You can now add Tumblr to the list of websites blocked by The Great Firewall of China.
GreatFire.org broke the news of the blockage in a tweet yesterday, which ironically, we had to use a VPN to view.
GreatFire.org’s URL testing feature also indicates that Tumblr has been blocked since May 29.
While it's not exactly clear why China added Tumblr to the blacklist, we have a hunch that it has to do with the now-infamous Lujiazui Sex Tape. Apparently, the blogging platform may have been used to distribute images and video related to the incident.
Attempts to load Tumblr from within Chinese mainland return a "timeout" error page in Chrome.
With Tumblr now joining Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Wikipedia and Snapchat (just to name a few) in censorship purgatory, it doesn’t seem like there are many US-based sites left that we can browse without a VPN. What are we supposed to do now that we can’t mindlessly scroll through adorable dog GIFs, aesthetically pleasing microblogs and political memes?
READ MORE: 86 percent of foreign companies say China's internet restrictions hurt business
Let’s take a moment of silence to mourn the loss of some of our favorite Tumblr blogs: Wuluwu, How High Are Xi Jinping’s Pants Today?, Kim Jong Un Looking at Things and Same Pic of Dave Coulier Every Day. We can only hope they’ll each have their own Weibo accounts someday.
We'll miss you guys.
RIP Tumblr in China, February 2007 to May 2016.
[Images via @GreatFireChina, Great Fire, Tumblr]
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