FreeWeibo ( zh, 自由微博) is a website that monitors and makes available content from leading Chinese microblogging site

Sina Weibo Weibo (), or Sina Weibo (), is a Chinese microblogging ( weibo) website. Launched by Sina Corporation on 14 August 2009, it is one of the biggest social media platforms in China, with over 582 million monthly active users (252 million daily ...

that has been

censored Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governmen ...

and deleted by

Chinese Chinese may refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people identified with China, through nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **Han Chinese, East Asian ethnic group native to China. **'' Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic ...

authorities under the

Great Firewall The Great Firewall (GFW; ) is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the China, People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected ...

. The home page is constantly updated to show the latest most-censored Weibo content. The site allows searches for any deleted microblogging strings and content, such as the names of

dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 2 ...

s, "64", "

tiananmen The Tiananmen , also Tian'anmen, is the entrance gate of the Forbidden City imperial palace complex and Imperial City in the center of Beijing, China. It is widely used as a national symbol. First built in 1420 during the Ming dynasty, Ti ...

", dalai (as in

Dalai Lama The Dalai Lama (, ; ) is the head of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. The term is part of the full title "Holiness Knowing Everything Vajradhara Dalai Lama" (圣识一切瓦齐尔达喇达赖喇嘛) given by Altan Khan, the first Shu ...

, specifically the 14th Dalai Lama), "

Xinjiang independence The East Turkestan independence movement is a political movement that seeks the independence of East Turkestan, a large and sparsely populated region in northwest China, as a nation state for the Uyghur people. The region is currently admini ...

", "

Winnie the Pooh Winnie-the-Pooh (also known as Edward Bear, Pooh Bear or simply Pooh) is a fictional Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by ...

", and terms related to any breaking news deemed sensitive. In addition, there are many terms relating to advertising content, pornography and so on.

History

The founder of the site goes by the name "Martin Johnson". According to

Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave"), commonly shortened to DW (), is a German state-funded television network, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the Federal Government of Germany. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite tele ...

, he describes his mission as: breaking Chinese Internet censorship and creating a free Internet. The establishment of the FreeWeibo site specifically targets system-deleted posts on Sina Weibo,

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

, and other large community websites, since around 12 percent of all posts for other Weibo platforms are removed by censors.

Concept

The United States magazine ''

Quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...

'' reported that one of the three founders of the site, "Charlie Smith", said out of concern about the CCP's censorship, they established in 2011 the Chinese website GreatFire with the aim to provide a resource to clearly show what was blocked.

Operation

"Martin Johnson" said that, like all major sites in China, Sina Weibo employs its own censors. They would manually remove content deemed sensitive, as automatic filtering cannot catch all such posts. Many comments are live for a few minutes or even hours before they are reviewed and deleted, so FreeWeibo makes use of this loophole and collect those posts. "Charlie Smith" said that they copy every Sina Weibo post, but this approach requires a huge storage capacity. According to the Deutsche Welle report, to access the FreeWeibo page from within China, people must use

VPN Virtual private network (VPN) is a network architecture for virtually extending a private network (i.e. any computer network which is not the public Internet) across one or multiple other networks which are either untrusted (as they are not c ...

software to bypass the authorities.

Objectives

In the Quartz report, "Charlie Smith" expected to defeat the censorship system with FreeWeibo. He said he would continue to pressure the Chinese government until they give up the practice.

Mobile app

On October 4, 2013, the outfit released an app version of the site in the Chinese

Apple App Store The App Store is an app marketplace developed and maintained by Apple, for mobile apps on its iOS and iPadOS operating systems. The store allows users to browse and download approved apps developed within Apple's iOS SDK. Apps can be download ...

in a collaboration with

Radio Netherlands Worldwide Radio Netherlands (RNW; ) was a public radio and television network based in Hilversum, producing and transmitting programmes for international audiences outside the Netherlands from 1947 to 2012. Its services in Dutch ended on 11 May 2012. Eng ...

. However, under pressure from the

Government of China The government of the People's Republic of China is based on a system of people's congress within the parameters of a unitary communist state, in which the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) enacts its policies through people's congresses. ...

, Apple took down the app on November 28.Index Freedom of Expression Awards: Digital activism nominee Free Weibo
18 Mar 2014

Awards

* 2013: Winner of Deutsche Welle "The Bobs" for Best Innovation.Winners 2013 - The Bobs - Best of Online Activism
/ref> * 2014: Nominated for the Index on Censorship's Freedom of Expression Awards in digital activism.

Notes and references

External links

Official website

Official website
{{Internet censorship circumvention technologies Chinese-language websites Internet censorship in China Internet-related activism Microblogging services Social networking websites