It’s the most sensitive day of the year for China’s internet, the anniversary of the bloody June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square and with under two weeks to go, China’s robot censors are working overtime. Censors at Chinese internet companies say tools to detect and block content related to the 1989 crackdown have reached unprecedented levels of accuracy, aided by machine learning and voice and image recognition.
“We sometimes say that the artificial intelligence is a scalpel and a human is a machete,” said one content screening employee at Beijing Bytedance, who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to media. Two employees at the firm said censorship of the Tiananmen crackdown, along with other highly sensitive issues including Taiwan and Tibet, is now largely automated. Posts that allude to dates, images, and names associated with the protests are automatically rejected.
“When I first began this kind of work four years ago there was an opportunity to remove the images of Tiananmen, but now the artificial intelligence is very accurate,” one of the people said. Four sensors, working across Bytedance, Weibo and Baidu apps said they censor between 5,000-10,000 pieces of information a day, or five to seven pieces a minute, most of which they said were pornographic or violent content.
“We sometimes say that the artificial intelligence is a scalpel and a human is a machete,” said one content screening employee at Beijing Bytedance, who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to media. Two employees at the firm said censorship of the Tiananmen crackdown, along with other highly sensitive issues including Taiwan and Tibet, is now largely automated. Posts that allude to dates, images, and names associated with the protests are automatically rejected.
“When I first began this kind of work four years ago there was an opportunity to remove the images of Tiananmen, but now the artificial intelligence is very accurate,” one of the people said. Four sensors, working across Bytedance, Weibo and Baidu apps said they censor between 5,000-10,000 pieces of information a day, or five to seven pieces a minute, most of which they said were pornographic or violent content.
