By Star Chang, posted Jul 24, 2012 at 9:55 PM, 423 views,

More Censorship and Termination on Chinese Social-media

Sina deleted the official microblog of the U.S. Consulate General in Shanghai, while searches for it return “In accordance with relevant laws and policies, search results cannot be displayed”. The account of spokesperson for the U.S. Consulate Generate in Shanghai, was banned from posting message too. Sina Weibo, the country’s leading social-media platform boasts nearly 300 million registered users. It can be considered the China’s version of Twitter and it’s the most influential one. Previously, the official account of The New York Times on Sina Weibo was also terminated for no reason. Most surprisingly, even the Chinese words for “the truth” could not be searched on weibo …

The U.S. Consulate General in Shanghai was not the only foreign diplomatic organ in China that has been censored on weibo, search results for “U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong”, “U.S. Embassy in China”, even “Embassy in China” and “embassy” all return search results that cannot be displayed. Attempts to search Weibo for “the truth” in Chinese, it turned up the same message: “In accordance with relevant laws and policies, search results cannot be displayed”… It is really ironic for the authorities to block the word ‘truth’. It is not known how long the term has been blocked. Sina Weibo did not respond to requests for information.

China is notorious for actively blocking sites such as Facebook and Twitter with its Great Firewall. But social media firms are also required to self-censor as a result of government guidelines and pressure. Terms blocked in the past include those politically sensitive ones such as the Chinese president’s name and the luxury sports car Ferrari. Weibo is the most popular social media site in China and as a result it seem to suffer the highest level of censorship. Whenever there is a sensitive keyword that upsets the authorities, SINA weibo will make their move and block the search immediately. You can’t really explain what the hack the government is afraid of. The social media in China has already become a thug …

SOURCE: chinaSMACK, The Telegraph