Difficulties getting onto Facebook.

I’ve talked previously during my stay here the frustration of not being able to access certain sites due to censorship by the national government, otherwise known as the Great Firewall of China (aka the Golden Shield Project). It’s basically a huge IP, DNS, and URL filter that allows and disallows websites to be delivered to China from outside sources, say the US or Australia. That means web sites such as Youtube, Facebook, and blogspot  hosted blogs, cannot be access from within China (theoretically) for fear of, well, I suppose spread of information to the Chinese public.

Without wanting to go into details of what that information is, it’s best to bundle it up as national security for the People’s Republic and the people that reside within it. Including yours truly.

Over the last few months I have been able to access Facebook, not often, but certainly able to if only to send and receive messages and do the odd piece of tinkering. In the 3 and half months I’ve been here, I’ve probably been on Facebook less then 10 times. One can sidestep the Great Wall, if only briefly by technical means, which I will refrain from writing about although it does seriously limit what one can do on Facebook. In actuality, that has been the main reason I’ve hardly been on, it’s not that enjoyable when most of the functions don’t work.

Not to say that a reduced amount of time on Facebook has been to my determent. Quite the opposite to the point where it’s been almost liberating. Seriously, how much time do you spend on Facebook each day/week/month?

However, during one of my random and infrequent visits, I noticed that my little gap in the wall has closed up. Well, I wouldn’t say it’s closed up, but the information coming through isn’t working well enough for my, or anyone else’s, browser to read it properly. I’m not sure if this is due to changes in Facebook, or the Great Wall adapting its shield modulation much like a Borg ship under attack by multiple Federation crafts, suffice to say that Facebook is now, and for who knows how long, is off my reachable areas here.

Being so far away from home Facebook is one of the few tools one can use to maintain contact with friends and family. One of the biggest fears I have is coming back to Australia and being completely out of touch with my friends to the point that, well, your friend status has been replaced with acquaintance.  So, to that extent, I’m not that happy to lose Facebook.

I’m also a little disappointed to see sites such as Youtube and Google.cn banned here. While I can access Google through Hong Kong (I don’t see the point in banning Google.cn then) there is still a lot of content this banned. It does appear that Google.cn is back to being registered by Google, the road for any real content seems a long way off. I found this great site, from Google, that monitors it’s access in China. If anyone is interested, the link is here; Google China Access Monitor

I know there are plenty of ways of me to get around the Great Firewall of China, including a vpn and other tools, but I don’t use Facebook, or any other banned service, enough to warrant spending money on getting one. As far as I can see, any thing that get’s me away from the computer is probably a good thing, leaving me more time with my study, work, and most importantly, the two girls in the house.

So you see, perhaps the wall is doing me a favour?