The censorship of Microblog

http://www.sacredwaste.com/censor_button-145380570316350001.html

I never noticed the censorship of my everyday used Sina Microblog until one day when I posted one microblog talking about the content I just watched on the American Chinese TV. Actually I wrote it in anger and wanted to express my love for China because I thought some content about Communistic and Falun Gong was unfair and misunderstanding. But the minute I clicked the "send" button, my microblog disappeared. This happened to my another similar comment.

I suddenly realized that there are some restricted key words topics in China. And I began thinking about Microblog censorship.

 

On September22, words saying that China Government would disseminate the licenses for Microblog runners, but Sina was not in the list spreaded on the Internet, causing great disturbance. Though Sina officially denied the humour, more than 10 billion dollars of Sina was evaporated over one night. However, whether there would be the license for Microblog or not, the PR person of Sina didn't give the response.
But there might be licenses.

In the two years since its inception, Sina Microblog's userbase has rocketed to 200 million as of June and the microblog is now a top-10 website in China. Microblogging has changed the way ordinary Chinese citizens are obtaining information and communicating with others, and is becoming a popular platform for voicing their views that would otherwise have been censored. However, that number is making China government officials sweat as Sina Weibo has been increasingly used as a soapbox for anti-government sentiment. So more and more stringent tabs are required to keep on its users.

Now Sina is taking considerable new measures to censor millions of its posts that it and authorities deem are "Internet rumors." It also plans to form a "rumor-busting team" of about a dozen editors to sift out unwanted or undesirable blog posts and implement a rating system to assess the credibility of users, Sina’s CEO Charles Chao said at a forum on digital media in Beijing.

All the meddling by Party officials has made investors nervous. Sina’s stock has taken a number of hits over concerns about restrictive regulations. On September 20, the stock dropped 15 percent.


http://news.chinabyte.com/39/12164039.shtml


To my own perspective, the censorship is a double-edged sword. One one side, there is indeed a sea of unconfirmed information that floats around in cyberspace—"rumors" that can spread across the Web in a flash, and cause the panic and even the destruction. Rumours of shortening summer holiday in Twitter finally led to the students protest in French, and brought many meaningless damages. on the other side, the desire for speech freedom is the reason of Microblog's prosperity, and in the Internet era, it's impossible to control the words. "The more they block [on the Internet], the more illegitimate the government becomes. They can shut it down, but this will make the government an enemy of the people." Chinese dissident journalist Li Datong told Voice of America.