The Information Curtain

Once you go down the road of censorship, you open yourself up to the paradoxical and the ridiculous.

Censorship Isn't Just The News .....

The UK for example has the quango that deals with complaints about advertising content, known as the Advertising Standards Authority, it generally deals with misleading content in adverts across al media streams. They are not that intrusive but in my opinion do over react to the smallest number of complaints, when compared to the millions who weren't offended. Generally complaints are that a product advert is offensive or misleading, or both.

For instance, the Facebook Superdry campaign featuring a parkour runner was pulled for just one complaint (out of millions who saw the advert), that it was irresponsible. However, to be fair despite this criticism, the members of the board generally show common sense despite my feeling that there should be a threshold of complaints before any action can even be considered. e.g. at least 500.

But in hard-line Islamic states, the line between common sense and justifiable censorship (by their blinkered lights), becomes increasingly blurred. So for example, Iran has become increasingly erratic in what is censored and what is not .... we recently saw the footballer who was banned from TV because of his long hair. Then there was the censoring of Michelle Obama's, and other western women's necklines, the world cup crowd scenes involving women, as well as decrees against Mullets and other strange items.

The latest of these really saddo decisions to come to light, has been, buffaloes backsides, which apparently one censor considered 'arousing' when seen coming out of a waterholes (all that dripping water, swaying hips and little tight hole was too much for his fevered imagination one assumes).  The badge of Italian football club Roma was recently censored by blurring because it shows a wolf suckling two infants (Romulus and Remus). And only this week in fact, it was reported that two stage artists (theatre director Maryam Kazemi, and theatre manager Saeed Assadi), have been arrested by Iranian police for releasing a trailer on Social Media for their production of  Shakespeare's 'A Midsummers Night Dream'.

The crime? The clip showed male and female actors dancing together, which are two offences (mixing genders, and women dancing in public), and so although the filmed trailer was on social media, the censors stepped in .... both were released on bail. In the past women's ears (when seen under a tight head-covering), and the top half of Reza Shah Pahlavi, the country's former ruler's torso are also censored. In the case of the late Shah, only the uniform should be seen .... the reason the picture has to be there in the first place is to ensure that no one thinks that any satirical comment are referring in anyway to the current regime!     

Now of course its not just the Islamic states who go to such ridiculous extremes ..... communist states and other dictatorships, will often go to similar extremes (although not necessarily over a woman's ears, or a cows backside).  North Koreans are often described as the most censored population in the world, partly because even access to the internet, or non state controlled media, is strictly forbidden - of course people will risk imprisonment to get round the restrictions - illegal Chinese simcards in smart phones near the border being one method.

China has similar censorship issues with subjects such as Tibet or homosexuality ..... during the first semi-final of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest, Chinese broadcaster Mango TV, edited out footage when it blurred rainbow flags and removed some entries altogether .... for instance Irish singer Ryan O'Shaughnessy's performance was not aired at all (screen was simply blanked), because it featured two male dancers enacting a gay love story. While Albania's entry was also removed because some of its performers had tattoos ....

TV censorship in China broadly falls into two categories: where sensitive images are blurred over, or the whole screen is completely blacked out. Not exactly subtle .... recent subjects for these restrictions have included Sino-Korean boyband EXO (faces blurred), the blurring over of any Taiwanese flags, blocking of international TV bulletins, numerous TV reports about Hong Kong politics such as the 2014 Hong Kong protests, anything relating to the 1989 Tian'anmen Square massacre .... even the innocuous girl singer Katy Perry, who notably had her Chinese visa rejected for the Victoria's Secret show. On-line spectators suspected that this was because she wore a sunflower dress at a 2015 Taiwan concert - seen as a support for Taiwan.  By god, even Peppa Pig has been subjected to censorship, after the cartoon character was accused by state media of being used subversively.

Similarly China's news and search engine result content is still heavily censored, by what's known as the Great firewall of China which forms an Internet Curtain around the country. But again, people can circumnavigate the system if they want to .... and that's the interesting thing. Its not apparent that many people are really not that bothered by censorship. Its a case of you don't miss what you didn't use.

There are of course those who are social media techno savvy individuals, for whom state censorship is oppressive ... but for the ordinary  Chinese man or woman in the street .... well they know no different, and have now grown up in a wholly Chinese universe as far as the Internet is concerned.

Information Curtain Falling Over The World .....

The Chinese alternatives (copied/stolen) to Facebook, Google, Twitter etc, all come with a heavy dose of state censorship on the results that can be returned, and uses the platforms can be put to. So Chinese users don't know, or seemingly care that they have been spoon fed a diet of Chinese nationalism, and communist propaganda .... the only items that the authorities are struggling to control are memes, which as JPEGs or GIFS are impossible to read as content by automated methods.

Now in the ordinary way of things, maybe this wouldn't matter too much, as in the long run the only society hurt by censorship of ideas, are those doing the censoring ...... but in a disturbing trend, China is now exporting its model of a censored Internet to other countries, including Vietnam, Tanzania and Ethiopia.

So is a new 'Information Curtain' about to descend across the globe (replacing the defunct 'Iron curtain'?), with the largely free western model of the Internet, competing against a communist model across the planet?

One can already guess which model will be popular across the Far Eastern and Islamic worlds. African states may also be attracted to the communist Chinese version of the Internet, as well as South American states such as Venezuela .... we could be in for another long battle for hearts and minds, and its not one that we are necessarily going to win.