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01 / Industry under examination
The bug in the system
was always human.
Keynote spectacles. Algorithmic monopolies. The surveillance apparatus operating in the background. Explore the verified scandals, anti-competitive pacts, labor abuses, and engineering disasters behind the technology industry.
02 / Daily Briefing
Synchronized UTC selection.
Rotates daily across the archive.
03 / The Archive
687 stories indexed
Filter by sector or keyword.
Fraud & Cover-Ups2000s
Chinese government; SARS reporting system
During the SARS outbreak in late 2002 and early 2003, mainland Chinese authorities drastically understated the number of reported cases. On 4 April 2003, PLA General Hospital chief physician Jiang Yanyong sent an 800-word letter to CCTV-4 and Phoenix TV asserting that military hospitals were treating far more SARS patients than the government acknowledged. After the letter was leaked, The Wall Street Journal interviewed Jiang on 8 April, and Time published the translated account under the headline “Beijing’s SARS Attack.” The disclosure prompted the resignation of Beijing’s mayor and China’s minister of public health on 21 April 2003, after which the government began addressing the epidemic more openly. Public-health experts credited the change with helping prevent SARS from reaching pandemic proportions. Jiang later faced state retaliation: he was placed under military custody in June 2004 and released on 19 July, and friends reported de facto house arrest after he criticized the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in a 2019 letter to Xi Jinping. He received the 2004 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service and died on 11 March 2023.
Surveillance & Privacy2020s
YouTube, WeChat, Chinese state censorship apparatus, Fang Bin
Fang Bin, a Wuhan businessman and citizen journalist, began recording the COVID-19 outbreak on January 25, 2020, and uploaded videos to YouTube to bypass restrictions on Chinese domestic platforms. On February 1, he published footage showing bodies piled in a minivan outside a Wuhan hospital. According to the source, police arrested him that day, warned him, and released him later that night. Fang continued criticizing official propaganda, the detention of fellow citizen journalist Chen Qiushi, and the treatment of whistleblower physician Li Wenliang. Police reportedly visited Fang’s apartment twice on February 4, and he released his final 12-second video on February 9 with the message “all citizens resist, hand power back to the people.” Fang was then detained and disappeared from public view. Radio Free Asia reported in February 2022 that he might be held at Wuhan’s Jiang’an District Police Station; in May 2023, reports said he had returned home after roughly three years in prison. The case illustrates how China’s information controls, blocked foreign platforms, and police action constrained independent pandemic reporting, although the source does not identify a public court judgment or formal charge.
Surveillance & Privacy2019–2020
WeChat; Wuhan Red Cross Hospital; Liu Wen
On 30 December 2019 at 19:39, neurologist Liu Wen posted in his Wuhan Red Cross Hospital work WeChat group that a coronavirus-infection pneumonia case had been confirmed at another Wuhan hospital and warned nursing colleagues to avoid the Huanan area. He said he believed the illness might involve person-to-person transmission and urged medical staff to protect themselves. The message was an early internal warning during the first known phase of the COVID-19 outbreak. On 31 December, hospital-related authorities interviewed Liu, demanded his source, and told him not to spread “fabricated rumours”; he documented the encounter in the presence of two police officers. Liu later told Caixin that police summoned him to a station around 2 January 2020, questioned him, prepared written transcripts, and took his fingerprints, although he did not receive the written reprimand issued to Li Wenliang. Caixin reported on 7 February that Liu, Li, and Xie Linka did not know whether they were among eight people publicly identified by police. The source records no subsequent prosecution or formal regulatory finding, but the questioning and fingerprinting became evidence of official pressure on early outbreak warnings.
Labor & Exploitation2010s
Jasic Technology and Jasic Workers Solidarity Group
In 2018, workers at Jasic Technology’s plant in Shenzhen, China, cited low pay and poor working conditions while attempting to establish a union independent of the state-controlled labor system. The effort drew support from students and Marxist activists, including Peking University graduate Yue Xin, who joined the Jasic Workers Solidarity Group on 8 August 2018. The dispute exposed the limits of China’s economic liberalization when workers challenge official labor structures and politically connected authorities. On 23 August 2018, Chinese police arrested Yue and roughly 50 members and supporters of the group. The organization said in January 2019 that Guangdong police had forced Yue and four others to record videos confessing to “illegal acts” and claiming they had been “brainwashed by radical organizations”; China’s National Security Department reportedly showed the videos to other activists. Yue was not publicly seen afterward, although Photon Media reported in August 2023 that she had been released and was working while volunteering with a library-related NGO. The detentions and alleged coerced confessions became an international example of Chinese authorities suppressing labor organizing and left-wing student activism.
Platform Scandals2020s
WeChat; Wuhan Public Security Bureau; Li Wenliang
On 30 December 2019, ophthalmologist Li Wenliang shared a diagnostic report and messages in a private WeChat group warning fellow doctors about seven suspected SARS cases linked to Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Market. He asked recipients to alert relatives while exercising discretion, but screenshots circulated publicly. On 3 January 2020, Wuhan police interrogated Li and seven other doctors, issued him a written admonition for publishing allegedly false statements, and warned that continued conduct could lead to prosecution. The warning was also publicized by state media, according to reporting cited in the source. The outbreak was later identified as SARS-CoV-2 rather than SARS, while the Supreme People’s Court said on 4 February that the citizens should not have been punished because their statements were not entirely false. Li contracted COVID-19 while treating a patient and died at Wuhan Central Hospital on 7 February 2020, aged 34. Following public anger and online demands for freedom of speech, an official inquiry exonerated him; Wuhan police apologized to his family and revoked the admonition on 19 March. The government later designated Li a martyr, but censorship removed related hashtags and posts, leaving his case as a lasting example of how information controls and institutional fear impeded early public-health warnings.
Platform Scandals2020s
Chinese internet-censorship apparatus; Wuhan Central Hospital; WeChat
On 30 December 2019, Ai Fen, director of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital, received a diagnostic report describing suspected SARS coronavirus and respiratory infections. She circulated an image of the report to medical contacts after reporting it internally; ophthalmologist Li Wenliang then warned former classmates through WeChat. Ai later said that hospital officials accused her of spreading rumors and subjected her to an “unprecedented and very severe rebuke.” The source also reports that, at a 16 January 2020 hospital meeting, officials continued denying human-to-human transmission, while infected nurse Hu Ziwei’s medical description was changed from “viral pulmonary infection?” to “spread-out pulmonary infection.” People magazine published Ai’s first-person account, “The Whistle-Blower,” on 10 March 2020, but the article and its WeChat post were removed within hours. Chinese users reposted it through emojis, Morse code, braille, pinyin, and other formats to evade censorship. Claims that Ai was formally threatened on 2 January were attributed to later reporting and her account; Wuhan Central Hospital party chief Cai Li was later fired, although the supplied source does not establish that the firing was solely for this incident. The episode became a prominent example of how institutional reprimands and online censorship obstructed early public discussion of a dangerous outbreak.
04 / Integration & SDK
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Deploy embeddable web components or consume JSON APIs to power research portals, terminal widgets, and editorial sidebars.