China tightens control on instant messaging services

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-28694890?OCID=twitterasia

 

Wow, China

I recall comments by Jackie Chan, where he justified/explained China's policies.

Freedom isn't big in China, either.

 

Not as bad as in the Middle East at least. In the Middle East you can be sent to a jail if saying things too much. As for our current topic, I wonder if the real-names can be faked?

And I'm also starting to wonder if wilderssecurity.com is being blocked in China due to my existence?

 

And their censoring of verbal diarrhea can't compete with North Korea. zing

 

True, it's worse in many parts of the Middle East. What I was trying to say about China is that I can almost get how this rule is OK as an aspect of social responsibility. From that perspective, what's good for society trumps what's good for individuals. That was the gist of the Jackie Chan quote. But still, it's totally outside of my world view.

That could be worse, though. It's more evidence for antisocial attitude, right?

Are you banned in China?

Is Wilders banned in China?

 

Lol, North Korea has been a funny word for me since yesterday. Too bad I can't tell why or else I would be kidnapped.

But yeah, I heard a few very unpleasant news about censorship in North Korea. But I haven't managed to verify those information yet, so I can't say I agree or disagree with that statement.

Not sure what your point is. Most of those who are involved in online discussions don't use their real names, and that's logical. So everyone who lives under the jurisdiction of People's Republic of China who are forced to input their real names more than likely will be faking it anyway. Unless China's government is more aggressive than what I know, but currently they don't seem to do mass hunting. Only deletion of information, banning of rights, access restrictions and all those standard stuff.

HA HA HA! Unless I am a president or a CEO of a multi-billion dollars multi-national company, I don't think China's government and corporations will take me as more than just a troll. I just happen to have sharp criticisms towards China's government and corporations which I have been done for years. Consider me as a pro-Americanist and pro-Europeanist, that should easily describe my thoughts regarding these topics.

I dunno. We do discuss about anonymity and censorship bypassing though.

 

@GrafZeppelin

I was just kidding around

 

No. But facebook, youtube and most of other sites of significant social influence are banned, although wealthier Chinese people still use them via VPN's. In my experience the Great Firewall of China (or something in China) also slows down a lot of regular sites that have nothing to with politics or anything contraversial - I think they may have some sort of algorithm that scans and potentially blocks stuff people browse, but it could just be spotty internet connect + my paranoia...

 

@pajenn

Thanks I've read that blocking varies a lot among ISPs. Maybe high-end ISPs are less blocked? I've also read that corporate data center uplinks are less blocked.

I've been wondering whether VPNs, JonDonym or Tor are best for avoiding censorship in China. Tor has obfuscating bridges. Although VPNs can also use obfsproxy, SSH or stunnel, there are far more Tor bridges. And new ones can be added easily.

 

I'll have to try Tor later, I rarely use it these days, and when I do I have it behind a VPN.

When in China I always have a VPN on because the web is too slow otherwise, and a lot of sites just don't work - even Mobile devices need VPN here if you want to use google's play store, for example (well, play store does work sometimes, but small updates can take many hours and Android phones in China don't even come with google apps by default). However, a lot of VPN's do not work here, and I've read that OpenVPN based services are detected and blocked, although my own experience with one particular OpenVPN service is just that it often fails to connect to servers outside of China and even if it succeeds it's slower than in Europe. If you are ever in China you really need to find a VPN that has has a good reputation for working in China (there are at least a few). For some things, like downloading torrents, I often find it necessary to run two separate VPN's with the second one running on a virtual machine.

That said, Wilders Security Forum has always worked perfectly for me in China even without a VPN - it's probably just not on their radar.

 

@pajenn

Thanks

Helping people circumvent the GFW is hard in many ways. Sharing specifics helps the censors know what to block. Testing from inside China does the same, and attracts attention to testers.

 

fwiw, Tor seems to work in China, at least from my current location at the present time; I'm posting this via the TorBrowser to test it. Youtube, facebook, etc. also worked this way.

I can only imagine that all this blocking has to hurt the Chinese tech industries because you need a working internet to be at the cutting edge in today's world, although I presume they all have VPN's too. fwiw, I'm not Chinese so not sure what regular people here do about all the censorship.