4.2. Terminus2049 (端点星计划, 2049bbs)
Jekyll GitHub Pages repository that saves full text copies of censored articles:
本仓库存放被删文章
This repository stores deleted articles.
Also accompanies a dynamic forum https://2049bbs.xyz/ which appears to be where content for the static pages gets discussed and brought up. But it possible that the website has been compromised and is leaking identity of users. At some point, https://2049bbs.xyz went down. Live https://web.archive.org/web/20200719151022/https://2049bbs.xyz/ dead: https://archive.vn/JFqCJ
The "Terminus" in the repo name seems to be a reference to Isaac Asimov’s fictional Terminus planet which is called 端点星 in Chinese, but it is not clear where the 2049 comes from in that context. Forgetting the Chinese name, Terminus2049 could be a reference to the fictional "World War Terminus" from the Blade Runner 2049 (2019) movie, which also explains the 2049.
First commit on 2018-04-27, GitHub pages domain blocked in China at least since 2019-03 according to GreatFire (自由微博): https://zh.greatfire.org/search/all/https%3A//terminus2049.github.io but not in GitHub gov-takedowns (由其各自政府在某个国家审查的仓库的GitHub官方列表) as of 2020-04.
The full post list can be seen most conveniently at: https://github.com/Terminus2049/Terminus2049.github.io/tree/master/_posts The number of articles is insane, usually several every day.
Most articles appear to be taken from recent news at the time of writting, although there are a few from before the repo started. As of 2020-04, the oldest article was from 2016 MeToo events reported by Yue Xin (岳昕), some other topics include:
-
Gay rights (LGBT权利) https://github.com/Terminus2049/Terminus2049.github.io/blob/master/_posts/2018-04-14-LGBTRights-advocacy-china.md
-
996.ICU (2019) https://github.com/Terminus2049/Terminus2049.github.io/blob/master/_posts/2019-04-04-996-ICU.md
-
LeBron James opposes Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests (2019) https://github.com/Terminus2049/Terminus2049.github.io/blob/master/_posts/2019-10-11-NBA.md
They use Jekyll tags a lot, which makes for a good grouping of the topics.
In 2020-04-25, it was reported that three Beijing-based contributors were arrested during Censorship of the 2019 Corona Virus (2019冠状病毒病早期迹象审查):
-
-
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/Xinwen/7-04252020144555.html Chinese article, gives the Chinese names, and some background on the arrested people
-
https://qz.com/1846277/china-arrests-users-behind-github-coronavirus-memories-page/
People:
-
Chen Mei (陈玫)
-
https://www.linkedin.com/in/玫-陈-1607b735/ a LinkedIn account with matching photo and name
-
-
https://github.com/cmmei, down 2020-12, live archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20200101232039/https://github.com/cmmei. Includes https://web.archive.org/web/20180611153507/https://github.com/cmmei/Banned-zh
-
Cai Wei (蔡伟)
-
https://github.com/thphd/2047 mentioned below reveals and email caiw15@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn and profiles/further aliases:
-
Xiao Tang (小唐), who is also Cai Wei’s girlfriend
In 2020-06-12 their families received calls saying that they had been charged with Picking quarrels and provoking trouble (寻衅滋事罪):
In 2021-05-11 they were charged: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/11/two-plead-guilty-in-case-highlighting-chinas-online-control
Ciro’s petition to free them: https://github.com/cirosantilli/chen-mei-cai-wei-ziyou
How their identities were found:
-
https://github.com/Terminus2049/Terminus2049.github.io/issues/598 offers a good analysis
-
-
https://gist.github.com/chinatimeline/5386a4f9d82483aa5346b17d8d324877 comments by chinatimeline (中国时间线) and gives further opsec guidelines
Terrible opsec… they used real name GitHub emails on early commits, including the institutional university address, before they started better opsec under https://github.com/TerminusBot / terminus2049@protonmail.com
https://github.com/thphd/2047 is a project to restore terminus, live at https://2047.name Ciro mention at: https://2047.name/e/76182458 by https://2047.name/u/5155 which is similar to a Mohu (膜乎) mention, so they seem to share the database? Who knows what’s the relation between all those Pincong (品葱, uncensored forum) lookalikes. TODO that website shows an ICP license 非经营性网站备案 (2000)? Very confusingly also mirrored at https://pincong.org e.g. https://pincong.org/t/10219/https://2047.name/t/10219[], which is very similar to Pincong (品葱, uncensored forum)'s address. Related account: https://github.com/PincongBot
https://2047.name has a links section at: https://2047.name/links shown on the sideboard, containg links of interest. Some all not are very China specific.
https://2047.name/register registration requires an invitation code.
https://github.com/2049bbs/2049bbs.github.io / https://2049bbs.github.io/ maintains another archive up to 2019-03-03.
Figure 1. Side-by-side photos of Chen Mei (陈玫) and Cai Wei (蔡伟) from Terminus2049 (端点星计划, 2049bbs). Source.
Jekyll GitHub Pages repository that saves full text copies of censored articles:
本仓库存放被删文章
This repository stores deleted articles.
Also accompanies a dynamic forum https://2049bbs.xyz/ which appears to be where content for the static pages gets discussed and brought up. But it possible that the website has been compromised and is leaking identity of users. At some point, https://2049bbs.xyz went down. Live https://web.archive.org/web/20200719151022/https://2049bbs.xyz/ dead: https://archive.vn/JFqCJ
The "Terminus" in the repo name seems to be a reference to Isaac Asimov’s fictional Terminus planet which is called 端点星 in Chinese, but it is not clear where the 2049 comes from in that context. Forgetting the Chinese name, Terminus2049 could be a reference to the fictional "World War Terminus" from the Blade Runner 2049 (2019) movie, which also explains the 2049.
First commit on 2018-04-27, GitHub pages domain blocked in China at least since 2019-03 according to GreatFire (自由微博): https://zh.greatfire.org/search/all/https%3A//terminus2049.github.io but not in GitHub gov-takedowns (由其各自政府在某个国家审查的仓库的GitHub官方列表) as of 2020-04.
The full post list can be seen most conveniently at: https://github.com/Terminus2049/Terminus2049.github.io/tree/master/_posts The number of articles is insane, usually several every day.
Most articles appear to be taken from recent news at the time of writting, although there are a few from before the repo started. As of 2020-04, the oldest article was from 2016 MeToo events reported by Yue Xin (岳昕), some other topics include:
-
Gay rights (LGBT权利) https://github.com/Terminus2049/Terminus2049.github.io/blob/master/_posts/2018-04-14-LGBTRights-advocacy-china.md
-
996.ICU (2019) https://github.com/Terminus2049/Terminus2049.github.io/blob/master/_posts/2019-04-04-996-ICU.md
-
LeBron James opposes Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests (2019) https://github.com/Terminus2049/Terminus2049.github.io/blob/master/_posts/2019-10-11-NBA.md
They use Jekyll tags a lot, which makes for a good grouping of the topics.
In 2020-04-25, it was reported that three Beijing-based contributors were arrested during Censorship of the 2019 Corona Virus (2019冠状病毒病早期迹象审查):
-
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/Xinwen/7-04252020144555.html Chinese article, gives the Chinese names, and some background on the arrested people
-
https://qz.com/1846277/china-arrests-users-behind-github-coronavirus-memories-page/
People:
-
Chen Mei (陈玫)
-
https://www.linkedin.com/in/玫-陈-1607b735/ a LinkedIn account with matching photo and name
-
https://github.com/cmmei, down 2020-12, live archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20200101232039/https://github.com/cmmei. Includes https://web.archive.org/web/20180611153507/https://github.com/cmmei/Banned-zh
-
-
Cai Wei (蔡伟)
-
https://github.com/thphd/2047 mentioned below reveals and email caiw15@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn and profiles/further aliases:
-
-
Xiao Tang (小唐), who is also Cai Wei’s girlfriend
In 2020-06-12 their families received calls saying that they had been charged with Picking quarrels and provoking trouble (寻衅滋事罪):
In 2021-05-11 they were charged: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/11/two-plead-guilty-in-case-highlighting-chinas-online-control
Ciro’s petition to free them: https://github.com/cirosantilli/chen-mei-cai-wei-ziyou
How their identities were found:
-
https://github.com/Terminus2049/Terminus2049.github.io/issues/598 offers a good analysis
-
https://gist.github.com/chinatimeline/5386a4f9d82483aa5346b17d8d324877 comments by chinatimeline (中国时间线) and gives further opsec guidelines
Terrible opsec… they used real name GitHub emails on early commits, including the institutional university address, before they started better opsec under https://github.com/TerminusBot / terminus2049@protonmail.com
https://github.com/thphd/2047 is a project to restore terminus, live at https://2047.name Ciro mention at: https://2047.name/e/76182458 by https://2047.name/u/5155 which is similar to a Mohu (膜乎) mention, so they seem to share the database? Who knows what’s the relation between all those Pincong (品葱, uncensored forum) lookalikes. TODO that website shows an ICP license 非经营性网站备案 (2000)? Very confusingly also mirrored at https://pincong.org e.g. https://pincong.org/t/10219/https://2047.name/t/10219[], which is very similar to Pincong (品葱, uncensored forum)'s address. Related account: https://github.com/PincongBot
https://2047.name has a links section at: https://2047.name/links shown on the sideboard, containg links of interest. Some all not are very China specific.
https://2047.name/register registration requires an invitation code.
https://github.com/2049bbs/2049bbs.github.io / https://2049bbs.github.io/ maintains another archive up to 2019-03-03.