In class today when we were talking about creating a website, it was mentioned how this assignment could end up helping society. Then censorship in china was brought up, which made me want to do more research about the degree of censorship that is currently going on and how the people in china are trying to get through it.
The research I did led me to this article by the New York Times, which talks about the people who work to censor the internet. People are trained on what to look for, so they can know what to block. These people scan the internet for hours to find code words, memes, and hidden language or symbols that the Chinese government doesn’t want people to be able to read about. These people work for companies, because they want people on the lookout so they can stay on the good side of the government. Since the government expects these companies to censor themselves the companies panic and hire thousands of people to censor content.
Having this big need for people working in the censorship field has created a booming industry, creating censorship factories. Although their job is just sitting behind a computer all day their job has high stakes, if they miss just one post there could be negative ramifications.
If you get the chance to check out this article, it’s a good read. It’ll help you gain some perspective, and really be thankful for the freedoms we have here in the U.S.