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businessweek: Skype’s Watch List in China These are 20 of the more than 2,000 words and phrases, compiled by computer scientist Jeffrey Knockel, that prompt Skype in China to intercept written messages. Roll over the phrases to reveal the words the hackers were targeting. For the full story: Skype’s Been Hijacked in China, and Microsoft Is O.K. with It. Read more at Bloomberg Businessweek (Graphic by Jennifer Daniel) Anyone interested in the topic of online censorship in China should also follow the excellent Blocked on Weibo Tumblr. (And, in care you’re wondering, how fast do Weibo’s censors work? Fast. At near real-time speeds.) Click for high-res photo

businessweek:

Skype’s Watch List in China

These are 20 of the more than 2,000 words and phrases, compiled by computer scientist Jeffrey Knockel, that prompt Skype in China to intercept written messages. Roll over the phrases to reveal the words the hackers were targeting.

For the full story: Skype’s Been Hijacked in China, and Microsoft Is O.K. with It.

Read more at Bloomberg Businessweek

(Graphic by Jennifer Daniel)

Anyone interested in the topic of online censorship in China should also follow the excellent Blocked on Weibo Tumblr.

(And, in care you’re wondering, how fast do Weibo’s censors work? Fast. At near real-time speeds.)

(this post was reblogged from businessweek)
futurejournalismproject: 64.89 6/4/89: Date of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. 64.89: Amount the Shanghai Stock Exchange fell on Monday, the 23rd anniversary of that event. Result: In a country where numerology is taken very seriously, Chinese censors quickly began blocking searches for “stock market,” “Shanghai stock,” “Shanghai stock market,” “index” and other related terms. They also deleted large numbers of microblog postings about the numerical fluke. And even before tens of thousands of demonstrators, clad mostly in black, gathered several hours later around Victoria Park in downtown Hong Kong for the annual vigil, censors were also blocking searches for “Victoria Park,” “black clothes,” “silent tribute” and even “today.” Click for high-res photo

futurejournalismproject:

64.89

6/4/89: Date of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

64.89: Amount the Shanghai Stock Exchange fell on Monday, the 23rd anniversary of that event.

Result:

In a country where numerology is taken very seriously, Chinese censors quickly began blocking searches for “stock market,” “Shanghai stock,” “Shanghai stock market,” “index” and other related terms. They also deleted large numbers of microblog postings about the numerical fluke.

And even before tens of thousands of demonstrators, clad mostly in black, gathered several hours later around Victoria Park in downtown Hong Kong for the annual vigil, censors were also blocking searches for “Victoria Park,” “black clothes,” “silent tribute” and even “today.”

(this post was reblogged from journo-geekery)
markcoatney: Today in Tumblrs you should be following: A really excellent piece of work by Jason Ng.  Click for high-res photo

markcoatney:

Today in Tumblrs you should be following: A really excellent piece of work by Jason Ng. 

(this post was reblogged from markcoatney)

So what if China blocks U.S. based social media outlets? We’ll just use theirs.

rocketboom:

Launched in 2009 by Sina Corp, Weibo is China’s most popular micro-blogging platform, with over 250 million users (that’s a cool 50 million more users than Twitter claimed as of May 2011). The Twitter-like service, allowing users to blog 140 character tweet-length posts and gather followers, is steadily gaining influence in China, and, perhaps paradoxically, abroad. As China routinely blocks access to U.S. social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, Weibo, the Eastern So-Me alternative, is attracting the attention of influential users abroad.

According to a public relations representative, Sina’s Weibo now has 450,000 users in the U.S. — roughly .2% of total user accounts. Notable early Western adopters include Christine Lagarde (French head of the IMF), Tom Cruise (affectionately known as “A-Tang Brother” in China), Bill Gates, tennis star Maria Sharapova, Emma Watson (50 points for Gryffindor!!!), and even global brands like the Coca Cola Company & LVMH’s Louis Vuitton. With sophisticated social media strategies increasingly becoming necessities of modern-day marketing, and social media sites mining online data about their users allowing multi-national corps a direct link to their target markets’ vital stats, Weibo allows Western users to tap directly into China’s mostly educated, mostly white-collar, burgeoning middle-class to promote their corporate and/or celebrity brand-identities. No word on when hyper-social Bieber-san will open his Weibo account. Fingers crossed! /sarcasm

Okay, awesome. Now China has an online watercooler forum of sorts where hundreds of millions of increasingly enfranchised people can say, and are saying, what’s on their minds. Amazing, right? Well, hold on. Don’t forget your grain of salt. If this all sounds like one really big “small step” forward in the oft-closed, centrally controlled society, maybe it is. But to be sure, it’s no “giant leap.” Many features of Weibo still smack of the trademarked Chinese political brand of expressive control and censorship. For instance, anyone in the world can register for a Weibo account (Rocketboom did, with the help of Google translator, but a full-fledged English language Sina Weibo platform is in the works). However, in order to get verified, Weibo requires users to submit proof of identification, which sends a “watch what you tweet, cuz we know where you live” kinda message. China’s tolerance of Weibo so far is in part due to the willingness of Chinese Internet firms to self-censor :( But of course, Sina also employs “technicians” to censor content on Weibo that contains “politically sensitive keywords.” So, if you want to know what’s going on real-time inside China (at least the happy-happy good fun stuff), log in to your Weibo account and see some of what people are saying.

Follow Rocketboom’s brand new Weibo account!

(I killed the link because it was way too long, went nowhere, and, for some reason, weibo.com/rocketboom doesn’t exist.)

(this post was reblogged from rocketboom)

#occupywallstreet: 'Occupy' Blocked In China, Joins Banned Search Terms On Microblog

(Source: The Huffington Post)

(this post was reblogged from globalvoices)