User privacy concerns on Chinese social-networking sites have led the biggest players to block indexing by Baidu, China's leading search engine, according to Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting.
The blogging site of Sohu.com, China's leading portal, as well as social networking sites including 51.com, Xiaonei, and Hainei have blocked Baidu's spiders from indexing the sites, Marbridge reported. Other search engines may also be blocked.
The reasoning behind this move may reveal a pragmatic commitment to security by obscurity for people who post under their real names and may want to avoid attention from employers, acquaintances, and government monitors.
But if Sohu blogs aren't indexed, there may be radical effects on the Chinese blogosphere.
Regardless, the attempt at security is partial at best. The data, of course, is still published. Just as Americans have gradually come to terms with the fact that placing something on MySpace, Facebook, or other sites may make it accessible to prospective employers or others, data posted on Chinese portals is accessible to a variety of actors.
Even if privacy controls intended to restrict access to approved users are used, the Chinese government's power to look at data contained on servers within its borders makes government surveillance only slightly more circumscribed.
Further, search engines might simply switch to spider IPs or behaviors that get around the blocks, though this may be unlikely given that leading engines tend to obey "no spiders" signs in robots.txt.
This move may still be good for social-networking sites. But for blogs, a block can be disastrous if it isn't optional.
As those of us who blog know all too well, the success of one's work and the likelihood that anyone reads it is dependent on links. Links, links, and more links. But if someone searching for discussions of a certain topic can't find our work, we're out of luck.
For personal blogs, this is no big deal. I could care less if people index my daily musings on a personal blog. But for people who wish to participate in the vibrant world of online discourse, being obscured from search engines is a game changer.
It's unclear to me at this point whether Sohu's block will remove its blogs from the searchable world. But if it does, prepare to see a deluge of Chinese bloggers switching to different platforms.
Editors' note: this post has been updated to reflect a new magnitude given to the earthquake. Although the earthquake was initially rated as a 7.8 magnitude, the U.S. Geological Survey updated it to 7.9 after a further review of the data.
The loss of life and damage in many cities in and around China's Sichuan province continues to grow after a 7.9 earthquake hit about 55 miles from the major city of Chengdu at 2:28 p.m. local time on Monday.
I live in Beijing, which is about 950 miles from the epicenter. Along with others, I first learned of the quake via Twitter, which has been lit up with first-, second-, third-, and many-hand information about various personal experiences, and hundreds of links to other reports. By contrast, mainstream media such as Sohu.com were partially responsible for a massive rumor mill that pervaded Beijing on Monday evening, with an apparently incorrect prediction of a quake in Beijing between 11:00 p.m. and midnight local time--right now.
Twits, as I prefer to call those who use Twitter, passed information and repeated via twitter what we heard from phone calls, SMS, IM, and e-mail with affected areas. We knew where people had felt it and had short descriptions from various locations quickly. Many soon switched to self-congratulations about how cool it was that Twitter had operated so quickly, and then that subsided for some comments about how we were commenting on our speed. Jeff Jarvis twittered that he'll be writing about this in The Guardian. It clearly is a fast-moving rhetorical space.
Meanwhile, via MSN instant messaging, mobile-phone text messages, and media such as Sohu, a rumor emerged claiming that a quake had struck in Beijing's suburbs at the same time and that some authority was predicting the big one for between 11 p.m. and midnight. As I said, that's right now, so my sense is that this is a hoax that will either be vindicated or made ridiculous in a matter of minutes.
By the time I had been repeatedly warned about tonight, I checked Sohu, which was then carrying a statement from the Chinese national earthquake-monitoring group saying there was no such prediction. Indeed, "twits" were quick to point out that although China is relatively good at predicting earthquakes, such a precise prediction is regarded as more or less impossible.
The latest word from Chengdu: "More aftershock! This is getting old now. Boring!"
My thoughts are with those in the southwest, and I do hope that skepticism takes the day on the Beijing rumor.
Update: Rick Martin at CNET Asia has more, including some good people to follow on Twitter for information.
- prev
- 1
- next
