Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Measuring Decentralization Of Chinese Censorship In Three Industry Segments, Jeffrey Knockel

Computer Science ETDs

What is forbidden to talk about using Chinese apps? Companies operating in China face a complex array of regulations and are liable for content voiced using their platforms. Previous work studying Chinese censorship uses (1) sample testing or (2) measures content deletion; however, these techniques produce an incomplete picture biased toward (1) the tested samples or (2) whichever topics were trending.

In this dissertation, I use reverse engineering to study the code that applications use to determine whether to censor content. In doing so, I can provide a more complete and unbiased view of Chinese Internet censorship. I reverse engineer …