Leaked document reports extensive censorship tactics used by Instagram-style app in China
Unflattering nicknames for Chinese leader Xi Jinping are among the targets of a crackdown, a leaked file has revealed.
Alex BlairA leaked document has claimed to show a deep network of censorship used to police content on a massive social media platform in China.
Content moderators for Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like app that claims to have 200 million members, have reportedly identified 564 new offensive nicknames and sensitive terms relating to President Xi Jinping and have pre-emptively dashed them from the platform.
According to a report from the China Digital Times, per VICE, moderators have been trawling the internet for anti-Communist Party memes, in an effort to identify anything even remotely translating to criticism of the Chinese leader to develop strategies to stop sensitive content in its tracks.
Business and government have a much closer relationship in China — meaning websites caught allowing criticism of authority risk heavy penalties.
Names like “Adolf Xitler”, “Winnie the Pooh”, “Mr Sh*t Pit” and random phrases like “personally commanding the epidemic” and “the general secretary is coming to my house” were part of the extensive ban list.
Content moderators for Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like app that claims to have 200 million members, have reportedly identified 564 new offensive nicknames and sensitive terms relating to President Xi Jinping.
There is also comprehensive list of banned songs, movies and artworks relating to the Tiananmen Square Massacre (now referred to in China as June 4th).
National security experts have long warned social media is a security risk due to its heavy control, surveillance and censorship by the Chinese Community Party.
The file also shows “public sentiment diaries” recorded in May 2020, where content moderators worked quickly to tag news events and posts that risked attracting unwanted attention. Censors were then able to manually identify keywords for the website’s filter to stamp out.
“The role of the daily is to provide strategies to address the sensitive points of the day and to report back on previous incidents. In the 20 daily newspapers, the censorship department reported a total of 596 pieces of public opinion, an average of nearly 30 pieces per day,” the file reads.
“The daily analysis and recommendations of key public opinions represent the value orientation of the Xiaohongshu censorship system. The daily instructs the censors what content is ‘negative,’ ‘harmful,’ or ‘rumour,’ and ultimately reflects the Xiaohongshu censorship standards.”
Xiaohongshu doubles as an e-commerce app, providing consumers with product reviews and recommendations.
The report also highlighted “emergency” techniques used by moderators.
In the document titled “Public Opinion Monitoring and Handling Process and System”, the Xiaohongshu censors defined 10 types of “public opinion incidents”, including ”social incidents that may cause political and social unrest, and endanger national security” and ”people‘s concerns about the Chinese Communist Party and government agencies”.
The process divides public opinion into two categories: censorship orders issued by the government, and ”internal public opinion,” which is Xiaohongshu’s active self-censorship.
Former content moderator for Chinese social media site Weibo Eric Liu said the advanced pre-emptive technique was beyond anything he had ever seen.
“I had never heard of such a thing when I was working at Weibo in 2011. We only took orders and deleted things accordingly, instead of making predictions based on sensitive topics,” Liu, now an analyst for the China Digital Times, said.
Xiaohongshu is currently facing competition after TikTok‘s Chinese owner ByteDance recently launched a social media application called Kesong.
The Xiaohongshu censors reportedly defined 10 types of ‘public opinion incidents’, including ‘social incidents that may cause political and social unrest, and endanger national security’ and ‘people‘s concerns about the Chinese Communist Party and government agencies’.
But instances of social media censorship are nothing new in China.
On June 3, one of the nation’s highest-streamed product influencers had his stream cut short after a peculiarly “Lipstick king” Austin Li was in the middle of yet another live-streamed sales event when a stunt went seriously wrong, leaving his fortune and reputation in doubt.
That night, Li was selling ice cream – believed to be cult Aussie favourite Viennetta.
During the segment, a team member handed Li the dessert decorated with cookies and chocolates to resemble a military tank.
While on the surface it might have seemed like nothing more than a decorated cake, it turns out that the stunt fell foul of China’s special censorship system concerning the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
In 1989, students held pro-democracy demonstrations in the square in Beijing starting on April 15, and ending on June 4, when troops opened fire and killed thousands of unarmed protesters, according to some estimates.
To this day, the topic is highly sensitive in China, with information about the massacre wiped from history books and posts regularly being scrubbed from the internet as part of the so-called “Great Firewall” – China’s massive online censorship network.
Experts believe the tank-shaped cake triggered a crackdown by officials for violating the censorship rules, given it coincided with the 33rd Tiananmen Square anniversary.
Many have also speculated that 30-year-old Li was unaware of his faux pas, given Chinese people born after the massacre know very little about it, as no records are available.
