Army of 1,000 censors delete a staggering 10million messages a day
IT’s the fastest growing website in the world... and Brad Pitt is one of its newest fans.
The Hollywood star recently took to Weibo – China’s version of Twitter – to announce a visit to the country he is reportedly banned from.
“I’m coming,” he wrote. “Yup, it’s the truth.”
His six-word tweet was forwarded more than 47,000 times and within an hour Pitt had acquired more than 100,000 Weibo friends.
But only hours later the message had been deleted as the actor fell victim to what has been dubbed “The Great Firewall of China”.
Today the Sunday Mirror goes inside the weird world of Weibo – a phenomenon in China where Twitter and Facebook are banned – to uncover the rigid censorship that governs the site.
Rules about what can be written are so strict that 1,000 people are employed to monitor tweets.
Tweeters often have to wait a whole week for a message to be approved.
And on an average day, an astonishing 10 MILLION tweets are deleted.
Meanwhile, the government is said to have an army of 300,000 people posting pro-Communist Party messages. Known as the 50 Cent Army, they get that amount (about 5p) for each post.
Weibo’s team of censors work 24/7 in the Haidien District of north west Beijing.
Any unauthorised messages which make it online result in stiff fines and closure of blogs.
Site users try to fool the censors by using nicknames and coded words for forbidden words and phrases, or by posting blocks of texts as images that can’t be read by auto scanners.
One censor, who asked to remain anonymous, told our investigators: “I felt an inner contradiction censoring messages. I had a heavy heart but we have rules we must follow.”
It’s estimated that 13 per cent of the 100 million daily tweets which pass through various micro-blogging sites in China are “scrubbed”.
Internet expert Duncan Clark says the Chinese government’s understanding of social media is more sophisticated than first thought. “They have devised things such as limiting the number of re-tweets and posts for a particular post or person.”
But co-operation with the state works well for Weibo, which first went online in 2009. Since then the site has gained 12 million new users every month – the equivalent of the UK population joining up every six months..
The most popular user is film star Yao Chen, who with 33.2 million followers narrowly outranks Lady Gaga as the most followed person on the planet.
His six-word tweet was forwarded more than 47,000 times and within an hour Pitt had acquired more than 100,000 Weibo friends.
But only hours later the message had been deleted as the actor fell victim to what has been dubbed “The Great Firewall of China”.
Today the Sunday Mirror goes inside the weird world of Weibo – a phenomenon in China where Twitter and Facebook are banned – to uncover the rigid censorship that governs the site.
Rules about what can be written are so strict that 1,000 people are employed to monitor tweets.
Tweeters often have to wait a whole week for a message to be approved.
And on an average day, an astonishing 10 MILLION tweets are deleted.
Meanwhile, the government is said to have an army of 300,000 people posting pro-Communist Party messages. Known as the 50 Cent Army, they get that amount (about 5p) for each post.
Weibo’s team of censors work 24/7 in the Haidien District of north west Beijing.
Any unauthorised messages which make it online result in stiff fines and closure of blogs.
Site users try to fool the censors by using nicknames and coded words for forbidden words and phrases, or by posting blocks of texts as images that can’t be read by auto scanners.
One censor, who asked to remain anonymous, told our investigators: “I felt an inner contradiction censoring messages. I had a heavy heart but we have rules we must follow.”
It’s estimated that 13 per cent of the 100 million daily tweets which pass through various micro-blogging sites in China are “scrubbed”.
Internet expert Duncan Clark says the Chinese government’s understanding of social media is more sophisticated than first thought. “They have devised things such as limiting the number of re-tweets and posts for a particular post or person.”
But co-operation with the state works well for Weibo, which first went online in 2009. Since then the site has gained 12 million new users every month – the equivalent of the UK population joining up every six months..
The most popular user is film star Yao Chen, who with 33.2 million followers narrowly outranks Lady Gaga as the most followed person on the planet.
source: http://www.mirror.co.uk
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