Chinese censorship: arbitrary rule changes are a form of powerful intermittent reinforcement
China’s Internet censors are capricious and impossible to predict — but this isn’t because China’s censors are incompetent, rather, they’re tapping into one of the most powerful forms of conditioning, the uncertainty born of intermittent reinforcement. […] As C Custer writes at Tech in Asia, this caprice is by design: by not specifying a set of hard and fast rules, but rather the constant risk of being taken down for crossing some invisible line, China’s censors inspire risk-aversion in people who rely on the net to be heard or earn their livings. It’s what Singaporeans call “out of bounds,” the unspecified realm of things you mustn’t, shouldn’t or won’t want to enter.
(tags: risk risk-aversion censorship control china politics enforcement crime self-censorship)
Dublin & Wicklow Walks » Family Walks
These are a great selection. Gonna be doing one of these every weekend if possible, now that the 2 year old can just about handle it ;)