2 ms·
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number :> You can literally arbitrarily associate any number to anything and
by GyYZTfWBfQw 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number :>
You can literally arbitrarily associate any number to anything and ban it based on that, which they did:
> In 2012, it was reported that the numbers 89, 6, and 4 each became banned search terms on search engines in China, because of the date (1989-06-04) of the June Fourth Massacre in Tiananmen Square.
> Due to the association with gangs, in 2012 a school district in Colorado banned the wearing of jerseys that bore the numbers 18, 14, or 13 (or the reverse, 81, 41, or 31).
> In 2017, far-right Slovak politician Marian Kotleba was criminally charged for donating 1,488 euro to a charity.
It's closely related to hate speech laws where the only requirement is perceived threat. Fun times. :D
- logfromblammo 8y agoThat's why the Tiananmen Square Maassacre anniversary date is commonly referred to as "May 35th". Banning specific representations of an idea is a game of whack-a-mole. As soon as you ban one symbolic representation, a new one will be created.
- gowld 8y agoThe Chinese government isn't stupid. They do what they do because it works. Even the opposition agrees with this, hence the term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect The website dedicated to the topic of the OP article is even called... http://chillingeffects.org/ http://chillingeffects.org/ (since renamed to https://lumendatabase.org/ https://lumendatabase.org/ )