Tech Stream

Social web blocked in China

3 June 2009

China is blocking access to social networking and social media websites ahead of the 20th anniversary of a bloody crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Sites like Twitter, Hotmail and Flickr were blocked on Tuesday and Microsoft also reported that access was blocked to their new Bing search engine.

The story is being covered today by Radio Australia News who report that internet users filled chatrooms with protest after access to Twitter was denied on Tuesday. And Reuters reports that “Access to video-sharing site YouTube, owned by Google, has been blocked in China since March, after overseas Tibetan groups posted graphic footage of China’s crackdown on protests by Tibetans in 2008.”

The Tech Dynasty blog on CNET Asia also covered the blocks yesterday and says that “anyone in China who spends any amount of time online has weathered these blocks before” and so has recommended some good sites to overcome them.  There are also unconfirmed reports on Twitter that the #gfw (great firewall of China) has been removed from the ‘trending topics’ section. We’ll have more in the Tech Stream program, on Radio Australia news and on our own Tech Stream twitter feed.

UPDATE 05/06/2009: Connect Asia covered this on Thursday morning, you can hear Steve Holland’s story from this link, and ABC News Online provided excellent coverage of the anniversary.