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Blogging platform Medium is now blocked in China, according to tests.
The site, co-founded by former Twitter CEO Evan Williams, launched in August 2012. Even though other blog services like Google’s Blogspot got whacked by China’s Great Firewall many years ago, Medium had gone uncensored until now.
A network ping test on Medium’s homepage within mainland China confirms that the site cannot be reached. We’ve found the site to be inaccessible on all three Chinese telcos.
We’ve contacted San Francisco-based Medium to comment. (UPDATED 24 hours after publishing: A Medium spokesperson responds, “We are aware of the block and we don’t have definitive knowledge why the block has occurred.”)
It’s inaccessible on all three of China’s telcos.
A post today on Hacker News by a user called “vfulco” first alerted us to this, saying that Medium had been inaccessible in China since a few days ago. Using the testing tool on Greatfire.org, a site that documents and reports on web censorship in the nation, shows that Medium was first blocked on April 10.
The blockage comes days after the country blocked access to the websites of Time and The Economist.
Medium last week launched a new scheme for major publishers to post articles to the blogging platform and make money from adverts there. That raised the prospect of stories from news outlets that are blocked in China being readable on Medium.
Editing by Erik Crouch
(And yes, we’re serious about ethics and transparency. More information here.)
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