The censoring of a woman who posted about the death of her mother after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine has recently caused a stir in China, prompting further scrutiny on the effectiveness of Chinese-made vaccines.
On Aug. 24, a woman with the handle TomoJiangJiang posted on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, that after her mother took her first Sinopharm COVID-19 shot on Mar. 26, she developed a drug-induced rash and skin hemorrhages on Mar. 31, and eventually died on June 30.
“I really want to know the truth … We met a lot of good doctors who tried their best but couldn’t save my mother. The doctors are also very sorry and helpless!” the woman wrote in the post.
Two days later, Weibo shut down her account. The woman was also publicly reprimanded by a Weibo censor, a “supervisor” hired by the company to report on posts containing pornographic content or other information deemed harmful. With social media platforms operating under the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) tight censorship regime, it is common practice for firms to employ armies of human censors backed up by sophisticated censorship algorithms to police speech online.
The censor with a username ShineJiHaoYang, in a post, accused the woman of fabricating stories to gain page views. They also claimed that the woman’s mother was still alive and that the authorities had detained the woman for “causing harm to the country.”
In response, the woman opened a new account on Aug. 26 and posted a picture of her mother’s death certificate. The censor hit back the next day, writing in a post: “Laws will not allow you to use an excuse to slander our country. You should know clearly whether the vaccine is effective.”
The censor’s actions sparked a firestorm of criticism on the platform.