How Much Censorship Is Too Much?

We're all probably aware of the horrendous live stream feeds that some have used as they have taken very violent and very public action against their perceived "enemies". Usually this has resulted in the death of innocents that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time but the public furore over social media platforms and the ability of wrongdoers to manipulate the content by placing their acts of horror in front of us has meant that governments in several countries have have held a variety of inquiries.

Some of the inquiries have been very public and some perhaps not so, as people such as Mark Zuckerberg and others have sat being questioned (not always answering) about how they intend to stop such anti-social abuse of social media and manipulation of the facts.

So how much censorship is too much? It's quite right that this sort of abhorrent content shouldn't be allowed and whilst I'm all in favour of free speech, even the growing use of political manipulation through social media can have very serious consequences. Having let the genie out of the bottle, how is some control regained over the content that is made available to the public?

I have been fortunate to go to mainland China on a couple of occasions over the past few months and I previously posted my "wow" feelings about travelling on the new Hong Kong, Zhuhai, Macau bridge which, at 29 kilometres in length, is an absolute feat of mankind's engineering achievements.

When I have been on the mainland (what a quaint term for what is a huge country), I have logged on as usual to LinkedIn which I had assumed was exactly the same as the version I use when I'm at home and apart from the Chinese characters that follow the LinkedIn logo, it looks and feels the same. I have not been able to use search tools as Google as it isn't authorised on the mainland and the "Great Firewall" prevents access to it. The firewall also stops the use of most, if not all VPNs (including some that say they can be used - I won't name the one I use but it's paid for and installed on my laptop and it doesn't work!). As such, the internet becomes something that is clumsy and almost unusable for anything but the most basic of tasks. I have found a partial work around by pre-loading various website URLs into my browser that I think I might need before I go, so the pages are already open or in my history. Even then, this isn't a guarantee of being able to access them because as soon as the content looks as if it might contravene whatever criteria the authorities have set, the page is disabled and won't load. So unless you know Mandarin Chinese and have it as a language on your laptop and can access a Chinese search engine, you are pretty much stuck - and even then, if it's a site the firewall doesn't like, you still won't be able to access it. I won't go into the "rights or wrongs" of this but there is no such saying as "Google is your friend" in China - it just isn't there! This can be frustrating but it shows what can be done by authorities when they have the willpower to do it.

Like I said, I had assumed that the LinkedIn I was using on the mainland was exactly the same as the one I access at home (and am using now as I write this). However, I couldn't have been more wrong.

This first came to light a couple of weeks ago as I was searching for a comment that somebody had made on one of my posts about the recent troubles and disruption in Hong Kong and which I wanted to answer as I hadn't had time before. It wasn't there! Not just the comment, but the entire post. In fact, non of the posts I had made about things in Hong Kong were there. Nothing, just gone. It was as if somebody had just taken them out of my activity timeline and they had never been. Naively, I thought it was just a glitch (ok, maybe I didn't really think that) and I didn't think much of it because as soon as I was back home, the posts were back along with all the comments. 'How strange' I thought.

Then yesterday I was asked to pop over to Zhuhai again, so I made the trek across the bridge (whilst it is still a huge feat of engineering, the wow factor isn't there for me anymore). On the way and before I lost data access (I don't use data roaming as it's ridiculously expensive for a couple of hours use), I commented on a post by Dave Officer that offered a humourous set of adverts and graphics aimed at getting men and women to "Check their jiggly bits" for cancer. Absolutely nothing bad about the post and I thought it was a great way of raising awareness on something we don't usually talk about until it's too late. There were another couple of comments and a share of the post by Chris Williams who has a wicked sense of humour but Dave's post obviously struck a chord with him too. The share was something that I had meant to do but on this occasion, I forgot. 'No worries' I thought, I'll do it as soon as I get WiFi and can log on to LinkedIn again.

Eventually, I managed to log on but hey - where's Dave's post? Looking through my own activity, there was no mention of my comment. Looking at Dave's profile (he was by then a connection), there was no mention of his post under "show all activity". Ok, well I know Chris also commented and shared it so I'll look there. Nope, nothing, nada - no listing for the share, his comment or any reference to Dave's post. Now, I have no idea what caused it to disappear, maybe checking yourself for cancer is some sort of taboo subject on the mainland but for the life of me, I can't see what would make whatever technology has been employed, remove it from the available content.

Feeling a bit like a character in "The Matrix", I have to be honest - apart from it being weird, it's an uncomfortable feeling knowing that what you see and read is being manipulated so openly and that this sort of censorship is simply the norm in some places. Ok, so it wasn't anything earth shattering that was being hidden from me but nevertheless, it just shows what can be done and how easily we can be fed selected items that somebody in authority has decided we should see and which ones we shouldn't.

Dave's post, comments and Chris's share are all back in my LI feed now that I'm back somewhere where there is greater freedom but it does make me wonder what else we never get to see - even in places where different opinions and views are more widely accepted.

So how much subtle censorship have you been aware of and if you follow the rabbit which pill would you take - red or blue...?