Could you imagine living without internet?

     Could you imagine going a day without internet, more so your whole LIFE without internet? Well that's what it's like in China. People have to live their day to day lives without most internet accessible websites in China. Why you may ask? Here's the answer:

     Several (a lot) of popular websites in America are banned in China by their government. This is happening in China , and as of now there is no way of getting around it. Since the internet is banned people having been nicknaming China the "Great Firewall of China." These website bans happened as of September 2015. The Chinese government has banned these websites because of their strict internet censorship laws. Some websites that are banned include Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

     Why China? Well the internet censorship laws in China are extreme because of a large amount of laws and administrative regulations. In fact, more than sixty internet regulations have been made by the Chinese government. The system blocks websites and content by stopping IP addresses from being routed through. It is made up of standard firewalls and proxy servers at the internet gateways.

     How does IP blocking work? The reachability to a certain IP address is denied. If the main website is held in a shared hosting server, all websites on the same server will be blocked. Another way that is used to block websites is URL filtering. Basically the system detects certain keywords in the URL to know if it should block the website or not, but most websites are in fact blocked.

     In conclusion a lot of people are impacted by this internet blockage everyday in China, and the government doesn't care. We just need to find ways to fight against them, and maybe they'll start listening.

 Sources:
Link to Wikipedia article I used