Week 11

Censorship and privacy are definitely very important aspects of the Internet culture. However, sometimes censorship can be rather silly or manipulative, and privacy sometimes turns out to be a well-disguised opposite.

China is one of the leading countries that censors both what is needed to be censored and what is not. One of the bright examples of online censorship in China is the fact that you cannot google “big yellow duck”. It is made after some pranksters edited a famous photo of Tiananmen Square, and changed tanks there for huge yellow ducks. But I find another example a bit more interesting. As conflicts between Taiwan and China are constant, the Chinese government decided to make an illusion of their win over the Taiwanese independence. It appears if you try to google “Taiwan Visa” in China, you won’t get any results covering it. On the contrary, googling it outside China takes you right to the topic. If you dig a bit into that conflict, you will find out that China does not recognize Taiwan as a separate country, and tries to convince in its position both Taiwanese and Chinese at all costs. It is a simple manipulation and propaganda, and censorship in such cases does not work as a safety method.

When it comes to privacy, cookies are one of the things that come to my mind, and which bug a lot of people. Ironically, in most cases, when you see the banner on the website, which suggests you accept cookies, the biggest slogan there is “We value your privacy”. Here works the rule “Privacy or comfort” - you either want to get to the information faster and click the glowing “Accept all cookies” button, or are persuaded to dig into settings and spend several minutes making the website not collect your personal data. An average user won’t do that, and therefore, they sell their privacy for instant access to the information. In most cases, your data will be used for contextual advertising, but do you actually read which data a website may collect, and are you always sure it won’t be used for other purposes?

Theoretically, privacy and censorship work for safety, and it works in most cases. But they also should be treated with awareness, and sometimes it is safer to get to know all the aspects before accepting such methods.