Every Rose Has Its Thorn: Censorship and Surveillance on Social Video Platforms in China
Jeffrey Knockel, University of New Mexico and Citizen Lab, University of Toronto; Masashi Crete-Nishihata, Jason Q. Ng, and Adam Senft, Citizen Lab, University of Toronto; Jedidiah R. Crandall, University of New Mexico
Social media companies operating in China face a complex array of regulations and are liable for content posted to their platforms. Through reverse engineering we provide a view into how keyword censorship operates on four popular social video platforms in China: YY, 9158, Sina Show, and GuaGua. We also find keyword surveillance capabilities on YY. Our findings show inconsistencies in the implementation of censorship and the keyword lists used to trigger censorship events between the platforms we analyzed. We reveal a range of targeted content including criticism of the government and collective action. These results develop a deeper understanding of Chinese social media via comparative analysis across platforms, and provide evidence that there is no monolithic set of rules that govern how information controls are implemented in China.
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author = {Jeffrey Knockel and Masashi Crete-Nishihata and Jason Q. Ng and Adam Senft and Jedidiah R. Crandall},
title = {Every Rose Has Its Thorn: Censorship and Surveillance on Social Video Platforms in China},
booktitle = {5th USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI 15)},
year = {2015},
address = {Washington, D.C.},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci15/workshop-program/presentation/knockel},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = aug
}