5 ms·

It's probably basic stuff that has to be in most Chinese apps, but I found the list of illegal words really interesting: https://github.com/jonathandata1/2022_

by elaus 5y ago

It's probably basic stuff that has to be in most Chinese apps, but I found the list of illegal words really interesting: https://github.com/jonathandata1/2022_beijing/blob/main/illegal_words_translated/illegalwords.zh-CN.en.txt https://github.com/jonathandata1/2022_beijing/blob/main/ille... It's a mixture of spam filtering ("... for sale", gambling, drugs/weapons) and swearwords, that you'd expect to find in western apps as well. But there are also a lot of phrases about the CCP, dissidents and Tibet/Taiwan.

mads 5y ago
And stuff like "Eighty-eight bloody cases" and "CIBS overseas immigration investment". I really wonder how they ended up there and the story behind.
- MagnumOpus 5y ago
  There is also an entry for "88 event", the "eighty-eight bloody cases" are almost certainly related to censoring that. I am not familiar with any famous event -- I wonder if it relates to the 8888 uprising in Myanmar where the Burmese rose up against their communist totalitarian dictatorship (and were slaughtered in the thousands, natch). No idea about the second one - but every single major mainland Chinese politician and ministry is on the list too, so it is probably just yet another political topic they want to monitor/suppress...
  - genwhsbvce 5y ago
    The last time I looked at this sort of thing it was claimed that a Chinese phone manufacturer had spying and censorship functionality on a phone that turned out to be part of its ad network. Specifically the phone manufacturer had an ad network that ran inside of certain applications on the phone that they sold access to and they didn't know server-side what an affiliates advertisement was going to be, so they implemented client-side filtering of the advertisements to prevent things like porn adverts and so forth. Looking through this list, I'm fairly certain that this is something like that because it also includes a bunch of Chinese government entity names that clearly would not be censored in China and also includes a lot of terms relating to pornography. So the round about point is "88 event" likely refers to a specific string in an advertisment that was once loaded by an affiliate and found to be undesirable for one reason or another and not any sort of specifically political event or similar.
kwertzzz 5y ago
It also includes "Der Spiegel", a German newspaper (one of the most influential one in Germany). https://github.com/jonathandata1/2022_beijing/blob/main/illegal_words_translated/illegalwords.zh-CN.en.txt#L1003 https://github.com/jonathandata1/2022_beijing/blob/main/ille...
- yorwba 5y ago
  It doesn't, actually. The original Chinese https://github.com/jonathandata1/2022_beijing/blob/6bcb2cc48501dc863fd526bff7ec79640e0aec66/android/raw/assets/illegalwords.txt#L1003 https://github.com/jonathandata1/2022_beijing/blob/6bcb2cc48... is 明镜网 and it's only translated as "Der Spiegel" because the Chinese news website https://www.mingjingnews.com/ https://www.mingjingnews.com/ is less famous than the German newspaper.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kwertzzz 5y ago
    I stand corrected. Thanks!
londons_explore 5y ago
Looks auto-translated. I'd guess the original Chinese wordlist contained more nuance.
andrewinardeer 5y ago
Rape for sale Rape Drugs Rape Pill Monopoly Rape Perfume For Sale Some on the list
sp1rit 5y ago
line 559 > China has no freedom of speech whoever wrote that into "illegalwords.zh-CN.en.txt" must have been aware of the irony...
- itsthecourier 5y ago
vertis 5y ago
I read that list and thought that if you remove the stuff that they specifically want to censor like 'Tiananmen Square 1989' it's probably a really useful list of things to filter for anti-spam.
- genwhsbvce 5y ago
  The last time I looked at this sort of thing it was claimed that a Chinese phone manufacturer had spying and censorship functionality on a phone that turned out to be part of its ad network. Specifically the phone manufacturer had an ad network that ran inside of certain applications on the phone that they sold access to and they didn't know server-side what an affiliates advertisement was going to be, so they implemented client-side filtering of the advertisements to prevent things like porn adverts and so forth. Looking through this list, I'm fairly certain that this is something like that because it also includes a bunch of Chinese government entity names that clearly would not be censored in China and also includes a lot of terms relating to pornography.
realSaddy 5y ago
"DIY Atomic Bomb Tutorial"
genwhsbvce 5y ago
It's pretty likely this isn't a ban list at all in the traditional sense but rather something more like the recent phone debacle which turned out to be a case where the chinese phone manufacturer also ran an ad network and the way its affiliates program was structured it didn't actually know what advertisement it was displaying on the server side, so it included functionality to inhibit undesirable advertisements-- which is pretty standard form. As a result, while the publicised list included things that the CPC may seek to censor, the full list showed that it was mostly porn filtering and similar and included blocks for advertisements from the CPCs main newspaper (people's daily). Briefly looking through the illegal words list, it looks very much the same and also includes a wide range of Chinese government entities and so its likely not censorship functionality in the way you'd expect but more likely things the company would prefer not to advertise to users. I've asked the original poster for more information, specifically for which classes contain the functionality he suspects but have gotten no response-- my suspicion is that he just read the strings of the program and made some assumptions, e.g. "monitor thread" probably doesn't mean what he thinks it does but I can't discern because I can't get a clear statement about what he thinks just screenshots with red arrows and him pointing to a decompiled application telling me to read it without referencing what exactly inside contains the suspect functionality.

by elaus 5y ago

mads 5y ago

And stuff like "Eighty-eight bloody cases" and "CIBS overseas immigration investment". I really wonder how they ended up there and the story behind.

MagnumOpus 5y ago
There is also an entry for "88 event", the "eighty-eight bloody cases" are almost certainly related to censoring that. I am not familiar with any famous event -- I wonder if it relates to the 8888 uprising in Myanmar where the Burmese rose up against their communist totalitarian dictatorship (and were slaughtered in the thousands, natch). No idea about the second one - but every single major mainland Chinese politician and ministry is on the list too, so it is probably just yet another political topic they want to monitor/suppress...
- genwhsbvce 5y ago
  The last time I looked at this sort of thing it was claimed that a Chinese phone manufacturer had spying and censorship functionality on a phone that turned out to be part of its ad network. Specifically the phone manufacturer had an ad network that ran inside of certain applications on the phone that they sold access to and they didn't know server-side what an affiliates advertisement was going to be, so they implemented client-side filtering of the advertisements to prevent things like porn adverts and so forth. Looking through this list, I'm fairly certain that this is something like that because it also includes a bunch of Chinese government entity names that clearly would not be censored in China and also includes a lot of terms relating to pornography. So the round about point is "88 event" likely refers to a specific string in an advertisment that was once loaded by an affiliate and found to be undesirable for one reason or another and not any sort of specifically political event or similar.

kwertzzz 5y ago

It also includes "Der Spiegel", a German newspaper (one of the most influential one in Germany). https://github.com/jonathandata1/2022_beijing/blob/main/illegal_words_translated/illegalwords.zh-CN.en.txt#L1003 https://github.com/jonathandata1/2022_beijing/blob/main/ille...

yorwba 5y ago
It doesn't, actually. The original Chinese https://github.com/jonathandata1/2022_beijing/blob/6bcb2cc48501dc863fd526bff7ec79640e0aec66/android/raw/assets/illegalwords.txt#L1003 https://github.com/jonathandata1/2022_beijing/blob/6bcb2cc48... is 明镜网 and it's only translated as "Der Spiegel" because the Chinese news website https://www.mingjingnews.com/ https://www.mingjingnews.com/ is less famous than the German newspaper.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kwertzzz 5y ago
  I stand corrected. Thanks!

londons_explore 5y ago

Looks auto-translated. I'd guess the original Chinese wordlist contained more nuance.

andrewinardeer 5y ago

Rape for sale Rape Drugs Rape Pill Monopoly Rape Perfume For Sale Some on the list

sp1rit 5y ago

line 559 > China has no freedom of speech whoever wrote that into "illegalwords.zh-CN.en.txt" must have been aware of the irony...

itsthecourier 5y ago

vertis 5y ago

I read that list and thought that if you remove the stuff that they specifically want to censor like 'Tiananmen Square 1989' it's probably a really useful list of things to filter for anti-spam.

genwhsbvce 5y ago
The last time I looked at this sort of thing it was claimed that a Chinese phone manufacturer had spying and censorship functionality on a phone that turned out to be part of its ad network. Specifically the phone manufacturer had an ad network that ran inside of certain applications on the phone that they sold access to and they didn't know server-side what an affiliates advertisement was going to be, so they implemented client-side filtering of the advertisements to prevent things like porn adverts and so forth. Looking through this list, I'm fairly certain that this is something like that because it also includes a bunch of Chinese government entity names that clearly would not be censored in China and also includes a lot of terms relating to pornography.

realSaddy 5y ago

"DIY Atomic Bomb Tutorial"

genwhsbvce 5y ago

It's pretty likely this isn't a ban list at all in the traditional sense but rather something more like the recent phone debacle which turned out to be a case where the chinese phone manufacturer also ran an ad network and the way its affiliates program was structured it didn't actually know what advertisement it was displaying on the server side, so it included functionality to inhibit undesirable advertisements-- which is pretty standard form. As a result, while the publicised list included things that the CPC may seek to censor, the full list showed that it was mostly porn filtering and similar and included blocks for advertisements from the CPCs main newspaper (people's daily). Briefly looking through the illegal words list, it looks very much the same and also includes a wide range of Chinese government entities and so its likely not censorship functionality in the way you'd expect but more likely things the company would prefer not to advertise to users. I've asked the original poster for more information, specifically for which classes contain the functionality he suspects but have gotten no response-- my suspicion is that he just read the strings of the program and made some assumptions, e.g. "monitor thread" probably doesn't mean what he thinks it does but I can't discern because I can't get a clear statement about what he thinks just screenshots with red arrows and him pointing to a decompiled application telling me to read it without referencing what exactly inside contains the suspect functionality.