Plurk banned in China
Posted on by Olivia Bell in Blog.
We at Plurk Layouts made a recent discovery today via Amix.dk which happens to be the blog of Amir, the lead developer of Plurk.
Plurk has been banned in China.
Yes, you read that right. Plurk have yet to have any contact with the government, but most suspect it’s due to freedom of speech – China have also banned YouTube, wordpress.com, a part of Wikipedia, Wordpress.com and others… however Twitter seems to still be accessible in China – interesting.
Google and other big websites censor themselves in China, Google search (US) is not available, and Google search (China) is censored, along with many other websites which do the same.
Apparently Facebook and Twitter were also banned – before the Olympic games, but they are now (we believe) available to use… the question is, what did they do to get unbanned?
Snippet from Amix.dk’s blog “Plurk banned in China”
I woke up in a shock today. Plurk has been blocked by the great firewall of China. We haven’t been warned or have been in any contact with the Chinese government – - so the reason is blurry.
We think it’s very unlikely that we will censor or suppress freedom of speech of our users – as we see freedom of speech as a basic human right. It’s known thought that other big corporations such as Google, Skype, AOL etc. are censoring for the chinese government and probably indirectly putting people in jail.
We feel terribly bad for the thousands of Chinese plurkers that have been affected by this and in shock that their government can do such a bold censorship
Please advise if you have any information on how to handle an unblocking.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you have anything to add? Leave a comment if you do.
Ps. Please share this post, re-tweet, plurk it, digg it etc, spread the word.
Now What?
You've reached the end of this post. As you've made it this far, We've outlined some more extras below. Related content, bookmarking options, and ways to keep updated easily.
Similar Posts
Share This Post
About the Author: Olivia Bell
Olivia has written 106 posts on Plurk Layouts - Some say she designed her own DNA and that she is the only human being to have ridden a unicorn, all we really know is, she's the co-owner of this website and she wants to talk to you on Plurk. Also check her out on www.escaped-emotions.com
33 Responses to “Plurk banned in China”
Leave a Reply
-
Bath Beauty Plurk Layout -
Play With Me Plurk Layout -
Premade Exclusive City and Space Plurk Layout -
The Road to Success Plurk Layout -
Easter Day Plurk Layout -
30 Things Typography – Blue Layout -
30 Things Typography – Green Layout -
30 Things Typography – Pink Layout -
Premade Exclusive Moon Plurk Theme -
Premade Exclusive Summer Colour Flowers Layout
Add Plurk Layouts
Mikayla
24. Nov, 2009
That is so unfair…sorry to Chinese people.
tey_
12. Jun, 2009
omg.. i am one of the victims… from 70 karma back to 30 karma… good thing im back to my own country now… i hate that GREAT FIRE WALL OF CHINA… UGH ! that makes me sick -_-
Jonathan
13. Jul, 2009
to tey_:
You can use some proxy server SW, such as TOR, Psiphone, or Hotspot Shield.
They run slow but work fine.
That’s how I use my Plurk in China!
Lentosky
09. Jun, 2009
China……..
The government is silly…
alexis
01. Jun, 2009
heck yeah! I lost a lot of karma because of that. from 81 to 38.. I wasn’t able to freeze my karma.
Olivia Bell
01. Jun, 2009
AWW! Are you in China?
alexis
23. May, 2009
no wonder! I was in China for 2 months and at first I was able to plurk and soon it just stopped working! :O
Olivia Bell
23. May, 2009
What a pain!!
ben
05. May, 2009
fantastic blog this is what ive been looking for cheers.
Alyzza
02. May, 2009
what the fuck? that’s the craziest thing ever. How could they do such thing? that’s so bad
Olivia Bell
02. May, 2009
It’s China…
lmanpig
30. Apr, 2009
I’m a native Chinese, and I wanna say that I am pissed off, again, but as an experienced user this does not affect me at all. You see, some of us have found our ways to bypass this censorshit and get whatever we want. As for the rest, I know most of them don’t care, honestly I just don’t get those people, I mean it is pretty fucked that they can just live with it.
Olivia Bell
30. Apr, 2009
Interesting… It would be interesting to know what you do to get around these sorts of things.
mistornado
25. Apr, 2009
There might have been good and bad reasons to why they banned Plurk and the other sites. But like Olivia Bell said, there’s nothing they could do about it. I just hope Plurk doesn’t get banned here or anywhere else. Social sites like plurk give us a sense of belonging and we should always be able to exercise our freedom of speech.
Olivia Bell
25. Apr, 2009
Well said
J
24. Apr, 2009
NO!!!! NO!!!!! NO!!!!!!
Please block “PLURK”!!!!
i need plurk during the office hour @ CHINA…!!!
J
25. Apr, 2009
Please dun block “PLURK”!!!!
typing mistake…..LOL
Precious
24. Apr, 2009
Woah. This thing is really not fair for the Chinese. For me, the Chinese Government is being unjust to them. It’s their right and everyone’s right to have access to Plurk. ( Only my opinion) I’m gonna re-plurk this one.
lathifulamri
24. Apr, 2009
china banned plurk, not plurk banned china
Raura
24. Apr, 2009
I think it a kind of news writing. In this case, omitting the verb “be” before the word banned.
Raura
24. Apr, 2009
China government is doing this all the time. They even ban websites of their own land, Hong Kong, and the land they claim to belong to them, Taiwan, because these two get the right of freedom speech and often criticize China in many ways. However, the government is still supported by groups of Chinese people. What Jackie Chan said recently reflects some Chinese’s thought about freedom: “I’m mot sure if it’s good to have freedom or not, I’m really confused now. If there is too much freedom, like the way Hong Kong is today, it is very chaotic; Taiwan is also chaotic. I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled.” Do you feel him convincing? So what’s big deal controlling the websites, and Chinese need to be controlled before too late
Google, who fights for his freedom of speech against the US government but censors itself to make them acceptable by China government, and that’s very depressing. I’m not surprised at how ridiculous policy China would make but surprised at how this freedom fighter embraces that policy.
Jared
23. Apr, 2009
Well, the way Plurk threads discussions on a plurks lens itself more toward an ongoing discussion than Twitter’s response system does. This makes in-depth discussions about politics much more frequent, and the Chinese government probably doesn’t like that.
Olivia Bell
23. Apr, 2009
This is a very good point – possibly the thing most love about Plurk, is what got it banned… it would be interesting to see what officials say.
Ryan
23. Apr, 2009
Like I said before on Plurk, it’s because China is so strict in trying to keep their image (w.e. image that may be) thus not wanting to cause an uprising (which knows WHY China would think Plurk would cause such a thing), but they could care less about their citizens, all they want is to keep a “squeaky clean” image for their leaders.
Kaye
23. Apr, 2009
Whoa. Is there a reason why Plurk banned their website in China? Anyway, i blogged this.
Olivia Bell
23. Apr, 2009
China banned Plurk, not Plurk banning China.
momo
23. Apr, 2009
I dunno about YouTube and Twitter but Facebook sponsored the Olympics which is probably why they got unbanned.
I feel really bad for anyone in China, can’t imagine what it’s like to live on such a short leash D:
Veronica
23. Apr, 2009
I personally think this is just rubbish, and China shouldn’t be so uptight. But I don’t understand too much politics, so I’m not going to add much more on the subject.
I re-tweeted and re-plurked this.
Olivia Bell
23. Apr, 2009
Thank you Veronica
Jared
24. Apr, 2009
It IS complete rubbish, but also very typical of China. People have coined the phrase, “the Great Firewall of China” for a reason. The concept of freedom of speech is more like a unicorn in China than a reality.
Veronica
24. Apr, 2009
That’s completely stupid, in my opinion. I didn’t know about this previous to Plurk being banned – I’m a bit oblivious when it comes to world news and politics.
Can the Chinese do anything about this at some point? I definitely wouldn’t stand for it.
Olivia Bell
24. Apr, 2009
There’s not a lot they can do.
Jared
24. Apr, 2009
Besides having an incredibly bloody revolution, there is nothing the people of China can do to stop the oppressive nature of the PRC. The Chinese people do have some strategies to try and circumvent the Great Firewall of China, but it is always a losing battle.
One example is that they will write their characters top to bottom (the archaic method of writing Chinese) as opposed to left to right (the Western-influenced contemporary style) because the automated web crawlers the government uses can only look for certain words in the left-to-right style.
Subversive content and sites are still eventually discovered and shut down though, and so Chinese bloggers are unfortunately more like wanderers than their Western counterparts that enjoy freedom of speech and thus the ability to become established at a single url long-term.