YouTube Outage Stirs Up Rumors, China Not to Blame
posted Sunday Mar 28, 2010 by Kyria Gianos
Rumor alert, rumor alert! There was talk earlier this week that the YouTube outage was caused by outside tampering, but the rumor has been put to rest.
As we know, Google has pulled the plug on censorship in China earlier this week, leaving room for speculation surrounding the YouTube outage. Technical problems caused the site to be down for only about an hour on Thursday morning, and in no way is related to Google's recent move.
After the announcement on Monday, many expected China to retaliate. Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies stated, "I think many people are, understandably, looking for China to take some unique and extraordinary technical measures to 'punish' Google." We all expect some kind of retaliation, but blocking access to YouTube isn't necessarily the best revenge.
Google would not reveal the details of the outage but did say, "YouTube is up again following a technical issue which has now been resolved. We know how important YouTube is for people and apologize for any inconvenience the downtime may have caused." Although it had nothing to do with the recent controversy, the incident did give users something to talk about for a few days. I'm sure many more rumors will arise in the next few weeks. After all, we never know what China is capable of.
