Palimpsest · DDTI Observatory

A real-time observatory of Chinese internet censorship — deletion as data

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⊘ Censorship Fear Index · now
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0 · calm255075severe · 100
▣ Top censor target · now
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◑ Selectivityreachable
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Censor attention allocation
recency-weighted share of the deletion stream, per term
✦ Noveltyreachable
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0 newly-sensitive terms today
terms bursting vs their 30-day baseline
⟿ DDTI top-threat index · 30 days → 7-day projection trend rising
−30d−21d−14d−7dNOW+7d
TOPIC NETWORK · shock = newly-sensitive term spreading
critical warning watch
Ranked censor targets · click to inspect
Scenario cockpit
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0.55
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Event stream
⏱ Velocity · deletion speedsuppressed
— /min
⚠ Velocity requires in-China egress to time deletions to the minute. Until that measurement is verified, the signal is suppressed by design — Palimpsest never publishes a number it cannot stand behind.
🌍 Censored at home, loud abroad · GDELT cross-signal —
Which censored topics the world's press is covering heavily. A topic loud abroad but scrubbed at home is containment: the state suppressing a story the world already reports. Cross-referenced against the GDELT global news index.
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🛡 Pressure on the mirrors · GitHub-refuge —
GitHub shelters censored material (996.ICU, nCovMemory, the Terminus2049 archive). This watches those mirrors for takedowns, legal blocks, and defensive fork or star bursts. Public pressure metadata only, never the content and never a maintainer.
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Method: threat = attention × (1 + 1.5 · novelty). Scope: censor-attention allocation (numerator-only; not a true deletion rate). Source: China Digital Times curated deletion stream.
Safety: public content only · never deanonymises posters or contributors · deletion confirmed by multiple independent checks · signal suppressed when the network is unreliable. See SAFETY.md · METHODOLOGY.md · ETHICS.md. Open source & openly licensed · audit-ready · github.com/beepboop2025/palimpsest