The Mechanics of Online Censorship

• Internet 101

  What Even Is the Internet? The internet is not one thing, but rather a “network of networks.” A personal computer in Iowa, for example, does not have a single, dedicated wire physically connecting it to the recipe website Epicurious. Nevertheless, an Iowan (let’s call her Marjorie) can get all the

• Censorship: How China Disrupts the Network

  Network-Level Censorship Chinese authorities have many political, legal, and bureaucratic methods to avoid unwanted information circulating on the country’s domestic internet. They can deny website registration licenses, or mandate that companies such as Apple remove censorship circumvention tools from local app stores. They can also outsource censorship to the online

• Blocking Circumvention Technologies

  China’s censorship system not only targets “dangerous” content, but also targets users’ attempts to evade the system itself. After all, Beijing spends a lot of money and effort to curate the domestic information environment and keep “dangerous” information outside the country’s digital borders. There would be no point to such