The words that China's equivalent of Twitter doesn't want people searching for might surprise you.
Disinformation, an independent media company in New York City, found this Tumblr blog containing a list of words blocked on Weibo, a Chinese social network similar to Twitter.
Jason Q. Ng, creator of the site "Blocked On Weibo," explains how he compiled the list in an email to The Huffington Post.
"I ran a computer script that plugged in every term in Chinese Wikipedia (about 700,000 different words) and searched it on Weibo," he writes. "When it is blocked, Weibo returns a message saying the word is blocked."
Some of the words, like "porn" or "incest" might not be so unsurprising, but what about "yellow"? Jason explains the site blocks some of the words because of specific Chinese characters which have particular meanings. "For instance, conflict diamonds is blocked because of the word in chinese for conflict is blocked. Similarly, the word that is roughly translated as candle wax (a bad google translation) actually refers to wax play (the sexual activity)," he said.
Scroll through the slideshow below to see more of the of the censored words and be sure to check out Blocked On Weibo for the full list.
CORRECTION: This story has been edited to reflect the fact that the words were banned by a specific Chinese company, not the Chinese government. Context for why some of the words have been banned has also been added and some of the words, where context wasn't available, have been deleted.
Our 2024 Coverage Needs You
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.