The massive 7.9-magnitude earthquake that killed thousands in China this week revealed a breach in the communist nation's outbound flow of online information.
Chinese bystanders were able to send images and videos quickly to the rest of the world in the hours following Monday's quake, exposing holes in the "great firewall of China," media and technology experts say.
"They [the Chinese government] have strong controls over information that comes into the country, but they've never thought of and, until this moment, they've never needed censorship of outbound data," said Clay Shirky, a faculty member at the interactive telecommunications department at New York University.
In this disaster, the worst quake to hit China in three decades, media-sharing services have been vital in spreading news. FOXNews.com