YouTube: Down for everyone or just me?

YouTube has just been blocked in China. Somehow I don’t care nearly as much as I used to when this happens. It’ll be back.

Coincidentally, today I just stumbled upon a website called Down for everyone or just me?. The interface is dead simple:

Down for everyone or just me?

I tried it out on YouTube and got this result:

Down for everyone or just me?

Strange. My “IP sleuthing” seems to reveal that the site’s servers are in France. Did I do something wrong, or is YouTube also down elsewhere?

For a service like this to be done really well, it would have to have server checks all over the world, but this is a good start.

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John Pasden

John is a Shanghai-based linguist and entrepreneur, founder of AllSet Learning.

Comments

  1. You Tube, censurado en China [ENG]…

    Ayer se me descartó injustamente una noticia con este tema (cuando me refiero a injustamente quiero decir que no tenía ningún negativo, fue una decisión del administrador). Creo que censurar la página web más visitada del mundo en China es una no…

  2. Yeah, it’s down for all of us in China. 🙁

  3. It’s down in Tianjin… I assume because of certain recent events.

  4. hint: south-west corner of China

  5. Hmmm, perhaps I didn’t make the point of this post clear enough (intentionally misleading titles doesn’t always turn out to be a useful practice)…

    I know that YouTube is down in China. I know why. I’m just wondering why this other service (called “Down for everyone or just me?”), which seems to be outside of China, would also report that YouTube is down.

  6. Just to check, I also did wikipedia.org (which is also blocked in China), and “Down for everyone or just me?” told me that it’s up.

    So… mystery unsolved.

  7. king of men Says: March 16, 2008 at 5:11 pm

    Sadly, Stage6 shuttered two weeks ago, so that’s a prior alternative no longer accessible. All that’s left are the local sites and one or two foreign video clip sites I won’t name because I don’twant the great firewall blocking them, too.

  8. anonymous in china Says: March 16, 2008 at 7:08 pm

    Well, there’s always onion routing… nudge nudge, wink wink…

    And I won’t be more specific because it blasts the Great Firewall into smithereens… 🙂

  9. Youtube is working fine in France today.

  10. yeah, for the record, Youtube works great in the US….

  11. My bad. Sorry. Should read more carefully before commenting.

  12. It’s down in Shenyang too since Friday afternoon – very annoying! I’m getting around it, but it’s not nearly as fast – have to wait much longer for things to open up.

  13. hedgehog Says: March 17, 2008 at 2:41 pm

    digg also has been inaccessible since today.

  14. Oh. What a disappointment. I thought that that site measured if something was blocked. Got any site that does that?

  15. Isn’t there some website like ‘greatfirewallofchina’ or something which measures if a website can currently be viewed in China? Like the website you mentioned except it’s just China. Although it does make a mistake I remember ages ago it said my website was blocked.

  16. jon byrne Says: March 18, 2008 at 5:15 am

    HI John , i dont know if your aware of certain events in a politically sensitive area of the west of china but i have just read that youtube has been shut down by the goverment, for obvious reasons .

  17. hope it gets unblocked soon

  18. Hay guyz it means “The Crazy Life” and is a Mexican gang symbol.

  19. Its Blocked for me too… CANT Help but thinking this is related to the Hu ZiWei upset where she called out China’s problems and of course her husbands infidelity on live TV opening show of the new Olympic television station aka CCTV 5. There doing everything to supress that story and youtube had it all over…

    Well actually come to think of it this may be more a move to supress Tibet riot videos than the prior far more disturbing.

    PS I heard Hu ZiWei may have also commited suicide recently… unbelievable if true sad story.

  20. PS 胡紫薇 clips have also mysteriously disapeared from tudou.com where for a while they were the most viewed China video..

    However the youtube ban must be just over all the fears on many levels especially the Tibet issue resurfacing Olympics looming. Looks like China is desperate to save face… wow who would have thought…… unfortunately if this is what really is happening then such actions themselves, hiding and supresion, in my opinion are the real reason why they should and do lose it.

  21. Good thing the USA is not suppressive, right?

    Anyway, this explains what happened to Benny, the Mandarin teacher from Shanghai, why I haven’t seen any clips from him lately.

  22. king of men Says: March 23, 2008 at 6:52 am

    Youtube sprung back to life in the PRC last night around 11pm. It’s piping through, unfettered, down here in Zhejiang province.

  23. king of men Says: March 23, 2008 at 6:59 am

    Eight minutes after posting it’s back it’s down again.

  24. king of men Says: March 23, 2008 at 7:07 am

    And now its back again, eight minutes after the second post. Oi.

  25. As far as the so far crackdown is concern, there is no evidence of violence from the Chinese Police. There is no need to block youtube. Maybe it is the authoritiy’s standard protocol for such events.

  26. Maya Arroyo Says: March 25, 2008 at 12:19 am

    Just an odd fact I’d like to share: On the days concerned, YouTube was down from time to time in Germany as well as Cambodia. I wonder how that is possible. (No, I’m not a conspiracy theorist 😉 )

  27. RobertLam18: Interesting, you seem to have the inside scoop to the whole story, please tell us more. By the way your blog is blocked by the Chinese government.

  28. Just now it was working fine.
    But now, I am having trouble viewing the youtube channel in Singapore.

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