New semi-censorship on Sina Weibo, and lots of keywords blocked and unblocked during September

New Semi-Censorship

We are currently monitoring more than 12,000 keywords on Sina Weibo, out of which around 2500 are currently blocked. When searching for any of those blocked keywords, you get the following message:

根据相关法律法规和政策,“[the blocked keyword]”搜索结果未予显示。

This translates into:

According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, search results for [the blocked keyword] can not be displayed.

These keywords generate no search results at all. Recently, however, a new form of self-censorship has emerged in which some results are returned but not all (big thanks to Jason Ng at BlockedOnWeibo for letting us know). Take, for example, weibo: 八九纪念 ("remember 89") and weibo: 河蟹 ("river crab", used instead of 和谐 which means "harmony" and is used to refer to censorship). These had been fully blocked since we started monitoring them in May this year. However, sometime in September, searching for either of the two started returning some results, followed by this new message:

 根据相关法律法规和政策,部分搜索结果未予显示。

which translates into:

According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, some of the search results for [the blocked keyword] can not be displayed.

An even more interesting example is weibo: 民泽江. It used to be fully blocked, but in September was partially unblocked (displaying the message quoted above). Then, at least as of October 1, it has been fully unblocked.

This new semi-censorship level resembles the one practiced by Baidu, which admits to self-censoring but still returns selected results.

Blocked and Unblocked

The following keywords were not blocked prior to September, 2012, but have been blocked since that month and onwards.
  1. weibo: 三表哥
  2. weibo: 克强
  3. weibo: 张培莉
  4. weibo: 砸毁警车
  5. weibo: 自焚

And these keywords were all blocked before September, but are not blocked anymore:

  1. weibo: 3月20日
  2. weibo: 4月3日
  3. weibo: 5人被刑拘
  4. weibo: 8x8
  5. weibo: BJ日报
  6. weibo: fang binxing
  7. weibo: guangcheng
  8. weibo: q=cache
  9. weibo: qd
  10. weibo: xing 爱
  11. weibo: xing 爱
  12. weibo: youtube
  13. weibo: 九八
  14. weibo: 二胡
  15. weibo: 互联网信息办公室
  16. weibo: 五套 功法
  17. weibo: 倪玉兰
  18. weibo: 八九纪念
  19. weibo: 公告
  20. weibo: 冤案
  21. weibo: 加兹温
  22. weibo: 勿忘
  23. weibo: 北戴河会议
  24. weibo: 吃人
  25. weibo: 吃少年
  26. weibo: 合肥 法院
  27. weibo: 国家 军队
  28. weibo: 大使馆
  29. weibo: 大力王
  30. weibo: 大腿肉
  31. weibo: 孤立事件
  32. weibo: 审理
  33. weibo: 尼尔伍德
  34. weibo: 师傅 天线
  35. weibo: 康 宝宝
  36. weibo: 开来
  37. weibo: 抗议
  38. weibo: 护士长
  39. weibo: 抵制日货
  40. weibo: 无修正
  41. weibo: 晚自习后
  42. weibo: 暴露
  43. weibo: 替身
  44. weibo: 杀人狂
  45. weibo: 正无
  46. weibo: 毒杀
  47. weibo: 民泽江
  48. weibo: 江绵恒
  49. weibo: 法广
  50. weibo: 熙来
  51. weibo: 立军
  52. weibo: 立案
  53. weibo: 纪委
  54. weibo: 纳米比亚
  55. weibo: 经济观察报 查封
  56. weibo: 美 大使
  57. weibo: 腌肉
  58. weibo: 自行离开
  59. weibo: 薄
  60. weibo: 藏 里
  61. weibo: 讲真相
  62. weibo: 起东
  63. weibo: 连环失踪案
  64. weibo: 邪恶的党
  65. weibo: 阿炳
  66. weibo: 非法献花
  67. weibo: 韩耀
  68. weibo: 领馆
  69. weibo: 食人魔
  70. weibo: 马力宏
  71. weibo: 驻华大使馆
  72. weibo: 骆 信访办
  73. weibo: 骆家辉 信访办
  74. weibo: 高干子弟
  75. weibo: 高瞻
  76. weibo: 鸵鸟肉
  77. weibo: 黄奇帆
  78. weibo: (梅)宁华

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The government has also blocked servers hosting VPNs which led to “near complete” internet shutdowns on several occasions in 2022. Current reports indicate that 66 hosting providers, 19 social networks and messaging platforms, and 10 leading content delivery networks (CDNs), are blocked in the country. The government presumably is unconcerned about the negative economic impact that such shutdowns can cause.

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Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russian users have had problems accessing government websites and online banking clients. Browsers began to mark these sites as unsafe and drop the connection. The reason is the revocation of digital security certificates by foreign certificate authorities (either as a direct consequence of sanctions or as an independent, good will move); without them, browsers do not trust sites and “protect” their users from them.

However, these actions, caused - or at least triggered by - a desire to punish Russia for their gruesome actions in Ukraine, will have long-lasting consequences for Russian netizens.

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Mon, Aug 03, 2020

Announcing the Release of GreatFire AppMaker

GreatFire (https://en.greatfire.org/), a China-focused censorship monitoring organization, is proud to announce that we have developed and released a new anti-censorship tool that will enable any blocked media outlet, blogger, human rights group, or civil society organization to evade censors and get their content onto the phones of millions of readers and supporters in China and other countries that censor the Internet.

GreatFire has built an Android mobile app creator, called “GreatFire AppMaker”, that can be used by organizations to unblock their content for users in China and other countries. Organizations can visit a website (https://appmaker.greatfire.org/) which will compile an app that is branded with the organization’s own logo and will feature their own, formerly blocked content. The app will also contain a special, censorship-circumventing web browser so that users can access the uncensored World Wide Web. The apps will use multiple strategies, including machine learning, to evade advanced censorship tactics employed by the Chinese authorities.  This project will work equally well in other countries that have China-like censorship restrictions. For both organizations and end users, the apps will be free, fast, and extremely easy to use.

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This hearing offers an opportunity to detail to the Subcommittee how Apple uses its closed operating ecosystem to not only abuse its market position but also to deprive certain users, most notably those in China, of their right to download and use apps related to privacy, secure communication, and censorship circumvention.

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