China wants to control citizens, they seek to censor online comments before they are published

 

The management of user privacy in the Asian country could reach heights never seen or desired.

China is a separate country. It is not that we are lovers of set phrases, but the reality is that their society and their way of approaching technology is quite different from how we do it in Western countries. Do not think that we will make the mistake of assuming that everything that is done in the country of the Far East is bad and we do know what we do, no. In fact, if you are interested in digging a little deeper into its extensive culture, Javiertzo's channel, a Navarrese youtuber who lives in China, can show you reality from the point of view of someone who is adapted to that society.

In any case, it is evident that it is shocking to find yourself in a country where Google is not the main search engine in browsers or where the government itself wants to limit the use of technology among the smallest. We are struck by the control to which the population is subjected and this is one more chapter of a restricted system for the user.

China wants to stop comments on the network from the outset and prepares a new censorship system

First of all, it would be necessary to do a fairly powerful exercise of imagination, given that we are talking about the most populous country in the world. Think about the technology and the number of people needed to review every comment made on Chinese networks. If this were possible, something quite complicated, it seems that the country's government has a plan in place, as they say from the Cyberspace Administration of China

Since 2017 there has been something called Provision of the Management of Comments Services in Internet Publications, the regulation that the new measures will affect and that it intends to update. This new censorship system will cover comments, forum posts, replies, messages on public networks and the new bullet chats, those real-time comments on video platforms in China. They include text messages, images, GIFs, audios and videos. Jeremy Daum, a member of the Yale Law School, states that:

The proposed revisions update the current version of the commenting rules to bring them on track with the latest language and policies, such as personal information protection laws, data security, and general content regulation.

Until now, it seems that the comments had escaped censorship, since they were more complicated to contain, but recent cases of misplaced posts on Weibo, the quintessential Chinese social network similar to Twitter, have accelerated the implementation of a system even more powerful censorship. William Nee, a researcher at the Human Rights Defenders in China association, states that:

Although the Internet in China is one of the most censored in the world, there is still space for the discussion of sensitive issues. People can play a clever game of cat and mouse with censors and make creative adjustments once posts are censored. Still, the new system could make freedom of expression on such sensitive issues impossible.