Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Caixin Reposts Article on "Post Deletion Business" Minus Comments and References to Detained Internet Police Officers

In August 2012 in "Baidu Employees Arrested for Deleting Posts for Cash, Baidu Censors 'Delete Posts'" this blog noted that the state-sponsored Global Times had published an article entitled "Baidu Staff Delete Posts for Cash." That article stated: "According to internal communications from Baidu, an employee, surnamed Lu, was working with professional agents to delete posts."

In February 2013 in "Caixin and Weibos Block Access to Report on Private/Public Cooperation in Internet Censorship" this blog noted that the state-sponsored Caixin Magazine had published an article entitled "The Post Deletion Business" (删帖生意), but that within hours the publicly-available version posted here - http://magazine.caixin.com/2013-02-08/100490897_all.html - had been deleted and visitors to that URL were being re-directed to Caixin's home page.

At some point between February and May of 2013, Caixin restored public access to the full article.

As these screenshots show, however, when it reposted the article Caixin deleted all user comments as well as three sentences from the original version of the article.

Comments deleted:


First deleted sentence:
However, according to information obtained by a Caixin reporter from an internal source at the Yage Times, prior to the current strike hard campaign against illegal Internet public relations, Yage Times had undertaken Baidu blocking keyword business, promoted as: keyword blocking, everything negative can be resolved. This business attracted quite a few enterprises: enterprises fear search engines increasing the influence of negative news more than anything else. In addition, there are always some web sites that can't be handled through public relations, and for those web sites the only effective means is to reduce the negative impact through "key word blocking." According to information disclosed by a Yage Times insider, this business required employing power at levels higher than those web sites, and the costs were very high, and only a small number of companies with special connections could pull it off. The typical price quoted for one job was vary anywhere from 100,000 yuan to millions of yuan, and much of this money was funneled to people with "special connections." Caixin reporters received information from those close to the investigation that, in the current Yage Times case, Internet supervision personnel were taken into custody.
不过,据财新记者从雅歌时代内部人士获知,在此次严打非法网络公关之前,雅歌时代亦曾承接有关在百度屏蔽关键词的业务,宣传语是:关键词屏蔽,一切负面都能解决。这个业务吸引了不少企业:企业最怕的就是搜索引擎会放大负面新闻的影响,另外,总有一些公关不下来的网站,对这类网站,惟一有效的方式就是通过“关键词屏蔽”来减少负面影响。据雅歌时代内部人士透露,这样的业务需要动用在网站之外更高层的力量,成本很高,只有极少数有特殊关系的公司能做到这点。一般对外报价一单从几十万元到上百万元不等,这些钱有很多流入了“特殊关系”人士。新记者从接近调查的人士处获悉,此次雅歌时代一案也有网监人士涉案落网。

Second deleted sentence:

This was only the beginning. As the investigation into the Yage Times deepened, the list of suspects grew longer and longer. The employees of many web sites were detained or investigated, and there were also police officers from the Beijing Public Security's Internet Supervision Department who were detained
这只是一个开始。随着对雅歌时代调查的深入,牵涉的名单越来越长,多家网站有工作人员被捕或被调查,北京市公安局网监处亦有警员被捕


Third deleted sentence:
(Correction: The last sentence of the seventh paragraph contained an incorrect description as originally drafted, and should read: "The employees of many web sites were detained or investigated, and there were also police officers from the Beijing Public Security's Internet Supervision Department who were detained" The online version has already been corrected and apologized.)
(更正:本文第七段最后一句原文表述不确,应为“多家网站有工作人员被捕或被调查,北京市公安局网监处亦有警员被捕”,网络版已做更正并致歉。)


Translation: Xu Zhiyong's Statement in His Own Defense

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