Slashdot Mirror
Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, Others Blocked In China
An anonymous reader writes "Two days ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square 'incident,' several high profile Internet sites have been blocked in mainland China. These include Twitter.com, Flickr.com, Live.com, and Bing.com. While Internet blocks are common enough in mainland China, blocking such high-profile sites is unusual. In addition, blog reports suggest even state-owned television broadcasts are suffering multiple instances of muting lasting several seconds (again, not unusual for some foreign stations broadcast over cable, but unusual for local state-owned media) suggesting state security, online or through other technology, has tightened significantly, perhaps in anticipation or discovery of protest plans."
Sounds a lot like Facebook being blocked during the elections in Iran. I wonder if banning sites just long enough to restrict the flow of ideas for the season will become more popular/acceptable than perma-bans?
... must be a "democratic" election coming up!"
"Oops, I can't access social sites today
My work here is dung.
That's it, I'm going to block China
I wish the US would block Twitter too.
Why are we buying the products of these fascist dictatorships? Why do we continue to support reigimes of tyrrany?
Oh yeah, because they make shit on the cheap and we're a nation of greedy slobs with a humane streak which lasts up until that $5 is taken from your pay cheque to buy your "morality token" for the month.
Flamebait or not, if you buy Chinese goods, you support oppression.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I suspect that this will have unintended consequences like a Streisand effect. Some people who might not think about the Tiananmen Square incident might wonder why they can't get to certain sites. They'll ask a friend about it who will respond "Maybe because it's the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident." The listener's memory will be refreshed and the chance of people forgetting about Tiananmen Square and the date the incident occurred will be lessened.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
But alas remember this is the instant information age now. A few days after the anniversary no one will care about it and move onto the next funny video on youtube of cats stuck in a bag.
https://www.speakservers.com/
Yeah, there are multiple editorial failures in this summary. And in honour of the story being about China, I vote that the punishment be summary excecution!
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
"Two days ahead of the Tiananmen Square 'incident'...
So, slashdot is predicting incidents now? Or should that read, "Two days ahead of the anniversary of..."?
Yes, I'm picking nits, but the overall quality of journalism seems to be declining on a daily basis. Despite what some here may think, accuracy IS important.
I was wondering how the Chinese had the foresight to block Twitter back in 1989.
Why are we buying the products of these fascist dictatorships?
Part of the answer to your first question is also availability. There are some markets where the Chinese goods have such a lock on production that it is nearly impossible to not buy something made in China.
Sure, you can buy a Chinese made widget for less than an American made widget almost without exception. However, there are times when no amount of money will buy a non-Chinese widget because no such item exists.
Furthermore, your statement
products of these fascist dictatoriships
Is itself an absurd over-simplification of the situation. Just because a product is made in China does not mean it inherently supports the Chinese government. Sure, taxes are (generally) paid but your $.99 widget almost certainly profits a greedy western capitalist much more than the Chinese government.
if you buy Chinese goods, you support oppression
Not always true. As I said, there are times that you don't have a choice in the matter. Sometimes the only way to purchase the item you need for whatever task is at hand is to purchase a Chinese made version of it. If you don't believe me then take a look through the tool section of your favorite home improvement / hardware / discount / general merchandise store. There are some items that if you need them today, you have no choice but to buy Chinese - and if your choice is to buy Chinese or allow your basement to flood with water, I have a suspicion on which way you will likely choose.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
They assume the government knows best and it's for their own good, for the most part.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Seriously, almost no Chinese use those sites. Twitter doesn't even have a Chinese language version, and has barely begun to grow in China (though it may, there are already several Chinese clonewares out). Nobody ANYWHERE in the world uses Bing, and the Chinese use QQ, Sohu, Xinlang, or other IM/Portal/Blogging services instead of Live/Blogspot. Flickr is the only one Chinese might even notice, and there are plenty of alternatives.
The only Chinese that use these (now blocked) services are educated, and probably have decent English, and know how to get around these blocks. The vast majority of Chinese users use other websites, or have alternatives. The contrversial stuff has always been hosted on non-Chinese websites for obvious reasons, and people who want to see it are well aware of how to get around the blocks.
Far more telling was the 7 hours of downtime Xiaonei went through yesterday for maintanence. They've already been shutting down certain Xiaonei groups and blocking users for doing political stuff, I wonder if the maintanence included any updates to help with censorship?
Configuration files? This is China, where labor is cheap. They have people manually inspect every request as it goes past the firewall.
Youtube is already blocked
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
Probably "off topic," but it's interesting that they promised quite a bit in order to be allowed to have the Olympics. Makes me wonder about other promises. Makes me glad to live in the US. :)
It's just your government 1984'ing your ISP. Don't worry about it.
Yes, we all think it's terrible that the majority of the youth in China don't even know about the Tianamen Square "incident"
But within America itself, how many of you know of, or recognise the following incidents?
1) US Government (ATF/FBI) burns to death 76 people in their homes, and the FBI lies about it for six years, when it finally comes clean. No one is ever held accountable.
2) 4 plain-clothed officers shoot an unarmed man standing in his doorway. They shoot a total of 41 times. He is hit 19 times. After the officers are convicted, the court orders them re-tried, and the second time around they are all acquitted.
3) Unarmed students at an anti-war protest, are shot at by the National Guard. 4 die, 9 are injured. Again, no accountability. No convictions.
You know, there are some significant differences between those two instances:
1) I can google 'kent state' and quickly find the relevant wikipedia article from work without risk of reprisal (unless my boss sees me goofing off...) even though I'm using a public, static IP address that could easily be tracked to my computer (at least it could be easily tracked if I was going through the great firewall of China). I'd love to see someone in China be able to google 'Tianamen' and be able to click on the wikipedia article from their job with as much ease and lack of danger as I can here in the US.
2) Just to get a taste of the difference between cultures, on the wikipedia article for the Kent State shootings the photographer received the biggest prize in journalism for the photo he took of the shooting (the same year the picture was taken, not years after the fact). It's impossible to imagine a Chinese photographer receiving a prestigious Chinese award back in 1989 for publishing a photo of Tianamen Square.
3) The day after the Kent State shootings (were 4 died and 9 were injured) there was a nationwide protest by millions of students that effectively closed a number of universities. After the initial shooting no further deaths and certainly no executions occurred. After Tienamen Square, captured workers were quickly executed although students were not.
4) The scale of the Kent State shootings is dwarfed by the Tienaman Square event. The official Chinese estimate of deaths in Tienamen Square was 241 dead with over 7000 injured (other estimates are in the thousands but because everything was handled very secretly by the Chinese government it is impossible for anyone to know for sure). As previously mentioned, Kent State was 4 dead with 9 injured. Also, nobody disappeared in Kent State. Whatever happened to that guy that stood in front of the tank? The last thing anyone ever saw was him being dragged away by the police. It is believed he was executed because the government was never able to produce him to quite the international criticism it was receiving.
5) Tienamen Square involved the state's army. The Kent State incident involved Ohio's National Guard which is a rather different force. It would be unheard of to use the federal army to suppress a riot or for any civil purpose. The local national guard is a very different force, used to help with natural disasters and, in rare cases, to help with crowd control in riots. One big difference is the national guard doesn't have tanks...
6) Coverage of Kent State was not suppressed in the American news at the time nor afterward. It still is unacceptable to talk about Tienamen Square on TV or newspapers in China except with great care and few words.
There are thousands and thousands of factories run by the PLA or by a direct proxy front man corporation.
And you know that. Funny you don't mention that. Maybe yours isn't,(how about your official chinese partner, you need one to be in business there, something else you failed to mention) but you know it goes on and a lot of bribery and corruption exists.
The same political gang that killed tens of millions of their own people is STILL IN CHARGE.
It is NO DIFFERENT from if the nazis were still in charge in Germany. Totalitarian genocidal murderers. Now they are just richer than 20 years ago.Richer and mnore powerful. I guess anything goes as long as you profit, right?
So yes, it is totally legitimate to paint with a broad brush once it comes to mainland China. We should have never normalized trade relations without an exact, carved in stone, due date by, quid pro quo and them loosening the reins and giving their people real freedom. There's still no freedom of speech, freedom of political expression outside of their one party rule, no real freedom of religion, nothing. Opening up trade to them hasn't resulted in one more iota of real freedom now than they had 20 years ago. And they seek to keep their people brainwashed forever, even to the point of censoring what is common knowledge in the rest of the world. So we made the planets largest military dictatorship richer, and near destroyed the US middle class by selling off our manufacturing infrastructure for pennies on the dollar.