China Blocks Twitter and Bing, Rest Of Web Too

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It seems as if China is blocking Twitter as well as Microsoft’s new search engine Bing. Other blocked sites is WordPress.com, YouTube, Flickr, Hotmail and several others. Ryan McLaughlin blogs from China and thinks the block is due to the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4.

I can only predict the next few days will see more and more sites being blocked, hopefully with things returning to normal shortly after (though if past blocks are anything to go by, it could be weeks or months).

Hat tip: Mashable

China Bans YouTube

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Video browsers in general, and bloggers in particular, should know that China has blocked YouTube. The Reuters report tells us that the ban has been in place over the past 24 hours, and the reason is supposedly unknown. However, Committee to Protect Bloggers posted this:

Xinhua, the Chinese news agency reported that the government blocked access to the site after a fabricated video showing C hinese police brutally beating up Tibetans during the riots last year. The description of the offending video fits one that was posted by the Tibetan government in exile and is a collage of varios clips showing the police putting down the riots brutally.

This is not the first time YouTube is banned in China. Several other countries have bans in effect as well. More on Techmeme.

How Do You Know If Your Blog is Banned or Blocked?

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bannedIn Has Your Blog Been Banned or Blocked?, I asked if your blog has been blocked or banned and how you found out, and what you did about it, if you could do anything. I recently published How to Access Banned WordPress.com Blogs in response to WordPress.com blogs being blocked and recent problems I’ve had trying to access my blogs and Gmail from various hotels and corporate WIFI firewalled networks.

From the stories people have shared, blocks and bans can happen from a variety of sources, not just from within a country. Blocks are in place within businesses, libraries, educational institutions, hotels, and even Internet cafes.

When a friend asked me how would she know if her blog was blocked from any potential readers, I thought it was a question worth investigating. How do you know if your blog is blocked or banned?
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Has Your Blog Been Banned or Blocked?

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I recently published How to Access Banned WordPress.com Blogs, and a friend asked me how would she know if her blog is banned by a country, government, Internet Provider, company, school, or otherwise. Good question.

On Monday, I’ll be publishing a feature article on how to find out if your blog is banned and offer some options to get your blog off a ban or blocked list, but what about you?

Has your blog been blocked or banned by a government, educational institute, corporation, or web filtering service or program? How did you find out? Did you find out why your blog was blocked? Were you unable to get your blog unblocked?

Share your story with us.