As China’s Internet Disappears, ‘We Lose Parts of Our Collective Memory’
www.nytimes.com
The number of Chinese websites is shrinking and posts are being removed and censored, stoking fears about what happens when history is erased.

The number of Chinese websites is shrinking and posts are being removed and censored, stoking fears about what happens when history is erased.

Chinese people know their country’s internet is different. There is no Google, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. They use euphemisms online to communicate the things they are not supposed to mention. When their posts and accounts are censored, they accept it with resignation.

They live in a parallel online universe. They know it and even joke about it.

Now they are discovering that, beneath a facade bustling with short videos, livestreaming and e-commerce, their internet — and collective online memory — is disappearing in chunks.

A post on WeChat on May 22 that was widely shared reported that nearly all information posted on Chinese news portals, blogs, forums, social media sites between 1995 and 2005 was no longer available.

“The Chinese internet is collapsing at an accelerating pace,” the headline said. Predictably, the post itself was soon censored.

Non-paywall link

  • anticolonialist@lemmy.worldEnglish
    610·
    6 months ago

    I’ve got dead links/ bookmarks to pages from the hill, Wall Street journal, the guardian, and several other still functioning websites where information has been selectively censored or removed. And is not specifically an age thing, I have some bookmarks that are older than the dead links that are still functional on those same websites

    • Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.worldEnglish
      103·
      6 months ago

      The massive difference is that even if that’s true, it’d be on the corporations deciding to change narrative independently, not being forced to by the government.

      Outlets like the Guardian are certainly willing to piss off the U.S. government, they were literally one of the publishers of the Snowden files.

      • bc93@lemmy.worldEnglish
        45·
        6 months ago

        The difference is only in the actor behind it - in China, it’s an authoritarian government. In the US, the government is just a figurehead for the wealthy elite.

        • Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.worldEnglish
          84·
          6 months ago

          In the US, the government is just a figurehead for the wealthy elite.

          Odd that the country supposedly being ran by a figurehead for wealthy elites is infinitely better to live in for working class people, than the supposedly completely working class inspired “socialist” country.

          You never found it weird that the Chinese government cracks down harder on independent trade unionists than actual capitalists do here?

      • beardown@lemm.eeEnglish
        12·
        6 months ago

        it’d be on the corporations deciding to change narrative independently, not being forced to by the government.

        That is incredibly naive

        • Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          Yeah? Then give me evidence of a large campaign by the U.S government to force companies to change media narrative in the past 2 decades.

          Every time I’ve seen anything even close, the media companies have screamed bloody murder.

    • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      Were those links killed because of archieving or website changes? Cause ive encountered that in the past with random shit, using links on the nexus mod pages for example has a pretty good chance to be a dead link since nexus migrated their site some years ago. I can easily see a scenario where ya may kill certain pages and transfer the story to an archieve instead, especially if the title may be reused or something similar. “3 killed in fatal car crash on the 15” aint exactly a unique headline for example.