Great Firewall of China targets Flickr

The San Fransisco Chronicle is reporting that Flickr.com, a popular photo repository site that I use, is now being blocked in China:

“The blocking, which began Thursday, is keeping Internet users across a large part of China from viewing photos on Flickr, home to millions of snapshots of everything from birthday parties to beach vacations to nudes.”

As many of you know, I just got back from a 12-day vacation in China on Monday, June 4. During that time, I took and uploaded nearly 2,000 photos to Flickr; uploading most of them from within my hotel room in China each evening.

Blocked by ChinaAccording to 苏菲的世界 and 1980Nic, access to Flickr from within China halted on June 7. While users can still comment and view some sections of the website, images appear to be stripped.

Internet censorship in the People’s Republic of China, sadly, is becoming more common. While visiting, I tried to access the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and found it to be blocked.

Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman maintain a database of websites confirmed to be inaccessible within China and greatfirewallofchina.org lets you test if a site is blocked. I guess now they will have to add Flickr.com.

3 replies on “Great Firewall of China targets Flickr”

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  2. Why don’t you just take down all that Peace Corps stuff? You just look like a big self-broadcasting crybaby. First of all, that was 5 years ago. Moreover, you misrepresent your experience by saying you were a PCV. You were a trainee who was never sworn in. Yeah, PC bureaucracy can be a drag–but successful volunteers can suck it up. If you couldn’t compromise with PC staff, its unlikely you’d be able to work effectively with host country counterparts.

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