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Top Blogs Censored in China

In China on 10 August 2007 with Comments

This post is written from behind the great firewall of China. First of all, I’m having a blast here for my vacation. The hotel I’m staying in is amazing; it definitely beats any hotel I stayed at in the States. The food is really awesome. Moreover, I am also extremely impressed by the progress of the economy.

However, being the internet-junkie that I am, I had to test out exactly how severe the internet censorship was. Specifically, I wanted to see which blogs are censored.

The experiment: I tried to access the Technorati Top 100 list. The rankings are determined how many other websites link to these top blogs. I used Safari to see which blog gave me a timed-out page.

These are blogs I cannot access:

• Post Secret (ranked #9)
• Seth Godin’s Blog (ranked #13)
• icanhascheezburger (ranked #14)
• Official Google Blog (ranked #15)
• Guy Kawasaki (ranked #21)
• Head Rush (ranked #23)
• Scobleizer (ranked #33)
• Google System (ranked #98)

These are the unlucky “A-list” bloggers. I also tried pinging their URL’s from the command line. Please let me know your results are different from mine. Also, I’d be happy to test out your blogs during my remaining days here. Luckily, my blog is accessible; though things might change after this post … (cross my fingers).