IFTTT adds support for Weibo, which makes it a little easier for Chinese to scale the Great Firewall

IFTTT, the useful service that lets you connect your web accounts and automate cross-posting, has just added support for China’s Sina Weibo, the US startup said today.

This allows Weibo users to connect the popular social network to an array of stuff, such as automatically sharing cool articles from Pocket to Weibo, or posting a daily weather update to your Weibo. But it also makes it a little easier for Chinese to scale the Great Firewall and post to blocked websites. That might not be IFTTT’s intention, but that’s likely how it’ll be used by at least some people.

For example, someone could connect their Weibo to a Twitter or Facebook account, so they can post to Twitter and Facebook simply by submitting something to Weibo. Of course, they’ll need to use a proxy or VPN for the initial set-up inside IFTTT (the IFTTT site is not blocked in China – yet), but thereafter it’s all automated, and Weibo becomes an effective portal for posting to censored sites.

See: Oh, Big Brother: you won’t believe how many sites are now blocked in China

IFTTT stands for If This Then That, which neatly explains how it works. The San Francisco-based startup got an extra US$30 million in funding in August.

The new Weibo channel on IFTTT is here.