Barely a day after Search Engine Giant Google launched its +1 service globally, albeit in a limited manner, China has blocked the new feature reports Ren Media.
Confirming this Just Ping and the Greatfirewallofchina.org said that Google +1 is not accessible from mainland China, This highlights China’s strict censorship practices.
An International Business Times blog posts, “The Chinese government’s rapid decision to axe Google’s latest experiment has less to do with Google specifically and more to do with how concerned it is about the power social networks wield in organizing anti-government protests.
Social media such as Facebook and Twitter have been increasingly used in the last few years to denounce authoritarian regimes and their repression of the population. Egyptians and Tunisians organized their protests using Facebook and Twitter, driving crowds into the streets and ultimately wrestling power from entrenched dictators. In Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain too, among others, social media has been instrumental in orchestrating political uprisings and denouncing the use of violence by the security forces.
However, even before China’s ban was imposed, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt had complained to journalists that governments are increasinlgy clamping down on Internet freedom. Schmidt had used China as an example.
Last May, at the G8 Schmidt had to stand up to French President Nicolas Sarkozy when the latter insisted that the Internet needed tougher regulations and governments should have more control.
“There are countries where it is illegal to do things that Google encourages,” Schmidt said. “In those countries, there is a real possibility of employees being put in prison for reasons which are not their fault.”
Google is yet to respond to China’s ban
China already blocks Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Foursquare. The government’s position on the censorship of social media is not set to change in the foreseeable future as it recently accused Facebook of fuelling Vietnamese protests against China’s involvement in the disputed Spratly Islands.
Beijing has also been widely criticised as it started tracking its citizens’ geolocations in March. While city officials claimed they needed to study traffic patterns, Human Rights activists are worried the city will use its mapping power to keep tabs on dissidents and protestors.
Internet censorship by government is however more and more criticised and it will be hard for China be able to maintain such a strict policy forever, especially after the U.N recently declared unrestricted Internet access to be a fundamental human right.
Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his supporters were recently slapped with a $91 million fine for blacking out telecoms during the Egyptian uprisings. In Iran, too, people have been protesting against the government’s plan to create an internal online network that would block outside websites, and hackers recently targeted Turkey for planning to restrict its Internet starting this August.
Update: Penn-Olson says Google+ wasn’t blocked, just made impossible to use by slowing it down to a crawl, which essentially comes down to the same thing: censoring.