Fans in Chinese transformative fandom developed systematic coded language to reference banned platforms and circumvent link blocking: AO3 was referred to as 'the red and white website whose name cannot be mentioned,' direct URLs were converted to text passwords posted in comments, and fan communities used numeric codes (e.g., '123456') to identify celebrity pairings in ways opaque to platform keyword filters. These community-maintained encoding conventions were required knowledge for platform access.

Contrary to an apathetic response to surveillance, fans actively constructed collective 'red lines' — community-shared threat models distinguishing definitely dangerous activities from acceptable gray-area behaviors. This community-level threat modeling was shaped by real incidents (e.g., the 2024–2025 Haitang author arrests) and operated in tension with privacy solutions: individual circumvention (e.g., accessing AO3 via VPN) did not restore community function because the broader fandom remained trapped on domestic platforms.

§Abstract, §5.2 evaluation

Blocking of AO3 in China since 2020 produced a fraudulent mirror-site ecosystem that deceived users: one social media post documented financial extortion through a mirror site, mirror sites charged for fanworks (exposing original authors to legal risk), and critically, mirrors collected domestic phone numbers—which are legally linked to government identity—unlike the real AO3 which requires only an email address. Users could not reliably distinguish mirror sites from the canonical platform.

§5.1.3 evaluation

Chinese platforms employ keyword-based algorithmic censorship that produces unexpected false positives even on self-censored content: one participant reported that a 4,000-word work posted as a whole was blocked, but splitting it into two 2,000-word segments caused both halves to be blocked, while splitting the same content into three parts allowed all three to post. The participant interpreted this as the algorithm learning to recognize their work over time, and ceased testing for fear of 'feeding the AI.'

§5.1.1 detection

Among 10 interviewed overseas members of Chinese transformative fandom, 7 used a VPN to access banned sites while in China, yet VPN distrust was a documented adoption barrier: one participant stated, 'I am considering whether the VPN might be under government surveillance. Some VPNs seem like they are fully monitored by the government, while others, which are more private, feel safer to use.' Separately, many fans inside China lacked awareness of VPNs entirely, assuming blocked platforms were permanently inaccessible.

§5.1.3 evaluation

Following the Bilibili takedown on 2026-02-22, user-created mirror copies on both Baidu Netdisk and Quark Netdisk were taken down within 24 hours (all links confirmed dead by 2026-02-23), demonstrating coordinated cross-platform suppression across at least three independent storage tiers in under one day.

2026-anon-b-2026-youtube 事件回顾 keyword-filteringip-blocking

IRBlock discovered that 1.7M of 3.3M blocked apex domains (52%) were attributed to blanket suffix-level blocking rules rather than individual domain listings. Examples include regex patterns targeting all Israeli domains (.il TLD), adult content (.porn), and country-coded suffixes (.com.mx, .my.id). Of 87K Tranco-ranked apex domains analyzed, 37% fell into adult content, with entertainment and gambling following. Approximately 1.27M apex domains were jointly censored by both DNS and HTTP filters, while the two filters maintained operationally independent blocklists for a significant fraction of domains.

2025-tai-irblock §5.3 dns-poisoningip-blockingkeyword-filtering

After Sandvine exited Pakistan in 2023 under U.S. sanctions, Geedge stepped in to power Pakistan's Web Monitoring System (national firewall), reportedly utilizing existing Sandvine hardware alongside new Geedge technology. This demonstrates that Western vendor exits under sanctions pressure do not disrupt national filtering infrastructure — they create vacuums filled by Chinese GFW-derivative equivalents.

2025-wkrp-leak-geedge-networks Body dpiip-blockingkeyword-filtering

For Tier 2 apps (IP geo-blocking only), using a VPN with a foreign endpoint was sufficient to restore access. For Tier 1 apps (SIM + IP geo-blocking), the authors confirmed that (1) removing the Indian SIM card and accessing via WiFi, or (2) intercepting HTTP traffic with a MITM proxy to suppress or rewrite the carrier_region=IN parameter, fully bypassed server-side censorship. The authors note that Indian users primarily rely on mobile Internet, making SIM removal impractical as a user-facing solution.

2024-gosain-out §4.3, §5 ip-blockingkeyword-filtering

After India imposed a permanent ban in January 2021, seven of the eight previously SIM-only-blocked apps escalated to dual-factor filtering: they continued extracting carrier_region=IN from the SIM card while simultaneously adding IP geo-blocking. Accessing these apps now requires both a VPN (for source IP masking) and SIM removal or carrier_region parameter suppression; MICO Chat remained the sole app using only SIM-based blocking.

2024-gosain-out §4.3 (Permanent ban subsection), Table 2 ip-blockingkeyword-filtering

Seven of the 220 banned apps (Tier 1, including TikTok, Likee, Kwai, UC Browser, FaceU, Hago, and V-Fly) used the Android TelephonyManager.getSimCountryISO() API to read the primary SIM's country code and embed a carrier_region=IN parameter in HTTP requests, enabling server-side identification and blocking of Indian users regardless of source IP or VPN state. A dual-SIM phone with an Indian SIM in the secondary slot only (primary empty or non-Indian) bypassed the check.

2024-gosain-out §4.3 ip-blockingkeyword-filtering