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With more than half a billion Chinese online, |
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and many of them avid microbloggers, |
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the speed of censorship uncovered on Sina Weibo is astonishing. |
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The researchers mined data on microblog comments removed by administrators, |
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and found that nearly a third of the deleted posts |
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were taken down in the first 30 minutes. |
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Unsurprisingly, criticism of the government, |
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local scandals and complaints about China's one-child policy |
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were blocked most quickly. |
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But the team worked out that if none of the process was automated, |
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Sina Weibo would need to employ more than |
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4,000 speed-reading censors a day, just to keep up. |
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The researchers uncovered a range |
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of devices aimed at bringing bloggers into line. |
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They included, hiding posts from other users, |
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flagging repeat offenders for closer scrutiny, |
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and tracking backwards to delete sensitive topics everywhere they arose. |
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With China's media so strictly controlled, |
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the study has raised questions about |
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why microblogs allow people to post before censorship at all. |
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One of the researchers, Professor Dan Wallach, |
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told the BBC that Sina Weibo had to satisfy government censorship requirements |
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without seeming heavy-handed to its bloggers. |
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He said it had to walk a fine line. |
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