A new interactive report entitled “Harmonized Histories” sheds light on online censorship in China. The Net Alert, a collaborative tech savvy project, produced the report which describes increased restrictions placed on popular live streaming Chinese platforms such as YY, Sina Show, and 9158. These companies maintain “24-hour surveillance on content” in order to adhere to the country’s vaguely defined – yet stringently enforced – government regulations. Chat conversations are monitored by the companies through a keyword filtering system that tracks a list of censored keywords, many of which relate to collective action and criticism of the government. All three platforms were found to be censoring information about Tiananmen Square, the sentencing of a former political leader Zhou Yongkang, and the Hague Verdict on the South China Sea arbitration.

The Chinese government is highly reactive to individuals posting online about Tiananmen Square. Last May, Chinese authorities detained ten Chinese activists calling for commemoration of the event. According to Freedom House’s new Freedom on the Net report, “discussion on the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square is censored so comprehensively that internet users in mid-2015 reported being unable to make online financial transfers in denominations of 6 or 4, numbers which connote the crackdown’s June 4 anniversary.” A visual timeline featured in the report demonstrates how the addition of keywords to the filtering system coincided with several other major historical events in the country. The Uyghur Human Rights Project and Ron Deibert, founder of Citizen Lab and a member of the World Movement for Democracy Steering Committee, contributed to the report.