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China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

washingtonpost.com

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Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#31

Post by fiveyearsinarow »

netheril96 wrote: post #25
fiveyearsinarow wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because to establish the tunnel, you need to send some "handshake" packets to the server. Those packets are not encrypted and can be easily identified and dropped.

Which is why `shadowsocks` has become popular to bypass the GFW: it has no such handshake phase and hence cannot be easily identified.

...and when GFW has trouble stopping `shadowsocks`, it threatens the author of the software. GFW is not only the technology, which is easy to bypass, but also the system that average citizen cannot escape.

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#32

Post by thelukester »

comex wrote: post #11

So what about Tor and obfsproxy? Does it actually (still) work? If so, why don't more people use it?; if not, why not? I can't easily find up-to-date information about this through Google - which I find odd, since China is such an important use case for Tor that I would expect them to maintain some sort of status page. Maybe the information is more readily available in Chinese...

Last year, obfsproxy was absolutely still effective in China. There are several comments here that "Tor doesn't work". Yes, vanilla Tor hasn't worked for years now. While it's true China has managed to block obfsproxy for short periods, the Tor developers are constantly release updates that circumvent the blocks.

Source: I've lived in China for 3 of the past 5 years, using Tor and VPNs everyday I was there.

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#33

Post by jondubois »

The Great Firewall actually makes a lot of sense. Everyone thinks of themselves as being rational and unbiased - But in fact, we are all irrational, biased and at times hypocritical. Those people who think that they are rational and objective are usually the least rational and most hypocritical of all because they lack self-awareness.

As westerners, as much as we like to pretend that we know the whole truth, in reality, what we know is only a biased approximation of it. The west likes to impose their version of the truth on the whole world but China is determined to stick to their version - I don't see anything wrong with that; especially if it works in their favour.

Regardless of how you look at it; the west is aggressive when it comes to spreading its ideals and values. If China wasn't so protecive, they would have become economically dependent on the west (as opposed to being the powerhouse they are today).

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#34

Post by manmal »

narrator wrote: post #29
nullnullnullnil wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, my personal experience says differently. I recently got back from a few months in China, and while I was there I had a conversation with a young man who was 100% convinced Tiananmen Square was a rumor started by anti government 'bad guys'.

Think of a person of median intelligence. Now realize that half the population is dumber than that guy. That's who propaganda is intended for, not the Hacker News crowd (apologies to anyone on Hacker News with below median intelligence, you're welcome here too :) ). Same thing in China. The people who are easily convinced of things is who the propaganda is intended for and who the government wants to protect from for…

Median might be about right - here in Austria we witnessed yesterday that almost 50% of the ppl fell for a rightwing wanna-be dictator running for presidency. And there wasn't even brainwashing involved, apart from ads and word of mouth.

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#35

Post by joe_the_user »

dasil003 wrote: post #30

I don't subscribe to common western black and white views on US vs Chinese freedom, and in fact I am fairly paranoid about the US government overreach of power, however I don't see that Chinese-style internet censorship has any applicability to the US or European governments. I'm far more concerned about the power exterted by increasingly large corporations who want extract as much rent from the network as possible.…

I don't subscribe to common western black and white views on US vs Chinese freedom

It's maybe, black and dark gray. US media and US spin interests can corruptly manipulate a lot. But I don't see how that sort of power makes the blunt repression of China any better.

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#37

Post by gohrt »

jondubois wrote: post #33

The Great Firewall actually makes a lot of sense. Everyone thinks of themselves as being rational and unbiased - But in fact, we are all irrational, biased and at times hypocritical. Those people who think that they are rational and objective are usually the least rational and most hypocritical of all because they lack self-awareness. As westerners, as much as we like to pretend that we know the whole truth, in reali…

Who is "China" who picks "their" version? The Chinese Communist Party, or the Chinese people?

How would China become dependent on the West if Chinese people had access to non-CommunityParty ideas?

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#38

Post by 13of40 »

nullnullnullnil wrote: post #22
comex wrote: post #11

So what about Tor and obfsproxy? Does it actually (still) work? If so, why don't more people use it?; if not, why not? I can't easily find up-to-date information about this through Google - which I find odd, since China is such an important use case for Tor that I would expect them to maintain some sort of status page. Maybe the information is more readily available in Chinese...

I just got back from a few months in China. These services are definitely blocked through DPI. It's frustrating. It's also interesting what happens to your mind when you can't read what you'd like to, talk about what you'd like to, and revert the accepted status quo for everything.

While you were there, did you get a feel for whether people there would pay for a semi-reliable bridge through the firewall?

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#39

Post by jgreen10 »

chillacy wrote: post #7

> China has achieved this. It can communicate with the outside world, meanwhile Western opinion cannot easily penetrate as ideological tools Media is powerful. And even in the US, most of us self-censor our news (liberal vs conservative media) to the point where we're largely reading only views we agree on (HN is no different in that regard). I always find it amusing that we can all read the same news with different…

When I'm in Russia, I find the state-controlled media surprisingly critical of government policy and very outward looking. They are clearly ignoring the elephant in the room: the country being an ungovernable pool of corruption that can only be kept together by instilling nationalism and foreign threats and an authoritarian leader, but then again, it's not like US media are really asking critical questions. With or without free press, no one wants to hear that they're in a mess. It's much nicer to think that everything is good, but the evil-doers are trying to ruin it.

Re: China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

#40

Post by hamstergene »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #8

The Chinese own China and can decide for themselves what is best for their country. But as an American living in China, I fear that some of what I see here can and will happen in America one day.

If you're locked in a kitchen, even though there is more than one choice of food are you free to decide what to eat? What if you was born there and don't really know all variety options you could have?

Centralized propaganda makes "freedom of choice" very controversial topic. Especially when its source has all the power to censor and prosecute.

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