MSN China reportedly censoring Blogs on MSN Spaces

Microsoft’s Blogging service MSN Spaces has been criticized earlier for their policies related to the content published by the users on their Blogs. The latest news just inflates those issues. MSN is reportedly censoring personal Blogs of users big time on their Chinese version of the MSN Spaces. Apparently, words like “freedom”, “democracy”, and “demonstration” are being blocked from being published by the bloggers.

These restrictions are suggested to be introduced to compromise with the demands of the Chinese government, which has laid down strict rules for the people wanting to express themselves online. They have made it compulsory for the publishers to register their Blogs with the governing authorities or the Blogs are forcefully shutdown.

Users get an alert message with instructions to change some particular keywords on trying to publish posts with content related to human rights and freedom of Taiwan. MSN is currently running their Chinese portal in collaboration with Shanghai Alliance Investment Ltd. and they have admitted to having some guidelines for the users to follow if they want to publish their views on MSN Spaces.

It is not for the first time a US company is being forced to support the Chinese government into blocking access to sensitive information on the web. Google has been reported to hide certain websites and pages on their search results on the Chinese version of their search engines.