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June 2, 2009
China Bans Twitter, Hotmail
by Lee Stranahan
Access to the popular social networking service Twitter and email service Hotmail was blocked across mainland China late on Tuesday afternoon, two days before the twentieth anniversary of a bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square.(snip)
Users in Beijing reported accessing the service without difficulty earlier on Tuesday, and even successfully searching potentially sensitive words such as "Tiananmen."
While professional and urban Chinese often use foreign Internet tools, including Twitter, Hotmail and Facebook, the vast majority of Chinese use similar domestic services that are carefully monitored for any sign of content deemed subversive.
Since the Chinese government oftern seems to only understand money, I'll approach this from that angle. China's stab at half-capitalism is always going to run into trouble because of their lack of commitment to basic human rights. They can do okay at the 'cheap labor' part but when it comes to building a modern, high tech economy things like mass censorship are bad for business and innovation.
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Posted By Lee Stranahan | June 2, 2009 10:40 AM
Comments
I bet those godless, communist bastards even torture.
Posted by: brutlygoddamnhonest at June 2, 2009 11:49 AM
Im pretty sure someday in the not too distant future the communist side of the chinese government will collapse under its own weight. Eventually the citizenry will get fed up and revolt. I know they've tried that before and got run over by tanks, but times change.
Posted by: J M Goddamn Ashby at June 2, 2009 1:46 PM
We should scream at Cisco, Google, and other US Tech companies that provide the technology that enables this nonsense.
I am very nervous that similar tech will be used here. Until people realize that network neutrality is important for protecting our free speech rights in cyberspace, I see much badness ahead.
Posted by: ∇•B=0 Goddamn Silly Ratfaced Git ∇•D=ρ at June 2, 2009 2:32 PM
They make it fun to live here, all right. I just changed my email address. They also have been blocking youtube, most free blog addresses like blogspot, and if you try to access more than about 5 google images, they block that.
I don't think you will see much in the way of people overthrowing the govt here, though. The overall population lives much better than they ever have, and the people are very self regulating.
There are ways to get around a lot of the internet censorship by using proxy sites, and the government efforts at censorship are very random.
I can access this site for example, and nearly all news sites except huffpo, which I can still get through a proxy.
Posted by: goddemsique at June 2, 2009 7:18 PM
