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Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

chinamediaproject.org

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Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#21

Post by doubloon »

pessimizer wrote: post #3

[flagged]

it's a question of intent.

'the free world' loses internet content mostly because we are indifferent and don't value the humanities or social sciences as much as we used to.

china loses internet content because it is a one party state dictatorship that is purposely trying to eradicate the cultural artefacts of it's victims and opponents, by hiring masses of people whose career goals are the purposeful destruction of memory.

we do have examples similar to that, for example "free speech advocates" like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk who abuse the legal system to silence critics. But those people are not literally running the government in a government that will never change hands.

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#22

Post by reaperducer »

typon wrote: post #6

[flagged]

Content is now behind walled gardens and impossible to search for

Yep. Most of the good vintage computing information is locked up in member-only Facebook groups now.

More and more, when you ask a question on a web forum the response is "Oh, that's in the $x Facebook group." Great. How do I search for the topic? Oh, you can't.

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#23

Post by rasz »

Arnavion wrote: post #12
lelandfe wrote: post #7

> Within the selected date range of “May 22, 1998 to May 22, 2005” on Baidu, there is just one positive result for “Jack Ma” (dated May 22, 2024). [..] Click on the result and you’ll find it is an article posted in 2021 US Google: About 2,580,000 results A pretty remarkable scrubbing of history.

https://www.google.com/search?q=jack+ma&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min... First result for me is https://www.scb.co.th/en/personal-banking/stories/business-m... which Google thinks is from 2003-03-15, except it mentions COVID-19 so it obviously isn't. Second result is https://www.instagram.com/jack_overpower/feed/ which Google thinks is from 2001-01-02, except Instagram didn't exist at that time. It might have pictures from 20…

Google has perfect vision of the past (didnt latest leak confirm they keep everything crawled indefinitely and have extensive historical records for all domains?) but zero incentive for redirecting you to old websites with no advertisements.

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#24

Post by rasz »

reaperducer wrote: post #22
typon wrote: post #6

[flagged]

Content is now behind walled gardens and impossible to search for Yep. Most of the good vintage computing information is locked up in member-only Facebook groups now. More and more, when you ask a question on a web forum the response is "Oh, that's in the $x Facebook group." Great. How do I search for the topic? Oh, you can't.

FB or Discord, both black holes.

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#26

Post by demosthanos »

typon wrote: post #6

[flagged]

I'd hardly call it the same thing at all.

In the Western internet a lot of early sites have come down gradually over time as their creators stopped paying for them, but many are also still up, including a lot of key relics. They're harder to find these days because Google prioritizes new content (shout-out to marginalia.nu), but they're there, and most (by historical traffic) of those that aren't there are preserved on IA. If there's collective memory loss it's organic and reparable.

This article is about the Chinese government actively erasing memory in order to be able to better control the content that their people read, including a post bemoaning the loss of that content. What has happened to new content on the Western internet (getting isolated in walled gardens) is tragic, but it's not the same thing at all.

> Posted on Wednesday, May 22, He’s post had been removed from WeChat by the following day, yielding a 404 message that read: “This content violates regulations and cannot be viewed.”

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#27

Post by boomboomsubban »

Arnavion wrote: post #12
lelandfe wrote: post #7

> Within the selected date range of “May 22, 1998 to May 22, 2005” on Baidu, there is just one positive result for “Jack Ma” (dated May 22, 2024). [..] Click on the result and you’ll find it is an article posted in 2021 US Google: About 2,580,000 results A pretty remarkable scrubbing of history.

https://www.google.com/search?q=jack+ma&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min... First result for me is https://www.scb.co.th/en/personal-banking/stories/business-m... which Google thinks is from 2003-03-15, except it mentions COVID-19 so it obviously isn't. Second result is https://www.instagram.com/jack_overpower/feed/ which Google thinks is from 2001-01-02, except Instagram didn't exist at that time. It might have pictures from 20…

The "custom range" feature simultaneously feels broken, gamed by spammers, and intentionally being scrubbed. I'm surprised they haven't completely removed it yet.

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#29

Post by Cheer2171 »

There are a few commenters in this thread making blatant false equivalence with the Western internet. This post is about how on major search engines in China, you now set the years to 1998-2005 and search for a non-controversial celebrity and you get zero search results from content actually published in that era.

The loss of the early web due to web hosters not maintaining their own hosting and moving to walled gardens is painful and tragic, but it is not in any way similar (or functionally equivalent) to this blatant censorship.

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#30

Post by anonzzzies »

Cheer2171 wrote: post #29

There are a few commenters in this thread making blatant false equivalence with the Western internet. This post is about how on major search engines in China, you now set the years to 1998-2005 and search for a non-controversial celebrity and you get zero search results from content actually published in that era. The loss of the early web due to web hosters not maintaining their own hosting and moving to walled gard…

Yep... Only archive.org has it sometimes and then you need to search there because you won't find it via others.
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