Misfortune Cookie Messages

With the rise of text-centered microblogging around the world, political dissidents have faced challenged when feeds are automatically filtered. Today, with the twentieth anniversary of the massacre of students and other civilians in Tiananmen Square being remembered around the world, users of such sites have resorted to ingenious strategies.

Rebecca MacKinnon covers circumvention strategies and government crackdowns on particular social network sites in "China blocks Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Hotmail, Windows Live, etc. ahead of Tiananmen 20th anniversary" On Twitter, where "#june4" was blocked, users resorted to "#may35." This New York Times graphic explains other strategies used on Fanfou.com to evade deletion of messages by censors.