26.1. Censorship (审查)
Related:
A fundamental quote by Blaise Pascal (布莱兹·帕斯卡) from his Lettres provinciales (1656-1657):
The war in which violence endeavours to crush truth is a strange and a long one.
All the efforts of violence cannot weaken truth, but only serve to exalt it the more.
The light of truth can do nothing to arrest violence; nay, it serves to provoke it still more.
When force opposes force, the more powerful destroys the less; when words are opposed to words, those which are true and convincing destroy and scatter those which are vain and false; but violence and truth can do nothing against each other.
Yet, let no one imagine that things are equal between them; for there is this final difference, that the course of violence is limited by the ordinance of God, who directs its workings to the glory of the truth, which it attacks; whereas truth subsists eternally, and triumphs finally over its enemies, because it is eternal, and powerful, like God Himself.
Figure 242. Eric Drooker's "Censorship" (TODO year) has become one of the most recognizable censorship symbols as of 2020. Source.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vpPqYYyUdU Inside a Chinese internet censorship centre by South China Morning Post (SCMP, 南华早报) (2019) Interview with Zhi Heng from the censorship department of the live streaming company Inke (映客), "China’s largest live-streaming app" at the time according to SCMP. company website. Heng proudly shows how they use machine learning to help their censoring efforts, and how the managed to block live streaming based on GPS location around a manifestation once. Pure gold. That company has close CCP ties as can be seen on China Daily (中国日报, CCP media) https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/tech/2017-02/17/content_28239744.htm "Inke hires 1000 supervisors to clean up live-streaming content" (2017).
Related:
A fundamental quote by Blaise Pascal (布莱兹·帕斯卡) from his Lettres provinciales (1656-1657):
The war in which violence endeavours to crush truth is a strange and a long one.
All the efforts of violence cannot weaken truth, but only serve to exalt it the more.
The light of truth can do nothing to arrest violence; nay, it serves to provoke it still more.
When force opposes force, the more powerful destroys the less; when words are opposed to words, those which are true and convincing destroy and scatter those which are vain and false; but violence and truth can do nothing against each other.
Yet, let no one imagine that things are equal between them; for there is this final difference, that the course of violence is limited by the ordinance of God, who directs its workings to the glory of the truth, which it attacks; whereas truth subsists eternally, and triumphs finally over its enemies, because it is eternal, and powerful, like God Himself.