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China Blocks WhatsApp

nytimes.com

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Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#291

Post by bamboozled »

rubenbe wrote: post #13

This is getting really strict. I went to China around 2012: * Facebook was already blocked * Google and wikipedia magically stopped working when you searched for "tiananmen" * Gmail worked fine I returned in early 2017, oh god what a change: * Don't even think about Facebook * Ironically Facebook messenger worked until my session expired * No gmail, google at all (don't remember about Wikipedia) * Whatsapp worked fin…

It seems strict but maybe it's sensible from a security standpoint. Why should a foreign country like China allow foreign owned mass-surveillance systems like Google and Facebook spy on their citizens?

I mean even countries in the EU are taking Facebook to court over unauthorised online tracking of citizens [1]. The only difference with China is they have the power to do something about it, which is skip the legislative overhead and get straight to the business of blocking access.

I disagree with censorship of this kind; However, I wonder how the US would like it if the shoe was on the other foot?

[1] https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities---threats/spain-...

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#292

Post by yourapostasy »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #206
Joking_Phantom wrote: post #89

WeChat is the replacement for WhatsApp, fully compliant with Chinese censorship controls. What's mildly disturbing is that many Chinese Americans, both American citizens and not, living in the US use WeChat. They use it because of their cultural and social ties with China. Chinese tourists as well have had increasingly better integration inside the US as well, which would only serve to spread the usage of WeChat to a…

The only users of WeChat have strong ties to China, and use it for those ties (e.g. WePay). Even in HK and Taiwan, WeChat is not used outside of those reasons. WeChat working in the US is like UnionPay working in the US. Ya, its great if you are a Chinese tourist or an expat with a Chinese bank account, but it is irrelevant if you aren't, UnionPay isn't going to start taking over the American ATM card market.

> Even in HK and Taiwan, WeChat is not used outside of those reasons.

Before someone asks, the approximate equivalent of WeChat in Taiwan is Line. Don't know what it is in HK.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#293

Post by dreamfactored »

Certhas wrote: post #117
chaostheory wrote: post #40

What the long-term effects will be: China's ruling class further cement their power at the cost of China's innovation and future growth. Interesting and useful things are made when people able share and consume information. e.g. Jack Ma's US visit exposed him to Yahoo. Ma Huateng was clearly inspired by his exposure to ICQ. The list goes on. The same thing happens in the West but it happens a lot more often since the…

Alternative: Innovation happens within the context of Chinas censorship and political regime. Blocking of entrenched western competitors allows home grown solutions to spring up, and local technological know how to develop faster. Capitalism and innovation turn out to work within the context of an illiberal society just fine. Especially as China avoids the mistake of closing itself off to the rest of the world, but s…

This analysis is spot on and sounds more like from someone who has actually been in China. I'd add that China has no choice but to compete through design and innovation as it is ending it's phase as a low wage economy and has a growing middle class to support (the 'copy machine' idea is complete nonsense recycled by lazy journalists who don't have a clue).

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#294

Post by dmoy »

eyeareque wrote: post #103
dmoy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google didn't work for me at all in 2011. The VPN I used worked, but then stopped after 2015 ish. I now use free roaming on e.g. t mobile / Google fi / etc which gets around all blocks.

L2TP tunneling works when you use an ip address for the vpn server.

Hmm maybe that'll be worth getting a static IP at home for my next trip, thanks.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#295

Post by jacquesm »

diminish wrote: post #192
Saad_M wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another alternative is that you may get a Galapagos island effect where Chinese firms do innovate, but their innovation is tied to the cultural and regulatory norms and not very applicable outside of China. The same effect was seen with Japanese cell phone companies pre-smartphone era.

If Chinese start an economic and cultural expansion which includes PRing their culture, movies, tech, products and building special relationships with developing world in Asia, Africa, south American and Europe they may end up being the globalization leader.

That is going to be tough. A whole generation of Chinese see the west as cool and to be emulated. I have a hard time seeing a whole generation of Europeans and Americans wanting to emulate the Chinese, Japan, maybe. China, not so much.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#296

Post by the_common_man »

gaius wrote: post #250
Certhas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative: Innovation happens within the context of Chinas censorship and political regime. Blocking of entrenched western competitors allows home grown solutions to spring up, and local technological know how to develop faster. Capitalism and innovation turn out to work within the context of an illiberal society just fine. Especially as China avoids the mistake of closing itself off to the rest of the world, but s…

China will reach some predetermined level of technology that The Party decides they are comfortable with, then close their borders and just get on with being the Middle Kingdom in splendid isolation. That is my prediction. I don't think they feel the need to project power and remake the world the way the US and previously the UK do/did. Maybe they will disengage from the world and look spacewards.

This really is a great point. Not everyone wants to dominate mankind.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#297

Post by CamperBob2 »

grzm wrote: post #281
CamperBob2 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more interesting: why is it suddenly considered unacceptable to ask for confirmation of a truly strange report?

I suspect the down votes (which I assume you're alluding to) are more regarding the wording. "Got a link that backs up this rather surreal claim?" can read as very aggressive rather than as a genuine question for more information. Also, the second result in my DDG query for "zuckerberg child chinese name" is this link, with the title "Chinese president snubs Mark Zuckerberg’s request for baby name". http://www.telegr…

Good point, I apologize if my post came across as an aggressive or disbelieving response. That wasn't the intent. It's objectively surreal, to the extent that particular adverb can ever legitimately be used next to that particular adjective, for the founder of Facebook to ask the Chinese premier for input on his child's name.

Also, typically, asking for an "easily searchable" citation results in a snarky LMGTFY link, rather than moderation normally associated with posting goatse links on Slashdot. It's interesting that this particular question seems to have hit a lot of peoples' nerves on here.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#298

Post by chaostheory »

westiseast wrote: post #252
Certhas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative: Innovation happens within the context of Chinas censorship and political regime. Blocking of entrenched western competitors allows home grown solutions to spring up, and local technological know how to develop faster. Capitalism and innovation turn out to work within the context of an illiberal society just fine. Especially as China avoids the mistake of closing itself off to the rest of the world, but s…

I'm a China hawk, but this is what has been happening and what will continue happening unless something massively more drastic than blocking a single minority foreign app happens. I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of foreign apps to Chinese consumers and to underestimate the Chinese market. It's almost laughable that people think blocking WhatsApp will make any difference to Chinese…

> I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of foreign apps to Chinese consumers

Then why take the trouble of blocking something so small and unimportant? ;)

> eg., the Chinese tech/online market is so huge it can sustain multiple competitors of its own in each sector

Doesn't China have bigger aspirations than just the mainland?

People are missing the bigger point. I'm not talking about the current state of things. This is about the future. Most things are derivatives of other things. It's much harder to create these derivatives without easy access to free flowing data. People are saying, "It's fine, Chinese students just study and work in the West and bring it back to China after a few years." This is extremely inefficient. 1. there's the monetary cost involved compared to a open internet connection2. only a very small portion of the population will have this opportunity compared to potentially millions more with an open internet connection. 3. the amount of time it will take for this data to come back to China is huge compared to the instantaneous sharing you get with an open internet connection

Getting more control isn't free, the price is growth.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#300

Post by EGreg »

barkingcat wrote: post #75
EGreg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if a common enough encrypted protocol is used to carry all communication, such as https TLS protocols?

It's not a technology problem. Be aware that human operators are hired specifically for correlating internet traffic with these kinds of evasions. In the end, unless it's a robot talking to another robot, all internet traffic in China can be resolved to people. And people can be arrested or jailed or killed. Of course, if you want to "go tech" you can go underground, but being illegal has disadvantages in a state lik…

As I see it, a large set of computers all running a webserver over TLS can form a cryptographic global consensus (blockchain) for permissionless chat and other stuff. Sure, someone has to be running these serveds. But once they are ubiquitous enough, the government wouldn't be able to stop the chats by arresting / remocing any percentage of machines short of 90% or so.

What kind of traffic correlations would then be taking place? That someone is making requests with one of these servers? It's always hard to arrest a meaningful number of users once the network itself is resilient, uses a common protocol that resists deep inspection, and has no major points of failure.

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