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Source index record · Single-source report · not independently verified by Palimpsest

CDT’s “404 Deleted Content Archive” Summary for July 2026

CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content Archive.” Each month, we publish a summary of content blocked or deleted (often yielding the message “404: content not found”) from Chinese platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, Douyin (TikTok’s counterpart in the Chinese marke

Published by China Digital TimesIndexed by Palimpsest · unchanged record version

Read the original at China Digital Times ↗

Palimpsest did not write or independently verify this publisher report. The record below adds source structure, measurement context when available, revision history and limits.

Record type

Single-source report · not independently verified by Palimpsest

This record indexes one publisher group. Palimpsest has not independently verified or refuted the publisher's claims.

What Palimpsest adds

Attribution, 1 independent source group, topic links, a revision receipt and explicit unknowns. The group count is not a truth probability.

Revision receipt

eventv-9ad2bc5a2e733645b85a0438

Previous: eventv-9ad2bc5a2e733645b85a0438

Immutable revision JSON

Publisher reports · attributed, not adopted

What the registered sources published

  1. China Digital Times. China Digital Times published “CDT’s “404 Deleted Content Archive” Summary for July 2026”.

Palimpsest addition

What Palimpsest adds to this source report

Collector conclusion withheld · as of

Added value: Palimpsest adds current measurement context from the named collector records below. Those measurements do not verify the publisher's article.

Verification status: Palimpsest withholds a collector-backed conclusion because one or more declared measurement surfaces are not current. Archive-news-context anomaly_state is warming_up; no anomaly score is published. 196 same-window events share a declared topic. Official-page corroboration coverage is none-reviewed. Declared receipts: wayback, ddti, public-deletion-ledgers. Joined peers: GreatFire, 2026-09-13, China Digital Times, 2026-09-14. Quality bar two-independent-source-groups is not met.

Source structure: The dossier contains one independent source group. Palimpsest treats it as an attributed report, not independent corroboration.

Why this is the bounded position

  • The dossier contains one independent source group. Palimpsest treats it as an attributed report, not independent corroboration.
  • 1 of 3 declared collector surfaces are not live, so Palimpsest does not issue a collector-backed view.

Cited newsroom brief

Lead · present

  • China Digital Times published the attributed source item at 2026-09-14T06:57:15Z.
  • Evidence strength is single-source across 1 independent source group and 1 attributed source record.
  • Palimpsest retained feed title, canonical link, publication time, and a bounded excerpt; it did not fetch the article body.
  • GreatFire, 2026-09-13: no count is published; this peer is attached by join key only.
  • China Digital Times, 2026-09-14: 1 CDT items over 16 CDT item set.

Timeline · abstained

  • official-first-seen is missing, so first-seen, last-alive, and hash-change points are omitted.
  • news-wire-live is missing, so that capture time is omitted.
  • A public deletion-ledger item matching this event was recorded at 2026-09-07T05:18:54Z.
  • Archive-derived host context last captured at 2026-07-22T20:47:52Z on crawl CC-MAIN-2026-30.

Official-page movement · none-reviewed

  • No live official-first-seen reading was supplied to this analysis.
  • Official-page first-seen, last-alive, and hash values are withheld.
  • Official-page corroboration coverage is none-reviewed: 0 accepted edges, 0 primary documents, 0 reviewed.

Deletion-ledger context · present

  • A cdt ledger item matches this declared topic surface. That is a peer observation, not a Palimpsest-verified deletion.
  • Palimpsest does not have its own first-seen to gone trail for this URL, so the ledger item stays a peer observation.

Pipe context · not-declared

  • This event does not declare OONI, bleedthrough, vantage, or IODA signal ids, so pipe context is withheld.

Archive-derived context · present

  • Host www.gov.cn has unique_urls=4816, mutation_rate=None, archive_gap_rate=None, anomaly_state=warming_up on crawl CC-MAIN-2026-30.
  • absence_semantics is archive-coverage-gap-not-deletion. No raw Common Crawl URL or WARC body is published.
  • The prequential-robust-mad/v1 model remains warming_up; no anomaly score is published.

Counterreadings

  • A ledger hit can reflect the ledger's own selection rules rather than a deletion of this URL.
  • A hash change or disappearance on an official page can reflect a routine update, a fetch failure, or a removal; the trail does not choose among those.
  • A current pipe or undertext value can post-date the article and cannot establish that this article was blocked.

What this brief does not know

  • Palimpsest does not know why any page, hash, or ledger item changed.
  • Palimpsest did not read the article body and does not verify the publisher's claims.
  • Person-level attribution and claims about why an actor acted are outside this brief.

Cited brief · citation coverage 1.0 · automatic publication prohibited · human review required.

Collector findings used

Current evidence · ddti

The directive index now tracks 176 censorship terms

The current deletion-directive index ranks 176 terms with documented censorship provenance.

176 countterms ranked

Current aggregate collector reading. It is relevant context only; the wire declares no timed, claim-specific verification join.

Method and receipt

See the complete embedded upstream payload and its raw feed

Observed
14 Sep 2026 · 07:02 UTC
Evidence
ddti-latest.json
SHA-256
be06d9efc71e162207450b71da68e05dbbcddff1b6c141b4ad2aef9756409ef6

Coverage degraded · silence-index

Silence index: no current finding

No current finding is published for Silence index because the source status is degraded.

Collector status is degraded; retained values are not treated as a current finding.

Method and receipt

pre-emptive silence: topics loud abroad and gone at home, the censorship that leaves no deletion to count. Guard rails are the processor's, not this runner's: no China nexus -> out_of_scope; missing global or domestic input -> abstain; and with no coupling baseline wired (v1), a topic without gazetteer corroboration abstains rather than scores — a topic China never covered being quiet at home is disinterest, not suppression. An abstention is published as an abstention, never as a zero. DDTI terms carry china_nexus by provenance: they are drawn from the censor's own deletion stream, so this runner sets the nexus flag at source and the processor's per-term gazetteer gate is deliberately bypassed for them (it still guards any non-DDTI deployment). A blind round (nothing scored) records null blackout counts in both the latest reading and the history, never zeros

Observed
14 Sep 2026 · 09:00 UTC
Evidence
silence-index-latest.json
SHA-256
c1b9d5dcf7cd0a5537acbcd7dbdc8093f9bad597fc670bc7fae881d7d4d5cdb0

Current evidence · wayback

Archive witnesses reconstruct 3 deletions across 21 watched URLs

Wayback evidence reconstructs 3 deletions among 21 watched URLs in the current reading.

3 countreconstructed deletions · across 21 URLs watched

Current aggregate collector reading. It is relevant context only; the wire declares no timed, claim-specific verification join.

Method and receipt

See the complete embedded upstream payload and its raw feed

Observed
14 Sep 2026 · 05:17 UTC
Evidence
wayback-latest.json
SHA-256
25a4d31afaa1c4036611b13d2374e02877b832962cadb227ce59613f13f2b563

Attributed peer context

  • greatfire. GreatFire's 90-day verdict for this host is not enough data as of an unknown date. GreatFire Analyzer, CC BY 4.0. Palimpsest is not the origin of these measurements.
  • ooni. OONI has no China measurements on this host in the local warehouse or ooni-gfw-latest reading. OONI Probe / OONI data. Palimpsest is not the origin of these measurements.
  • cdt. CDT published a related title "Wuhan Authorities Punish Theatre and Event Organizers After Comedian Guo Degang Riffs on “Red Tune” Without Prior Approval" (https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2026/09/wuhan-authorities-punish-theatre-and-event-organizers-after-comedian-guo-degang-riffs-on-red-tune-without-prior-approval/). Palimpsest did not write that piece. China Digital Times. Palimpsest did not write that piece.
  • cdt. CDT published a related title "China’s Online Environment Gets Colder and Darker" (https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2026/09/chinas-online-environment-gets-colder-and-darker/). Palimpsest did not write that piece. China Digital Times. Palimpsest did not write that piece.
  • cdt. CDT published a related title "Netizen Voices, on Gyirong Floods: “Controlling Speech is One Area Where ‘China Speed’ is Actually Real.”" (https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2026/09/gyirong-controlling-speech/). Palimpsest did not write that piece. China Digital Times. Palimpsest did not write that piece.
  • weiboscope. Historical Weiboscope volume is not on this node (Fu, Chan, Chau 2013; doi:10.25442/hku.16674565). Weiboscope / HKU Journalism and Media Studies Centre. Historical 2012 volume is not stored on this node.

Named-key interconnection

  • GreatFire, 2026-09-13. exact host chinadigitaltimes.net host
  • China Digital Times, 2026-09-14. exact host chinadigitaltimes.net; url_path /2026/09/cdts-404-deleted-content-archive-summary-for-july-2026; term cdt’s “404 deleted content archive” summary for july 2026 host, url_path, term

topic-surface-only · 2 joined · warehouse groups do not count as wire corroboration.

Analysis analysisv-a75b289be72ba7f3ee293edb · structured assessment · immutable revision

Evidence braid

Order, provenance and declared surfaces

  1. documentation · china-digital-times

    China Digital Times

    CDT’s “404 Deleted Content Archive” Summary for July 2026

    · feed sha 0c3b530e9270

  2. Declared topic surfaces · not a causal match

    scan:ddti · scan:silence-index · scan:wayback

    A timed measurement join has not been asserted by this dossier.

The braid reports source ordering. A declared topic surface is not a timed statistical match and cannot establish cause, coordination, censorship, or economic impact.

Evidence matrix

Inspect every receipt

Scroll horizontally to inspect every column.

Evidence receipts for this dossier
RoleSource / groupFeed recordPublished / hash
documentation China Digital Timeschina-digital-times CDT’s “404 Deleted Content Archive” Summary for July 2026CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content Archive.” Each month, we publish a summary of content blocked or deleted (often yielding the message “404: content not found”) from Chinese platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, Douyin (TikTok’s counterpart in the Chinese marke feed sha 0c3b530e9270

Measurement surfaces

Where Palimpsest can test the topic

The directive index now tracks 176 censorship termsCurrent instrument · topical pointer onlySilence index: no current findingCurrent instrument · topical pointer onlyArchive witnesses reconstruct 3 deletions across 21 watched URLsCurrent instrument · topical pointer only

Epistemic boundary

What this dossier cannot establish

  • Palimpsest retained only feed title, canonical link, time, and a bounded plain-text excerpt; it did not fetch the article body.
  • The evidence-strength label describes source structure, not truth, intent, impact, or causation.
  • Declared instrument links are topical pointers until a separate scan or economic observation is joined by time and method.
  • Title-similarity clustering can miss differently worded or cross-language accounts and can join closely worded updates.
  • This dossier currently contains one independent evidence group and remains explicitly attributed.