Have you noticed an increase in web censorship within the KSA?

[Nobody]

Headline:
Web censorship expanding in some countries

Link:
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/03/2...269210352/

Story:
Censorship in China, Iran and Saudi Arabia and other countries threatens the growth of social networking companies like Facebook and Twitter, experts say.

The San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News said Google's dispute with China's government, which could lead to a shutdown of Goggle in China, exemplifies the impact of censorship of foreign companies by authoritarian governments.

These countries are relying on new technology to filter or block access to Internet sites they deem dangerous. That could mean difficulty for Silicon Valley companies that provide news and information in China and other countries, the Mercury News said.

[Neil]

I've noticed. What the story conveniently leaves out is Western censorship. We don't like the Chinese filtering the Tianenmen drama, but when Google filters certain Nazi content in Germany and France we think this is fine, perhaps even good.

Currently many western countries are introducing filters, supposedly "to protect the children from abuse", and apparently most people are OK with this too.

This doesn't work though. Either you're against censorship or your not, but you can't have censorship when it's convenient to you and then condemn others who do the same. (Not to mention that it's rather naive to think that hiding crimes, be it the Tianenmen square or abused children, will actually stop it - the opposite is more likely to be true.)

[sad lady]

agree with Neil...
censorship and democracy from the US and western point of view is always biased.

[Dexter]

web censorship is present in the USA as well what are you guys talking about?!
schools have been censoring material deemed inappropriate for the school setting. Hate speech is a big NO NO in the US as well - and is always removed/blocked once reported.

[hongkongmob]

Real life censorship is even worse like that whole school prom got cancelled because a girl brought another girl to it. The school ordered a cancellation and all blames shifted on the girls. I thought America are suppose to be free. I agree censorship is stupid but there are always be and you just have to obey local laws. Google pulling is a way for them to leave a losing market. They dont even have much people using it. It is kind of lame they use US govt propaganda to glorify there exit strategy.

[trancinguy]

Headliner, this is what you should have copied then paste:
"Social networking Co.'s like Twitter and Facebook hinder human health and promote obesity. Therefore, 'authoritarian governments' need to form their own networks to insure 'proper socializing'."

[B K]

well, most censorship in saudi is regarding x-rated and pornography related websites.
you can access almost anything else, i know i can.
what bothers me the most though today is that when you you want to google something it is always on strict safesearch mode, so anything with a word or content deemed offensive by google at the start will be removed from the results, this is annoying, but a little creativity gets you the results you want.

[tin m]

For the most part , Saudi Arabia does not censor as much as Iran does . Facebook & Twitter are not blocked in KSA as far as I know. Though there are 2 filtration systems in KSA.
Iran & China do the blocking for political reasons.