China’s great firewall has a new target – Foursquare! According to multiple tweets, Foursquare has been disabled in the Chinese mainland, possibly following the show of solidarity by a number of users who checked in at Tiananmen Square. It is not known whether the location-based mobile social network site has been blocked temporarily or for a longer time. The discussion of the 1989 government crackdown, which led to the massacre of Chinese protesters, occurred on the night of 3 June and the early morning of 4 June, is still considered taboo and the Communist government remains sensitive to any commemoration activities. Speculation is rife that the reason for the governmental censorship could be the 21st anniversary of the country’s Tiananmen Square massacre.

China encourages the use of Internet for business and education purposes but blocks websites which it feels are subversive or pornographic in nature. In fact the government has launched repeated crackdowns against pornographic websites. The Chinese government is likely to keep a watchful eye on the Internet services used by its citizens on this sensitive day. Some analysts believe that this could be a glitch. In fact Kaiser Kuo, a Beijing-based technology analyst stated that “Some site will suddenly become available for a day or two days and then be back to normal again. There’s never any rhyme or reason to it.” Foursquare co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai have confirmed the block but were not sure if this means a permanent restriction of access. Naveen Selvadurai believes that a lot of people checking into Tiananmen Square, using the site as a protest vehicle and posting tips/protest messages to the venue could be the reason behind the block. A number of US-based websites have a long history of dealing with blocked sites which are deemed as objectionable. Google shut shop in China earlier,during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the country blocked access to Apple’s iTunes Store.