Chinese Microblogs: Less Users, More Censors

Ever wonder why Twitter’s doing great with just 205 personnel and still manages to crank out 190 million pageviews a month?

Here’s something to ponder about: along the same lines of that stat we’ve just thrown out, Chinese “Twitters” (retermed “microblogs”), being on less libre PRC territory, has way less people in terms of the user base. Yet still, we’re seeing over a thousand people employed.

(Yep, we realize there’s a “number error”. Read on…)

Many of these folks are involved in this peculiar trade of being a “content inspector”. This is censorese for — well — censor. Post anything “inappropriate” (ie political), and your post just got deleted. That’s 90% of all tweets, according to @lzaiting.

And as long as there’s a censorship requirement of one form or the other, Chinese web sites will continue just chugging along — much like an overloaded freight train pulled by a locomotive dating from earlier in the last century.

US, England Win Bring Out Twitter Fail Whales In No Time

It was just around midnight Beijing time when this happened. We needn’t say any bit more, for both the US and England qualified for the Eighth-finals — and you know what happens when two big English-speaking nations win at the same time.

Twitter broke. In just about no time. England won minutes before the US got a last-minute ball in. The rest, they say, is history. Twitter broke down in no time — for a few moments, even those in China on a VPN couldn’t resolve to twitter.com.

The fact that America won drove the US mad. Both the White House and Starbucks tweeted out their joy.

In England, the response must have been deafening, although England’s own goal early on must have drowned out some bit of the cheering early on. (That was a fair bit back!)

Congratulations to England from America. From China.

Chinese World Cup Tweeps: Rooting For An Unlikely Comrade

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Unless you knew what happened for real inside this place, you’d probably think that this nation, via its name on its own, is a bit like the democrazy that’s Switzerland (where Swiss citizens are given the microphone 4 times a year — as in the ballot — to determine on everything, from tax raises to asinine proposals to ban minarets). “The People’s Paradise”, as North Korea’s Shanghai World Expo pavillion claims itself to be, seems to be “The People’s Choice” this time ’round in the Chinese-language Twittersphere.

For apparently no surprise. “The People’s Korea”, as it makes reference to itself, has long had a political love-affair with the PRC. Within days after the communist leadership was installed in Beijing, Pyongyang gave it almost-instant recognition. Kim Il-Sung and Mao Zedong were seen together a lot, and the tradition has continued with Kim Jong-Il and the three successive “generations” of Chinese leadership, although as of late Kim Jong-Il has a new practice of coming into China in total secrecy to the extent that even his waste is transported back to Kimland. (It’s rumored Kim Jong-Il is gravely ill, and in 2009 pictures with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, Kim appeared downright awful.)

North Korea’s an unexpected love in the Chinese Twittersphere — and it’s less about the mutual communism than about the fact that people have no idea what the world’s remaining Communist dictatorship can do. Its goal against Brazil shocked the masses, although, unsurprisingly, Brazil outdid the North Koreans.

There’s another point of commonality between the DPRK and the PRC in the Chinese-language Twittersphere: it’s how they’re referred to. North Korea calls itself Chosun (朝鮮), unlike South Korea calling itself Hangeug (韓國). As it’s north of the 38th parallel, some call it North Chosun (北朝鮮). With the Chinese government closing more websites than conceivable, some are thinking if the PRC is in a love affair with the DPRK, rhetoric-wise. No surprise, then, that the two socialist comrades share the Chosun (朝鮮) moniker: as China’s west of the DPRK, tweeps sometimes give the PRC the nickname West Chosun (西朝鮮), poking fun at the Chinese Net censors.

Tomorrow, North Korea’s at it again. And of course, there’ll be a fair deal of tongue-in-cheek support for the DPRK. Including the thousands of Chinese dressed up to be North Korean cheerleaders in South Africa.

Has The Chilling Effect Gotten This Bad Lately?

If Lu Xun [ed: one of those great Chinese writers that, during the era of the Republic before 1949, challenged the norm] is still here today, first, his blog would get blocked (harmonized); next, he’d be called to the police office; and finally, he’d be imprisoned on grounds of subverting state authority.

These are not the most libre of all times. We thought that when YouTube was taken away from us in March 2009 that the worst would pass after a sensitive June anniversary three months down the road. Not only is it still invisible in China, but now, Twitter, Facebook and even the apparently-innocent foursquare has joined the queue. The censors have attacked Twitter like they’ve attacked a F@!un Gøng website, closing all API and third-party links as soon as they could find one. Meanwhile, noted blogger Han Han, who turned into a so-called “public intellectual”, is not only in public fights (with the typed word, not physically) with other “public intellectuals” so-called, but also with the censors, who have removed an increasing number of Han’s articles.

@jason5ng32 (who tweeted the Chinese tweet first, seeing it retweeted over about 50 times in all) has been particularly badly hit. He runs a Chinese-language blog Kenengba, and that has been toyed around with due to an apparently pro-Google stance. (Your tech blogger was initially pro-Google as well, but immediately changed sides once it was found out that apparently all Google was interested in was gaining publicity, fighting a proxy “Cold War 2.0″ and toying with the Chinese netizenry.)

We have to ask ourselves: has the chilling effect really gotten this bad as of late?

On A Personal Note Re: Retweets…

I dunno who came up with Them Retweets, but it was a cool invention. Suddenly, your tweet spread like wildfire. Get folks with a million followers to retweet you, and boom, you’ve just made it big.

Twitter’s had two things “crowd-invented”: the @s (as in @user), and the retweets. Twitter knew that it somehow couldn’t dodge the retweets, so for me, it was just a case of them embracing this — earlier or later. Then @wolfgroupasia came out with the idea to “translate retweets” using the TT @user twlexicon — something your tech blogger loves.

Here’s the thing, set out straight: beginning today, I’m retweeting nearly everything using the official Twitter retweet, except for those that need a comment inserted. Retweets make up a fair deal of what I tweet, so if you really hate them, just go to my profile page and turn ‘em off. (It’s a free planet.)

Here’s why I’ve decided to retweet the Twitter way:

1. It’s an official feature. People are using it already. Why am I missing the boat or being like one of those conservatives in the land of the Alps? (No offence to the Swiss. But in this day and age, those who move on will ultimately win.)

2. It allows you to keep track of who’s retweeting the message in an easy way.

3. More and more third party clients are doing this — as in the new Retweet feature. In TwitBird, for example, a “retweet” will only do the Twitter retweet. For the “old”, organic retweet, that’s now just a “quote”.

So here goes. Retweet away. Please get ready for your arrival.

David Feng
Beijing, June 15, 2010

Sina Head Editor: Censoring Tweets - What A Pain!

“Controlling content in Sina microblogs is a problem which is a very big headache.”

There — we’ve tried our best at verbatim translation. On, of course, Chen Tong (陈彤), the head editor at Sina. It’s no surprise that, given the fact that Sina is one of the largest portals in China, that the Chinese government is keeping a good eye on this thing. (The government keeps a good eye on everything: this blog included, dare we contend.) Basically, what Chen’s remarks are telling of is the fact that — surprise — censoring tweets on Sina Microblogs is a pain in the #ExpletiveDeleted.

Oh, and by the way, you weren’t supposed to know that. This article first found its way via Jingchu Web (荆楚网) and was posted onto Sina.com.cn at 12:38 on June 13, 2010. Within the same day, it got nixed (aka “harmonized”). No probs: the Twittersphere (especially in the uncensored “outer Twittersphere”) found a cached copy (thanks @wenyunchao for the tweet).

The article goes on by saying that in the recent case involving a Japanese porn star who wanted to apologize for Japanese invasion in China during World War II, that she’s doing what men and women in s_x__l relationships want to do — for free. (The offer’s good if you’re a Chinese student in Japan.) The message got retweeted about 5,000 times — snap, just like that. (Later “research” by Sina showed that nothing of the sort actually happened. Huh?)

However, that was a lesson as to how fast stuff can spread — through microblogs. We’re looking at a potential audience in the six figures who can get the inside skinny within a matter of minutes. With the world-renowned censors of the People’s Republic never far away (anywhere), this is the kind of stuff that keeps these people up at 3:30 AM (and a bit later than that as well).

Chen was also quoted as saying that although “controlling content” (that’s Chinglish 2.0 for “censorship”) is a real headache, Sina’s able to “do this work the right way” and that it’s confident it can get this sorted. Here’s the scary bit: some of the censors at Sina have been censors for 12 full years. (Poor them. This blogger wonders if they’re married or not; poor their spouses if they are.)

(But we digress.) The censorship goes on, day and night, taking no weekends, and is without interruption. Both the censors and the editors are at work, summarizing via email every hour, and holding censorship meetings (uh, yep, this is surreal) every day. This way, editors make sure their duty at filtering out controversial content is always met.

As for those who post controversial, censor-bait content (mainly “politically reactionary” content as well as (of course) porn), it’s just a case of communicating offline with the users or taking the “please stop tweeting this kind of content” notice public. If that’s not working, the offending content is removed, and if that’s not working, the user is automatically deleted. Chen also recommends users who find “unhealthy” content to fully make use of the “Report Inappropriate Content” link on every page.

(That sure sounds Gestapo-ish. Imagine censoring your girlfriend’s tweets.)

We’ve RTs; Are We Ready For TTs?

Lest you think otherwise — nope, we are not ready to all shift into top gear on those cute-y-ish Audi TTs. But we are ready for this:

China’s a nation with 1.3 billion people and counting, as well as 56 ethnic groups with PRC nationality. Add the more internationalesque megalopolises with folks from a trillion other countries (aka Them Expats), and you’ll start getting the point. What if your tech blogger retweets someone in Chinese — but folks out there who speak nothing but English don’t get the idea?

Translate Retweet… TRT… TT for short. I like that. Will there be an official TT function soon?

If there is, credit @wolfgroupasia (David Wolf). The man behind the idea.

China Blocks Foursquare; Too Many People Checking Into Tian’anmen

The Chinese censors are a sight to behold. As in how fast they react. It’s an open secret that while Twitter is probably chock-full of “the wrong people” (to the censors), the censors themselves are there, too.

Given that, well, are we surprised? China has blocked foursquare — apparently because we’ve seen too much of this…

…and because foursquare speaks to both Twitter and Facebook, some of us posted that onto — right… especially Twitter. The censors probably went, “Ah…” and boom — blocked the site outright.

Jeepers. This is the stuff that must have the censors soiling in their pants. Virtually hundreds of people checked into Tian’anmen Square, the place where “something baaad happened” 21 years ago. Of course, the square itself is “safe” (in the real world) today, with cops even in helmets, as well as SWAT forces, all reported in the vicinity of the world’s largest square.

In place of student demonstrators and their banners, we have people basically filing into foursquare and leaving “sensitive comments” as “tips”. Those checking in included folks outside Beijing; @isaac (Isaac Mao), @rejon (Jon Philips) and the rest just flocked to the square, even if they were based elsewhere. (You can do this, by the way, by going to the Foursquare mobile site or even the main site and change your location — although if you’re not actually there, that could be seen as cheating…)

Can we call this politicized cheating — or a way to remind ourselves that something baaad happened on this day?

Foursquare. Dead to China beginning in the afternoon hours of June 4, 2010. (Confirmed here in Beijing.) You’ll have to reroute to get in…

Late night update: We have updates that this is indeed a nationwide block. Here’s a list of other cities in which foursquare is invisible: Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Hangzhou (thanks, @APE_kIng @EnjoyCHH @Marvinlou @warrenLOL for the updates).

Yet another update: Good news (if there’s any) for those who did check in: you automatically got the Swarm badge and the Player Please! badge. As they say, to every cloud there’s always a silver lining…

Why Turnips Are Sensitive in China

Go ahead, look up the Chinese word for turnip, 胡萝卜 (hu luo bo).

Chances are, unless you’ve ways around the Great Firewall, you can’t find it.

It’s not just because it has that sensitive word — Hu (as in Chinese President Hu Jintao) — in it, but because of… well, let’s take a look at this tweet by Chinese language tweep @geniusyrp:

Aha. Looks like carrots, or turnips, rather, aren’t just in the biz of being something to be fed to you. They have more “harmonious” tasks to do — stuff like to turn IPs. (That’s right: turnip = turn IP.) That would cause the censors to lose track of you.

Would the censors even think of approving this? (No way.)

PS: with today being the day it is, there are more polit tweets in Chinese than deemed healthy. Somehow, folks just have to let it vent…

The Day That Twitter Was Supposed To Die

This post is a day ahead of what might have been an on-and-off, full year of Twitter becoming “invisible” or being “harmonized” in mainland China. By that, of course, we mean Twitter being blocked in China. The twentieth anniversary of what’s known as “some sensitive anniversary” got the authorities more than a bit upset — thereby granting it a license to basically shut down all major SNS sites outside China. For those of us still on SNS sites inside China, numerous limits were also placed. Censorship increased and appeared to go on and on.

That was June 2, 2009. @mranti (Michael Anti) warned tweeps that everyone’s favourite tweeting machine will “go under” — “soon” or “one of these days”. A year ago, that date finally “became true”. Along with Twitter, Facebook and flickr also died, and the then-new Bing also “went under”.

The funny thing is that although Twitter was supposed to be completely “dead” (the API block coming an hour or so after the initial twitter.com block), it wasn’t the case. We switched to other tools, such as iTweet, which were blocked months after the “sensitive anniversary”. We set up our own Twitter sites, such as Twitese, which also got blocked. For those of us with the tools, we did VPNs. There was always a way for us to tweet. When @thomascrampton came to town in August 2009, he was positively amazed that everyone heard of the tweetup — via Twitter, of all things. Before Twitter got blocked, we had only a couple hundred tweeps around early 2008. The 2010 stats now speak of over 150,000 tweeps, 100,000+ of these China-based.

The censors had wanted to stop Twitter. Instead, they did what’s known as a bang dao mang (帮倒忙); instead of nixing Twitter, they helped it spread like wildfire. It’s a fact of life that active Twitter users are tracked by the cyberpolice, who are also present on Twitter and have been known to follow “sensitive people” and harmonize, or censor, any third-party Twitter site being promoted like wildfire. There have been cases of people tweeting much-too-sensitive content and being called into the police office for interrogation, and to be ordered to stop blogging “all this negativity”.

Yet despite official disapproval, Twitter is not gone from China. Radio broadcasts make reference to Twitter and nobody gets fired. The printed media also makes the rare reference to Twitter at times — apparently without serious consequences. While much of the Chinese Web (”official” Web rather) may have gone onto Sina Microblogs, Twitter has managed to thrive. People know that because Twitter does not censor (once you can get into the service), Twitter comes closer “to the truth” than “eunuch-ized” local microblogs.

It’s that old adage at work, once again: when there’s a will, there’s a way.