Censorship

Demonstrations of support for Pablo Hasél and free speech continued in Spain for the third night in a row, particularly in Catalonia. Deployment of riot police caused confrontations where a woman lost an eye to a rubber bullet.

The fallout from the rapper's conviction also continues in government and the judiciary. Government coalition parties PSOE and Unidas Podemos reacted to the events differently, while a legal reform is being called for by the Spanish Justice Ministry itself.

Spain's National Court sentenced Pablo Hasél to two years and nine months behind bars for two separate cases relating to the content of some of his songs and tweets as they were deemed to be "glorification of terrorism" as well as slandering the crown and Spanish law enforcement.

Hundreds of artists have signed a manifesto released earlier last week, entitled 'Without freedom of speech there is no democracy', including luminaries such as Catalan singer Joan Manuel Serrat, Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar and actors Javier Bardem, Alba Flores and Aitana Sánchez Gijón.

Thousands of Chinese users suddenly found themselves unable to access Clubhouse on early Monday evening as the country prepared to start the week-long Lunar New Year holiday.

Over the weekend, several large Chinese-language chat rooms were set up on the invite-only audio app, where guests talked about politically-charged topics such as the ongoing crackdown against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, democracy in Hong Kong and the sovereignty of Taiwan.

Clubhouse has faced criticism at home in the U.S. for its lack of effective moderation and abuse-prevention practices, so it's hardly a surprise that it has fallen afoul of China's rather more strict enforcement of measures designed to stifle the spread of information the government deems inappropriate for discussion.

A senior official from Facebook has told Reuters that the Vietnamese government is pressuring the platform to censor more local political content on the social network. If the company does not comply it could face a ban in the country. Vietnam's foreign ministry stated on the matter that "spreading information that violates traditional Vietnamese customs and infringes upon state interests".

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has announced that Apple has requested that Telegram shuts down three channels that are "used by the people of Belarus to expose the identities of their oppressors". Apple states that violence might be incited because personal details of Belarusian "law enforcers and propagandists" get shared in the channels, according to Durov.

He assumes that the channels will be blocked from iOS devices to avoid a ban from the Apple AppStore.

Reuters reports that, from 2018 to mid-2020, ByteDance censored content in its BaBe app in Indonesia. According to Reuters sources, local moderators were instructed to remove content perceived as critical of the Chinese government.

Articles with references to 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, or to Mao Zedong, the founder of modern China, were among those taken down.

In a statement, BaBe disagreed with the claims: "A cursory search on the BaBe app shows numerous articles and videos that highlight the type of content these claims say we would remove."

ByteDante has previously faced criticism as TikTok, one of their applications, has been criticizes for its alleged data harvesting on behalf of the Chinese state.

Books written by prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy figures, including Joshua Wong and lawmaker Tanya Chan, have started to disappear from the Chinese-ruled city’s public libraries. According to Reuters, the books are being reviewed to see whether or not they violate a new national security law.

On Twitter, Joshua Wong wrote "Less than a week after #NationalSecurityLaw has been put in place, #Hongkong's public libraries started to put books under review and suspend them from lending, including two of mine published in 2013 and 2015.".

The co-founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has announced that the company will direct "anti-censorship resources into other places where Telegram is still banned by governments — places like Iran and China". In the past Telegram has already developed and provided users with tools to circumvent the Telegram ban in Russia.

In "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir", John Bolton details his time as national security advisor and claims Trump said journalists, who he called "scumbags", should be jailed to force them to expose their sources and that they "should be executed".

The Trump administration has submitted an application to a district court on Wednesday to get an injunction and an emergency restraining order to stop the book from being published.

The video call provider Zoom has announced that it complied with requests from the Chinese government to block meetings that commemorated the 1989 protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Three sessions had attendees from mainland China and were shut down. The company has stated that it lacks the technology to exclude users based on region and therefore ended the meetings altogether, later saying that it won't comply with requests from the Chinese government in the future if the people are not located in mainland China.

Brazil is limiting the amount of data it publishes about Covid-19 cases and deaths as the government of President Jair Bolsonaro grows uncomfortable with the criticism about its handling of the outbreak.

The Health Ministry of Brazil announced Friday it would only be reporting cases and deaths in the past 24 hours, no longer giving a total figure as most countries do.

Former Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta said on Saturday: “From a health perspective, it’s a tragedy ... Not giving out the information makes the state more harmful than the disease.”. Mandetta also likened Bolsonaro's orders to an information blackout on a meningitis epidemic during the nation’s military regime.

The Philippines broadcaster ABS-CBN was forced by order from the National Telecommunications Commission to cease operations on Tuesday. ABS-CBN's broadcasting license expired on Monday and the parliament dominated by President Rodrigo Duterte loyalists wouldn't renew their license. Duterte has been threatening to block ABS-CBN's renewal after the channel has angered him in the past. NTC Deputy Commissioner Edgardo Cabarios said that the network could appeal through court.