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).
Popularity: 24% [?]
Writer: Jeff Wang. I am currently a student at UC Berkeley, majoring in Computer Science. Most posts will be dedicated to young entreprenuers.
The majority of Chinese internet users aren’t interested in the sites you’ve mentioned. They don’t care that they are blocked.
China’s netizens rely on homegrown sites for news and information and most online activities are conducted in Chinese.
The issue of web censorship in China seems only to matter to those few foreigners living or visiting China who can’t access their favorite site.
For most Chinese people, it ain’t a big deal since they don’t even know the banned sites exist in the first place.
Bummer, they don’t get any cheezburger.