Bloggers use Herdict to monitor China
March 7th, 2009 | by Yvette Wohn | Published in Herdict | 3 Comments
by Yvette Wohn
Speaking at the Berkman Center earlier this year before the official launch of Herdict, Prof. Z described Herdict’s potential as being a real-time tool for mapping web filtering activities around the world. “Should it start producing a map of filtering as it happens, I think it will have a major impact,” he said.
Several weeks into the official launch, people are using Herdict to monitor website blockages around the world– and not just because they’re bored.
As the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising in China (and one-year anniversary of the Tibet riots) draws near, bloggers are pointing out increased inaccessibility in China of U.S.-based web services such as Twitter and Youtube, using Herdict data that shows statistical trends and information of the IP addresses where the blockage is happening (examples here and here). One blogger used Herdict data to create a visual representation of accessibility within China on a political map.
Of course one could find information about web blockage of YouTube in China on Twitter or in discussion forums, which reflects personal experiences. Herdict, however, aggregates that data from a self-reporting crowd and presents it in a manner that makes it easy to analyze trends.
I know this all sounds great, but what happens when China wants to block Herdict for reporting which sites are getting blocked? Z hopes that in the near future, the concept of knowing which sites are accessible or not will be something people take for granted.
Think of something that starts as inane as you can imagine. Herdict doesn’t get much more inane than Twitter or Wikipedia, where months later you say “How do we ever get on without this?” I would like to see this in that category, that provides a momentum onto itself– now that it’s invented, it’s too good of an idea so that if you shut it down, someone else is going to write it. My idea is that when that is established, it’s obvious that this is part of the functioning Internet– to know where you can get to and why.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:34 pm (#)
[...] is not just the usual suspects like China that appear to censor online communication. The Netherlands has “126 reports of [...]
March 10th, 2009 at 7:35 am (#)
[...] in Echtzeit ermittelt werden, welche Seiten von welechem Ort der Erde nicht erreichbar sind, wobei China leider wieder mal heraussticht. Momentan ist das Ganze natürlich noch BETA und mir ist schleierhaft, wie verhindert werden soll, [...]
March 18th, 2009 at 10:47 am (#)
seriously guys idid not know anything about Herdict before i read this post. still i am not fully clear about this but reading this post i understood that it’s work is to map web filtering activities and monitor website blockages. that’s it. I love this blog because it gives me new information like this and the news are authentic.