The Great Firewall of China is nearly complete

Access to Twitter (TWTR, Tech30), Facebook (FB, Tech30) and YouTube is blocked in China. During recent pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, the Facebook-owned photo sharing app Instagram was blacked out on the Mainland.

Taken together, the restrictions constitute the world’s largest — and most effective — state-sponsored censorship program. The effort, officially called “Golden Shield,” is more than a decade old.

The program allows Beijing to restrict content it deems sensitive (on democracy, Tibet or the Uighur ethnic group, for example). Thousands of websites are blocked outright, and Chinese citizens that offend authorities can face judicial consequences.

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