article_snippet: Hong Kong (CNN)It wasn't supposed to work.
article_snippet: The ban on Western social media sites like YouTube and Facebook has also given home court advantage to China's own Internet stars like Youku and WeChat.
article_snippet: Last week, the Chinese and English news websites of Reuters news agency became inaccessible in China, joining a number of foreign media destinations that are barred online in China.
article_snippet: Through VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, web users in China can access restricted content.
article_snippet: But in a recent crackdown, the Chinese government is shutting down VPNs -- Beijing's latest move to shore up the Chinese government cyber-authority.
article_snippet: You can filter out keywords, you can filter by URL, you can block or poison DNS (domain name system), and increasingly now they identify VPNs," says Tsui.