A team of researchers at the University of Toronto‘s Citizen Lab decided to find out by investigating one of the topics considered most controversial by the Chinese authorities, the so-called „709 Crackdown.“ This refers to a major government clampdown that began on July 9 in 2015, when more than 250 Chinese rights lawyers, law firm staff, activists, and their relatives were detained by public security agents across China. Internet users are understandably keen to discuss this important event, and many of those conversations take place on the main blog site in China, Weibo, and using the messaging service WeChat, which is even more popular. But as the researchers discovered, those online conversations were subject to subtle but consistent interference: