Users from China have come up with a new way to circumvent censorship on the Internet — they publish information, criticizing the government and state corporations in the Ethereum blockchain, which is available to all users. In early July three-month-old children in the province of Zhengchun were supplied with substandard vaccines against pertussis and tetanus developed by the state corporation Changsheng Bio-Technology. The news of this event came under state censorship – the authorities banned the publication of an article on ineffective vaccination, written by the user under the name “Beast”, in the media and social networks. Then users found another way to spread the information — one of them sent himself 0.001 ETH (about $0.47), adding text about the low-quality vaccine to the metadata of the transaction. As a result, the information became available to all users — data in the blockchain is extremely difficult to fake, and the Chinese government has not yet managed to ban access to the network. Another case of criticism spread through the blockchain is the publication of an open letter in the Ethereum network from a student of one of the Chinese colleges, who accused teachers of sexual harassment and persecution. |
