Talk Digger teaches me many things since I am working on it. I discovered many things: I found search engines bugs (I will come back on this in a later post), I learned many Ajax tricks, etc. However, today I learned a thing much more important: the situation of Chinese people and the state of the Internet in China.
I know that the Chinese government censors many, many websites. I also know that Chinese bloggers are even more censored. However, I never really question myself on that reality. This morning, all that ignorance slapped me into the face.
I opened Talk Digger to see who was talking about it and about my blog. Then I found that little post in German wrote by VanVan. I was astonished to see the name of Talk Digger beside the ones of Skype and Flickr. Then I immediately checked my logs: no one connection came from China during the night. She was right: the Chinese government censored Talk Digger. Awesome; I never thought it possible, but it is.
A few Chinese were able to access to Talk Digger via this address: fgiasson.com/td/. However, it seems that they also banned my domain name fgiasson.com today. Unbelievable and how sad. Many, many Chinese had tried Talk Digger in the first hours of online life. Around 24 hours after, the domain name has been put into the censored sites list.
So, could I do something to make Talk Digger available to them? Anyone have an idea?
I could probably build something like an email diffusion list of Talk Digger’s result once a day. Could it work? Probably, I would need to check the possibility. Then, if it is possible, how could I reach them if they can’t even read my blog? I do not have any idea yet. I will need a good night of sleep and hope to get a good idea.
So, many brains are always better than only one; so, you, do you have an idea? Leave it there and I will consider every of them.
Update: 4 august 2005: It seems that the Chinese government did not ban the domain name fgiasson.com… yet. So, if you look to use Talk Digger in Chine, use that URL to access it: http://fgiasson.com/td/
Technorati: talkdigger | china | chinese | blogs | blogchina | bokee | censor | ban |
vanvan
August 2, 2005 — 9:21 pm
Hello Fréd,
thanks for your commenting and trackback. I am glad that the freedom of informations in china is coming to your attention. Yes it must be unbelievable for those, who were born with the privilege of the public opinion.
Talkdigger.com is such a great idea that one could freely get what he seeks in seconds – maybe that’s why it was blocked by the big brother. They tremble at the free press all the while.
Since the other access (http://fgiasson.com/td/) was also blocked today, I feel sadly. For me it’s not unbelievable. It happens in China, everyday, everywhere.
Regards,
vanvan
Fred
August 2, 2005 — 11:29 pm
Hello VanVan,
No; thank to you for that post. We know it, but we do not take the time to remember it. It is the biggest characteristic of humans: their tendency to forgive things too quickly. We only need to remember; at least to try.
But I can confirm that they did not banned fgiasson.com (I just seen an incoming Chinese IP requesting that address). What it means? Chinese Internet users can access to Talk Digger via this address:
http://fgiasson.com/td/
They can also use that address for instant search:
http://fgiasson.com/td/index.php?surl=The_url_to_dig_for
Or the bookmarklet:
javascript:q=location.href;if(q)location.href=’http://fgiasson.com/td/index.php?surl=’+q;
It will works, but for how long?
Thank VanVan. So, if you have other things like this that you would like to put my attention on, leave me an email, I would be glad to read and discuss about them.
Take care,
Salutations,
Fred