(Bloomberg) -- Chinese video services have long censored taboo topics to promote the government's vision of a “harmonious society.” Now some popular providers are turning the same tools on each other, using blacklists to shut out rival platforms, according to a research group.
Live-streaming video services in China have grown into a $2.5 billion industry by featuring everything from celebrities cooking lunch at home to women seductively eating bananas. But the competition for fickle viewers is such that several of the largest players have quietly scrubbed mentions of rivals along with political red-flags such as party leaders' names, according to Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.
As many as 150 different platforms currently vie for attention. At least three major services -- YY Inc, 9158 and Sina Show -- have added their competitors to in-app lists of banned terms originally designed to help Chinese authorities keep taboo topics out of chatroom discussions, the group said. From May 2015 to September 2016, YY added 25 keywords that referenced competing live-streaming platforms. 9158 also included references to competitors, the group said.
"These may be attempts to prevent users from being lured away from the provider's platform," said Citizen Lab research manager Masashi Crete-Nishihata.
Citizen Lab has been poring over code and keywords embedded in mobile apps since February 2015, aiming to uncover red-flagged terms. YY and Tian Ge Interactive -- the owner of both 9158 and Sina Show -- declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg.
The live-streaming boom is a relatively new phenomenon fueled by bigger data plans and the shift from computers to mobile. In China, it emerged as a low-cost pastime for millennials who lack the budget for pricier entertainment. Operators earn revenue by taking a cut when viewers ply their favorite celebrities with anything from virtual roses to digital diamonds.
HSBC analysts led by John Liu wrote on Monday that the industry had grown from almost zero revenue in 2011 to 17 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) this year. By 2018, they expect over 340 million viewers to generate 41 billion yuan in sales using the platforms.
All video streaming services manage their own blacklists and teams of censors who roam the live feeds watching for transgressors. This helps prevent discussions of issues like China's 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Users trying to send messages with banned terms find that their posts disappear or words are transformed into asterisks and, in some cases, they are quietly flagged for review, according to Citizen Lab.
Blacklists built into live-streaming apps are regularly updated to keep up with new terms and euphemisms invented by internet users trying to evade censorship. Some are downright cryptic: YY has banned the Uighur language terms for “cloudy weather” and “sweet potato,” with Citizen Labs unable to uncover discover why.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: David Ramli in Hong Kong at dramli1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Robert Fenner at rfenner@bloomberg.net, Edwin Chan
With assistance from David Ramli
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