Mediaboss Marketing

from the no-signal dept

It's common knowledge now that the Chinese government heavily censors the access its population has to the internet and information writ large. It's been a decade since China first proffered that its Great Firewall of China was not actually censorship, but was merely a method for "safeguarding" its citizens. Safeguarding them, it seems, primarily from any international criticism of the Chinese regime itself, which sure seems like it's more about safeguarding the government, rather than the citizens. In the subsequent decade, whatever skin China had to weather criticism further sloughed away such that the government is now not only actively pressuring groups and companies within Chinese borders, but actively attempting to affect its censorship outside those borders as well.

Whatever else we might want to say about Chinese censorship, it most certainly is not subtle. This was on full display when the government essentially pulled the plug on streams for the American Vice Presidential debate precisely during a segment discussing China's actions on COVID-19.

Chinas censors cut off Vice President Mike Pence mid-sentence during the debate with Sen. Kamala Harris when he called out the Chinese Communist Party for its mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.

As Pence Wednesday night began to criticize Beijings response, saying China is to blame, CNNs feed in China suddenly cut out and the words no signal please stand by appeared over a test pattern.

Again, not subtle. And that's actually kind of important, because if you put yourself in the shoes of a Chinese citizen, it's difficult to imagine that you wouldn't know precisely what is going on here. The real question is whether the transparent censorship in cases such as this is a feature or a bug. If a bug, it doesn't serve Chinese government purposes. It will be clear that the censorship is to mask criticism of the ruling party. If a feature, well, the idea is that China doesn't mind the transparent nature of this exertion of control. It's a muscle flex, in that case.

The question is how long can this authoritarian approach expand before the rubber-band reaches its limits and snaps back on the regime. In an increasingly connected and global world, and with China very much wanting play a lead role on that stage, it's own thin-skin may be a high barrier.

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Filed Under: censorship, china, free speech, kamala harris, mike pence, us, vp debate

The rest is here:
China Micro-Censors The VP Debate In The Most Hamfisted Way - Techdirt

America was founded on defianceAt least, thats what Patrick Morgan, an English professor at ULM believes. So he, along with Sigma Tau Delta, hosted a banned books reading last week as an act of defiance against censorship.

Students, faculty and staff gathered on a cold, rainy day in October to share their love of literature by reading books that have been banned in multiple countries.

The annual reading was hosted in the Chemistry and Natural Science Building. Together, attendees read excerpts from books that were all banned at one point or another due to controversies. Some of the pieces of literature referenced were Moby Dick, Red Azalea and several poems from Shel Silversteins A Light in the Attic.

Its a chance to celebrate the freedom to read, the freedom to read any text, even the pieces of literature that have been barred throughout history, Morgan said.

Morgan said that he loves to see students share their interest in literature and learn about their relationships through literature. In the past, some of the books included Lord of the Flies, 1984 and Huckleberry Finn.

Kaylee Sadler, a junior and member of Sigma Tau Delta, said, I enjoyed listening to passages from banned books in history, and the discussions centered around the absurdities of censorship.

Sadler also read passages from Red Azalea, a novel that was banned in China due to its themes of homosexuality and anti-communism.

I hope more people will show up at the next reading, Sadler said. I think some people would be surprised with whats been banned.

A similar event that takes place in the spring is the Ides of March, an event where poetry lovers, students, faculty and staff alike, gather around a tree on campus and read their favorite poems.

Sadler encourages more literature lovers to attend the next banned books reading to celebrate their passion for literature together.

Continue reading here:
Students fight censorship with banned books reading - The HawkEye

Joe Rogan has weighed in on employees of Spotify allegedly pushing to censor episodes of his podcast,Joe Rogan Experience.

On Wednesday, September 16th, Spotify hosted a town hall meeting at which employees raised concern over content in theJRE archive.

A number of employees took umbrage with an episode that featured an interview with Abigail Shrier author ofIrreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. During the episode, Shrier associates transness with autism and explores her theory that YouTube and social media are influencing young people to transition.

Many LGBTQAI+/ally Spotifiers feel unwelcome and alienated because of leaderships response in JRE conversations. What is your message to those employees? one employee raised during the meeting.

When The Joe Rogan Experience first landed on Spotify at the beginning of September, a select few notably controversial episodes were omitted. Episodes that saw Rogan interview Gavin McInnes, Chuck Johnson, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Alex Jones the latter whos own podcast was removed from Spotify for hate content.

In a statement, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek expressed that the company had reviewed the episode featuring Abigail Shrier, ultimately deciding against removing it from the platform.

In the case of Joe Rogan, a total of 10 meetings have been held with various groups and individuals to hear their respective concerns, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said. And some of them want Rogan removed because of things hes said in the past.

Others have concerns specifically over a recent episode, Ek continued. And Joe Rogan and the episode in question have been reviewed extensively. The fact that we arent changing our position doesnt mean we arent listening. It just means we made a different judgment call.

Read this article:
Joe Rogan has weighed in on Spotify employees looking to censor JRE - The Industry Observer

Rob Fahey

Contributing Editor

Friday 9th October 2020

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On the scale of grand industry scandals, a few short phrases being censored in the in-game chat client of a free-to-play RPG seems like it ought to be in real "storm in a teacup" territory.

Indeed, it's deeply unlikely that very many of the millions of players of Genshin Impact -- a Breath of the Wild inspired RPG for PC, PS4 and mobile, which is quickly shaping up to be one of the most internationally successful titles to have been developed in mainland China thus far -- will ever really notice that the game does the text equivalent of bleeping them out should they choose to mention places like Taiwan or Hong Kong, or a number of other phrases, some of them surprisingly innocuous. Even among those who do notice, the vast majority will shrug it off; it's not a major imposition for most, and it's not like developer miHoYo seemingly had a choice in the matter given China's censorship rules.

For the specifics of those rules and why this has happened at all, Niko Partners' Daniel Ahmad wrote a succinct thread on Twitter (cited in this previous GamesIndustry.biz story) that's worth reading. Taken in isolation, this is explanation enough -- and will certainly be more than enough to sate the curiosity of almost any gamer who wonders enough about the censored terms to try googling about the whole affair.

What we're seeing here is the thin end of a wedge that's going to become a very serious headache for a lot of games companies in the coming years

However, it's worth stepping back from this single instance of China's censorship creeping into the media and communications of people beyond its borders, and considering the broader context -- because this isn't the first time this kind of issue has popped up, and there's a strong possibility that what we're seeing here is the thin end of a wedge that's going to become a very serious headache for a lot of games companies in the coming years.

Unless you follow developments in Chinese politics and geopolitics relatively closely, the first time something like this appeared on your radar was probably last October -- when Blizzard banned a pro Hearthstone player, Hong Kong resident Ng Wai "blitzchung" Chung, and fired two presenters who had interviewed him on a post-game livestream during which he made remarks supporting democracy in Hong Kong. Blizzard's knee-jerk kowtow to China's censors (jerking your knees and kowtowing at the same time being the gutless executive's version of the childhood challenge of rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time) earned it an unusually bipartisan rap on the knuckles from the US Senate and House of Representatives, not to mention some noisy protests from the company's own consumers. Tellingly, however, Blizzard only walked back its decision a few steps at best, almost visibly scrambling to find some convoluted form of words that would appease critics outside China without actually annoying China's authorities.

China's authorities seem to have decided that censorship pools once restricted to its own population can be applied internationally

The lesson anyone in authority in China would have taken away from that affair -- and several other individually minor run-ins with western media and gaming companies over various kinds of content or censorship -- is that the size of the Chinese market and the extent of the nation's stakeholdings in overseas firms means that it's now open season on discussions or statements it doesn't like, even outside its borders. Within China, of course, censorship of users' discussions on digital platforms has been standard for years; the government's control, however, mostly stopped at its borders.

As the country's economic and geopolitical conflict with the United States has expanded, however, so too has its desire to control or suppress narratives and discussions overseas. This has resulted in the removal or hiding of statements or symbols with which China's authorities take issue, often from platforms owned or controlled within China (such as WeChat and TikTok, and games like Genshin Impact) but also on platforms which aren't China-based but rely on keeping the authorities there happy for a major part of their revenue and potential growth -- from Activision Blizzard's games through YouTube and Microsoft Bing, all the way up to major international organisations like the WHO.

Genshin Impact is a relatively minor case of Chinese censorship, but the number of examples is steadily growing

A good example of this kind of censorship creeping out beyond China's borders can be found in games, in fact. As Daniel Ahmad noted in his thread on this topic, many Chinese game operators used to run two versions of their games, disabling censorship filters in the one aimed at overseas players. This practice appears to be in decline, with Genshin Impact being just one high-profile example; generally speaking, China's authorities seem to have decided that censorship pools once restricted to its own population are quite handy to apply internationally as well, especially now that some of its major tech companies are doing so well overseas.

As the strain between China and the US increases -- something that's likely to happen regardless of who wins next month's US Presidential election, although a change at the top may at least make the process more predictable -- companies which operate tech or media platforms, like games, in both China and abroad, or which have welcomed large investments from Chinese firms, are going to increasingly find themselves dragged into this fight. Asked to police the speech of their users (and employees) in ways that are going to play increasingly poorly to consumers and governments elsewhere, the value of China's market and investment is going to have to be constantly balanced against the power of the backlash elsewhere.

There's a very real degree of commercial and political pressure being brought slowly to bear on game companies

Absent a pretty major shift in approach from consumers or governments, that's a balance that's not often going to favour anything other than capitulation to China's demands most of the time. The country's authorities have plenty of leverage left in the tank and haven't experienced any real pushback to these moves thus far. Protests against companies complying with censorious demands have been small-scale and relatively muted, and overseas governments certainly haven't shown any stomach for waving around big sticks on this kind of issue.

There has even been a small but vocal counter-backlash movement in some instances, largely based on taking Blizzard's conspicuously awful "we just want people to stop talking about politics and focus on the games" excuse and turning it up to 11. In these people's reality, Chinese censorship is actually good, you see, because it stops terrible people from ruining games by mentioning political things -- when as any fool knows, "games" and "politics" are the opposite of one another and should never be put together.

Of course, games have never existed in a vacuum away from geopolitics and some forms of censorship have been a reality all along. It would be pretty intellectually dishonest to condemn China's growing pernicious influence on in-game content and communications without acknowledging that the whole world has spent decades with its games being quietly tuned and, yes, censored in such a way as to minimise the pearl-clutching of middle America. There's a reason games continue to be vastly more comfortable with an exploding skull than with an exposed nipple, or that anything that lies along America's cultural faultlines -- like the existence of LGBT people, or any kind of nuanced discussion of racism -- is generally avoided or pushed to the fringes of the medium.

But holding up this kind of commercially-driven self-censorship to match the whims of the US market alongside government-ordered filtering of media and communications is a false equivalence. We cannot and should not pretend that "if we don't make this regressive creative decision, we'll risk selling poorly in America" is remotely the same thing, morally, as "if we don't follow this censorship order, we'll probably have our Chinese joint venture shut down".

So yes, the Genshin Impact scandal really is a storm in a teacup. Something as (arguably) minor and (certainly) dumb as Taiwan and Hong Kong being added to a game's naughty word filter isn't really anything game consumers are going to worry about in the long term, given that it doesn't impact the game, is easily circumvented, and well, why are you discussing politics in a game chat channel anyway -- or so the logic will go. Put enough stormy tea-cups together, though, and a pattern starts to swirl out of them.

This wedge is still thin, but it's been sliding in for a long time, and far away from the ground reality of a censored game chat channel there's a very real degree of commercial and political pressure being brought slowly to bear on game companies and other firms with influence over culture and media around the world. I'm not sure we'll ever see Genshin Impact's chat censorship as a watershed, but be certain that it's a little taste of a sour flavour we're all going to get very used to in the coming years.

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Gaming will be a frontline in China's censorship drive | Opinion - GamesIndustry.biz

Facebook and Twitter on Tuesday censored posts by President Donald Trump that the social media platforms said violated their rules against misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. In his posts, Trump compared COVID-19 to the seasonal flu, downplayed the deadly nature of the pandemic and said, we are learning to live with COVID.

The morning after he returned to the White House from Walter Reed Hospitalstill infectious and heavily medicatedand posed in Hitlerian fashion for a photo op on the Truman Balcony, Trump took to social media to bolster his homicidal herd immunity policy and dangerously demonstrate by example how the great leader is facing down the virus.

Facebook removed his post entirely but not before it was shared approximately 26,000 times, according to data published by the social media metrics company CrowdTangle. A Facebook spokesperson told CNBC, We remove incorrect information about the severity of Covid-19, and have now removed this post.

The action by Facebook is unusual in that the worlds largest social media platform has been reluctant to remove posts by the president in the past. In August, Facebook deleted a video of Donald Trump falsely asserting that children were almost immune from COVID-19 during an interview with Fox News, the first time the platform ever removed one of his social media posts.

In the case of Twitter, the tweet remains up but is covered by a warning that says, This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the publics interest for the Tweet to remain accessible, along with a link to learn more about the companys coronavirus information policy. Trumps post cannot be retweeted or shared.

The full Tweet reads, Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!

That Trumps comparison of the seasonal flu to the coronavirus is completely false is easily confirmed by information readily accessible on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The site contains data for every year of the seasonal flu going back to 2010-2011 and shows that the death rate among those who get sick from the flu ranges between 0.1 percent and 0.3 percent. The death rate, through July, of those who have contracted COVID-19 is 2 percent, showing that coronavirus is between 6.7 and 20 times more deadly than the flu.

Additionally, as pointed out by the Washington Post, many people who have been infected with the virus have lingering symptoms for months, including difficulty breathing, inability to exert themselves physically, recurring pain. The virus can cause long-term damage to organs other than the lungs, damage that is not common to the seasonal flu.

In response to the censorship measures by Facebook and Twitter, the President tweeted REPEAL SECTION 230!!! Section 230 contains the provisions within the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that shield online services such as social media platforms from being legally responsible for the content posted by users of their systems.

When Twitter began labeling the presidents tweets in late May, he issued an executive order making the US government the arbiter of political speech online. The order called upon the Federal Communications Commission to revise the scope of Section 230 and also empowered the Federal Trade Commission to evaluate the content moderation polices of the tech giants and determine whether or not their actions violate free speech rights.

With Attorney General William Barr standing next to him, President Trump said on that day, Were here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers, before he signed the order. By empowering the federal regulatory agencies in his executive order, Trump was sending a message to big tech that attempts to censor his social media postsalong with those of his far-right and fascist allies and supporterswould result in the removal of Section 230 protections and open up the online service providers to fines and lawsuits.

Since then, the Department of Justice (DoJ) and AG Barr late last month drafted proposed legislation modifying the language of Section 230 to address concerns about online censorship by requiring greater transparency and accountability when platforms remove lawful speech. In a letter dated September 23, Barr jumbled together claims that big tech is hiding behind the shield of Section 230 to censor lawful speech with the allegation that online service providers are invoking the laws protections to escape liability even when they knew their services were being used for criminal activity.

Simultaneous with the DoJ-drafted legislation, Republican Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee introduced a bill in the Senate that calls for nearly identical modifications to Section 230 rules for online services. At the top of their list is the unsubstantiated charge that right-wing political views are being singled out by the tech monopolies for persistent online censorship.

In moving the bill, Senator Wicker said, For too long, social media platforms have hidden behind Section 230 protections to censor content that deviates from their beliefs. These practices should not receive special protections in our society where freedom of speech is at the core of our nations values. Our legislation would restore power to consumers by promoting full and fair discourse online.

On October 1, the Senate Commerce Committee, which includes 14 Republicans and 12 Democrats, voted unanimously to subpoena the top executives of Facebook, Twitter and Google to appear at a hearing on Section 230 on October 28. After initial opposition to the subpoenas from Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, the Republicans agreed to add the topics of privacy and misinformation to be discussed along with censorship issues.

Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee released a 449-page report on Tuesday on the results of its antitrust investigation into Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook which condemns big techs monopoly power and calls for the companies to be broken up and restructured.

The coming together of the White House and Democrats and Republicans in Congress over a raft of regulations and attempt to assert government control over the Silicon Valley tech giants raises to a new level contradictions embedded within the capitalist system, not least of which is that these firms are the most valued properties on Wall Street worth trillions of dollars and a primary source of the massive fortunes being made by the financial oligarchy that controls both parties and the entire US political establishment.

Behind the frenzied efforts to rein in the powerful technologies of these firms is a growing awareness that the utilization of these systems by billions of people amid expanding class struggle internationally presents the ruling elite with a problem of revolutionary proportions.

While the ruling establishment is roiled by intense conflicts in the run-up to the November 3 electionswith Trump asserting that he intends to stay in office regardless of the outcomethe Democrats and Republicans are unified in their drive to clamp down on information technologies. Their central aim is to prevent the working class from using these technologies to organize their struggles, including across national boundaries, and above all to stop the program of revolutionary socialism represented by the World Socialist Web Site from reaching the working class and youth.

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Trump intensifies conflict with big tech over Section 230 protections following censorship moves by Facebook and Twitter - WSWS