UAE is odd when it comes to what's blocked and what's not, and it may depend on an individual censor at times (what catches the bureaucrat's eye at any particular moment). They don't like anything that looks like dating or meeting people online, and a lot of online chat is "romance" specific, so it's possible the UAE found one or more dating-type chats hosted by addonchat and just blocked the whole shebang, though you'd think it would then be impossible to get into the demo chatroom too, unless it's hosted through a different server and IP.
Once I was doing a guest-instructor thing with a single divers board, and that board was blocked even though it's not a dating site at all. As I recall, there was a way to write to the censors to ask why a site was blocked, and I did that, receiving an answer from them several weeks later that the scuba site was deemed a dating site. I was in UAE for work purposes for a couple of weeks and wanted to be in easy touch with my students. Because it was a temporary assignment, I didn't pursue trying to get it unblocked, so I have no idea how that might work.
Once I was doing a guest-instructor thing with a single divers board, and that board was blocked even though it's not a dating site at all. As I recall, there was a way to write to the censors to ask why a site was blocked, and I did that, receiving an answer from them several weeks later that the scuba site was deemed a dating site. I was in UAE for work purposes for a couple of weeks and wanted to be in easy touch with my students. Because it was a temporary assignment, I didn't pursue trying to get it unblocked, so I have no idea how that might work.
