It is a truth universally acknowledged that a ruling Party in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a dissent-free internet. To that end, China has blocked many foreign websites, and the latest victim is apparently Slideshare. Wait, I can hear you thinking, that makes no goddamn sense. You’re right, noble reader, and I feel your pain, but your logic is no good here. Fire up slideshare in China right now, and you’ll only get to see one slide:
Slideshare was bought by LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) back in May for $119 million, but LinkedIn remains unblocked in China as of this posting. It’s unclear what might have caused the Sliedeshare censorship, but the service isn’t exactly known for attracting rebels or dissidents (one doesn’t often put plans to overthrow the government into PowerPoint format). Nor is there any big domestic competitor that the government might be trying to protect with this move. MIC Gadget did find a few slide decks with sensitive content (see the end of their post here) but it would be a shame if a useful business tool got blocked just because of a few random slide decks.
Of course, this could just be some strage Great Firewall bug; there’s no way of knowing. Sites occasionally disappear and reappear a few days later with no explanation, so Slideshare might yet live. All we can do is wait and see. We’ve contacted Slideshare for comment and will update this story if we hear back, but the company is likely just as in the dark as we are when it comes to the reason for the block, because the government does not issue any kind of notification when a site is blocked.
As site blockings go, this is one of China’s more nonsensical, rating well above obvious censorship candidates like Twitter but still trailing out-of-left-field, why-the-flip-is-this-blocked classics like IMDB (because apparently looking up Ryan Gosling’s filmography is the first step on the path to becoming a capitalist roader).
(See also: Here’s a list of websites blocked in China)
[TheNextWeb via MIC Gadget]
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