Undoubtedly, the Internet has become one of the most important conduits to information for the general public. Nonetheless, Internet access can be and has been limited systematically or blocked completely during political events in numerous countries and regions by various censorship mechanisms. Depending on where the core filtering component is situated, censorship techniques have been classified as client-based, server-based, or network-based. However, as the Internet evolves rapidly, new and sophisticated censorship techniques have emerged, which involve techniques that cut across locations and involve new forms of hurdles to information access. We argue that modern censorship can be better understood through a new lens that we term chokepoints, which identifies bottlenecks in the content production or delivery cycle where efficient new forms of large-scale client-side surveillance and filtering mechanisms have emerged.

翻译：毫无疑问，互联网已成为公众获取信息的最重要渠道之一。然而，在众多国家和地区的政治事件期间，互联网访问可能且确实通过各种审查机制被系统性限制或完全阻断。根据核心过滤组件所处位置，审查技术传统上被分为客户端型、服务器型和网络型。但随着互联网的迅猛发展，新型复杂审查技术不断涌现，这些技术跨越地域界限，并形成了信息获取的新型障碍。我们认为，通过我们提出的"瓶颈点"这一新视角，可以更好地理解现代审查机制——该视角聚焦内容生产或传播周期中的关键阻塞点，正是在这些节点上，出现了高效的新型大规模客户端监控与过滤机制。