Big mama

Big mama is a Chinese language neologism for an Internet censor on web bulletin board systems in the People's Republic of China. Big mamas are human censors and moderators on different online platforms who remove politically sensitive information, comments and postings on news forums and chatrooms. The Chinese government also has a team of censors and internet police to monitor internet content; however, it is not possible for them to control the whole internet. Yale Global calls all Chinese censors, including the internet police, big mamas. However, big mamas are generally understood as censors working in the private sector. Private sector companies have a market interest to self-censor their websites and users' comments to fall in line with the Chinese government's internet goals, economic and industrial Chinese development. Private companies use many technologies to censor themselves and their users, one of which is hiring teams of computer workers and programmers, called big mamas, to censor the content of website forums, chatrooms, comment sections and bulletin board systems. Big mamas are prevalent across many companies and have led to a larger discourse on censorship that can be compared to the Western idea of Big Brother on a smaller scale. Technology and process A study of the site Sina Weibo, a microblogging site, was conducted by BBC to see how quickly censors removed material and gain insight about big mamas. The study concluded many things including that those who are censored often are censored at a faster rate. Around 90% of politically risky content is removed in the first 24 hours, 5% within 8 minutes and 30% in the first half hour. It also concluded just for the site Sina Weibo, a social media platform, there would have to be at least 4,000 monitors if none of the process was automated. The job of big mamas is becoming more automated as technology becomes more advanced.