[imagesource: Twitter / @goal]

Across China, protesters have taken to the streets to demand an end to COVID-19 lockdowns.

Some have even gone as far as to call for President Xi Jinping to stand down, which is basically unprecedented in a country where any form of dissent is rapidly cracked down on.

The Chinese government’s zero-COVID policies have driven many to breaking point and it doesn’t help when you turn on the telly to watch the Qatar World Cup and see footage of maskless crowds having a great time.

Except, and this is quite something, in China they’re not actually seeing the same footage that we are. This from The New York Times:

…social media users and journalists in China have begun to notice they are not seeing the same crowd shots that the rest of the world sees in their broadcasts…

The games are shown on about a 30-second delay in China, giving CCTV officials time to replace close-up shots of screaming fans with other available camera shots…

Exhibit A:

Some people still refusing to see this, so decided to track it. Within a minute, there was this: close-up shots of Canadian and Croatian fans on BBC/international feed, replaced by a solo shot of Canadian coach John Herdman on CCTV. pic.twitter.com/V3DZRjHrzk

— Mark Dreyer (@DreyerChina) November 27, 2022

Exhibit B:

So I thought it was BS that China’s govt broadcaster was censoring shots of fans at the World Cup due to lockdown anger back home. But it’s true.
Here are live feeds from SBS & CCTV (which has a 32 second delay). As ⁦@DreyerChina⁩ explained, CCTV avoids crowd close ups: pic.twitter.com/wWui0cTdkC

— Bill Birtles (@billbirtles) November 27, 2022

One more for the road:

China censors world cup close-ups of crowds, driven by backlash from citizens about why large crowds aren’t wearing masks in other countries. pic.twitter.com/X3S52EKUHi

— DM (@MondestinDidier) November 28, 2022

The World Cup opening ceremony, in particular, was a wake-up call for Chinese sports fans.

A massive backlash followed on social media, with scenes of 70 000 to 80 000 maskless revellers angering people who have been under strict pandemic restrictions for years.

It appears the Chinese government has taken a rather novel approach to prevent Twitter users from finding out more about the protests, reports CNN:

Twitter searches for the widespread COVID-19-related protests in China are returning a flood of spam, pornography and gibberish that some disinformation researchers say at first glance appear to be a deliberate attempt by the Chinese government or its allies to drown out images of the demonstrations.

…searches in Chinese for major protest hotspots, including Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Guangzhou, produced a nonstop stream of solicitations, images of scantily clad women in suggestive poses and seemingly random word- and sentence fragments.

Many of the accounts sharing these spam-style messages were created months ago, follow virtually no other accounts, and have no followers of their own.

Even though Twitter is banned in China, the country still has an estimated three to 10 million users.

According to one former employee, the wave of layoffs at Twitter in recent weeks has reduced the company’s ability to prevent this sort of thing from happening.

[sources:nytimes&cnn]