Listening

In March 2007, a major tech company called NetWorld agreed to cooperate with local authorities in a certain country to remove the personal website of Lin Hao, a journalist known for speaking out against government censorship. Although Lin Hao’s website was hosted on servers outside that country, it was completely taken down, making it inaccessible worldwide. After international criticism, NetWorld announced new rules: it would only remove sites after receiving an official legal order, and the blocking would only affect users inside that country. However, research later showed that NetWorld’s search platform filtered results for sensitive topics like 'press freedom,' 'student protests,' and 'political reform,' displaying a message: 'Some results cannot be shown due to local regulations.' Tests also revealed that when users tried to create blogs with words such as 'democracy,' 'human rights,' or 'freedom of speech,' the system blocked them with an error message: 'Your title contains prohibited words. Please choose another title.' These actions limited users’ access to information on global human rights issues, preventing them from reaching international organizations' websites.