In their enthusiasm for limiting their citizen’s access to the Internet, Saudi Arabia has blocked the web address shortening service, TinyURL. We found this out from one of our members and subsequently confirmed it. There is even a Facebook campaign to unblock it.

The major problem with the Kingdom’s filtering of this service is that it is the default shortener for Twitter, the microblogging service.  So when you pipe your latest posts from your blog to your Twitter, as we do at CPB, the link is via TinyURL.

According to Rami, a member of the Facebook campaign, there is a workaround.

Anyways, if you want to access tinyurl in Saudi Arabia, all you need is to add an “s” after http. For example https://tinyurl.com/5zgee4 Go ahead click on this, and if your using Firefox you will get a security warning or something like that, you just need to click on “More” (or something like that) and add a security exception for tinyurl. Thats it, next time you want to access tinyurl just add the “s”

Can anyone in KSA confirm that this works?

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Update: It has been confirmed.

Also, Jillian York has asked us to remind folks to report this block to Herdict.  (Fantastic project on self-reporting of filtering.)

I have asked Twitter if there is a way to change which URL shortener your account uses as its default. We encourage you to do the same.