I invited an artist friend who’s living in Iran, to come and participate in this years
![[info]](https://i0.wp.com/stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
. But to my surprise I just leaned that livejournal is a filtered site in Iran! That means, you can’t access this journal from Teheran!! Not one or two journals. Whole LJ is blocked!!! Maybe this is old news by now. I knew other blogging sites and tools were banned and filtered in many countries, but LJ? I didn’t know that.
What a world!
Is this still blocked in China too? I know China blocks even Typepad and blogspot. Pakistan did that to blogspot last year. But still people can read filtered content from these countries via proxies.
I found more stories about other blog services:
blogspot.com blocked in Iran
Internet censorship and domestic terror in Iran
Do you know what are the other countries that filter Livejournal? I’m curious to know.
Update : LJ gate looks like a useful tool for this situation.
Unfinished Business 
Not only LJ, but also FLICKR was blocked in Iran. However, there are internet places where once you know the owners and they are nice, they can remove the filters and let you access the pages you want . . . ;-) As in all sorts of countries around the world, everything belongs to the smart hacker!!!
Oh they must be using proxies! Internet censorship is a useless attempt in the long run. People find ways to bypass the walls :-)
I am sorry to hear this Lohan, it’s sad that your friend can not participate.
Yeah, that’s sad, and also outrageous. I heard that they have banned more than 4,000 sites!!! “Sites” means top level domains like livejournal.com. Livejournal has millions of sites in it. So all the sub-sites are banned as a result.
Lives are shaped merely by virtue of birth – not because we are better or have done anything to earn certain rights and privileges but merely because of our birth place and family. There are challenges I will never face simply because I was born in a particular geographic area to a particular family. I see it daily – the difference in schools, neighborhoods, businesses – with the separation of a few blocks. Poverty or affluence, flourishing or struggling schools, deterioration or pristine architectural design. But freedom to interaction with all people is something I don’t even think about until something like this crosses my path. I appreciate your sharing this as well as researching other sources. Terrifying.
A ray of hope is that creative problem solving is alive and well – enter Lj gate!
The best remedy for distress is express. Lohan, I’ll be watching to see what you do with this through your art. I applaud you for your caring and your advocacy.
Thank you very much for commenting Mikell:-)
I guess no one can keep their mouths shut about these outrageous restrictions!
Will try my best through all the means I can :-D
There’s no doubt in my mind!
As you noticed, I also tend to get passionate and verbal about inequity. I guess I should follow my own advice and go to the studio to vent! By the way – what time is it there? I didn’t expect to hear from you until later.
Oh it’s still 11.30pm here in Sri Lanka and we all are wide awake :-)
I’m trying to edit some images for posting.
wow–no i had no idea this was the case. do you know if blogspot is the same?
Blogspot WAS blocked earlier, but when my friend and I were chatting it was accessible from Iran. But no LJ!
I don’t know about LJ, but there was recently a big uproar in the WordPress community about all the WordPress blogs being blocked in Turkey—instead of just blocking one site they found unacceptable, they blocked the entire domain, and thousands of blogs. Some of the Turkish members were using some sort of proxy service to continue accessing their sites. Umm, I think I got this from Photo Matt—yeah, here.
Yeah governments do try to block the net without much siuccess :-) People find ways to bypass. Even here in Sri Lanka the government has blocked one website called Tamilnet.com. But we can still see it through proxies.
But I couldn’t find LJ blockers other than China and Iran
I bet China doesn’t have Yahoo’s suckass blog blocked
Oh yes! Yahoo blogs are fine and safe! :-D What else can you expect?
I hope your friend, finds a way around the issue.
I too hope so. But unfortunately some people have gotten used to the filters and they don’t look for anything beyond the walls. That is disturbing.
There is an academic (and American who now teaches and works in Hong Kong) who writes a lot about this. The address is http://rconversation.blogs.com/
She does a lot of web-based action to help people imprisoned in China and other places from blogging and has done some public discussion with Yahoo and Google about them supporting the Chinese govenment by blocking certain sites, such as LJ and wikipedia.
She also helps curate Global Voices,, which is an awesome website helping people from remote and repressed areas to blog.
She is Rebecca Mackinnon, the former CNN journalist. Yes indeed she is doing a wonderful job, R conversation and Global Voices are among my daily readings :-)
i had no idea countries were blocked on LJ. sheesh.
that’s really stupid.
well… the only thing I can not understand – the sense of such a blogspots, anyway, people are able to find a way and get through, sooner ar later.