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March 17, 2017 Image-curation website Pinterest has become the latest social media service blocked in China, watchdogs say

Image-curation website Pinterest has become the latest social media service blocked in China, checks on censorship monitoring websites indicated Friday.

According to greatfire.org and blockedinchina.net, the popular virtual bulletin board service has been unavailable in mainland China since last Thursday.

The San Francisco-headquartered service joins rival photo-sharing firm Instagramwhich has a much larger user baseas well as Twitter and Facebook on the list of social media platforms inaccessible in mainland China.

The ruling Communist party restricts access to many foreign websites including Google, with a vast network of controls dubbed the Great Firewall of China.

While China user numbers are not available, Pinterest is a hit particularly among women, who tend to pin images about non-political subjects such as food, fashion and travel.

However, some Pinterest users maintain public boards on subjects that are deemed politically sensitive in Chinasuch as human rights issues.

There is a Pinterest board devoted to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo, for example, and another on the Senkakus, an archipelago controlled by Japan, which China claims as the Diaoyus.

"It will be very hard to do my homework later because I had collected the works of a designer there," a student wrote on Weibo, China's native version of Twitter.

Another Weibo user, who described herself as an e-commerce designer, wrote that Pinterest was a key tool in her job and it will be "hard to work effectively without it".

A 2015 report by US think tank Freedom House found that China had the most restrictive Internet policies of 65 countries it studied, ranking below Iran and Syria.

China is home to the world's largest number of internet users731 million as of Decemberthe government-linked China Internet Network Information Center said in January.

Explore further: China cracks down on bids to bypass online censorship

2017 AFP

China has announced a 14-month campaign to "clean up" internet service providers and crack down on devices such as virtual private networks (VPNs) used to evade strict censorship.

The number of Internet users in China has risen to nearly 650 million, authorities said over the weekend, as the world's largest online population continues to rise.

The number of web users in China has surged to 618 million, a government agency said Thursday, underscoring the rapid growth of online connectivity in the country with the world's largest Internet population.

App stores in China must register with the state from Monday, a government statement said, as China tightens its control over the internet.

Pinterest on Thursday announced that the number of monthly users soared in the past year to top 150 million, with most of that growth coming from outside the United States.

Reuters news websites were inaccessible in China on Friday, the latest Western news organisation to be blocked in a country where censors keep a tight grip over information.

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Originally posted here:
China blocks Pinterest: censorship watchdogs - Phys.Org