Imagine yourself not being able to access popular websites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Now if you don’t really care about whether or not you can access social media, what if you couldn’t access Google? What if every single piece of information is censored? How would you feel?
You probably would hate it, I mean not being able to use Google to search for homework answers? How crap would that be?
Sadly it’s actually a reality for people in China, they can’t access Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google. Basically any website we can access, they can’t. Why though?
The Great Firewall of China is why.
I watched the TedTalk which was one of the required readings for this week, and I found Michael Anti incredibly insightful. I honestly didn’t know much about what China was doing in regards to the internet, but thanks to him I know more now, and I realise how interesting it is.
Anti talked about China’s Firewall and said, “It's not only to defend the Chinese regime from overseas, from the universal values, but also to prevent China's own citizens to access the global free Internet, and even separate themselves into blocks, not united.”
I thought this was particularly interesting, especially when he said that, he also followed by saying any website we access, is replicated, and all your information you use to access those replicated sites goes straight into their pigeon hole, basically.
Anti said, “Sometimes this Chinese national Internet policy is very simple: Block and clone. On the one hand, he wants to satisfy people's need of a social network, which is very important; people really love social networking. But on the other hand, they want to keep the server in Beijing so they can access the data any time they want.”
He follows on by saying that was the reason why Google pulled out from China, is because they can’t accept that the Chinese government wants to keep the server.
It’s interesting though, I find myself thinking, why the Government wants to censor everything. Is it because they’re afraid of the damage the internet can do to their current policies. I’m not quite sure.
McKinsey and Company (2013) said, “the country has by far the world’s most active social-media population, with 91 percent of respondents saying they visited a social-media site in the previous six months, compared with 30 percent in Japan, 67 percent in the United States, and 70 percent in South Korea.
So how are they doing it? If they’re leading the way of social media, what are Australia, and America doing wrong?
Hoffman (2013) explained that, “China controls the Internet gateways where traffic travels between China and the rest of the Internet. Through a combination of firewalls and proxy servers at these gateways, they can analyse and manipulate Internet traffic.”
“Many of us often see the Internet as impossible to control based on its very structure, as it routes around points of failure and gives everyone access to a democratic form of communication free of government control. The Great Firewall of China shows us that it isn’t quite that simple — the Internet has its bottlenecks where censorship can be instituted and technologies like DNS can be abused to aid in censorship,” Hoffman (2013) wrote.
I thought it was particularly interesting, as I find it quite hard to understand how they can possibly monitor and censor absolutely everything. Surely it’s impossible right?
To be completely honest, I don’t think China is leading the way when it comes to social media, sure they have a huge presence, but at the end of the day, everything they read, everything they see, everything they write is being censored, although being censored is good in some situations. It takes away our availability to learn from one another, and find out a different side of the story. Although sometimes it’s needed, if we’re censoring absolutely everything, how do we know what’s real anymore?
These are just my thoughts though.
Anti, M 2011, 'Behind the great firewall of China', TedTalks viewed 27 May 2017, <http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_anti_behind_the_great_firewall_of_china.html>
Chiu, C, Lin, D and Silverman, A 2012, 'China’s social-media boom’, McKinsey and Company, 1 May 2013, viewed 27 May 2017 <https://ilearn.swin.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-6273096-dt-content-rid-34296541_2/courses/2017-HS1-MDA20009-220271/McKinsey-Chinas-Social-Media-Boom1_2012.pdf>
Howtogeek.com 2017, How the “Great Firewall of China” Works to Censor China’s Internet, viewed 27 May 2017, <https://www.howtogeek.com/162092/htg-explains-how-the-great-firewall-of-china-works/>.
vaporwave
titsay
izzy806
pixelskylines
andulkaphoto
gummygunk
gracieabrams
theartofmadeline
