A glitch in China’s Internet censorship firewall lead to hundreds of comments on the Google+ page of President Barack Obama and some 2012 hopefuls.
Normally China’s strict Internet rules prevent users in that country from accessing sites like Google+, much less the President Obama’s’ page. But once a glitch in that fire wall was found, hundreds of users flooded Obama’s Google+ page with cries, mostly in Chinese, for green cards and support, the AFP reported.
“Mr President. Please pay more attention to Chinese civil rights ,I hope that you will win the coming election,” posted Able C.
“Wish u can help China become more open and free,” added Yaolong Zhang, a comment that received 185 +1’s.
Many users, including Sheehan Gau and Haitao Yang, posted the following message, which received hundred of +1’s:
“Dear President Obama，I’m sorry to write some irrelevant comments under your post. Due to my appreciation and trust to your country’s consistent respect to human right, I left this message, to implore the government of your country to call for the freedom of the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng in international community , thank you!”
There were no moves by the Obama page administrators to remove the comments and as of Monday night numerous messages could still be found on the page. One poster even likened it to “occupying” Obama’s page.
But Obama’s page wasn’t the only one getting occupied. A handful of messages from China appeared to have been posted on the Google+ pages of both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, although certainly not in the number found on Obama’s. Most of the notes were not written in English, but one that was stated “Please pay more attention to Chinese civil rights.”
As of Monday night, most of the messages appeared to be recently posted, meaning whatever loophole the “netizens” —what the AFP called the Chinese users—had used had yet to be blocked.
Normally the Chinese government blocks content it deems “politically sensitive.”