Facebook situation in China
By milkcow
@milkcow (99)
China
September 23, 2009 12:31pm CST
Hi all,I'm like many others, frustrated about the situation with Facebook in China. Firstly, there's absolutely no reason to block Facebook, there is nothing illegal on the Facebook site and even if there was, Facebook is a closed community, you can only see friends' stuff not the general public, and if there's anything illegal, report it, I have personally seen Facebook remove reported content. While on Twitter you can read anybody's tweets, there is still some policing on the site and they have a legal department. Facebook is not an adult site! Facebook does not contain instructions on how to build weapons of mass destruction! Is it so wrong just to chat with old friends? Anybody know if this situation is gonna get resolved? Anybody have any thoughts on this? Your opinions are welcome. Why doesn't Facebook do something about it? There was an issue with Google earlier this year and it was resolved in a matter of days because Google went crazy on them! And what can us normal people do about it? Start a petition? Or better yet, a riot?Yours thoughts are appreciated.
1 person likes this
3 responses
@anna728 (1499)
• United States
24 Sep 09
Yeah I never realized that Facebook is sometimes blocked in the PRC until this summer. I tried to message my roommate over the summer while she was at home in China, and she couldn't access it. She was able to see what I wrote because of an e-mail notification, so we were still able to get in touch that way, but it was pretty inconvenient. I will be spending a semester at Beijing University next fall and I don't want to have trouble accessing Facebook. I use it a lot as is, and I will want to use it even more when I am there because I will want to keep in touch with friends back here.
@milkcow (99)
• China
24 Sep 09
Yes, it's definitely inconvenient. I am fortunate to have a BlackBerry with the MDS server in Fort Lauderdale. So all my internet access from the phone passes encrypted to the US, meaning Facebook works. But accessing only Facebook Mobile is still very inconvenient. I've tried proxies and VPN, but they only work for a while until the providers discontinue the service (and all except one so far has been extremely slow), I guess the bandwidth is just too expensive, especially if you consider that some people use it for BitTorrent. Anyway, I really hope this situation will improve, wish I had the power to do something about it.
@allyoftherain (7208)
• United States
23 Sep 09
Well, there are a lot of things that I don't like about the government in China. Facebook is not at the top of the list, but it does kinda irk me that China would go so far as to ban it. I don't think a riot would do much good, but a petition might. You would have to have lots of names on it, and get some senators on your side. China will probably only respond to other governments looking sideways at them.
1 person likes this
@lordcaocao2025 (4098)
• Indonesia
27 Sep 09
Wow, i also c no reason why the government of China doing this to facebook. Really i dont c any reason for them doing this kind of block. But to make a riot just for the sake of make the facebook accessible again, i think is a litle to much. The first thing you should do is gather those who not agree with this policy, then if you think you have big support you can demonstrate, or if one of you good at legal, maybe take a legal action.
Ok thats it from me
