Internet in China

It is well known that the Chinese government has strict rules when it comes to internet use but I did not know just how strict this was. Upon further reading, I found out a lot of about Chinese internet service and content. The Chinese government bans way more sites than I could imagine. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are blocked. These are sites that I literally use every single day here. They have made several sites that are meant to mimic these sites but are approved by the government. I can't speak to the usefulness of the sites personally because I don't use them but I can imagine that they are not all to similar to our social media sites here in America.
This brings us to the net major topic which is censorship. It is reported that the government employs thousands of individuals to comb through just about everything that is posted on the internet and remove things that they find to rebellious. It is also reported that the search word "freedom" from Google. To go along with all of the sites that are blocked and the messages that are erased they employ more people to sway peoples opinions. These people go into forums and message boards and make posts that our pro-government or promote the ideas of the government. Basically they are removing the ability to tell if what someone has said in a forum is genuine or not. Now I'm sure that this happens here in the US but probably not for the government. I can see different organizations going into forums to promote their views but I think that the government doing it is a bit much. They have also gone as far as to remove sites of groups who promote democratic ideals even if they are sites of very intellectual and often high standing individuals in society. Other blogs, like blogs pertaining to sexual activity, are often removed.
Google has had its fair share of trouble in China. Chinese government filters results in Google which is a conflict of interest for Google who would like unfiltered results in there searches. They shut down service for a while in 2010 and this angered the Chinese government. Google also complained that several civil rights activists email accounts had been hacked. All of the issues that are present with China's internet service is interesting to say the least. I cannot even imagine after having used internet here for so long trying to get around the internet in China. It's a shame because they have more internet users than anywhere else in the world but they do not have the access that most countries do. More recently two microblog sites had been censored to not allow comments in the last year. They also tried to pass a law that would have software on every new computer that would allow the government to follow just about everything that you do on a computer. They do scan most all activity that goes on on the internet there anyway but this would be a further extension of that. It would be absolutely terrifying to surf the internet in China and after reading about their internet I am truly grateful for mine.