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Behind the TikTok controversy is an important struggle between two dueling visions of the internet. The first is an older vision: the idea that the internet should, in a neutral fashion, connect everyone, and that blocking and censorship of sites by nation-states should be rare and justified by more than the will of the ruler. The second and newer vision, of which China has been the leading exponent, is net nationalism, which views the countrys internet primarily as a tool of state power. Economic growth, surveillance and thought control, from this perspective, are the internets most important functions.

China, in furtherance of this vision, bans not only most foreign competitors to its tech businesses but also foreign sources of news, religious instruction and other information, while using the internet to promote state propaganda and engage in foreign electoral interference. Though China is the pioneer of net nationalism, it is on the rise elsewhere, particularly in nations like Saudi Arabia and Iran and, more recently, Turkey and India.

For many years, laboring under the vain expectation that China, succumbing to inexorable world-historical forces, would become more like us, Western democracies have allowed China to exploit this situation. We have accepted, with only muted complaints, Chinese censorship and blocking of content from abroad while allowing Chinese companies to explore and exploit whatever markets it likes. Few foreign companies are allowed to reach Chinese citizens with ideas or services, but the world is fully open to Chinas online companies.

From Chinas perspective, the asymmetry has been a bonanza that has served economic as well as political goals. While China does have great engineers, European nations overrun by American tech companies must be jealous of the thriving tech industry that China has built in the absence of serious foreign competition (aided by the theft of trade secrets). At the same time, China has managed, to an extent many believed impossible, to use the internet to suppress any nascent political opposition and ceaselessly promote its ruling party. The idealists who thought the internet would automatically create democracy in China were wrong.

Some think that it is a tragic mistake for the United States to violate the principles of internet openness that were pioneered in this country. But there is also such a thing as being a sucker. If China refuses to follow the rules of the open internet, why continue to give it access to internet markets around the world?

Read more:
A TikTok Ban Is Overdue - The New York Times

Fearing loss of market share in China, Hollywood studios are now removing from their films any content related to Tibet or other human rights issues considered politically sensitive by Beijing, according to a U.S.-based media freedoms group.

As U.S. film studios compete for the opportunity to access Chinese audiences, many are making difficult and troubling compromises on free expression, PEN America says in a recent report, Made in Hollywood, Censored by Beijing.

Film content is now frequently changed even for American audiences, while studios provide censored versions of films specifically for Chinese audiences and sometimes invite Chinese censors onto film sets to advise them on how to avoid tripping the censors wires, PEN America said.

Studios decisions on casting, plot, dialogue, and settings are now made based on a desire to avoid antagonizing Chinese officials who control whether their films gain access to the booming Chinese market, PEN America said, adding that these decisions are carefully made behind closed doors and out of public view.

After making two films in 1997Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet--depicting Chinas conquest of Tibet, two major studios were banned from doing business in China for the next five years, and Hollywood quickly got the message, with Disney CEO Michael Eisner going to Beijing to apologize for his companys production of Kundun and its sympathetic treatment of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt, was also supportive of Tibet and would never be made again today, Emily JashinskyCultural Editor at The Federalisttold RFAs Tibetan Service in an interview.

Seven Years in Tibet is a great example of a film that would never be made in todays Hollywood, and this is because everybody in the industry is absolutely petrified of being blacklisted by the Chinese Communist Party, Jashinsky said.

Hollywood would be terrified even if they made that movie just for viewing in the United States and elsewhere, and not to be shown in China, Jashinsky said, adding that movies with sympathetic treatments of Tibet are politically against what the CCP wants their narrative to be.

An invisible phenomenon

As an industry, Hollywood should develop a mechanism for disclosure that would reveal censorship requests made to it by foreign governments and say how studios responded, said James Tager, PEN Deputy Director of Free Expression Research and Policy.

Ultimately, self-censorship flourishes in obscurity or in invisibility. So if we want to tackle this issue, we have to start discussing this more honestly and address the fact that this is largely an invisible phenomenon."

Chinas influence over Hollywood reflects the countrys growing success in forcing foreign corporate compliance with Beijings propaganda goals, with international companies as diverse as Mercedes-Benz and Marriott giving in to Chinese censorship demands, PEN America said in its report.

Meanwhile, the media freedoms group said, Hollywood films reach billions, and help to shape the way people think.

In a statement sent to RFA, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz said that one way Beijing attempts to advance its preferred narrative about Tibet and other issues sensitive to China is by coercing Americans into self-censorshipespecially in Hollywood.

Thats why I have introduced the SCRIPT Act, which would cut off Hollywood studios from assistance they receive from the U.S. Government if those studios censor their films for screening in China, Cruz said, calling the proposed legislation a wake-up call for Hollywood.

I remain committed to protecting our national security and ensuring that the Chinese Communist Party is held accountable for their censorship, human rights abuses, propaganda campaigns, and espionage operations, Cruz said.

Reported and translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFAs Tibetan Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Link:
Hollywood Censors Films for Content Offensive to China, Fearing Loss of Business There - Radio Free Asia

(Illustration/Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

When CNN hired Sarah Isgur, a former Jeff Sessions spokeswoman and now staff writer at The Dispatch, last year to be a political editor at its Washington bureau, left-wing media types put on a full-court press to smear her professionalism. The CNN newsroom which, last I looked, included former Obama official Jim Sciutto was reportedly demoralized by her very presence. Conservatives, and its probably fair to say that Isgur is a pretty moderate one, arent welcome in mainstream journalism. We dont need to go through all the numbers and polls to stress this point. Journalists have long jumped back and forth between Democratic Party politics and media gigs. The job is the same. The venue is different.

I bring this up because, as my former colleague Sean Davis points out, Nick Pacilio, Kamala Harriss former press secretary, is now in charge of deciding announcing what the president of the United States can and cant say on Twitter to his 85 million followers. Twitter has already removed debatable contentions by the president or, contentions no more misleading than any number of Joe Biden allegations. The point of removing tweets, I assume, has more to do with being able to call Trump a liar than worrying about his spreading misleading information.

But the optics are remarkably terrible for Twitter. Its almost certainly true that whoever holds the job of senior communication manager at the social-media giant will be ideologically progressive like the companys CEO. But could you imagine what the nightly reaction on CNN and MSNBC would be if Mike Pences former spokesperson was seen censoring Joe Bidens tweets during a presidential election? I have no doubt Democrats would be calling for congressional hearings.

Correction: Twitter says Pacilio isnt involved in the removal decisions himself. I have updated the post to reflect his role though Pacilios definitive tweets give users no clue as to how the process plays out or who makes these decisions. I dont think the optics are any better for Twitter, but I should have been more careful.

Excerpt from:
Kamala Harriss Former Press Secretary Is the Face of Twitter Censorship - National Review

There are significant cultural and other differences between the United States and India, but one feature seems to unite them seamlessly: the inability (at least as reflected in media and among campaigners and activists of various persuasions) to reach political consensus on whether Facebook is implementing too much or too little censorship?

And just like in the US, in India, too, accusations that Facebook needs to step up its censorship game are coming from the left, while those telling opposite ideological beliefs say their speech on the global social network is already muzzled to an unacceptable degree.

One, but not insignificant difference, is the way this dissatisfaction is expressed against Facebooks representatives: in India, Reuters said, Ankhi Das, a top exec with the giant, has had to formally turn to the police with a criminal complaint against those making death threats against her. They accuse Das and the platform of allegedly giving a leg-up to the ruling BJP party, led by the countrys prime minister.

The case against Das and Facebook is that hate speech coming from BJP supporters is not being removed, just as we see from the left in the US and Europe.

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Facebook is meanwhile denying the accusations of exhibiting political bias in India not only those coming from the left, but also those simultaneously voiced by the right, including the BJP, who say their nationalist voices are the ones censored on the platform.

OpIndia presents this side of the row, saying that the perception of Facebook favoring the prime ministers party is false, and a result of local liberals joining forces with whats referred to as WSJ propagandists.

This report finds evidence that if any, Facebook has a pro-left bias that is evident in its own guidelines used as the basis for moderation and censorship, especially on issues like hate speech and gender identity.

In addition, says OpIndia, Facebook took down as many as 687 pages with links to the Indian National Congress ahead of the 2019 India elections, also targeting BJP pages which, the article warns, amounts to involvement in electoral malpractice.

Go here to see the original:
In India, the push for censorship on Facebook comes from the left, just as it does in the US and Europe - Reclaim The Net

David Robie also blogs at Caf Pacific

The silence from Facebook is deafening and disturbing.

At first, when I lodged my protests earlier this month to Facebook over the immediate removal of a West Papua news item from the International Federation of Journalists shared with three social media outlets, including West Papua Media Alerts and The Pacific Newsroom, I thought it was rogue algorithms gone haywire.

The breach of community standards warning I also received on my FB page was unacceptable, but surely a mistake?

However, with subsequent protests by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) media freedom watchdog and the Sydney office of the Asia-Pacific branch of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the worlds largest journalist organisation with more than 600,000 members in 187 countries, falling on deaf ears, I started wondering about the political implications of this censorship.

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READ MORE: Melanesia: Facebook algorithms censor article about press freedom in West Papua

We had all complained separately to the FB director of policy for Australia and New Zealand, Mia Garlick, and were ignored.

Several news stories were also carried by Asia Pacific Report, RSF and RNZ Pacific. No reaction.

The blocked item was purportedly because of nudity in a photograph published by IFJ of a protest in the West Papuan capital Jayapura in August last year during the Papuan Uprising against Indonesian racism and oppression that began in Surabaya, East Java.

Media freedom in MelanesiaThe FB photo was published with an article about the content of the latest Pacific Journalism Review research journal with the theme Media freedom in Melanesia which highlighted the growing need to address media freedom in the region, particularly in Vanuatu, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and West Papua.

The two protesters in the front of the march were partially naked except for the Papuan koteka (penis gourd), as traditionally worn by males in the highlands.

As I wrote at the time when communicating with RSF:

Anybody with common sense would see that the photograph in question was not nudity in the community standards sense of Facebooks guidelines. This was a media freedom item and the news picture shows a student protest against racism in Jayapura on August 19, 2019.

Two apparently naked men are wearing traditional koteka (penis gourds) as normally worn in the Papuan highlands. It is a strong cultural protest against Indonesian repression and crackdowns on media. Clearly the Facebook algorithms are arbitrary and lacking in cultural balance.

Also, there is no proper process to challenge or appeal against such arbitrary rulings.

Using the flawed FB online system to file a challenge in this arbitrary ruling three times on August 7, I ended up with a reply that said: We have fewer reviewers [to consider the appeal] available right now because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

Two letters unansweredMy two letters to Mia Garrick on August 10 and 11 went unanswered.

RSFs Asia-Pacific director Daniel Bastard wrote to her on August 11, saying: Since it is a press freedom issue, we plan to publish a short statement to ask for the end of this censorship. Beforehand, Im enquiring about your view and take on this case.

The IFJ followed on August 14, two days after their original FB posting had also been removed, with a letter by their Asia-Pacific project manager Melanie Morrison, who described the FB the censorship as a cruel irony:

As a press freedom organisation, the IFJ strongly condemns the removal of posts on spurious grounds. Such an action amounts to censorship.

West Papua is subjected to a virtual media blackout. Access to the [Indonesian-ruled] restive province is restricted and one of the only ways to get information out is through social media.

The photographer, Gusti Tanati, is based in West Papua and is no stranger to operating with harsh restrictions. To have his photos censored, along with an article that points to the increasingly hostile media environment in West Papua, is a cruel irony.

Hinting at the political overtones, Morrison also noted that if Facebook was made aware of this photo by a complaint made by a Facebook user, it is highly likely that the complainant objects to any coverage of West Papua that may be critical of the repressive situation in the province.

She added that understanding the background to this ongoing censorship is critical.

Tracking truth and disinformationListening to journalist and forensic online researcher Benjamin Strick in an interview with RNZs Kim Hill last Saturday about tracking truth and exposing disinformation prompted me to revive this FB censorship issue.

In 2018, Strick was part of a Peabody Award-winning BBC investigative team that exposed the soldier-killers of two mothers and their children in Cameroon The Anatomy of a Killing.

But I was alerted by his discussion of his investigation last year of the Indonesian crackdown and disinformation campaign coinciding with the Papua Uprising.

Discussing collaborative journalism and the West Papuan conflict with Kim Hill, he said: The war is really online.

He became interested in the resurgence or pro-independence sentiment and racial tension after incidents when some Javanese students branded West Papuans as monkeys and with other extreme abuse, which sparked a series of protests from Jayapura to Jakarta.

I was investigating this thinking that it was going to be another mass human rights crime committed in West Papua, he recalls. But instead, when the internet was off and I was searching online, I was seeing these tourism commercials about West Papua and I was also seeing these videos on Twitter and Facebook about the great work the Indonesian government was doing for the people of West Papua.

And they were using these hashtags #westpapuagenocide and #freewestpapua. I thought to myself this has got nothing to do with genocide, providing tourism in this context.

Hashtag hijackingThis is a process known as hashtag hijacking.

Stricks research exposed hundreds of bogus sites sending our masses of scheduled bots automated accounts and were traced back to a Indonesian public relations agency InsightID linked to the government.

Recently, I was engaged with a high ranking Indonesian Foreign Affairs official, Director of the European affairs Sade Bimantara, in a webinar hosted by Tabloid Jubi journalist Victor Mambor when we talked about web-based disinformation.

However, my experience of this disinformation has been overwhelmingly linked to Indonesian trolls, and even our Pacific Media Centre Facebook page has been targeted by such attacks.

In October 2019, Strick and a colleague, Famega Syavira, wrote about this for the BBC News in an article titled: Papua unrest: Social media bots skewing the narrative. They wrote:

The Twitter accounts were all using fake or stolen profile photos, including images of K-pop stars or random people, and were clearly not functioning as real people do on social media.

This led to the discovery of a network of automated fake accounts spread across at least four social media platforms and numerous websites.

Fake accounts removedReuters reported that more than 100 fake Indonesian Facebook and Instagram social media accounts were removed for coordinated inauthentic behaviour. Five months later, in March this year, Facebook and Twitter pulled about 80 websites publishing pro-military propaganda about Papua.

In February 2019, Reuters had earlier reported Facebook removing hundreds of Indonesian accounts, pages and groups from its social network after discovering they were linked to an online group called Saracen.

This syndicate had been identified in 2016 and police arrested three of its members on suspicion of being being paid to spread incendiary material online through social media.

For the moment, we would be delighted if Facebook would remove the block on our shared items and not censor future dispatches or human rights news items about West Papua.

The truth deserves to be told.

Disclaimer: David Robie is editor of Pacific Journalism Review.

Read the original:
Facebook censorship on West Papua then deafening silence - thedailyblog.co.nz