This piece from citizenlab illustrates just how spontaneously dangerous the CCP can be when they want to. The 709 crackdown (named such like many Chinese scandals after the date). They detained hundreds (individuals listed on amnesty.org) of human rights lawyers in a short span of time. If they are willing to treat people who want to help people like this, what would they do to someone who uses a tool to evade their strict censorship.
citizenlab 709 crackdown Crackdown viz amnesty.org data
“The majority of the blacklisted keyword combinations that we found were in Chinese with the exception of one keyword combination in English (“China+Arrest+Human Rights+Defenders”).”
From what I can find there are very little English blacklists in china. And when I found a list I couldn’t get there terms blocked.
Blacklists:
Every Rose Has Its Thorn: Censorship and Surveillance on Social Video Platforms in China
In this paper, Jason Q along with four other analysed 42 Chinese blacklists. They found little similarity between the lists, and when they were similar, there were from the same company. This could be an areas to leverage, finding the holes in their censorship and exploiting it.
Another study found discrepancies across the same product on different platforms.
I began testing the feasibility of implementing these features on a site.
After after iterations with what buttons to add, I ended up here after a while. The text contains some Chinese censored terms from the blocked lists. In the lower tight I added a field to add additional censored terms that specific users might required as the product grows beyond just languages, but specific targeted groups.