No China… no Facebook.

Sadly, things aren’t going to get any better for either me, or Facebook, here in China, with negotiations to get it back up stalling after much promise.

…But Japan, India and Korea currently have popular local alternatives to Facebook, and the Chinese government has no intention of lifting its ban on the site.

The site was banned there in 2009 and it looks unlikely that Facebook will get back in without censorship that will damage the brand everywhere else.

Chinese social media sites employ so-called rumour control departments that censor posts and stop certain topics from trending.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-08/facebook-faces-uphill-battle-to-crack-into-china/3818520

Bummer.

Not that I want to spend hour after hour on Facebook, or that I ever did, it’s just that I really do have a keen interest in what other people are doing, on a larger scale than I do now. If a friend is moving country, changing job, getting married, etc, it would be nice to know.

Of course I can understand why Facebook wouldn’t want to start censorship here in China, it goes against everything that Facebook really is, free speech. And one shouldn’t take that for granted now that micro-bloggers here in China now have to register before they can make comments. I’m not really sure where that leave my blog, but for the moment I’ll assume the same place it always is. Free and easy. Although on a few occasions blog.com (the company that hosts this site) has been blocked here in China. Fingers crossed this doesn’t happen too often.

So, for the moment, I’ll do without Facebook and Twitter (I was never really into Twitter to begin with). I won’t go to the Chinese social sites just yet…