Another reason suggested for the block is that activists can utilize them to organize themselves.
One of these pictures, for example, showed Florentijin Hofman's replacing tanks in the Tank Man photo.
The government had the power to delete any comments online that were considered harmful.
In the hours or days in which the story is available online, people read it, and by the time the story is taken down, the information is already public.
In September 2007, some data centers were shut down indiscriminately for providing interactive features such as blogs and forums.
After the Internet, Before Democracy: Competing Norms in Chinese Media and Society.