For those of us who live in the democratic world, its taken for granted that a social utility such as Twitter is an open forum, where people can say just about anything and not worry about censorship.

Not only are there few rules in place to regulate Twitters content, it’s obvious that corporate or government censors, if they actually existed, would never be able to keep up with the content.

Not so in China, where the equivalent of Twitter (known as Weibo) is censored by an army of trawling censors who quash dissent and controversy with lightning speed.

And although the details of how this feat is accomplished are not common knowledge (China does not share its censorship secrets openly), a group of computer scientists has been able to ascertain just how efficient their methods must be.

Led by Dan Wallach – of Rice University in Houston, Texas –…