Category Archives: Censorship

The autumn edition of the Index on Censorship will be published in Great Britain today, Tuesday. Before the 26th UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow she is dealing with a very special climate, the climate of fear, which is spread wherever climate and environmental activists oppose overexploitation. For the time of this issue, lawyer Steven Donziger, known for his fight against chevron activities in Ecuador, will participate virtually. He appears virtually because he has been under strict house arrest in the United States for 800 days.

Ignored by the US press, Steven Donziger is an example of the people his first namesake Stephen Spender wanted to give a voice to: on October 15, 1971, his appeal With Concern For Those Not Free appeared in the Times. It led to the establishment of the Index on Censorship.

In this section we always present astonishing, impressive, informative and funny figures from the fields of IT, science, art, economics, politics and of course mathematics on Tuesdays.

All articles on Pay, please!

Anyone who thinks of an index in the context of occidental history and not in the sense of database IT thinks of the first List of Prohibited Books, with which the Catholic Church banned numerous thinkers and their books. Writings by Galileo Galilei or by Johannes Kepler landed on this index. In modern times Immanuel Kant caught the Critique of Pure Reason, in very recent times it was the writings of the author couple Jean-Paul-Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. In 1968 it was a letter from the young Soviet Russian Alexander Daniel to the British writer Graham Greene, referring to the situation of his father July Daniel drew attention. Along with Andrei Sinjawski he was sentenced to hard camp work in a show trial. The trial showed that the Soviet leadership, after the thaw, took a tougher pace again because everything was fermenting in their entire sphere of influence.

In Great Britain a group of supporters was formed which, after Amnesty International, called itself Writers and Scholars International (WSI). On October 15, 1971, the Times published its founding manifesto With Concern For Those Not Free, written by the poet Stephen Spender. Spender announced the publication of a magazine called Index, which should make all persecuted writers, poets and artists in East and West heard. Critical voices were not only suppressed in the Soviet Union, dictators were also in power in Greece, Spain and Portugal, not to mention Latin America.

Fifteen British and American artists joined the call, including the poet WH Auden, the musician Yehudi Menuhin, the composer Igor Stravinsky and the sculptor Henry Moore. When the magazine first appeared in 1972 under the slightly crooked title Index on Censorship. A Voice for the Persecuted, it contained pieces by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, an account of the crackdown on student protests in Prague, and a text by Giorgios Mangakis on the Torture in Greek prisons.

In the 50 years of its existence the quarterly index published numerous important documents such as the translation of Charter 77, the Solzhenitsyn Nobel Prize speech, the story of the disappeared in Argentina, the declaration of hunger strike by the students from Tianmen Square, the declaration of supporters of Salman Rushdie and the reports by Anna Politkovskaya about the wars in Chechnya. The summer edition of 2021 was the Whistleblowern Dedicated to this world, with a focus on the case of Reality Winner, who is not allowed to speak publicly after serving her prison sentence.

Now appears under the sign of Glasgow Climate Change Conference the autumn edition Climate of Fear. The silencing of the planets indigenous peoples, which deals with the protest of indigenous peoples that is being stifled by governments and corporations around the world.

There is a small one to appear Online celebrationwho the lawyer Steven Donziger is switched on. He has been under house arrest in New York for 800 days and is being prosecuted by US judges for his lawsuits against the Chevron oil company. For example, they demand the surrender of all electronic devices belonging to the lawyer. Similar to the case of Julian Assange, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has found that the proceedings against Donziger violate current US law.

(mho)

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Pay please! No end to speaking bans - 50 years of the censorship index - Market Research Telecast

(Thumbnail photo credit: The Philippine Daily Inquirer)

National Artist Francisco Sionil Jose disses Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa and says there is no censorship in the time of Duterte. Jose has been making loquacious claims lately without basis (like when he said no media station was closed by Duterte). But I have a story to tell from the first-person perspective. The Philippine Daily Inquirer had censored me.

Ten opinion columns of mine never saw print in the Inquirer online edition, even though they were published in the broadsheet edition. When one is published in print but not online, it means the article cannot be shared digitally in social media, which had become the most common way of ensuring the widest-possible readership.

One can only understand the reason behind the censorship: political umbrage. It was used as a tool to prevent criticism against influential political figures.

For sure, there were alternative platforms to share the censored article online. To the consternation perhaps of Inquirer.net, friends and colleagues in the Inquirer Opinion page made sure I had the printed article shared in social media.

Even as the censorship was effectively challenged by the articles posting in in social media, Inquirer.net never cared. Two weeks later, another article was censored, and so forth and so on. The pattern was predictable. It was designed for one to break down and stop writing.

In the beginning, one would think it was simply clerical error. One, of course, seeks recourse from the opinion editor. The opinion editor was new and had accepted that position despite not having a personality of approachability (Dont ask me because that's beyond my pay grade).

Before the chairman of the board could compose a coherent answer for the opinion editor to relay to me, the papers insiders had already given me, albeit secretly, the reason: Inquirer.net had a standing editorial policy not to publish anything unfavorable to Bongbong Marcos and Bong Go. The policy apparently affected even news stories which had to show a favorable slant. In fact, demoralization was brewing among the online news staff. The Inquirer has more than a dozen opinion writers. Of all writers, why was I singled out? You do not censor big-time names; otherwise, hell will be raised. How do you serially censor Ambeth Ocampo or former Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio or former cabinet secretary Winnie Monsod?

Recall that Duterte was angry at the Prietos of the Inquirer. This was his way of threatening the Inquirer that, under its revered slogan of balanced news, fearless views, was a known administration critic. Many in the paper had rude awakenings.

So what was the official line of the Inquirer management about the censorship? It was fake news at its worst. It said Inquirer.net was a separate company (yet was using the same brand and the same livery) that had its own set of editorial policies. Prior to Duterte, there were no such things as separate companies (Inquirer the paper, Inquirer.net, Radyo Inquirer, etc.).

The Inquirer had joined the era of fake news by making a convenient lie about why it was censoring opinion articles. If the paper and the online edition were two separate companies, then that means one can criticize the other. And that is exactly the experiment I chose to do: say outright that the Inquirer had censored my articles. The next day, the opinion editor who once said his pay grade was low gave me my ouster notice. I had expected it. I can answer for myself. But Inquirer, until today, cannot answer for itself.

For many of us who lived through the Marcos regime, the Inquirer was a gilded pillar of strength. We have lost touch with reality when we continue to think of it in the same way.

It was only important for it to survive the business onslaught of Duterte. As to press freedom, the Inquirer is no longer the vanguard it used to be.

The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.

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Censorship in the time of Duterte - Vera Files - Vera Files

Katie Couric has defended herself against critics regarding several revelations in her new memoir ahead of its publication next week.

In an interview on the Today show, her former broadcast home, Ms Couric said that some of the content of her radically transparent book had been wildly misrepresented in coverage.

One of the biggest controversies to emerge from Going There was that an interview with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was edited or censored by Ms Couric ahead of broadcast.

She was criticised for editing out a segment of the interview when the late Justice Ginsburg made a controversial comment regarding the national debate about athletes taking the knee during the national anthem.

The justice said people who do so show contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents to live a decent life.

Ms Ginsburg also reportedly called Colin Kaepernick, the NFL player who began the social justice protest movement, dumb and disrespectful.

Explaining the decision to remove the comments in the memoir, Ms Couric writes that she believed the then 83-year-old justice was elderly and probably didnt fully understand the questions.

Speaking to Today show anchor Savannah Guthrie on Tuesday, Ms Couric said: I think what people dont realise is we make editorial decisions like that all the time. I chose to talk about this and put it in the book for a discussion.

She continued: I mentioned that it was a conundrum that I asked Justice Ginsburg about Colin Kaepernick and taking a knee and how she felt about that. And I did include the fact that she said it was dumb and disrespectful, it was stupid and arrogant, and quite a bit of what she said. There was another line that I thought was I wasnt sure what she meant exactly, and I thought it was subject to interpretation.

Ms Couric added: What I wish I had done is asked a follow up to clarify, or just run it and let her clarify it later, but I think the most pertinent and direct response to the question about Colin Kaepernick I included, and thats why I raised it because maybe I should have done the other sentence, as well.

Pressing her further on the subject, Ms Guthrie said that in the book Ms Couric said she wanted to protect Justice Ginsburg and asked whether her lack of objectivity on the matter undermined journalism at a time when reporters are under attack for bias.

Ms Couric responded: The more we can be transparent about the decisions we make, and the more we can say that maybe that wasnt the right one, the better off we are.

Ultimately, I think I should have included [the comment], but I also think its important to look at what I did include. [Justice Ginsburg] had to make a statement afterward saying that her comments were harsh and dismissive, said Ms Couric. I still believe I used the most critically important response, but I think youre right that it might have illuminated even more if I had included the other response.

The journalist and former anchor of the Today show also addressed her response to the initial allegations of sexual misconduct against former co-host Matt Lauer, saying that it had taken her a long time to process and the two no longer have any relationship.

Ms Couric also dismissed a further allegation that she had failed to mentor or help other female colleagues.

She said she had never deliberately sabotaged a female colleague, as had been alleged, but wishes she had done more to help and mentor others.

I wish I had extended myself a bit more but when people are outwardly vying for your job it is hard to be generous, she said.

Link:
Katie Couric defends censoring RBGs comments on taking the knee as an editorial decision - The Independent

Gaming journalist and known leaker Tom Hendersonrecently posted a tweet indicating that Activision and Sledgehammer Games may have figured out how to deal with the offensive imagery. "It looks like there could be an option in the #Vanguard campaign to have either the Swastika or Iron Cross," Henderson tweeted. "As previously mentioned, the Swastika was displayed instead of the Iron Cross in some internal artwork."Henderson included a screenshot from the newly released "Vanguard" campaign trailer. The screenshot appears to show a man in a burning hazmat suit which is on fire and behind him, there are red banners on a building in the background which clearly bear swastikas.

Commenters on Henderson's post seemed to be largely onboard with the idea of leaving these design elements up to the player.If Henderson's intel is accurate, that means "Call of Duty: Vanguard" players will have the opportunity to choose their own historical experience when the game launcheson Nov. 5, 2021.

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The Real Reason Call Of Duty: Vanguard Might Allow Censoring - SVG

The Bates Student would like to address the petition released on Oct. 15 (and subsequent articles by News Center Maine and The Intercept) regarding censorship of The Bates Student by the Bates College administration.

The Bates Student was not coerced or censored by any member of the Bates administration, the Bates Communication Office, or any other member of the Bates community in the writing or republishing of Elizabeth LaCroixs article from Oct. 13.

Mary Pols, Bates media relation specialist, asked The Student to temporarily take down the original article, pointing to several misleading statements and reporting inaccuracies. The Student made the decision on its own accord to honor this query. Mary Pols handles all media relations for the college; therefore, The Bates Student, like all other media outlets, is unable to access school administrators in all departments without first communicating with Pols. However, Pols has no authority to require changes or read articles before publishing and did not attempt to exercise such authority.

Nearly all edits made to the originally published article were additions. Information regarding neutrality statements was reworded for clarity. Additionally, a quote provided by Francis Eanes was paraphrased, as it relayed second-hand information that could not be verified. Commentary provided by employees with first-hand experience was unaltered, or in Jon Michael Foleys case, expanded.

Every edit or change in the article was discussed between Elizabeth and myself and approved by me as editor-in-chief of The Bates Student. We corrected inaccuracies that were misleading or confusing, and we allowed additions to both the union and administration side of the story, as shown in the document outlining edits made to the original article linked in the petition.

The staff of The Bates Student takes immense pride in our editorial independence. We are given full autonomy on what is and is not published. In the interests of informing the Bates community, we stand by the edits we made.

If you have any questions regarding the events of the past week, please send us an email ([emailprotected]).

Jackson Elkins 22 and Elizabeth LaCroix 23

Editor-in-Chief and Managing News Editor at The Bates Student

Continued here:
A Statement Regarding the Petition Against Censorship at Bates - The Bates Student

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, RealClear Media Fellow Kalev Leetaru joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss his paper Transparency Is the First Step Toward Addressing Social Media Censorship.

Many of the organizations today that are saying we need more censorship, we really really need to crack down on speech, those are the same ones that in the early days of the web said look, we cant have censorship of the web,' Leetaru said. Theres this fascinating, fascinating sort of basically 180-degree turn from the early days of the web to where we are today and I think that its really important to understand how we got here because really, in the end, it kind of reminds us that there are no easy paths forward.

Leetaru also explained the history behind Section 230 and the growing tension between leftists and conservatives on how to deal with social media companies whose policies are secret.

These rules are designed to protect certain communities how often do these rules backfire and actually harm the very communities that theyre designed to protect? If we had data to actually show whether or not that was the case or not, that might also really change the conversation. Because, again, at this point the company is saying trust us thats a really scary thing, Leetaru said.

Excerpt from:
Section 230 Forces Us To Confront Old Challenges In A Brave New World - The Federalist

Shilpa Gupta at the Barbican: social injustice, censorship and poetry

In the multipart showSun at Night at Londons Barbican, Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta highlights the fragility of free expression and gives a voice to those silenced

The words of Azerbaijani poet Mikayil Mushfig (1908 1938), labelled an enemy of the state by the Soviets, hover in the air. From a canopy of 100 low-hung microphones, a chorus clusters and repeats the poets statement. There is heavy breathing. Hums dissolve into whispers. Fingers click and hands furiously clap. An unpredictable rhapsody of disembodied voices darts around a dimly lit room, creating a dense fog of sounds that lingers over a field of metal spikes.

Once your senses adjust, you can edge through these spines that comprise Shilpa Guptas sound installation, For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit (2017 2018). Rising up to waist height, the spears forge a constricted path. Each pierces a leaf of paper bearing fragments of the spoken verses, written by a poet incarcerated for their beliefs. It is a panoply of resistance spanning time and place, with the words of dissident writers such as Maung Saungkha from Myanmar, arrested in 2016 for his risqu claim that he had a tattoo of the president inked on his penis, melding with those of Ayat al-Qurmezi, jailed in 2011 for supposedly defaming Bahrains royalty.

The enveloping piece is part of Guptas poignant exhibition Sun at Night at the Barbican Curve. In a year when the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to two journalists, Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia, for their courageous advocacy and practice of press freedom, and when digital censorship is alarmingly on the rise, the show is a testament to the force of words and the fragility of our commitment to free speech.

Gupta, however, finds a refreshingly subtle way of rallying for free expression while keeping those poets at the fore. She treats their words preciously. She has preserved the verses of censored poems by speaking them into a collection of ostensibly empty medicine bottles that form the piece Untitled (Spoken Poem in a Bottle).

The thresholds of expression have long preoccupied Gupta. She once built a library of stainless steel books, each a replica of a title written anonymously or pseudonymously. And on the spine she explained the reasons why, capturing a range of societys neuroses and prejudices. Guptas practice is characterised by its delicate investigation of social injustices and finding pathways to empathy. As she tells me, the objective of her work is speaking with you and not at you and not against you. It maybe has to do with a sense of hope that a conversation might mean something.

Come November 2021, Gupta will continue this dialogue with her first solo show at Londons Frith Street Gallery. There will be spillover from the Barbican show,she explains, drawing a link between the genre of isolation that has been enforced throughout the world this last year. She has created a new flap-board the kind typically associated with airport and train arrivals that flickers through letters and settles to find our connective tissue. It spells out We are closer than you ever imagined.

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Shilpa Gupta at the Barbican: social injustice, censorship and poetry - Wallpaper*

Professional networking site LinkedIn announced it will shut down its website in China because Chinas hefty compliance requirements have created a significantly more challenging operating environment. Its parent company, Microsoft, said it would replace LinkedIn China with a job listings website without a social media element later this year.

LinkedIns retreat from China sends a warning to all Western companies that there is no middle ground between Chinas authoritarian system and Western liberal democratic values. They must choose a side.

LinkedIn launched in China in 2014. It was the only Western social media site that operated openly in China, as Chinese authorities blocked other Western social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn paid its admission price for the Chinese market by agreeing to adhere to the Chinese governments rules, including censorship requirements.

Like all Western companies doing business in China, LinkedIn claimed that to comply with Chinas law it had no choice but to censor content Chinese authorities object to. LinkedIn insisted the censorship was very light and in no way contradicted the company supporting free speech.

Still, LinkedIns censorship has caused great concern in the United States. In 2019, LinkedIn made headlines by blocking the profile of a U.S.-based Chinese dissident, Zhou Fengsuo. Zhou was one of the student leaders of the 1989 pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen Square.

After the Chinese government brutally cracked down on protestors, Zhou was forced into exile in the United States. He co-founded a nonprofit organization to aid human rights activists and organizations in China. On January 3, 2019, Zhou tweeted out a notice from LinkedIn, which stated that although the company strongly supports freedom of expression, Zhous profile and activities would not be viewable because of specific content on your profile.

Zhou demanded an answer in atweet, This is how censorship spread from Communist China to Silicon Valley in the age of globalization and digitalization. How does LinkedIn get the order from Beijing? After Zhous tweet received wide media attention, LinkedIn reversed its action and unblocked Zhous account,claiming his profile had been blocked in error.

As Chinas leader Xi Xinping seeks to return China to the Maoist socialist model and intensify his suppression of dissenting voices, he demands more censorship from Chinese and foreign companies. Early this year, Chinese regulators visited LinkedIns headquarters in China and gave the company 30 daysto clean up its content. The companydisclosedthat it had to stop new member sign-ups in China for weeks to ensure we remain in compliance with local law.

LinkedIn learned the hard way that capitulation to Beijing is not a one-time action but a process. Once you bend the knee, Beijing will soon demand a better attitude and posture. Surrender leads to more surrender because Beijing always wants more.

LinkedIns censorship on behalf of the Chinese government reached new heights in recent months. It used to only remove individual posts that Chinese censors did not like. But recently, LinkedIn blocked profiles and posts of foreign journalists, academics, researchers, and human rights activists from its China-based websites.

Well-known journalists affected includedAxios Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, Vice News Melissa Chan, and U.K.-based author Greg Bruno. All of them have written about Beijings human rights violations in the past. All received similar messages from LinkedIn, which claims their profiles were blocked in LinkedIn China due to prohibited content in the summary section of these journalists profiles.

Besides these well-known journalists, LinkedIn also banned academics and researchers. One of them is Eyck Freymann, a Ph.D. student at Oxford University. According to theWall Street Journal, Freymanns profile was probably blocked in China because he included the words Tiananmen Square massacre in an entry describing his job as a research assistant for a book in 2015.

To add insult to injury, LinkedIn offered suggestions to those affected: modifying their content to remove the ban. Greg Bruno, author of a bookon Chinas soft power on Tibet, disclosed in an interview with Verdict, LinkedIn suggests that my ban is not permanent, and that I am welcome to update the Publications section of my profile to minimize the impact of my offending content.

Bruno rejected LinkedIns offer. HetoldVerdict: While I am not surprised by the Chinese Communist Partys discomfort with the topic of my book, I am dismayed that an American tech company is caving to the demands of a foreign government intent on controlling access to information.

LinkedIn refused to explain whether its recent heightened censorship resulted from self-censorship by the company or was explicitly requested by the Chinese government. The companys actions and its silence received widespread backlash at home and drew attention from U.S. lawmakers. Rep. Jim Banks, R-Indiana, wrote to LinkedIn, demanding the company say which Chinese Communist Partys speech regulation it was enforcing on Americans and whether the company had handed over American users data to Beijing.

Senator Rick Scott, R-Florida, sent aletteraddressed to Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. He said the companys censorship raised the serious questions of Microsofts intentions and its commitment to standing up against Communist Chinas horrific human rights abuses and repeated attacks against democracy. He criticized the companys action as a gross appeasement and an act of submission to Communist China.

Besides censorship, LinkedIn has been embroiled in another controversy. Chinese intelligence agents have used fake profiles on LinkedIn and disguised themselves as headhunters, consultants, and scholars to collect information and recruit potential spies. In 2017, Germanys intelligence agency disclosedthat Chinese agents targeted more than 10,000 German citizens, including senior diplomats and politicians.

A year later, William Evanina, the U.S. counterintelligence chief,warnedLinkedIn about Chinas super aggressive intelligence activities on the site. In 2020, a Singapore national wasconvictedin U.S. court as an illegal agent for a foreign power. He had set up a fake consulting company and used LinkedIn to recruit Americans to spy on behalf of China.

Eventually, both the pressure from China and from home has proven too much for LinkedIn. The company finally realized that Beijing would continue to demand more censorship while abusing its intelligence-gathering on the companys platform.

To please Beijing means to abandon the companys business model as a platform for the open and free exchange of ideas and to face more backlash from the public and more scrutiny from lawmakers at home. Eventually, LinkedIn chose to fold its China operation because it couldnt straddle two different political systems with opposing values and still be successful.

LinkedIns exit from China should serve as a warning for all Western businesses and organizations. For too long, Western companies and organizations, from Nike to the NBA, have operated by this one company, two systems model. They have acted as if they are the defenders of liberal democratic values in their home countries.

But they have instead overlooked the Chinese Communist Partys human rights abuses and insisted on abiding by the CCPs speech code, all for the sake of chasing profit they dont want to be shut out of potentially lucrative Chinese markets. They have damaged their reputations while finding out Beijings appetite for control and censorship cannot be satisfied.

LinkedIns experience in China has shown that the one company, two systems model is a failure. All Western companies and organizations must realize that Beijings authoritarian model is incompatible with Western liberal democratic values.

Trying to find a middle ground will please no one. Western companies and organizations have to choose a side.

They should remind themselves that the liberal democratic values such as freedom of expression they enjoy at home have not only fattened their bottom line, they have given birth to superb products, including music, movies, products, and sports teams with universal popularity. If Western companies and organizations want to maintain their success and achieve more, they should choose freedom and democracy over kowtowing to Beijing.

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LinkedIn's Retreat From China Is A Warning To All Western Businesses - The Federalist

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL On our platform Dissenters Voice Banned YouTube videos we publish videos that are censored and deleted on YouTube.

We believe that the arbitrary removal of inconvenient content on social media should not be a part of our civilization. That is why we give censored content the opportunity to be seen.

xxxx

What happens to a society in which satire is no longer allowed? This video about the broken promises of Covid vaccines does not convey misinformation and yet it must not exist.

And what will happen tomorrow if we tolerate this kind of censorship by social media today?

The Rio Times expressly points out that as an independent newspaper, we also strive to provide a platform for the dissemination of suppressed statements in an era characterized by censorship on social media. The information conveyed in each case does not necessarily reflect our own views.

Join us on Telegram:t.me/theriotimes

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Banned YouTube videos: Satire about broken promises of Covid vaccines - The Rio Times

Key Takeaways:

Beijings ongoing crackdown on pretty much everything spurred by President Xi Jinpings highly publicized common prosperity campaign has brought about a new challenge for influencers hoping to maintain their online traffic as well as authorities on the lookout for those posting anything that smells of wealth-flaunting. With authorities on extra-sensitive mode, many if not most celebrities and influencers are lying low and resisting the urge to post photos of lavish outfits or handbags, yet others have sought to skirt the scrutiny of censors by shoehorning their high-end items into seemingly unassuming content.

As noted in our recent report Chinese Cultural Consumers: The Future of Luxury, Chinas influencer landscape is changing, with the formerly dominant Hollywood stars or established Chinese actors holding less sway over young consumers than livestreams by KOLs (key opinion leaders), KOCs (key opinion consumers), or even brand owners and employees. This means there are now dozens, if not hundreds, of types of influencers, all fighting for the attention of consumers and keeping online censors on their toes.

Below are just three recent examples of innovative influencers in China, whose crafty content strategies are testing the limits of the wealth-flaunting crackdown:

The Buddhist Socialite ()

Buddhist Socialites have attracted particular ire from censors, since commercial advertising using religion is illegal in China. Image: Weibo

Almost exclusively made up of young women, the appearance of the Buddhist Socialite influencer in recent months was marked by content that often showcased activities at Buddhist temples praying, eating vegetarian meals, or transcribing religious texts. All common practices, none of which are the target of Chinas content crackdown. However, where the Buddhist Socialite attracts the ire of censors is in her often prominently featured luxury apparel and accessories and elaborate makeup which they typically offer for sale via e-commerce livestreaming or other online channels.The Patient KOL ()

Patient KOLs often appear in hospital beds in full make-up. Image: Weibo

This highly niche group claims to be hospitalized for medical treatment yet manages to find the time to share recommendations for beauty and wellness products. Often, Patient KOLs tell their audience they have just undergone a procedure such as major surgery that left scars on their skin that they successfully treated with various products (which theyre happy to recommend or sell via e-commerce livestreaming, of course). One distinguishing factor about this type of influencer is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain whether he or she had a genuine illness or medical procedure.

In one case, a female Weibo user responded with lawsuit against media reports that named and shamed her as a Patient KOL, claiming that she had a thyroid procedure and did not promote any healthcare product for profit. Nevertheless, the fact that short video platform Kuaishou has reportedly removed more than 100 videos from Patient KOLs speaks to their prevalence.

The Volunteer Teacher KOL ()

Altruism or opportunism? Image: ce.cn

The latest secret influencer controversy surrounds the founder of a charity organization that organizes volunteer teachers to assist young students in remote, mountainous areas. Catapulted to internet fame by post in September that praised her as the prettiest volunteer teacher in China, who had helped over 2,000 students over ten years in 24 different schools, skepticism soon emerged. How, some asked, could the young lady volunteer for an entire decade, given she claimed to hold degrees from overseas institutions, and how was she able to maintain such an impeccable appearance on-camera without a professional photography team?

Soon, it was revealed that the individual only volunteered for short periods during her summer breaks, and that her organization charged around RMB 5,000 ($775) for volunteer trips that consisted of only seven classes in two days but offered volunteer certificates and multiple souvenirs. Some viewers were quick to saythat the trips expensive accommodation and the flashy apparel and accessories shown off by those taking part in the volunteer trips did more harm than good to the children they are supposed to help.

These new types of undercover influencers have emerged in response to the governments crackdowns on ostentatious displays of wealth. The most recent of these campaigns which do appear with some frequency launched in May, when the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued a series of policies designed to curb overt displays of extravagant lifestyles through measures such as blacklisting andcontentfiltering, which have been taken up by social platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu.

By selecting themes that appear, at first glance, to be altruistic and far removed from the usual fashion-influencer content, this new spate of KOLs hoped to stay under the radar. However, Chinese state-run media quickly caught on and condemned their behavior. One state media op-ed accusedBuddhist Socialite influencers of stoking materialism while compromising the integrity of temples, while also noting thatcommercialadvertising using religion is illegal in China. Likewise, Patient KOLs have been criticized for corrupting the sacredness of hospitals and the healthcare profession and potentially engaging in fraudulent advertising. Another Xinhua Daily op-ed criticized the phenomenon of volunteer teaching for show and called for moral condemnation and legal action against exploiting volunteering opportunities to generate traffic and profit. For their parts, short video platform Douyin and lifestyle platform Xiaoghongshu have penalized dozens of accounts and removed their objectionablecontent.With Xis common prosperity becoming a central concept in recent government action, any public displays of wealth, whether obvious or subtle, are likely to come under greater scrutiny in the run-up to next years National Congress. But its not just government censors on the lookout for this type of content. Major social platforms are also stepping up their scrutiny of sneaky KOLs, having pledged to promote core socialist values. Although the KOLs who most recently came under fire were not directly sponsored by brands, their experiences offer a cautionary tale for luxury brands engaged in influencer marketing in China: simply switching to influencers previously not associated with excessive wealth might come along with its own problems if the crackdown continues to spread and intensify.

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Undercover Influencers Test the Patience of China's Censors - Jing Daily