Censored

The title of this post is identical to the title of an important and highly relevant book by Margaret E. Roberts. The subtitle is “Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall.” This book is of special interest to HM. A number of summers back HM was privileged to participate in a month long workshop on the effect of new technology on two countries: China and Iraq. The workshop included intelligence professionals, technology professionals, linguists, and experts on these specific topics. Why they were interested in a psychologist like HM was not clear to him, although it was a most stimulating month, and HM hopes he was able to make some contributions.

This book makes clear the sophisticated means that China uses to control information in the country. These were vaguely understood from the workshop, but Dr. Roberts brings them into clear view.

“China has four million websites, with nearly 700 million Internet users, 1.2 mobile phone users, 600 million WeChat and Weibo users, and generates 30 billion pieces of information every day. It is not possible to apply censorship to this enormous amount of data. Thus censorship is not the correct word choice. But no censorship does not mean no management.” Lu Wei was the Director, State Internet Information Office, China, in December 2015. As the former “gatekeeper of the Chinese Internet” Lu Wei stresses in his epigraph that the thirty billion pieces information generated each day by Chinese citizens quite simply cannot be censored.

So China as developed what is termed “porous” censorship. Dr. Roberts writes, “…most censorship methods implemented by the Chinese government act not as a ban but as a tax on information, forcing users to pay money or spend more time if they want to access the censored material. For example, when the government ‘kicked out’ Google from China in 2010, it did so simply by throttling the search engine so it loaded only 75% of the time.” So if you want to use Google, you just needed to be more patient. China’s most notorious censorship intervention that blocked a variety of foreign websites from Chinese users could be circumvented by downloading a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Chinese social media users circumvent keyword censoring of social media posts by substituting similar words that go undetected for the words that the government blocks. This makes content accessible as long as you spend more time searching. Newspapers are often instructed by censors to put stories on the back pages of the newspaper, where access is just a few more slips of the page away. This technique is termed “friction” for creating friction that seriously slows, but does not eliminate, access to the information. Porous censorship is neither unique to China nor the modern time period. Iran has been known simply to throttle information accessibility and make it slower during elections.

The Russian government also uses armies of online bots and commentators to flood opposition hashtags, and make it more difficult, but not impossible, for people to find information on protests or opposition leaders. This technique is termed “flooding.” Essentially users are flooded and drown in information.

Conventional wisdom is that these porous censorship strategies are futile for governments as citizens learn quickly to circumvent censorship that is not complete or enforced. Conventional wisdom is wrong. Many governments that have the capacity to enforce censorship more forcefully choose not to do so. Using censorship that taxes, rather than prohibits, information in China and in other countries around world is done as a design choice and is not an operational flaw.

The trade-offs between the benefits and costs of repression and censorship are often referred to as “the dictator’s dilemma.” One form of the dictator’s dilemma is when the government would like to enforce constraints on public speech, but repression could backfire against the government. Censorship could be seen as a signal that the authority is trying to conceal something and is not in fact acting as an agent for citizens.

Another form of the “dictator’s dilemma” is that even if the dictator would like to censor, by censoring the autocrat has more difficulty collecting precious information about the public’s view of the government. Fear of punishment scares the public into silence and this creates long-term information collection problems for governments, which have interest in identifying and solving problems of governance that could undermine their legitimacy. Greater transparency facilitates central government monitoring of local officials, ensuring that localities are carrying out central directives and not mistreating citizens. Allowing citizens to express grievances online also allows government to predict and prevent the organization of protests.

What could perhaps be considered a third “dictator’s dilemma” is that censorship can have economic consequences that are costly for authoritarian governments that retain legitimacy from economic growth. Communications technologies facilitate markets, create greater efficiencies, lead to innovation, and attract foreign direct investment. Censorship is expensive—government enforcement or oversight of the media can be a drag on firms and requires government infrastructure. Economic stagnation and crises can contribute to the instability of governments. Censorship can exacerbate crises by slowing the spread of information that protects citizens. When censorship contributes to crises and economic stagnation, it can have disastrous long-term political costs for governments.

So “porous” censorship is much more efficient than heavy handed control of virtually all information by inducing fear in users.

Tags: China, China's Great Firewall, dictator's dilemma, flooding, friction, Margaret E. Roberts, porous censorship, Russian govenment, VPN