As Sarah Lai Stirland reported at Wired’s Threat Level blog, the Chinese government banned YouTube in the hopes of keeping videos of Tibetans protesting from going viral. The internet being the internet, videos and photos are popping up, albeit slowly, elsewhere. Most are news reports from official sources, including The New York Times, Reuters (above), BBC and MSNBC. The Guardian’s Tania Branigan has been sending audio, video and print reports back from Lhasa.
A scan through other video-sharing sites, including Revver, Metacafe. Google Video and Veoh, reveals a relatively small number of Tibet-related videos. Users posted more than 900 Tibet-related videos to YouTube since the protests began, with less than a couple of dozen combined available at the other sites.
In addition to the political and human rights implications, China’s repressive measures remind us just what a giant YouTube is in the video-sharing world. Countries that censor YouTube, in other words (and China’s internet censorship is sophisticated) can succeed at stemming the flow of information. But you can do your part for global free speech. If you’ve found or posted video or photos that help our understanding of what’s happening in Tibet, add a link in our comment section. As the Chinese censors play whack-a-mole with reports from Tibet, perhaps unfiltered information will sneak through to all of us who need it.
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