China Blocks FeedBurner RSS Feeds

FeedBurner, which powers hundreds of thousands of blog, podcast and mainstream news feeds (including this one), is apparently being blocked by Chinese authorities. Here is a Yoda-esque loose English language translation of William Long's original post. William even used a proxy server to verify that the issue is with the Chinese, not FeedBurner. His subscriber count dropped from over a thousand readers to zero overnight.

I have nothing but respect for Dick Costolo and the FeedBurner crew. They have been extremely helpful in troubleshooting various issues on my blog and others. I am sure they are doing everything in their power to remedy as best they can. This issue goes way beyond FeedbBurner.

This is a big deal. Essentially, the Chinese government is choosing to block some of the most popular RSS feeds in the world. That's like they decided to block the largest airline from their airspace. It is as close as you will see a nation coming to blocking the entire RSS/podcast transport. This goes beyond blocking blog services like TypePad and is important to watch. This might be a sign of bigger trouble for RSS in China.

::Later: The ban lasted only a day and has since ended.

Tags: feedburner, china

Comments

[Jack Yan]

Struth—thanks for highlighting this, Steve. A very disturbing development.

[Marc]

Feedburner and its feeds work fine in Shanghai, maybe it was just a temporary glitch? It happens more often that sites are temporarily unavailable here.

[Scott]

From the follow up comments in William Long's blog entry, it seems just a temporary glitch. Moreover from his August 4 post entry, he actually blogged that his subscription jumped from 1000 to 1600, according to FeedBurner (probably thanks to all the publicity from his previous entry).

I guess there is nothing to worry about -- for now.

[williamlong]

FeedBurner was only blocked in 2006-8-1, but since 2006-8-2 till now, FeedBurner is OK, we can visit it no problem ,maybe it's just a GFW's temporarily error.

[David Scott Lewis]

Everything is working fine from here (Beijing), Steve. No problems with my Feedburner feeds.

However, my main publishing platform is Blogger. Although I can publish on Blogger, my Blogspot feed cannot be read in China. Hence, I use Feedburner. But I also simultaneously publish on a Yahoo! Group, so my blog postings are also sent via e-mail. See this as an example: http://doiop.com/China . So, the best bet is to use BOTH Feedburner but also e-mail as a distribution means. I post once and my posts automatically go to Blogger, Feedburner, Yahoo! Groups, and Talkr (an automatically generated TTS audio podcast of my postings).

Frankly, I do most of my writing on AlwaysOn (their "Letter from China" column) and the Sand Hill Group blog (with a weekly column in the works), so I don't use my personal publishing platforms very much. But, there is a way around the Great Firewall.

In closing, it was a pleasure meeting you at the AO Stanford Summit. I regret we didn't get a chance to break bread. Perhaps on your next trip to China (I have digs in Beijing, Shanghai and Qingdao, although I spend most of my time in SH).

[freedomfighter]

RSS feeds can be redirected via proxy server. you can change ip address and access like from other place. use www.msproxy.com to get a list. fight internet censorship

[Gareth BFG]

Feedburner is still blocked for me. Anyone using China Telecom (state owned) ISP cannot access feedburner. This telco regularly blocks sites to 'test the water' before being implemented across the board in China.

Also, 'temporary glitches' in China ARE temporary blocks. We know this because the sites are normally DNS poisoned (in China) and directed to a dead IP address.

Expect feedburner to be completely blocked in China within the next 2-3 months after their 'trial period' of only being blocked by state owned ISPs.