China implements "emergency" level filtering in response to the zero-Covid protests

Meanwhile, Chinese authorities appear to have initiated some "emergency" level filtering efforts.

One site, Yahoo! Forums (correction: US-based Yahoo! Forums), in particular, has gone completely quiet, and search results were entirely blocked. One user with an unverified Chinese IP address also claims that Yahoo! Forums is now available only to people with different IP addresses, but there are no examples of this locally.

Baidu reports similar traffic drops, but it's possible to circumvent China's censorship attempts.

Other protests have also appeared on Chinese sites:

In fact, the protests are growing across the country, and tens of thousands of Chinese citizens have so far joined them on the Facebook and Twitter sites.

As noted by WikiLeaks, other protests have also appeared on the Chinese blogs, including a solidarity group to end the authorities' crackdown.

The instructions, which originated from China's cyberspace administration and were also published and translated by the China Digital Times, a US-based news site that focuses on Chinese censorship, announced a "Level I Internet Emergency Response, the highest level of content regulation."

The instructions include:

Retain core functions of national security and public safety “Forbidding any unauthorized information from spreading” and “Forbidding any unauthorized information from being spread through searching and publishing.”

Keep Reading: What exactly is dot world of warcraft? | Discover Blogs

The directive said:

Web users are all potential participants, and once an incident happens, it can quickly become a huge one. Once the incident becomes a big issue, people will be rushing for help via the Internet. Internet services should be put in standby mode as soon as the notice of the incident is posted on the Web and they should be used as soon as possible.

According to the Cyberspace Administration of China, the directives are intended to be strictly implemented:

These directives are to be strictly enforced by all Internet administration agencies nationwide.

The website blocked in response to the failed protests has been changed to link to a new Chinese government site.

According to the China Digital Times, however, the “chickenis” site – a site that would connect people to a “revolutionary currency” for use in the protests – still works.

It’s possible the new site is administered by the authorities, and perhaps it’s meant to encourage people to protest, but it’s possible that the site continues to function with or without the directives.

Under the directive, a range of sites were ordered to be blocked, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Google Docs, and many Chinese websites such as Sina, Sohu, and Tencent.

It’s also possible that the directive to block certain websites was planned well in advance, since parts of it mirror earlier censorship attempts, particularly the decision to block Baidu and Yahoo! under the same authority:

Final Thoughts:

The protest appears to have failed because the demonstrations were at best ineffective, and at worst completely disruptive.

Protests were restricted to “small gatherings” of a couple hundred or less, and due to the restrictions placed on demonstrators, the participants were limited to a relatively small area around Tiananmen Square.

Those who did get past security at the Tiananmen Square were taken to a temporary “media zone”, which limited the content they could transmit and distribute via social media.