Chinese web users trying to discuss the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising on its 23rd anniversary Monday are incurring the wrath of China’s web censors.
Those censors, who number in the thousands, have spent the day crawling the web and blocking terms that Chinese citizens are using to talk about the protests on the popular Twitter-style microblogging platform Sina Weibo.
Banned terms include “six four,” “23,” “candle” and “never forget,” according to the BBC. Sina Weibo has even blocked users from using a candle emoticon as it’s considered a symbol of mourning. When Weibo users started using an Olympic flame symbol as a work-around, Weibo blocked that as well.
General web searches are also being blocked. Chinese web users searching for “Tiananmen Square” are typically delivered humdrum information about the place, with no mention of the uprising that took place there. Instead of the typical results, search engine users in the country on Monday are smacking face-first into the Great Firewall of China: An error message is being delivered telling users that search results can’t be delivered “due to relevant laws, regulations and policies.”
On June 4, 1989, Chinese troops killed hundreds of pro-democracy protesters gathered in the square. The government has never released an official death toll and it discourages public discussion of the event.
This is far from the first time China has played cat and mouse with Internet users. When blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng fled house arrest for the U.S. embassy in Beijing, China’s censors got to work attempting to block discussion about his plight on the social web.
Recently, Google announced it would be alerting Chinese web users when search terms are being censored in China. Google searches carried out in mainland China are re-routed through the company’s Hong Kong-based servers.
Sina Weibo also recently introduced a new user contract featuring a points-based censorship scheme.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, yesfoto
More About: censorship, china, sina weibo, Social Media, weibo, World
via Mashable! http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/W2R80vkeOu8/
