China Blocks Twitter, Wordpress, Hotmail & More

As the 20th anniversary of the horrific bloody massacre at Tiananmen Square looms near (June 4), it shouldn’t be any surprise that the government of China has now cut off yet another form of communication. As of approximately 5:00pm (9:00GMT), access to the ever popular social sites Twitter and Flickr have been denied.

In addtional to the blockage of Twitter, there are widespread reports of denials for Hotmail, Live, and Wordpress. Internet users had already lost access to YouTube back in March, after graphic footage of China’s crackdown on protests by Tibetans back in 2008 were posted.

However, the sheer idiocy of blocking blogs boggles my mind. I guess having spent my entire life living in a democracy, I just can’t wrap my brain around being denied anything such as this. Considering blogs are used for so much more than just personal diaries these days, it seems that a very large section of the internet has now turned into no-mans-land for over a billion people.

For those of you in China wanting an easy way to evade the block, Twitter can still be accessed via third-party applications. These include TweetDeck and iTweet, to name a few. Your favorite services such as Hotmail, Flickr, and Live can also be accessed via a proxy.

Food For Thought: Does anyone think this may cut down on the amount of spam coming from China?