Why do censors censor? We don’t seem to learn exactly why from the translated excepts that China Digital Times has published of an interview with a censor who works for “one of Chinas biggest search engines.” Unless the fact that the job pays the bills is sufficient explanation. But we learn a few things.
“It is rare for a censorship worker to speak so openly, even though China’s internet giants employ tens of thousands of them,” CDT editor Alexander Boyd notes. “ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, employs over 100,000 people, 20% of whom work as censors. At Bilibili, a YouTube-style video sharing site, the percentage of employees that work in censorship is 27%” (“Interview With Gen Z Chinese Censor,” China Digital Times, October 18, 2024)
The interview originally appeared on Substack in a Chinese-language publication called Mang Mang.
The criteria for censoring political content
“Whatever [domestic media] aren’t allowed to report on, we’re not allowed to let pass. The most obvious examples are content related to senior political officials and their family members, or to darker episodes in Communist Party history. We’re mandated to delete all of those. Also, every year around June 4 [the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre], many people post content about it, all of which we must censor. As June 4 approaches, we even have to pull overtime just to handle all the work….
“As soon as those dates [June 4 and October 1] come up, there are always people who, for some reason, try to stir the public’s memory. As soon as the date draws near, they love to post about it…. Usually, it’s ‘Let them post first; we’ll censor later.’ But around sensitive dates it’s ‘Censor first.’ ”
The process for shutting down accounts
“There is no process. If I feel that an account has published something problematic, I can just shut it down. Afterwards, I pass a list of those suspended accounts to my supervisors at our contracting company.”
Mentioning the People’s Liberation Army
“Around sensitive dates, it is completely forbidden—even comments praising the government and the PLA for restoring order are verboten. The point of this censorship is not to channel public opinion in a certain direction. Whether it’s positive or negative is beside the point. The point is for censors to delete all evidence of an event in the hopes that the public will completely forget about it.”
On whether the interviewee’s only motive is to make money
“Yup. I’ve never felt guilty. It’s just a job. And if I’m going to do it, I should do it well….
“[T]the only pressure from my job comes from worrying about mistakes. I’m very afraid of making a mistake, which is to say I’m afraid of not censoring bad content. As far as I can tell, none of my coworkers have any negative feelings either. Nobody cares about politics. These topics aren’t related to our daily lives. One of my colleagues is actually Mao Zedong’s biggest fan. Many see themselves as helping the nation avoid chaos and avoid societal instability. From that perspective, how could we feel pessimistic or worried about politics?”
Feeling guilt
Despite the interviewee’s statement that “I’ve never felt guilty” and that the possibility of making a mistake is the only source of pressure, it emerges that the necessity of censoring content on some topics has in fact made him or her feel guilty: for example, censoring posts about COVID-19 and the Zhengzhou floods, and “a piece called ‘Ten Days in Chang’an’…. Deleting those made me feel very guilty.”
The year 2021 was a rough one. “I really wanted to leave the company and never work as a political censor again. But I couldn’t find any good opportunities. I feel conflicted about working as a political censor: it’s familiar work that keeps me fed, but on the other hand, it’s…painful….”
Just following orders
Yet: “I reject the moral judgements made about my job…. Why is criticism always heaped on those of us at the bottom? Instead, the question ought to be: Who created the position of censor? We’re just workers, after all. The problem isn’t the job; it’s the people who created this job. Critics should aim their barbs at the source of the problem, not at workers like us, who are just carrying out orders. Cogs in the machine are replaceable—if it weren’t us, they’d just find someone else to do the work.”
