I believe censorship is very much fused with information overload in this age. Instead of having authoritarians impose limitations and restrictions as the means of censorship to control social mores, people have spontaneously and irreversibly affected social mores through other self-strengthening methods that can voluntarily enable the system to become more powerful.

Even as I am writing to claim this issue, I can’t help but think that I am a participant in this cycle and that I am inevitably a part of this process that makes this vicious cycle become stronger and stronger. We are all a part of this process.

A friend who works at a Chinese social media platform told me that they would write ten headlines for each article, and then select the most eye-catching headlines based on the platform. For different platforms, they will use different headlines. They tend to pick titles that evoke fear or anger (strong emotions) so that people would click on the content with that kind of emotion.

Gresham’s law is originally an economic term, whereas when people start using fake money, then the real money loses its value, and there will only be fake money left in the market. This law can explain why people’s attention is so preoccupied with information that is only stimulating but lack actual content.

The trending lists on every social media platform are the most accessible source of information. However, it is often full of celebrity gossip, fake news, and content without substance.

This is the kind of problem that we realise the scale of and how it can affect us, but we can do nothing about it. This is an irreversible phenomenon where tendencies will become habits, and people’s content selecting habits will make the content creators to produce more content of this type. As people intake more of this type of information, a vicious circle slowly begins to form. A cycle that can cultivate people’s behaviours and affect the entire system of acquiring information and the way of how people perceive information.

The term “Overload” does not seem like a good sign for most people, but in the age of information overload, it sounds like a paradox that a small number of people can actually benefit from it.

One of the examples is related to food and the physical condition of people. More than 71 per cent of Americans are having weight problems, but many people living in Manhattan’s affluent neighbourhoods are very in shape. Let’s call this phenomenon ‘the paradox of overload’.

Let’s compare food with information. There are common expressions like “Digesting an idea” and “Thirst for knowledge”. As you begin to learn to cook for yourself in order to improve your diet, when you begin to write, you are actually improving the quality of your access to information.

Just as acquiring healthy food is a daily task, finding high-quality information in an age of information overload is becoming more complex. You can still get it, but you will have to put in more time and effort in the process. With the development of the Internet, there is more and more high-quality content, but at the same time, the amount of useless and ambiguous information is staggering.

The effects of surveillance may include a broader reduction in awareness and resistance to censorship. Authoritarians are increasingly adopting a mechanism that is able to use data for microtargeting which may reduce the awareness and collective experience of reviews.

Authorities often respond by reducing the visibility of censorship and potentially adversative collaboration among people. Although many experts predict that the internet will be the death knell for authoritarianism, difficulties that the government faces in exercising control over the internet may actually be transmitted through the idea of freedom of information.