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Censorship China

A Million-Word Novel Got Censored Before It Was Even Shared (technologyreview.com) 237

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
Imagine you are working on your novel on your home computer. It's nearly finished; you have already written approximately one million words. All of a sudden, the online word processing software tells you that you can no longer open the draft because it contains illegal information. Within an instant, all your words are lost. This is what happened in June to a Chinese novelist writing under the alias Mitu. From a report: She had been working with WPS, a domestic version of cloud-based word processing software such as Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365. In the Chinese literature forum Lkong on June 25, Mitu accused WPS of "spying on and locking my draft," citing the presence of illegal content.

The news blew up on social media on July 11 after a few prominent influencer accounts belatedly picked it up. It became the top trending topic on Weibo that day, with users questioning whether WPS is infringing on their privacy. Since then, The Economic Observer, a Chinese publication, has reported that several other online novelists have had their drafts locked for unclear reasons in the past. Mitu's complaint triggered a social media discussion in China about censorship and tech platform responsibility. It has also highlighted the tension between Chinese users' increasing awareness of privacy and tech companies' obligation to censor on behalf of the government. "This is a case where perhaps we are seeing that these two things indeed might collide," says Tom Nunlist, an analyst on China's cyber and data policy at the Beijing-based research group Trivium China.
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A Million-Word Novel Got Censored Before It Was Even Shared More

A Million-Word Novel Got Censored Before It Was Even Shared

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  • you think that you novel in China is going bypass the govment censorship?? they should be lucky to not be jailed over it's content

    • Re: you think that you novel in China is going byp (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Grokew ( 8384065 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @01:49PM (#62713244)
      Don't worry, we are going on the same direction. Just give It a few election cycles.

      This is sad, and scary

      • Re: you think that you novel in China is going byp (Score:4, Interesting)

        by shanen ( 462549 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @02:12PM (#62713362) Homepage Journal

        Nice FP branch, though it makes the Chinese look so ham-fisted. I think the American approach will be to tie things up with copyright lawsuits. Just claim the "bad" novel is a derivative work that violates someone's copyright. Maybe the biggest future value of copyrights will be in the payments copyright owners can collect for helping to stifle speech the government doesn't like? With a court system like America has now, there's no such thing as a frivolous lawsuit filed by serious people!

        Different angle on the story, but I'm reading an interesting book called Chinese Senior Migrants and the Globalization of Retirement by Nicole Dejong Newendorp. Mostly about old Chinese people who have moved to America, largely for the relative freedom they think they will have in the States, though there are also familial and financial considerations. But the interesting part is their revisionist historical perspective of China under Communist rule. They know how bad things were, they survived some very bad times, but now they mostly "want" to remember the good times and how they were helping to build the economic powerhouse that China has become.

        Gee, I almost wonder if they're afraid of making trouble for their family members who are still back there? Naw, that would be too ham-fisted.

      • Slashdotters say, First crypto, then your book. Be like China.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fazig ( 2909523 )
      Government censorship of publications are one thing. And it's not a good thing.
      Government censorship of thoughts privately put on private "paper" is on another level.

      Because in this case it was a draft that was being written and not something that was being vetted in the process of being published.
      Now I'd say it's the authors fault for not backing up their work using some degree of redundancy. I'd say that it's the authors fault for having used a cloud based word processor in the first place, while there

  • Laughed So Hard (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lsllll ( 830002 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @01:48PM (#62713226)

    with users questioning whether WPS is infringing on their privacy

    I choked on my drink when I read this. Did they really expect privacy while in China, using a Chinese web site? Also, who in their right mind, writes a million words and saves it to the cloud?

    • Re:Laughed So Hard (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Iamthecheese ( 1264298 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @01:58PM (#62713292)
      >who in their right mind, writes a million words and saves it to the cloud?

      There are people all over the world who genuinely believe their authoritarian governments are doing good things and THEY won't be targeted because they're doing nothing wrong. It takes an incredible amount of blatant abuse for public awareness to exceed the "everything is okay" bias. People who try to raise awareness are dismissed as conspiracy theory nutjobs.

      • Re:Laughed So Hard (Score:4, Insightful)

        by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @02:12PM (#62713368) Journal

        Most of the people reading this think that their national government's authoritarian aspirations and actions magically become good every 4-8 years, then horrendous in the other years.

        When a Clinton donor who put an (R) after their name is in the White House, everything the government does is horrible (or wonderful).

        When segregationist who put a (D) after their name moves in, suddenly the action same programs become wonderful (or horrible).

        Most of us are just rooting for a team, for which gang gets to beat us up today.

        • Re:Laughed So Hard (Score:5, Informative)

          by splutty ( 43475 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @02:28PM (#62713426)

          Most of us don't live in the US, and are just enjoying the spectator sport that is US elections.

          Worth it just for the utterly ridiculous advertising.

          • I’m not even religious and I hope to god it keeps being a spectator sport for ya. Unfortunately if the US goes full on fascist it’s going to be the rest of the world that also pays the price. Canada better haul ass on those nuclear weapons.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by splutty ( 43475 )

              I think if there's one legacy Trump left (one he'd probably not be proud of at all), is that it really kicked a lot of countries that more or less coasted along on the US's coat tails in the ass.

              And now they realize they really need to start standing on their own 2 feet (or 2 million feet, or 50 million feet), and disentangle themselves from the US.

              So who knows..

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
          Heh, sadly it's so true. I like the way you framed it.
        • just moderately corrupt. There's a difference there. You'll note that in the General election when Hilary lost she just bowed out. The other guy? Not so much.

          Democrats are more like "eat your vegetables" kind of nagging. But they're not all that interested in seizing and wielding power. Hell, they won't even do away with the filibuster for Christ's sake, and they let McConnell walk all over them.

          They're more like well meaning hobbyists and bored rich people than Authoritarians.

          Now Republicans? T

          • You've managed to hit all the Dem party talking points. Unfortunately, reality exists. Dems are more like "Let us sodomize you with this zucchini." than "eat your vegetables". Forcing people, by nature of birth, to give money to for-profit companies that invented the term "medical bankruptcy" is the height of corruption. Not to mention the billions that are being shoveled to the war profiteers by this and our last Dem POTUS. Then there's the censorship pogroms. Let's not forget the Dems just recently

            • I suppose I can give one, but it's not the Dems, it's our entire system. Specifically we use interest rate hikes to cause layoffs and force workers to spend less to control inflation. We could instead do gov't spending to expand cities and education so that there would be more productivity with the same workforce, and thereby more goods and services. But hey, the Dems have proposed the "Green New Deal" that does just that! Or the scaled done version that is the "Build Back Better" plan. Funny that.

              Meanw

              • We could instead do gov't spending to expand cities and education so that there would be more productivity with the same workforce, and thereby more goods and services.

                You want to tax and spend your way out of inflationâ¦? Thatâ(TM)s like trying to stop the car by slamming the gas pedal to the floor.

                • The phrase tax and spend was given to you by ultra wealthy who ironically typically owe their entire fortunes to government subsidies.

                  Yes if we waste money on bombs to blow up brown people that's just going to cause inflation. Instead what you need to do is invest in the areas that private businesses refuse to invest in while also constraining those private businesses so they don't use illegal tactics to prevent competition.

                  Think about how you and I are communicating right now. Who's actually respon

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by deKernel ( 65640 )

              Both parties are simply awful because they only care about increasing their overall power with like care about how they get it. They promote the ranker and bickering so as to make themselves look as friends with the sole goal of contributions. I do believe that people would actually start talking and discussing topics and ideas like rational adults better if the damn parties just weren't there lighting torches. If I had one dream to come true, it would be that both parties are disbanded and their money push

          • Now Republicans? Those guys know how to grasp and wield power.

            It's impossible to look at Trump and think Republicans know how to grasp or wield power. The whole thing is a clown show.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by deKernel ( 65640 )

            So when the AOC have blatantly admitted to wanting to pack the Supreme Court to get their way...that's not attempting to wield power to get your way as just one of many examples?
            Look, it you simply see the Democrats as nagging parents who only have your best interest in mind simply shows just how naive you are. Just keep hammering back the Kool-Aid.

        • I'm not sure that's really true. In America we don't have a lot of respect for leaders. As you mention, when the other party holds the presidency, we think they are the anti-christ/Hitler.

          We feel better when someone from our own party is in power, but we're still kind of suspicious that they're messing around there somewhere. A lot of dems don't like Biden, they just think he's better than Trump (or Rick Perry).

      • Re:Laughed So Hard (Score:4)

        by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @02:16PM (#62713376)
        Mod parent up, also informs what is happening in Russia right now
      • Looks like some conspiracy theorist nutjobs got modpoints today and modded up their fellow conspiracy theorist here...

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by doug141 ( 863552 )

        Yes, here's another: “I never thought it could happen that officials could use this kind of violent beating against unarmed and defenseless regular people.” “If I hadn’t experienced it myself, I really wouldn’t believe it. When foreign media reported similar incidents in the past, I always thought it was slander,” he said.

        https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )

      Did they really expect privacy while in China, using a Chinese web site?

      The same question can be asked in US when using any big tech cloud product.

    • Re:Laughed So Hard (Score:5, Insightful)

      by narcc ( 412956 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @02:24PM (#62713414) Journal

      People who have not learned the importance of local backups. We've spent years training people to trust infrastructure they have no hope of understanding.

        "Are my pictures on my phone? In the cloud? I don't have to care, and that's great!" are the kinds of things that I've seen on this very website. That's what they're telling their relatives and friends. It's disturbing.

      Apple started this trend where we hide the filesystem from users and Google followed suit. It's bad for users and bad for society, as articles like the above make abundantly clear.

      Take control of your data now. We lied to you. When you put something on the internet, it's not there forever. Print out your pictures, keep local backups of important data. Give up that control at your own peril.

      • Re:Laughed So Hard (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @03:04PM (#62713604)

        We lied to you. When you put something on the internet, it's not there forever.

        I'd say that depends on the "something". Anything illegal, embarrassing, or the product of privacy invasion is probably there forever. Anything you WANT to be there, such as files, pictures, etc, may disappear on a whim.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Did they really expect privacy while in China, using a Chinese web site? Also, who in their right mind, writes a million words and saves it to the cloud?

      First, remember that the Chinese writers don't know any other life. The Chinese are brainwashed into thinking everything the government is good - privacy is something people use to hide criminal plans from each other and such. Talk to any Russian citizen about the "special operations" and they believe Russia is at war with Ukrainian Nazis. Likewise, the Ch

  • Everyone Needs Backups Under Their Direct Control (Score:5, Insightful)

    by careysub ( 976506 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @01:48PM (#62713234)

    I don't trust any system to have the only copy of any important work-product. Certainly not a cloud tool, and certainly not in China (although corporations are hardly saints).

    Although it may not be the most current version, any earlier version is better than no version.

  • Don't keep valuable data online... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bb_matt ( 5705262 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @01:48PM (#62713238)

    How often does this need to be stated until it becomes common knowledge?

    Clearly not often enough - I guess it's only in tech circles where it _is_ common knowledge.

    Solution, OpenOffice and a decent backup solution.

    Keeping your valuable data in the cloud? - that's kinda dumb. Almost like keeping your data on someone else's computer ... oh, wait! /s

    • Ok honest question. What advantage does OpenOffice has over libre office? Cause Last time I checked (long time ago) it was lagging.

      • I think he really meant LibreOffice. People do still tend to say "OpenOffice" even though its Apache incarnation is effectively moribund
          (though not completely dead--it got an update in May), with LibreOffice the only fork getting significant updates.

      • The GP probably meant OpenOffice and its forks, which includes LibreOffice. Since OO was the original, then it becomes the generic catch-all for a fairly well-supported FOSS word processor.
    • *cough* LibreOffice so you're less likely to have your machine owned by the oppressive government instead ðY

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bjwest ( 14070 )

      How often does this need to be stated until it becomes common knowledge?

      People have been warned since the mid 90s or so about phishing and clicking email links without knowing where they lead, and it still happens, even with the "tech-savvy" youth, to this day. No amount of warning or education can penetrate the willing ignorance of some people, and there comes a time when you have to just give up trying. Let those that ignore the issues, fall victim to those issues and move on with your day.

  • For reference (Score:3)

    by r2kordmaa ( 1163933 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @01:50PM (#62713252)
    A million words is a right proper doorstopper, for comparison the entire harry potter series is about million words.

    • The effect that online connectivity and patronage has had on literature is actually pretty interesting. The need for editing solely for length is effectively nonexistent which means that if a writer can keep things coherent and engaging an entire chapter can be the length of a long novella.

      • Re:For reference (Score:5, Insightful)

        by taustin ( 171655 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @06:33PM (#62714242) Homepage Journal

        Unfortunately, virtually no writer - even long established professionals - can "keep things coherent and engaging" for normal length chapters, much less million word monsters, without the services of an editor.

        Sadly, the more successful a writer is, the harder it is for editors to edit them. Go compare David Weber's early work, thoroughly edited and tightened up, with his later, stream of consciousness infodumps that are longer than most novels.

    • Maybe they should have said she allegedly wrote a million words, because thereâ(TM)s no proof she wrote a single sentence. I had a billion word book erased in China as well!

      • It's not that unbelievable, a lot of people write as a hobby. Most keep their works significantly lighter than million words, but works that long or longer are written every now and then. All sorts of "computer ate my homework" problems are also common. Really the only outstanding part is that it was automatic censorship that did it.

    • I feel bad for the guy, losing all those words. But a novel that takes that many words to write, probably isn't worth reading.

  • So show of hands... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @01:58PM (#62713298)

    Who here does not think Google is scanning every document you store with them, much less ones you write using Google Docs...

    The only thing different is the censorship but that's honestly pretty close at hand.

    Write stuff using a local app, keep copies if you care about contents.

  • The future if we users of technology aren't careful. When politicians ban a word, phrase, then the online software will be waiting and watching. One reason I don't care for online cloud services, and prefer to have the text editor local on my machine. Moving to the cloud is moving toward a central control.

    And, one-million words, wow that's not a novel that's one massive tome of a book, or book series, a trilogy of trilogies...

    Josh K.

    • Given their propensity to wildly exaggerate things, I'd say 100K words is the true count.

      • Given their propensity to wildly exaggerate things, I'd say 100K words is the true count.

        Indeed. Reminds me of typing class where a word was always four characters. Or a page in writing is 250-words, but now with ebooks that's a new twist on a page. That might be a new law, for a million-words take the square root.

        JoshK.

  • I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

    I don't buy the idea that the Chinese people LOVE their totalitarian overlords. They hate it, but the know that without help from overseas it will be neigh-impossible to overthrow them. The fact that we actively bankroll their masters via our imports is both counterproductive and demoralizing to freedom-loving Chinese people.

  • For her own good. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by clovis ( 4684 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @02:03PM (#62713322)

    The monitoring software deleted her illegal words so she was saved from going to prison.
    What's even worse, she might have brought shame to her family, her community, and frankly, we the Slashdot community, who acts as a consumer of bad thoughts.
    Thank you guardian angel software.

  • "All of a sudden, the online word processing software..."

    I am simply gobsmacked that someone would entrust their magnum opus to the f**king cloud, in any country, much less China.

    I wonder what got the attention of the censors.

  • Take a lesson (Score:5, Informative)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @02:06PM (#62713336) Homepage Journal

    yes, this happened in China this time, but the rest of us (especially in the U.S.) should take a lesson from it. DO NOT RELY ON THE CLOUD, keep your data AND the ability to use it local. Allow no part of it to depend on the cloud, including phoning home for a licence check. Also including mandatory "updates" over the net that allow the deal to be altered without notice or recourse.

    Today it's a million word novel in China, tomorrow perhaps an opinion piece on the morals of people who think it's OK to force a 10 year old to carry a rape baby.

  • I learned years ago never to put too much work into a post on any online service without making a copy to the side before hitting 'submit.'

    • If you use the classic view around here then when you back button in FF the contents of the form are still there. But there was a period when Slashdot was super flaky, and I copied every long comment into a text editor before hitting the button.

  • I want a recount in English (Score:3)

    by DarkRookie2 ( 5551422 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @02:30PM (#62713436)
    It is 1,000,000 words?
    Or is 1,000,000 characters.

    • There's less difference in written Chinese than in written English. Where it is standard in English to count five characters as a word, in Chinese a word is somewhere around two characters (one of the advantages of having a character set that numbers in the thousands). Even if it's English and characters, that's still 200,000 words, which makes for something on the order of a 700-page doorstopper. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was 190,637 words and one paperback edition I found in Amazon was 752 p

      • So not as crazy as it seems.
        700 pages is a Saturday. Harry Potter would be done in 4-6 hours.

        • A word count of over 110,000 for a fiction novel is generally considered too long; you'd have to have some special selling point to get a publisher to pick it up (with 50,000 the minimum--under that is a novella or some even shorter format). Goblet of Fire, of course, was a Harry Potter book produced after Harry Potter became a sensation; of course the publisher was going to take it. Philosopher's Stone was 76,944 words.

  • "Cloud" (Score:3)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @02:33PM (#62713446) Journal

    "Cloud" = "someone else's computer".

    In China, "someone else"always = "the glorious Party".

  • In soviet China (Score:3)

    by nhtshot ( 198470 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @03:06PM (#62713612)

    Word processor really does process your words.

  • DO NOT save your private work on the cloud. Your laptop is more than capable of storage.

  • "There is no cloud. It's just someone else's computer".

    Someone else who can take your data away whenever they like.

  • Cloud (Score:2)

    by tsqr ( 808554 )

    cloud-based word processing software

    Using cloud-based word processing software while living in a totalitarian regime? She's lucky her novel was the only thing she lost.

  • "All of a sudden, the }}}online word processing{{{ software tells you that you can no longer open the draft because it contains illegal information. Within an instant, all your words are lost. "

    THIS! And this will also happen in America, it's only a matter of time.

    Also, I'm not going to try to speculate too hard on why this guy would depend entirely on a cloud word processor in a place like China. Not even a copy/paste local backup?

  • Sure it wasn't just a buffer overflow? Maybe the censorship software spent too long scanning and gave up...

  • See if the author was using latex on the local computer and back it up on a usb disk...it would be safe and no word stealing !

  • I write for fun. I keep multiple copies. One on the internet and one downloded every couple of chapters on to my home computer, in txt format.

    Frankly, you should never keep just one copy, and one copy should be in txt so that it will always be readable. Formats die. Home computers get thrown away, the internet erases stuff.

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