Tiananmen Anniversary

In the days leading up to the 20th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, Chinese security was out in force. According to the Washington Post, Twitter and other Internet services that people could have used to coordinate gatherings were blocked, as were news Web sites such as CNN and the BBC. Foreign newspapers and magazines that had been covering commemorative protests in Hong Kong were delivered with pages ripped out. Also blocked was online photo sharing service Flickr, as well as a brief interruption of Hotmail.

Those in authority in Iran were less savvy about Twitter, as the Washington Times reports: “They had managed to take down the telephone system opposition supporters used for texting but for some reason were slow to eliminate other social media. As open defiance of the election results broke out, citizen journalists used new media to spread the word. And the whole Web was watching.” The story also noted that beyond well-developed Twitter lists, local hackers were “active in helping keep channels open as the regime blocked them, and they spread the word about functioning proxy portals.”