“On June 4, the 37th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, internet users across China reported intensified online censorship, including tighter controls by social media platforms and messaging groups on content related — directly or indirectly — to the date.”
Thus begins a June 6 article from The Epoch Times. Quoted here apropos of Paul Jacob’s June 5 article, “The Nerve of Some People.”
The Epoch Times based its reporting on tips from “netiziens” (which is a not-so-common term for “citizens of the Internet”) who told the paper of “not only explicit references to the 1989 massacre, but also indirect expressions, numbers, images, and even routine daily posts appeared to be caught in automated filters or subject to account restrictions. Some described the moderation as unusually strict; one user said the surveillance felt “‘almost frenzied.’”
This shows how important public opinion is for even a tyrannical government. It’s not that the government aims to follow public opinion, but that the communists suppress public discussion to tamp down on opinions that might destabilize citizen acquiescence to the regime. “More than three decades after the Tiananmen Square protests,” the report concludes, “in which the communist regime deployed troops to massacre thousands of pro-democracy protesters, discussion of the event remains heavily restricted within China’s online ecosystem.”