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China Blocks WhatsApp

nytimes.com

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Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#81

Post by htrp »

barkingcat wrote: post #68
revelation wrote: post #54

Does OpenVPN still work, in normal or PSK mode? I wonder if at some point their filtering gets smart enough that they will just turn it over to a whitelist, or worse, straying too far from the "norm user" gets you a visit from police.

Regular openvpn sees disruptions. They sniff out the ip addresses that sees vpn traffic and blocks them. You can get a different ip and have it run (or do multi-encapsulated tunneling), but in my opinion, nothing about this issue is technological. At the very end, if you try to evade too many times, the government just tells the telco not to sell any internet access to you. Or get the police to show up at your reside…

If you are foreign, in a first tier city, just pay for the corporate internet (the unblocked version) in a lot of office districts.

The government knows that the expats aren't their customer for censorship, they just want to make it inconvenient enough for their citizens to get to the new york times or the scmp.

Have people actually gotten visa's revoked, that would be a crazy escalation by the MPS.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#82

Post by justaman »

jrmurad wrote: post #50
meri_dian wrote: post #15

Edit: This is not a justification or defense of internet censorship. It is an explanation of why the Chinese public may be more willing to accept strict government controls than the West. While most Westerners see actions like this as serious violations of individual rights, the Chinese are used to such exercises of control by their leaders. There is a firm historical basis for similar behavior going back thousands o…

> the Chinese never had a Locke, or a Rousseau, or a Hobbes How about Lao-Tzu? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laozi

Perhaps you could give examples as to how they are similar?

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#85

Post by princekolt »

micaksica wrote: post #76
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…

> The people who will get ahead in China in the future are the ones who are somehow able to live outside of China to experience new ideas. So in other words, the ruling class continues to rule, as they will be the only ones with the sanctioned political freedoms to study abroad, etc. > China's fate as being relegated to being the world's giant copy machine is sealed unless things revert China being the world's giant…

> China being the world's giant copy machine has worked very well for those in power in China.

Yes, but that's not OPs point, I think. What I think OP means is that the west doesn't have to worry (much) about China becoming the world's main innovation spot, because with censorship, the best they can do is copy. In a weird way, this is good for the western world.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#87

Post by ben_jones »

Jerry2 wrote: post #65

TechAltar made a video few days ago about censorship in China and what their goals are [0]. He also talked about lengths to which Mark Zuckerberg went to try to get Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp unblocked in China. It was quite shocking. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swuir_7YIPs

The 5 points according to the video:

1) Married Priscilla Chan

2) Learned Mandarin

3) Joined Tsinghua University

4) Befriended Xijinping

5) Offered to let Xijinping name firstborn

Personally I have trouble believing 1 and 5 were to get Facebook products into China unabridged. 5 sounds like a joke at a dinner party.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#88

Post by ausjke »

there is an extra but critical reason that I somewhat know why the censorship is getting tougher these days, it has something to do with https://twitter.com/kwokmiles

this guy is nowadays' Don Quixote, one person against a powerful government and really made a crack there, this battle has been on for 8 months and it gets more and more interesting as he is challenging the most powerful group of men in China with corruption evidence gathered over the years,each case is weighted more than 100 billion dollars wealth.

to give you two incidents over the last 8 months: 1. VOA(voice of america) live interview with him was stopped in the middle as the leaked info is too strong. 2. youtube was DDOS-ed-to-death for a while when he started live streaming two months ago, which is said never happened before.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#89

Post by Joking_Phantom »

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 anyone who interacts with Chinese tourists. Tencent is slowly but surely gaining a foothold inside the United States as they roll out more features abroad that made it popular in China.

Are they suspect to these controls as well, despite not being within China? More importantly, whats the legal status of a Chinese corporation with the capability of invading its users privacy under Chinese law, if some users are neither not in China or not Chinese citizens?

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#90

Post by CuriouslyC »

mikeash wrote: post #5
aaron-lebo wrote: post #3

Well, at least Mark didn't sacrifice his child for that. What's the end game here? In the early 2000s it seemed like China was going to become this liberal democracy, but it just seems like the government is getting more and more power and control. Is there any sign this (and the rise of several authoritarians) is gonna stop? This made me think of Fukuyama (1989): What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the…

I don't think there's any sign it will stop. The standard prediction used to be that prosperity would bring democracy, but that's looking to be either wishful thinking or bad extrapolation from past events.

People tolerate the authoritarian government because of the rapid improvements in standard of living. Once living standards plateau we will see growing unrest and a gradual shift to a more open government (or a violent revolution).
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