Results tagged “internetcensorship”

• China's Alibaba Adds Social Networking to E-commerce [PC World] "China's Alibaba Group has started mixing social-networking functions into its leading e-commerce platforms, a move it hopes will convince users to spend more time and money on Alibaba Web sites. Alibaba is crafting social-networking platforms specifically to complement two of its core operations. The beta version of a Web site with Facebook-style applications and a Twitter-style feed is being grafted onto Taobao.com."
• China, the world's factory--a photo tour [CNET Asia Blogs: The Tech Dynasty] "These images are from WethicA, a company that audits factories with an eye toward child labor, workers rights, health & safety, and wages. From the WethicA newsletter: "We are posting real untouched photos of factory working conditions from about one year ago. We have decided this summer to show you an important part of the job we do during audits by telling you why these pictures have been taken. Actually, an audit is much more investigative than ticking boxes off a questionaire. One has to walk in with an open mind ready to question everything in these situations and not only ask a list of predefined questions.""
• China's turning children against me: Kadeer [ABC News] "The children of exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer have gone on Chinese television criticising their mother. Two of Ms Kadeer's children and her brother were at first reported as having written letters blaming their mother for orchestrating recent violence in far western China. Now the two children, along with another son, have recorded interviews with Chinese television for a special program."

China’s online gangster/mafia games are now officially sleepin’ with the fishes. According to Xinhua, the Ministry of Culture banned all websites and servers running, publishing, or offering links to online games involving gang-related subject matter and warned that violators of the ban will face an unspecified but "severe punishment."

Qin Gang, do you have children?

The crackdown on Google in China seems to have had little effect on its internet traffic. After dropping to 29th place on Friday, Google.cn returned to its original position of 21st place yesterday. While this is still much lower than Baidu (which has remained a stable position in the top 10), it's not bad for a site that's been consistently targeted by Chinese authorities - including campaigns complete with fallacious name-smearing interviews and fudged statistics, as well as a firewalling of several of its auxiliary services. Source: SCMP (paywalled)

Some enterprising cyber-Sherlock has used Google's Insight for Search service to discover that certain pornographic search terms experienced suspicious growth in the days prior to the the anti-Google CCTV reports.

Youtube, Blogspot, Tumblr, Livejournal, Xanga, Wordpress, Friendfeed, Flickr, Microsoft's Live.com and yes... now Twitter too (noooooo!). A little bird tells us that apparently you can still read and post to twitter from another very popular social networking site which we won't name in hopes that it won't get blocked too. We bet you can guess what it is. Otherwise, going through a proxy and searching "#twitterblock" should help you find ways to get around the ban as well. Oh... how could we forget - Bing.com is also blocked (man, Microsoft can't catch a break here can they? Wonder what kind of guanxi google has that they don't in this country). If there was ever a time to get a VPN, now is it.

If you're reading this blog in China or if you've got one of your own here, you're part of a national trend: having blogs is about five times more popular in China than it is in the US. If you're listening to some music online and instant messaging at the same time, you're an even more typical Chinese Internet user.

Have you been missing laughing babies and sneezing pandas? Haven't seen Star Wars kid in too long of a time? Or you just wanted to feel plugged into the international video-trading scene again?

Ugh. Most of you have already noticed by now, but Youtube's been Great Firewall-ed for the second time this month. Unlike the weird half-assed blocking in early March though, it looks like this time the video site is down. completely. everywhere.