Can an Android App Defeat China's Internet Censors?
By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai2014-04-28 18:22:39 UTC
China has long had one of the most pervasive online censorship systems in the world.
The country's infamous "Great Firewall" blocks access to numerous Western websites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and The New York Times. But China also has laws that force Chinese companies and social networks to apply censorship within their own services.
On Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like service that boasts almost 300 million users, hundreds of posts get censored every day. The social network has a sophisticated system that automatically censors certain keywords ("June 4 massacre," referring to the Tiananmen Square protests, is blocked), and a team of in-house censors manually monitors other accounts and messages to catch whatever escapes the automated system.
Censorship on Sina Weibo is not only effective, it's lightning quick. Researchers last year found that some posts, or "Weibos," would be deleted as quickly as five minutes after being posted.
A secretive group of online activists called GreatFire has been monitoring Chinese online censorship for three years. GreatFire's three collaborators track blocked websites and collect censored posts on Weibo, which they then publish on FreeWeibo.com.
Now, the GreatFire activists are launching an app that they believe will make the Great Firewall of China and its mighty censorship powers obsolete, thanks to a relatively new approach called "collateral freedom."
The Android app, also called FreeWeibo, allows users to read posts that are deleted from Sina Weibo, giving Chinese netizens a chance to see what their government censors, and what their fellow countrymen are really talking about.
The activists believe that the way they designed the app makes it impossible to be blocked which they hope will show others an effective way to circumvent Chinese Internet restrictions, furthering their goal of ending online censorship in China.
"Since the founding of our organization, I don't think we've come as close to achieving that goal as we are about to with the release of [the FreeWeibo] Android app. Because it's really changing the rules of the game," says a GreatFire founder who goes by the pseudonym Charlie Smith, in an interview via encrypted phone with Mashable.
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Can an Android App Defeat China's Internet Censors?