Methodology

How we decide a story "dropped off" and when we call it "likely censored".

"Dropped off the list"

An item was on a tracked hot list (Weibo, Baidu, Toutiao, Zhihu, Bilibili, Douyin, Kuaishou), then stopped appearing, while its rank trail shows it was still rising or holding steady — not fading out naturally. That's the full claim. It is not, by itself, evidence of removal.

"Likely censored"

We add this label only when there is supporting evidence: the item vanished abruptly while hot, a re-check minutes or hours later still shows it gone, and/or there's a matching entry on an independent censorship tracker. We still call it "likely" — we don't claim certainty for any single item.

Evidence tiers

Every item shows its own evidence: the rank history right before it vanished, re-checks at fixed intervals after, any hits on censorship-tracker archives, and any lists it survived on. We show the structured evidence, not our summary of it.

Known false positives

Items can fall off a hot list simply because public interest moved on, because of routine list-rotation policies on some platforms, or because of an unrelated technical glitch. A returned item is marked as such, with a note on its original entry — we never silently delete or edit a past entry.

Soft evidence, always disclosed

Unless an item is specifically marked otherwise, treat every entry as soft evidence: a drop from a hot list, not a confirmed takedown.