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hile the country has slowly warmed to capitalist markets and a more open economy, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has long maintained a tight grip on digital culture. A quarter of the world's population -- nearly 700 million people -- are online in China. 90 percent of web users in that nation access the web from a mobile device and, in 2015 alone, more than 40 million new users signed on for the first time.
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And yet, some of the biggest cultural stories in China's modern history simply don't exist within its borders. All references to the 1989 Tienanmen Square crackdown have been so thoroughly scrubbed from the Chinese national internet that, in 2015, financial institutions were reportedly unable to accept monetary transfers that included a 4 or 6 because those digits refer to the protests' June 4th anniversary. Of course, there is no such thing as perfect security. "People are creative in how they work around such systems, " Jason I. Hong, Associate Professor at the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote to Engadget. "In China, people sometimes refer to Tienanmen Square protests as May 35 (June 4), which evaded censors for a while. "
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What's more, according to Great Fire. org, around 3, 000 websites had been blocked by the country's government as of 2015. Those include Google, Facebook, Twitter and the New York Times. This ubiquitous censorship is a testament to China's top-down design for its national network.
Essentially, Chinese censorship halts the flow of dissenting ideas before they can even start by continually keeping an eye on you. Unlike in the US, Chinese ISPs and websites are legally liable for what their users post which has forced them into becoming unofficial editors for the state. So much as linking to political opinions critical of the CPC's conduct is a prosecutor offense. By keeping ISPs and websites under threat of closure, the government is able to leverage that additional labor force to help monitor a larger population than it would otherwise be able to. A conversational AI system would be able to accomplish the same effect more efficiently and at an even larger scale.
State censorship even extends to social media. This past July, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the administration in charge of online censorship, issued new rules to websites and service providers which enabled the government to punish any outlet that publishes "directly as news reports unverified content found on online platforms such as social media. " That is, if a news organization gets a tip from a reader via Weirdo, that organization is going to be fined or shuttered.
"It means political control of the media to ensure regime stability, " David Bandung of the University of Tokyo told the New York Times. "There is nothing at all ambiguous about the language, and it means we have to understand that 'fake news' will be stopped on political grounds, even if it is patently true and professionally verifiable. "
It's not that bad here in America, yet. Over the past 20 years, "self expression has proliferated exponentially. And the Supreme Court, especially the Roberts Court, has been, on the main, a strong defender of free expression, " Danielle Keats Citron, Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, wrote to Engadget.
Historically, the court has upheld specific forms of speech like snuff films, video game violence and falsified military service claims because they don't meet the intentionally narrow threshold for unprotected speech -- like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. "At the same time, " Keats Citron continued. "Much expression occurs on third party platforms whose speech decisions are not regulated by the First Amendment. "
A sizeable portion of this expression takes the form of online harassment -- just look at the Gamer gate, Pizza gate, Lizard Squad and Sad/Rabid Puppies debacles, or the cowardly attacks on Leslie Jones for her role in the Ghost Busters reboot. Heck, even Donald Trump, the newly-installed President of the United States, has leveraged his Twitter feed and followers to attack those critical of his policies.
"The thing to remember about these platforms is that the thing that makes them so powerful -- that so many people are on them -- is also what makes them so uniquely threatening to freedom of speech, " Frank Pasquale, Professor of Law at the
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All of this hate and vitriol has a stifling effect on speech. When constantly inundated with this abuse, many rational people prefer to remain silent or log off entirely, as Ms. Jones did. Either way, the effect is the same: The harassment acts as a form of peer censorship. However, a number of the biggest names in technology are currently working to leverage machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence to combat this online scourge. And why not? It certainly worked in League of Legends. The popular game managed to reduce toxic language and the abuse of other players by 11 percent and 6. 2 percent, respectively, after LoL's developer, Riot Games, instituted an automated notification system that reminded players not to be jerks at various points throughout each match.
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