| [00:00.41] | With more than half a billion Chinese online, |
| [00:03.14] | and many of them avid microbloggers, |
| [00:05.32] | the speed of censorship uncovered on Sina Weibo is astonishing. |
| [00:09.89] | The researchers mined data on microblog comments removed by administrators, |
| [00:14.77] | and found that nearly a third of the deleted posts |
| [00:18.90] | were taken down in the first 30 minutes. |
| [00:20.71] | Unsurprisingly, criticism of the government, |
| [00:23.20] | local scandals and complaints about China's one-child policy |
| [00:26.89] | were blocked most quickly. |
| [00:28.38] | But the team worked out that if none of the process was automated, |
| [00:32.17] | Sina Weibo would need to employ more than |
| [00:34.69] | 4,000 speed-reading censors a day, just to keep up. |
| [00:38.95] | The researchers uncovered a range |
| [00:41.05] | of devices aimed at bringing bloggers into line. |
| [00:43.79] | They included, hiding posts from other users, |
| [00:46.49] | flagging repeat offenders for closer scrutiny, |
| [00:49.57] | and tracking backwards to delete sensitive topics everywhere they arose. |
| [00:54.11] | With China's media so strictly controlled, |
| [00:57.03] | the study has raised questions about |
| [00:59.42] | why microblogs allow people to post before censorship at all. |
| [01:03.69] | One of the researchers, Professor Dan Wallach, |
| [01:06.61] | told the BBC that Sina Weibo had to satisfy government censorship requirements |
| [01:11.81] | without seeming heavy-handed to its bloggers. |
| [01:14.56] | He said it had to walk a fine line. |
| [01:17.11] |
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