which did not go with my ethical standards. And when you work on it for a long time, the conflict becomes stronger. “

Zeng, what now he lives in the heart of Silicon Valleyin California, he is a 29-year-old who bears the weight of his experience lightly.

Few people who worked within the Chinese propaganda apparatus have told his story. Even fewer are ready to do it openly.

Zeng came of age with the Internet.

His own story

Born in 1993 in Guangdong Province in Southeast China, he had his first experience with computers in high school, when his father brought home a computer.

What he found when he connected to the network was amazing. “There was a whole world that needed to be explored,” she tells AFP.

The Chinese government’s first attempts to censor the internet were not perfect thanks to VPN servicesthat modify the user’s geographical position, allowed access to topics and information not addressed publicly.

Among them, the three-hour documentary “The door of heavenly peace”, which deals with the student protests of June 1989 in Tiananmen Square, one of the most symbolic places in Beijing.

Zeng was shocked by what he saw: Tanks and semi-automatic weapons ignited unarmed students in a violent crackdown. which left hundreds, perhaps thousands, dead.

“It’s a huge, significant historical event, but no one told us about it and you can’t search for it on the Chinese Internet. That footage has been deleted.”

“I felt it was a big lie. A great story had been made up, “she said.

Like other peers of the bright generation, Zeng spent his college years abroad and returned home with a business degree from Estonia.

Your technological mastery caught the attention of ByteDance, a Chinese startup whose apps, global TikTok and national Douyin, competed with Twitter and Facebook.

“At first I was very excited because ByteDance is the only company that has grown out of China,” he said.

And it was a good job that, in addition to being intellectually stimulating, earned a salary of $ 4,000, above the Beijing average. Zeng was part of a team that developed automatic systems to filter content from its platform.

forbidden topics

Incorporating artificial intelligence, they observed the images and examined the sounds that accompanied them, transcribing comments and search for a disallowed language.

If the system identified a problem, it was passed on to one of the thousands of employees who deleted the video or blocked the broadcast.

For the most part, they were looking for content that any social network would stop, such as pornography, unauthorized advertising, or violence. But they were also looking for politically sensitive material.

Some images were constantly banned, such as tanks, candles or yellow umbrellas – symbols of the Hong Kong protests – as well as criticism of President Xi Jinping or other leaders of the Communist Party.

The China Cyberspace Administration provided guidance to ByteDance, which spared no effort.

“In China the line is blurred. You don’t know exactly what will offend the government, so sometimes you go further and censor harderZeng said, describing the company’s position as “walking a tightrope.”

The list of censored content was fluid and was updated based on specific events.

At the beginning of 2020, that update included Dr. Li Wenlianga Wuhan eye doctor who was trying to warn of a deadly new virus.

It was silenced by the authorities, eager to suppress the first alarms on what we now know as Covid 19.

“When Dr. Li Wenliang released the news, the information was censored and the propagandists (on tv) said he was spreading disinformation “Zeng said.

But when the doctor himself contracted the virus, Chinese netizens were outraged.

“They’ve updated Twitter or Weibo [la versión china de Twitter] to check the newsin search of a truth between rumors and official denials.

“Many tweets or Weibo have been deleted.”

“I posted something like ‘we want freedom of information. No more censorship’ and my Weibo account was also censored “.

“At that moment, I felt like I was part of that ecosystem.”

The death of Li, now one of more than 6.5 million people in the world, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“The night Dr. Li Wenliang died, I felt like I couldn’t keep doing it. “said Zeng, who quit his job and returned to his hometown, where he focused on his programming skills and enrolled at Northeastern University in Silicon Valley.

As Xi Jinping prepares to win a third term as president of an increasingly nationalist government, Zeng says he feels hopeless.

“I thought I will not be able to return to China for at least 10 years”.

“In the short term, everyone is pessimistic. But I think there is long-term optimism about China’s future,” he said. “If you look at our history, there are always courageous idealists who will guide the change when the time comes.

AFP agency

PB