Popular geolocation and social networking app Foursquare has been blocked in China, and speculation for the reason centers around governmental censorship of buzz about the 21st anniversary of the country’s Tiananmen Square massacre.
Foursquare co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai confirmed the block to CNET, but said they didn’t know if the action was a permanent restriction of access to the service in China or just until hype dies down surrounding the Tiananmen check-ins:
“There were a lot of people checking into Tiananmen Square and posting tips/protest messages to the venue,” Selvadurai told CNET via e-mail, speculating that this is what led Chinese authorities to block Foursquare’s servers and IP addresses on both the Web and its various mobile apps. He said that Foursquare is not yet sure how this has been done or precisely what geographic region is covered.
This isn’t the first time China has censored social networking applications during a controversial or sensitive event. In 2008, iTunes was briefly banhammered for protest music circulating during the Olympics. Occasional bans of Facebook and Twitter have been known to happen as well.
