“Algorithmically Bypassing Censorship on Sina Weibo with Nondeterministic Homophone Substitutions” by Chaya Hiruncharoenvate et al.
“Reverse-Engineering Censorship in China: Randomized Experimentation and Participant Observation” by Gary King et al.
It seems obvious that as long as massive and automatic censorship is possible to the censor without incurring any major cost, then the censor will remain powerful. However, if the only action the censor can effectively employ is through using human actors, then they should eventually be defeated by any anti-censorship group (except by some extreme response). This is because a larger anti-censor group with the same tools available will be able to focus efforts on overwhelming the censor. Similarly, a small anti-censor group can be innocuous or unassuming where they can focus on remaining undetected. There is another issue for any powerful and growing censor because the increased chances that anti-censor groups will infiltrate and sabotage the censor’s goals. However, a censor can employ computational methods to judge content en masse and with great detail as an effective guard against all of these points.
This leads me to believe that the censorship seen in this research is not sustainable, and is only kept alive through computational methods. The direct way of defeating any censorship is to defeat any machines driving them currently. I think this is the greatest implication of this research by both Hiruncharoenvate et al and King et al. By understanding and breaking down a censor’s computational tools in this manner, a censor would only be able to revert to human censor methods. And when this censorship is unacceptable to people, then they have the strategies I listed above to actually defeat the censor. This is a necessary point to make because without an accompanying anti-censorship movement of people, then defeating the computational tools of the censor is meaningless. So in this case, the computer adversaries are best defeated by computational approaches, and the human adversaries are best defeated by human approaches. I think there should be special consideration taken for problems that match this description because not tackling them in the best way proves to be an incredible waste to time and energy.
I also have trouble estimating whether the censorship is really working as intended. From King’s findings, if China is very concerned about calls for collective action, then it should be surprising that it is less concerned with what could be ‘seeds’ of outrage or activism. China may censor the calls for action by a movement, but they strangely allow the spread of criticism and information that could motivate a movement. This seems problematic because it does not address the underlying concerns of the people, but instead just makes it more difficult to do something in return. Also, the censorship is targeting publicly viewed posts on social media, but doesn’t seem to have any focus on the private direct messages and communication that is being used as well. In the case of a rebellious movement forming, I think this kind of direct and more private communication would naturally come about when a large group has a unifying criticism of the government.
