Archive for the ‘Censorship’ Category

Tucker Warns About ‘Ominous’ Google Censorship of Political Content – Fox News Insider

Tucker Carlson slammed Google's apparent censorship of content not politically agreeable to them company.

"Google seems to be letting politics dictate who is allowed to make money from their platform," Tucker said on his show Thursday.

Talk show hostDave Rubin claimed YouTube financially censored his videos when the platform "demonetized" them.

"It appears at least that there's some pretty shady stuff going on," the host of "The Rubin Report" told Tucker.

The mammoth video platform put out a statement claiming that 90 percent of Rubin's videos were monetized and those that weren't contained adult topics, which are objectionable to some advertisers.

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Rubin disputed this, saying that episodes of his "Larry King-esque" show with no sensitive content were demonetized.

"Unfortunately the lack of transparency there, it took me about two years to get on the phone with them," Rubin said. "I finally did about two weeks ago and didn't really get any answers."

"It sounds ominous," Tucker said. "Somebody needs to keep track of what Google is doing."

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Tucker Warns About 'Ominous' Google Censorship of Political Content - Fox News Insider

Beijing’s Bold New Censorship – The New York Review of Books

Ng Han Guan/AP ImagesA billboard showing Chinese President Xi Jinping with the slogan, To exactly solve the problem of corruption, we must hit both flies and tigers, Gujiao, China, February 2015

Authoritarians, in China and elsewhere, normally have preferred to dress their authoritarianism up in pretty clothes. Lenin called the version of dictatorship he invented in 1921 democratic centralism, but it became clear, especially after Stalin and Mao inherited the system, that centralism, not democracy, was the point. More recent examples of prettifying include The Republic of Zimbabwe, The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, and several others. What would be wrong with plainer labels? The Authoritarian State of Zimbabwe? The Shining Dictatorship of Korea? That dictators avoid candidly describing their regimes shows that, at least in their use of words, they acknowledge the superiority of freedom and democracy.

Such pretenses have been useful to autocracies not just internationally but within their regimes as well, for domestic control. In 1979, I did a series of interviews with groups of Chinese writers and literary editors as part of a research project. This was only a few years after Mao had died, the government had arranged the interviews, and the atmosphere was stiff. The interviewees knew that others in their group were observing them. I was struck by how often, one after another, they used the phrase in my personal view, only to follow it with anodyne statements like, Dengs policy of The Four Modernizations is best for the development of Chinese socialism. Why did they say in my personal view? Perhaps so that, in case they did say something wrong, they could not be accused of misleading a foreigner about state policy. More likely, though, I think it was to conform to the regimes fiction that Chinese intellectuals were all free to express their individual viewseven though the expressed views were boilerplate. The regimes unvarying message to writers and editors was, You are entirely free to agree with us, and they were obliging.

People who did not conform were penalized, but the penalties were dissociated from the offenses so that the pretense of free speech could be maintained. An offender might be denied a salary increase, a housing allotment, or a permission to travel that otherwise should have been granted. In common parlance it was said that people punished in this way were being made to wear small shoesbe hobbled in daily life. When no reasons were givennot even pretextsthey were wearing small glass shoes.

The art of controlling speech while avoiding the appearance of doing so has lasted through the ensuing decades. In the 2000s, explicit instructions went out to provincial officials that they avoid putting any censorship or blacklisting into writing. To kill an article, officials should get on the telephone and instruct editors orally.

Similarly, serious speech-crime offenderspeople being sent to prison for yearswere charged under face-saving euphemisms: tax evasion, fraud, even blocking traffic, or simply picking quarrels. The most fearful charge, inciting subversion of the state, which is reserved for extreme cases, is the only one that comes close to saying what is actually happening.

Though euphemisms continue to be useful to Chinas rulers, it has now become increasingly obvious that their use is declining. In the era of Xi Jinping, repression is often stated baldly, even proudly. Deng Xiaoping had counseled in 1992 that the Communist Party should, for the time being, hide its strength and prepare in the shadows. It appears that Xi has decided that it is time to step out of the shadows.

In 2013, his governments Document Nine warned Party members about the dangers of universal values, Western-style journalism, civil society, and other such ideas. Document Nine was technically classified, but it was distributed within the Party to millions of people and eventually was leaked outside the Party. In July 2015, a nationwide crackdown on human rights lawyers was similarly bald. Face-saving references to the lawyers as thugs or swindlers hardly mattered; the real message, which everyone understood, was: Here comes the Partys power.

Earlier this year, I saw a standard contract that a major Beijing publisher uses with its authors and that no doubt reflects practice all across China. Provision Two of the contract lists the items to be censored: any language that violates the honor or interests of the state, harms national unity, leaks state secrets, insults the nations outstanding cultural traditions, and so on; a catch-all category at the end says, or that violates other regulations. Provision Five spells out who will decide which words in a text are to be censored:

Publisher has the right, in accordance with the publishing laws and regulations of the State, to make deletions, revisions, and additions to the Work. If changes are major, Publisher should consult with Author to obtain agreement. If Author refuses to revise or, after repeated revisions, has failed to satisfy Provision Two of this agreement, Publisher has the right to cancel the contract.

If ten years earlier political censorship was done by telephone, now it is out on the table, in writing.

Editors at the Chinese online magazine Caixin (wealth anew) saw an essay I had written in memory of my beloved first-year Chinese language teacher at Harvard in 1963; they wanted to publish it but said they would have to strike two sentences in which she referred to the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. They did not want to do it but said they had to: Such words are forbidden and there is not the slightest room to negotiate. The piece was published elsewhere.

Beijings aggressive new censorship policies reached the West on August 18, when Cambridge University Press acknowledged that it had bowed to a request from the Chinese government and deleted off its Chinese website 315 articles from the China Quarterly, a distinguished academic journal that Cambridge publishes. The regimes purpose in this demand was not to irritate the West but to narrow the intellectual horizons of people inside China. Still, an immediate and loud protest from Western academics turned the issue into something of an East-West confrontation (and eventually led Cambridge University Press to reverse its decision). In its response, Beijing continued with its new bluntness. The Global Times, which hews reliably to the Party line, wrote:

Its no big deal if a few barely-read China Quarterly articles cannot be found on Chinas Internet. The real issue is that the fundamental principles of the two sides are in conflict, and the question is: Whose principles are a better fit for todays world? This is not a matter of each to his or her own; it is a contest of strength. In the end time will tell whos right and whos wrong.

The Global Times here treats the China Quarterly issue as a small matter, important only as a symptom of a much broader struggle over what kinds of states and societies are right for the world in the twenty-first century. On this point I agree with the Global Times. That larger struggle is indeed the main issue. It has been on the minds of the men who rule in Beijing for a long time, at least as early as Deng Xiaopings advice in 1992. From this perspective, the China Quarterly troubles could be viewed as good news: they might awaken a nave West to what is really going on.

Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died recently in Chinese imprisonment, was not allowed to speak or write to the outside world from 2008 until his death, so we dont know what he thought about the Xi Jinping clampdown. But in a 2006 essay he reflected on how the Communist dictatorship led his country during the Cultural Revolution into a hysterical frenzy that ended in disaster. Comparing it to the virulent nationalism of current times, he wrote:

If the Communists succeed once again in leading China down a disastrously mistaken historical road, the results will not only be another catastrophe for the Chinese people but likely also a disaster for the spread of liberal democracy in the world.

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Beijing's Bold New Censorship - The New York Review of Books

Despite censorship, China has some cool bookshops – The Economist


The Economist
Despite censorship, China has some cool bookshops
The Economist
Yet around China, privately owned bookstores continue to defy both competition from online booksellers and heavy-handed censorship (recently curbs are reported to have been imposed on the number of foreign children's books allowed to be published).

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Despite censorship, China has some cool bookshops - The Economist

Editorial: Too many Virginians want a safe space for censorship – Richmond.com

Lost in the Labor Day weekend news about North Korea and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) was a dismaying new poll released by VCU. It showed how much the campaign against fundamental liberties has made inroads among the general public.

Conducted by the Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, the poll shows that half of Virginians think colleges and universities should place more emphasis on protecting people from discrimination, even if that infringes on the right to free expression. Only 40 percent thought colleges and universities should guarantee freedom of expression even if that means some groups face discrimination.

Discrimination is wrong. Its also illegal. But the legal prohibitions apply to discriminatory actions, such as turning down a job applicant because of her race. Laws against discrimination dont infringe on the right to free speech (except possibly in those cases where the speech is so abusive and persistent that it creates a hostile work environment).

The kind of discrimination at issue in higher education more often concerns the expression of viewpoints that deviate from liberal orthodoxy on questions of race and gender, or being subject to microagressions such as when an Asian student is asked where shes from, or not receiving sufficient praise (were not making that up).

Those forms of discrimination might be obnoxious, but they do not trump fundamental constitutional rights and it is disturbing that so many Virginians think they should.

Ironically, many colleges and universities practice overt discrimination today. For instance, they do so in admissions: Asian students must score far higher on standardized tests to have the same chance of gaining acceptance as black or Hispanic students. Many schools also offer race-based housing for affinity groups i.e., people of the same ethnic background.

Colleges and universities should dismantle those very real forms of discrimination instead of policing what students and faculty say and think.

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Editorial: Too many Virginians want a safe space for censorship - Richmond.com

Why many Russians have gladly agreed to online censorship – ScienceBlog.com (blog)

The Russian government has persuaded many of its citizens to avoid websites and social media platforms that are critical of the government, a new study has found.

Researchers analyzing a survey of Russian citizens found that those who relied more on Russian national television news perceived the internet as a greater threat to their country than did others. This in turn led to increased support for online political censorship.

Approval of the government of President Vladimir Putin amplified the impact of those threat perceptions on support for censorship, according to the study.

The success of the Russian regime in persuading citizens to self-censor their internet use has troubling implications, said Erik Nisbet, co-author of the study an associate professor of communication at The Ohio State University.

This is actually more insidious. The government doesnt have to rely as much on legal or technical firewalls against content they dont like. They have created a psychological firewall in which people censor themselves, Nisbet said.

People report they dont go to certain websites because the government says it is bad for me.

Nisbet conducted the study with Olga Kamenchuk, a visiting assistant professor, and doctoral student Aysenur Dal, both from Ohio State. Their results appear in the September 2017 issue of the journal Social Science Quarterly.

The researchers used data originally collected by VCIOM (Russian Public Opinion Research Center) for the Internet Policy Observatory at the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication.

For that project, researchers surveyed 1,601 Russian citizens during May 2014 about their internet and media use, risk perceptions about the internet, support for online political censorship and support for the Putin government.

Ohio States analysis of the survey responses showed that people who relied most on the official government TV news were more likely than those who used other media sources to see the internet as a threat. These viewers were more likely to agree that the internet was used by foreign countries against Russia and that it was a threat to political stability within the country.

Not surprisingly, those who saw the internet as a threat were also more likely to support online censorship.

Support for Vladimir Putin significantly strengthened the relationship between seeing the internet as a risk and supporting online censorship, the study found.

Government authorities have convinced many Russians that censoring content labeled as extremist protects the population from harm, while at the same time failing to mention that this label is often applied by authorities to legitimate political opposition or opinions that run counter to government policies, Kamenchuk said.

The Russian regime uses its official news outlets, particularly television, to spread fear about anti-government sites. The regime often uses graphic metaphors to sensationalize the risk of some internet content, according to the researchers.

For example, the government has compared some websites it opposes to suicide bombers and tells citizens its response would be to use internet control and censorship to create a bulletproof vest for the Russian society.

Kamenchuk said Russians dont have to rely on these official government news sources.

There is opposition TV, radio and newspapers in the country that are not blocked. People can find them freely. But our studies show that many deliberately choose to ignore those outlets, she said.

Even blocked websites can be accessed through technical solutions that arent difficult to find in the country, even if they are illegal, Nisbet said.

But it is tougher to circumvent that psychological firewall than it is the legal or technological firewalls. How do you circumvent the mindset that censorship is good? he said.

Russia isnt alone in persuading citizens that the internet can be dangerous. Many authoritarian governments, such as Turkey, have labelled opposition websites and social media platforms as a threat, the researchers said.

Despite the importance of self-censorship in countries like Russia, most studies have overlooked the issue, Nisbet said.

Much of the academic research on the subject comes from the United States, where there is a lot of support for free expression and internet freedom, he said. But the U.S. is an exception in this regard, and not the norm. Much of the world is much more supportive of censorship than is the U.S.

These results also mean that the United States needs to adjust how it pursues its goal of increasing internet access and freedom around the world. The U.S. State Department has allocated millions of dollars to promote internet freedom, primarily in the areas of technology for getting around censorship.

Thats not going to help a lot if people agree with the censorship and dont want to use these tools, Nisbet said.

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Why many Russians have gladly agreed to online censorship - ScienceBlog.com (blog)