Instagram blocked in China as democracy reform protests sweep Hong Kong

Web users in China are waking up to find that Instagram is now blocked in the country. Both the Instagram app and the website now fail to load, as verified by Tech in Asia and numerous concerned tweets about the blockage on Twitter.

Instagram’s block in China is likely due to the ongoing democracy reform protests in Hong Kong. Yesterday saw tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators fill the streets of Hong Kong, demanding the scrapping of a rule that the Chinese government will vet Hong Kong’s leader in the 2017 poll.

Many at the protests are using Twitter and Facebook to show the scale of the protests across several parts of the city and provide evidence of local police using tear gas against the unarmed crowds. A number of protesters and eyewitnesses are also using Instagram. The Facebook-owned photo app currently has 6,985 images tagged with #OccupyCentral.

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

China’s web censorship does not extend to Hong Kong.

News of the Hong Kong protests is also being scrubbed from other sites in China, such as Baidu’s search results and the Twitter-esque Sina Weibo.

Instagram joins a very long list of major web services blocked in China, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google’s search engine.