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It does make me laugh as a British citizen when the government touts the use of evidence-based frameworks and its ' nudge' unit and then employs a blunt instrum

It does make me laugh as a British citizen when the government touts the use of evidence-based frameworks and its ' nudge' unit and then employs a blunt instrument such as this which is purely legislative and flies in the face of all available evidence. Since the advent of the internet and the accompanying rise of internet porn, sexual irresponsibility, teen sex, rape and divorce have all been in decline. That's to say nothing of the arguments for encryption and against backdoors, which have been well trailed in these parts before. Luckily, as the Chinese example shows, it just doesn't work, though I did find it amusing the time I caught a long haul China Air flight from Beijing with 'Free Wifi' where there was only one website available, and it was the website for China Air.

paradite 9y ago
I'm curious as to which "Chinese example" do you have in mind that doesn't work? Edit to reply to your wifi issue: you need to use that one website to login to access the "full" internet.
- wodencafe 9y ago
  The Great Firewall of China, of course.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - paradite 9y ago
    It's working exactly as intended. You need a VPN to access certain websites, some keywords are censored properly. How is that an example of not working? So what do you exactly mean by not working?
    - illuminati1911 9y ago
      Chinese government is unable to prevent people accessing prohibited content. Which part is unclear here?
      - paradite 9y ago
        Well it prevents 99% of the people who don't know how or don't bother setting up VPN from accessing prohibited content, that's the intended effect. So I would say it's working well.
        imron 9y ago
        On the other hand, it blocks 0% of people who have the intent to access that content so it doesn't really work at all for the people it's supposed to stop.
        viraptor 9y ago
        According to stats I found, it prevents <71% in China. https://www.statista.com/statistics/301204/top-markets-vpn-proxy-usage/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/301204/top-markets-vpn-p... Edit: another one is pretty close as well: http://insight.globalwebindex.net/chart-of-the-day-90-million-vpn-users-in-china-have-accessed-restricted-social-networks?ecid= http://insight.globalwebindex.net/chart-of-the-day-90-millio... And that's just people who explicitly use it. With that kind of market penetration basically everyone knows what to do, or who to ask if they want to access some geoblocked service in the future.
        paradite 9y ago
        According to my observations now here in China, your stats are wrong. Edit: Just to substantiate, many people I spoke to vaguely know what they would see if they get unfiltered internet, so there's not really much motivation to bypass GFW.
        viraptor 9y ago
        Sorry, but this is an anecdote. Do you have a source that shows some usage? I'd love to see that, whichever side it agrees with, but personal experiences rarely generalises to nations.
        9y ago
- imron 9y ago
  The Chinese example where they have tens of thousands of people monitoring internet content and spend millions per year on filtering and blocking technology - and it can all be circumvented with a VPN.
  - paradite 9y ago
    Interesting. So on one side people are bashing the the level of censorship by the government and how people are unable to exercise certain rights. On the other side the same people are laughing at its ineffectiveness and how trivial it is to circumvent them and access information freely. One of them must surely be wrong? Btw, censoring of keywords and blocking of websites are two different issues. VPN solves the latter, not the former.
    - kristianc 9y ago
      I don't see the tension between saying that the government's intent is to create an all encompassing censorship machine based on what it defines as social harms, and saying that such an endeavour is doomed to fail. One is about intent, the other is about ability to execute on that intent. In law, we punish people for intent to commit harms if they have gone some of the way towards planning those harms, even if the intended harms do not come to pass.
      - paradite 9y ago
        Right. So we can say that Chinese government has bad intentions. But based on your description, surely Chinese people do enjoy freedom of speech and access to the information, since such censorship efforts are doomed to fail? Why is that I see the the opposite conclusions in Human Rights reports?
    - viraptor 9y ago
      No, both can be right. Censorship can be ineffective, but circumventing it may still put your name on some list. And once you do get charged with something, that fact can easily come up. Also, VPNs are usually leaky. You can trivially identify many protocols, even under encryption. There was some researcher recently (sorry, can't find the link) identifying which movie is being streamed over encrypted link. Some networks are better at injecting noise than others - Tor has some benefits here for example.
panglott 9y ago
The Great Firewall works amazingly well, if not perfectly well. It is a little leaky at the edges, but certainly influences how a very large proportion of Chinese users experience the Internet.
- nebabyte 9y ago
  Yup. The goal of TGF is suppression, not complete shutout. By most accounts it unfortunately does a really good job of that.

paradite 9y ago

I'm curious as to which "Chinese example" do you have in mind that doesn't work? Edit to reply to your wifi issue: you need to use that one website to login to access the "full" internet.

wodencafe 9y ago
The Great Firewall of China, of course.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- paradite 9y ago
  It's working exactly as intended. You need a VPN to access certain websites, some keywords are censored properly. How is that an example of not working? So what do you exactly mean by not working?
  - illuminati1911 9y ago
    Chinese government is unable to prevent people accessing prohibited content. Which part is unclear here?
    - paradite 9y ago
      Well it prevents 99% of the people who don't know how or don't bother setting up VPN from accessing prohibited content, that's the intended effect. So I would say it's working well.
      - imron 9y ago
        On the other hand, it blocks 0% of people who have the intent to access that content so it doesn't really work at all for the people it's supposed to stop.
      - viraptor 9y ago
        According to stats I found, it prevents <71% in China. https://www.statista.com/statistics/301204/top-markets-vpn-proxy-usage/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/301204/top-markets-vpn-p... Edit: another one is pretty close as well: http://insight.globalwebindex.net/chart-of-the-day-90-million-vpn-users-in-china-have-accessed-restricted-social-networks?ecid= http://insight.globalwebindex.net/chart-of-the-day-90-millio... And that's just people who explicitly use it. With that kind of market penetration basically everyone knows what to do, or who to ask if they want to access some geoblocked service in the future.
        paradite 9y ago
        According to my observations now here in China, your stats are wrong. Edit: Just to substantiate, many people I spoke to vaguely know what they would see if they get unfiltered internet, so there's not really much motivation to bypass GFW.
        viraptor 9y ago
        Sorry, but this is an anecdote. Do you have a source that shows some usage? I'd love to see that, whichever side it agrees with, but personal experiences rarely generalises to nations.
        9y ago
imron 9y ago
The Chinese example where they have tens of thousands of people monitoring internet content and spend millions per year on filtering and blocking technology - and it can all be circumvented with a VPN.
- paradite 9y ago
  Interesting. So on one side people are bashing the the level of censorship by the government and how people are unable to exercise certain rights. On the other side the same people are laughing at its ineffectiveness and how trivial it is to circumvent them and access information freely. One of them must surely be wrong? Btw, censoring of keywords and blocking of websites are two different issues. VPN solves the latter, not the former.
  - kristianc 9y ago
    I don't see the tension between saying that the government's intent is to create an all encompassing censorship machine based on what it defines as social harms, and saying that such an endeavour is doomed to fail. One is about intent, the other is about ability to execute on that intent. In law, we punish people for intent to commit harms if they have gone some of the way towards planning those harms, even if the intended harms do not come to pass.
    - paradite 9y ago
      Right. So we can say that Chinese government has bad intentions. But based on your description, surely Chinese people do enjoy freedom of speech and access to the information, since such censorship efforts are doomed to fail? Why is that I see the the opposite conclusions in Human Rights reports?
  - viraptor 9y ago
    No, both can be right. Censorship can be ineffective, but circumventing it may still put your name on some list. And once you do get charged with something, that fact can easily come up. Also, VPNs are usually leaky. You can trivially identify many protocols, even under encryption. There was some researcher recently (sorry, can't find the link) identifying which movie is being streamed over encrypted link. Some networks are better at injecting noise than others - Tor has some benefits here for example.

panglott 9y ago

The Great Firewall works amazingly well, if not perfectly well. It is a little leaky at the edges, but certainly influences how a very large proportion of Chinese users experience the Internet.

nebabyte 9y ago
Yup. The goal of TGF is suppression, not complete shutout. By most accounts it unfortunately does a really good job of that.