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China Blocks WhatsApp
- ChuckMcM 9y agoThis feels to me like the war on the Internet has entered a new phase.
- badosu 9y agoNext step should be enabling censored services to citizens with 4-star+ social scores.
- stuffedBelly 9y agoreminds me of the 1st episode of the latest Black Mirror season.
- spookyuser 9y agoIt's like a really ugly combination of that episode and the waldo episode
- JigglyGigalo 9y agoNo I expect it to be more like only the rich will be able to afford the data rate fees that will apply to any Inter-Zone communications.
- r00fus 9y agoI think I made a prediction earlier on HN about balkanization of the Internet - I give it till 2025 until all major countries are in a process of complete segregation.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoWell, 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 Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las... That looks really funny in hindsight. He's actually changed his position: http://www.npr.org/2017/04/04/522554630/francis-fukuyama-on-why-liberal-democracy-is-in-trouble http://www.npr.org/2017/04/04/522554630/francis-fukuyama-on-...
- mikeash 9y agoI 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.
- SirensOfTitan 9y agoIt feels to me that stability brings prosperity, and democracy represents one of several paths to stability.
- azurezyq 9y agoDemocracy and prosperity are orthogonal concepts. I agree both of them are good but prosperity without democracy exist (China and in some sense Singapore) and democracy without prosperity also exists (everywhere).
- adventured 9y ago> prosperity without democracy exist There has never been a large nation example of that in world history. China has yet to get there in any broad sense. Further, there are exceptionally few examples of it, regardless of nation size. A solid 80% to 90% of the prosperous, well developed nations use representative government systems, and not a single large nation that is prosperous at the median doesn't. Most of the exceptions are smaller, resource nations like Qatar (even Saudi Arabia hasn't achieved high-level prosperity at the median, their median income is nearly 1/3 that of the US). Here's the list of nations that are prosperous at the median - Democratic: US, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Ireland, Japan, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Israel, South Korea Not Democratic: Singapore, Qatar, Kuwait, Brunei, UAE Questionable inclusions: Czech, Portugal, Taiwan, Slovenia, Greece, Estonia, Slovakia; vs Saudi Arabia on the other side I don't see how this could be any more blatant.
- zabana 9y agoAre you saying that before democracy appeared (300 or so years ago) humankind didn't prosper economically, financially and culturally ?
- EGreg 9y agoHow does the blocking actually happen? What if people used a decentralized service, that worked over https?
- gruez 9y ago>What if people used a decentralized service, that worked over https? that sounds great until you realize that most people don't run tls servers on their computers/phones. so running one would immediately raise suspicion. not to mention that if they can block tor/vpn, they can block whatever tls chat service you have as well.
- EGreg 9y agoWhy is running a webserver going to arouse suspicion? Furthermore, with https authentication, non members wouldn't even know that a chat is going on.
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- throwanem 9y agoTraffic analysis will tell you that something far from the norm is going on. You don't need to be able to read packets to recognize that the pattern is all wrong for an HTTPS website session. And it's not ordinary for a client machine or network to be listening for TLS sessions on port 443 in the first place.
- oconnor663 9y agoI think peer discovery is still a difficult issue?
- EGreg 9y agoHasn't it been solved with freenet, perfectdark, and other darknets and DHTs?
- bluetwo 9y agoThis had not already been blocked?
- rubenbe 9y agoThis 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 fine And now it is even getting worse....
- yuncun 9y ago>* Google and wikipedia magically stopped working when you searched for "tiananmen" Hmm I find this hard to believe because the massacre is known as the June Fourth Incident. "tiananmen" is the location, and blocking that would seem a bit strange for people trying to find directions, etc.
- aeorgnoieang 9y agoI'd expect them to block "tiananmen", the search of those exact Latin characters.
- cgb223 9y agoIt’s almost as if they block the massacre in multiple languages Tiananmen Square is what the massacre is referred to as in the United States
- tinco 9y agoIt might be based more on the results that those sites return than the query itself. It is just a still existing square. But if you search "Tiananmen" in English, most results will definitely be the sort of thing China doesn't want it's citizens to look at.
- NedIsakoff 9y agoYou're looking for the wrong thing. Its the May 35th Incident now comrade ;p
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
- 0xbear 9y agoSo brown nosing with comrade Jinping did not have a desired result. For those not aware: Zuck asked him to name his first born. Jinping declined. :-)
- CamperBob2 9y agoInteresting. Got a link that backs up this rather surreal claim?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- aodin 9y ago> At a White House dinner in 2015, Mr. Zuckerberg had even asked the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, whether Mr. Xi might offer a Chinese name for his soon-to-be-born first child — usually a privilege reserved for older relatives, or sometimes a fortune teller. Mr. Xi declined, according to a person briefed on the matter. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/technology/facebook-government-regulations.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/technology/facebook-gover...
- derptron 9y agoGood old Zuck the cuck
- imron 9y agohttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/china-s-president-xi-jinping-turns-down-mark-zuckerberg-s-request-to-name-his-unborn-child-at-white-a6679156.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/china-s-president-x...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- CamperBob2 9y agoEven more interesting: why is it suddenly considered unacceptable to ask for confirmation of a truly strange report?
- meri_dian 9y agoEdit: 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 of years, and the desire for social harmony and stability which in part enables strict government control through tacit public acceptance is deeply rooted in Chinese culture. It's important for Westerners to realize that the Chinese never had a Locke, or a Rousseau, or a Hobbes. The foundational political philosophy taken for granted in the West has no parallel in China. Their political philosophy is grounded in a very different hierarchy of values.
- terminalcommand 9y agoIMHO it is not just the hierarchy of values. In Turkey Wikipedia has been blocked for months, without a court order. The government man-in-the-middle's its own citizens and makes wikipedia unreachable. Even if you use a dns, they spoof the dns and redirect you to their own IP. It seems to me that people do not care, when it is the internet. The thoughts of Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes are taught nearly in every university and there is no culture of conformity. People seem to simply not care, or are afraid to speak their minds.
- DPW_ 9y agoApathy is conformity by default.
- msla 9y agoThis is very essentialist, and I'll only point out that, prior to the Renaissance, you could say very similar things about European cultures. In short, history explains, it doesn't justify. And this can be explained even better by a closed oligarchy wanting to stay in power. Edited to add: Modern Western countries have had experiences with autocracy as well. Do you think there's some deep cultural reason Germany went Nazi which sets it apart from France or the UK? How about Spain and Portugal?
- sethbannon 9y agoDuplicate of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15332147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15332147
- hellofunk 9y agoIf that other link (yours, I see) actually had discussion, this might be a useful contribution to post here. But it doesn't. Sorry mate, your submission didn't catch the fire of the kindling; no need to repost it here.
- victornomad 9y agoLast year I went to China, wanted to show a web project I had in internet and it didnt work at all. My hosting was working perfectly and not blocked at all since I could SSH there. Then I realized that I had some jquery loading from a Google CDN and of course the cdn was banned there. And of course CSS fonts from google and youtube videos didnt work either... I learned 2 lessons. 1) dont rely on CDNs if you want to have global access. Host everything your self and check that your hosting or any of the mirrors can be accessed everywhere. 2) How long Google tentacles are (and we always keep forgetting)...
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago> dont rely on CDNs if you want to have global access So don't rely on CDNs for their primary purpose?
- nilved 9y agoYes.
- islanderfun 9y agoSeems like the "lessons" you learned was to blame others for what the Chinese government did. - Google being blocked in China is out of their control regardless of their "tentacles". It's well know, try another CDN. - As already mentioned, don't use a CDN for the purpose CDNs exist. Thats really baffling to me. Sorry, this post wasn't so productive but I'm really confused by OP.
- victornomad 9y agoI reread my comment and I dont see any place where I blame others... Im just told my story, not blaming any body and mentioned how big is google, thats all anyway...
- pducks32 9y agoOr just don’t worry about China.
- chaostheory 9y agoWhat 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 there are a lot more opportunities to share ideas with much fewer restrictions. The end result is that China's fate as being relegated to being the world's giant copy machine is sealed unless things revert 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. This is already true, but its importance will grow as China's censorship grows. The more China closes up, the less Western companies have to fear about future tech dominance or crazy innovation from China in the long run To be fair, things may even out since Western governments seem to be doing all they can to copy China's censorship and gov control. SOPA, PIPA, SESTA, and the Digital Economy Bill come to mind. I'm sure others can add more to the list.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- zitterbewegung 9y agoI think the blocking of foreign corporations also serves as a way to eliminate competition for services that are created inside the country. Obviously they would be able to pressure the in country services to do whatever they want.
- chaostheory 9y agoYou're right. There's definitely protectionism, but imo moves like limiting VPN's go beyond that.
- chrischen 9y agoA lot of people use VPNs to access foreign services. It's quite popular to use Instagram in China, even though it's blocked.
- dominotw 9y agodoes this kind of thing violate any trade agreements between US and china? should it?
- logfromblammo 9y agoTo my knowledge it does not, but it should. Censorship is a weak attempt at mind control, which is a bit worse than chattel slavery on the list of heinous things that humans do to one another. Not only that, but in order to implement it effectively, you must be omnipresent, with a finger in every ear and a hand over every mouth. The concentration of power necessary to do that is an open invitation to corruption. If I had significant influence over US trade agreements, the degree to which ordinary citizens had open and unfettered access to information would factor into every last one of them.
- frandroid 9y agoWhat trade agreements :D
- aorth 9y agoI would say WhatsApp could use domain fronting like Signal, but that technique requires the adversarial government or ISP to decide that blocking Google.com—or whatever large, important domain is doing the fronting—is worth the cost to block WhatsApp. But China definitely doesn't care about blocking Google! https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/fronting/ https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/fronting/
- revelation 9y agoDoes 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.
- htrp 9y agoOpenVPN doesn't work unless you do some crazy tunneling over encrypted bank traffic ports (OVPN over SSL on 443)
- barkingcat 9y agoRegular 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 residence. Regular Chinese citizens get jailed for 50+ years all the time for doing things online. If you are foreign, they can revoke your visa.
- htrp 9y agoIf 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.
- terminalcommand 9y agoEven if OpenVPN doesn't work, ssh tunneling could get you onto the free internet. I imagine that using Tor would certainly get you into trouble in China. There was a statement in a documentary from an ex Syrian Intelligence Officer that they found out and tortured people who used Tor or other encryption methods. Anonymity in the Internet at the age of surveillance states is really tricky. One slip-up and your identiy might get comprimised.
- hw 9y agoI'm curious if this is really censorship or just a play to further enhance the position of Chinese messaging apps' monopolies. Question is why wouldn't the US block Chinese sites, apps and services like WeChat, Alibaba, Baidu, etc?
- FabHK 9y agoCross-border chats that previously used WhatsApp will now be forced to switch to WeChat, and thus be subject to Chinese gov't monitoring. Also leading to more international installs of WeChat. If US blocked those sites, nobody would care, except those with ties to China. However, it would be easy to circumvent with VPNs etc., unless of course the US duplicated the GFW. At any rate, that's rather antithetical to US values.
- rubatuga 9y agoIt makes sense, as a country you wouldn’t want US companies taking over your social media. It’s only alarming from a US centric view.
- corndoge 9y agoI hope this is a joke
- zabana 9y agoHe's got a point though.
- zaro 9y agoWell it's very valid reason. Companies like Google and Facebook do influence their users, and do define how they interact. So banning the big tech companies is kind of protection against this, as US influence can be really toxic for local businesses. Even the EU starts to fight back against them.
- abiox 9y agoshould every country block every other country?
- Posibyte 9y agoThe statement doesn't seem imperative as much as it's just generally relatable. In the end, it comes down to the values and limits of each society as to how they approach and react to something like Facebook and Google's massive influencing powers.
- islanderfun 9y agoProtectionism for all.
- samlevine 9y ago> It makes sense, as a country you wouldn’t want US companies taking over your social media. Not having to build your own Facebook (and WhatsApp, etc.) means that you can build something else that can (eventually) compete internationally. China isn't being irrational here, but there is a tradeoff between growth and security.
- kareldonk 9y agoMaybe Fuckerberg will finally understand now that kissing chinese government official anus won't get him far.
- Jerry2 9y agoTechAltar 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swuir_7YIPs
- ben_jones 9y agoThe 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.
- jimmies 9y ago#5 is really low. I cannot believe someone who did that is a great person. This guy's baby is just another tool huh?
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoI'm sure Zuck just meant to pick the Chinese name, not the official English name. My half-Chinese son still doesn't have one, my wife having rejected my proposal of 小囧. Even then, I think this is just Zuck being Zuck, he is a bit socially awkward and was probably unfiltered genuine here for no business reason.
- balls187 9y agoThe story goes Zuckerberg asked President Xi to give his unborn baby an Honorary Chinese name. Which still seems gross, but perhaps less so, given the baby would likely have a more common American name.
- jimmies 9y agoEven it's the "backup" name, it's not like his wife or his wife's parents are incapable of coming up with a meaningful Chinese name for the child. It's his choice to go ask the president of China to choose it for him (and his wife - if she is like "I am not interested in choosing a Chinese name my child"?). I can understand this on a personal level. Yeah, I'd understand, If, say, Obama was my friend, I'd want to "ask" the ideas of his for my child's English name, when he comes to my family dinner, sure... But asking the Chairman of China publicly in a dinner just shows he does care a lot about who has power. Not a friend, not a great thinker, but a fucking president he has a chance to have dinner with the first time. And publicly with many other people. If I'm being cynical, then at least doing it his way was really quite distasteful.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kome 9y agoWhat about Telegram?
- miaklesp 9y agoWas blocked two years ago
- ProfessorLayton 9y agoI wonder if steganography + encryption will be the way past internet censorship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Digital_messages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Digital_messages
- Crontab 9y agoIt’s like China and England are competing to see who can have the least amount of Internet freedom.
- cybertronic 9y agooh, but England "had Locke,... or a Hobbes" (see comment above)
- Bouncingsoul1 9y agoI'm currently on a buisness trip in china, had to switch to wire which is still working.
- ausjke 9y agothere 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 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.
- Joking_Phantom 9y agoWeChat 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?
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoThe 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.
- yourapostasy 9y ago> 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.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoEven that isn't really accurate. Wechat is an app ecosystem, it is as much like Google Play as it is like WhatsApp. Also, Facebook and google services remain popular in greater china outside of the mainland.
- PresidentObama 9y agoThe equivalent of WeChat in HK is WhatsApp.
- Animats 9y agoNaomi Wu's comment on China's surveillance: "That's basically the social contract. Someone grabs your purse, you go to the police station, they show you the video, usually catch them. ... Honestly, I hear more anger on Weibo/Wechat when there's not camera footage of a crime than any unhappiness over cameras on the street etc."[1] [1] https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg?lang=en https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg?lang=en
- mrtron 9y agoI have several friends who have said that they feel more safe walking around alone at night due to the cameras, when compared to major north american cities.
- HillaryBriss 9y agothe UK does tons of video surveillance of public spaces. much much more than the US, where cameras are often low-res garbage, broken or hacked for use in botnets.
- Animats 9y agoIn the UK, if you're robbed can you go to a police station, see the video, and get the cops started on finding the robber?
- HillaryBriss 9y agoi don't know about that. i do know that some UK police departments have officers watching some public spaces in real time. they can sometimes recognize and intercept known offenders before a crime occurs. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1 https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1
- jimmies 9y agoI was in Singapore for a while and the fact that cameras were everywhere in SG made me feel really uncomfortable and hard to breathe, at least. I guess you get used to what you think is normal. There is no right answer to that. I'd prefer to go to a place that has no camera, and go to a party/event that no one is fucking around with their phone cameras, but I guess I'm just old.
- justboxing 9y ago> By blocking the heavily encrypted WhatsApp service while making less secure applications like WeChat available to the public, the Chinese government has herded its internet users toward methods of communication that it can reliably monitor. How could they possibly monitor millions of messages sent per hour? Even if they have some ML / Bot, what are the odds that they'll miss some protest, or plot??
- grzm 9y ago> Even if they have some ML / Bot, what are the odds that they'll miss some protest, or plot?? Do they need 100% accuracy for it to be effective? Nothing of this sort is, and that's accepted as part of using it. Of course people work to minimize false positives and false negatives, but it's understood that they can't be reduced to 0.
- bryananderson 9y agoThis event is an amazing lesson in what China's rulers see as their interests and how they pursue those interests. Over the last several decades, these rulers have done a lot to open China to the world and lift the totalitarian restrictions of Maoism. This process has been the greatest poverty reduction program of all time, and thus it would be easy to mistake it for altruism, or at least a belief in governing in the common interest. This theory, however, fails to explain much of the Chinese leadership's behavior, and I submit that self-interest is a superior theory. The wealthier and stronger China becomes, the wealthier and stronger its rulers become. Thus it is generally in the rulers' interest to make China wealthier and stronger. But if something would make China wealthier and stronger, but could loosen the ruling clique's grip on that wealth and strength, then it is against the rulers' interest and they will act to prevent it. This is why China often acts as though it values technological leadership, but continually takes measures such as these, which undermine that leadership. The result, as several in this thread have pointed out, is that China will not soon be the world's leader in cutting-edge technology. But China will still be rich. And China will still be strong. And China's rulers will still be in power.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoAnd China's rulers will still be in power. I wonder. When the inevitable downturn comes the population won't have the option of voting out the current government. They may well turn to other means.
- splintercell 9y agoThis almost always happens. Because in order to achieve what they have achieved, they had to give their citizens a certain amount of freedom. Generally when the new generation becomes old enough , it would have never seen why people are afraid of the rulers so much, then it becomes a situation of a showdown. Though it doesn't always have to end with a bloody outcome, for instance Spain went from dictatorship to democracy quite peacefully after it's dictator died in 1975.
- dv_dt 9y agoChina is still in the range of development where it's pretty easy to make the case that raising the wealth of its people aligns with increasing the power and wealth of its rulers. An interesting question is how long those interests stay merged. I suspect it isn't ultimately driven from a political power calculation, but on what areas of open growth are available. Cutting off WhatsApp keeps open growth available in that area internal to the nation. But as areas close off and get filled, economies have to start making harder choices about where to put effort. It's easy to commit to long-term society wide efforts when it's easy to forsee improvements _and_ personal profits. But as choices get harder to forecast and make good on, will China start looking shorter term and with a more narrowly focused self service scope as many western economic leaders have done.
- Asdfbla 9y agoThe article mentions that, as in years before, the Chinese tighten censorship when important party meetings or other events of political significance come up. But does anyone know if the longer term trend is toward more isolation of the Chinese internet (or intranet, almost) or did the overall level of censorship stay constant over the last few years?
- technologyvault 9y agoOver the past several months, I have had increasing difficulty communicating with suppliers and business partners in China, who have become very frustrated that they can only communicate via Skype. All of their VPNs seem to have been shut down. They can't access Facebook, YouTube, and now WhatsApp. Does anyone know of a simple workaround that would allow someone inside of mainland China to regain access to what's been blocked recently?
- HillaryBriss 9y agointeresting. we live in an age where we should ask: what did Microsoft have to give China's leadership to make Skype so much more attractive to Chinese users? what influence/control within the US can Microsoft offer up to other governments if the price is right?
- kawera 9y agoNot sure if this would work for you but still... After having a lot of problems communicating with my business partners in China, I bought a second (cheap, chinese!) phone and installed WeChat, Weibo and a host of other apps on it. It became my chinese "channel", completely isolated from my main phone. Working pretty well so far.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cousamfee 9y agoIt's not just censorship, China is now openly engaged in economic warfare of foreign companies within China, closing up the Chinese economy, and preventing foreign companies from competing fairly. "The Chinese government is blocking South Korean companies from leaving China while prohibiting assets from being taken out of China without any standards. In addition, Lotte and other large South Korean corporations are also having difficulty in their withdrawal process as the Chinese government demands huge compensation from South Korean companies restructuring their human resources management structures... South Korean manufacturers have been not allowed to bring production facilities back to South Korea. The Chinese government has banned South Korean manufacturers from transporting simple production machines to South Korea from China while designating them as "equipment that adversely affects the Chinese economy." http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/national/19352-exodus-china-s-korean-companies-suffering-omnidirectional-retaliations-china http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/national/19352-e...
- dukoid 9y agoI don't get how China can have WTO "Market Economy" status. It's not just blocking western internet companies, also forced joint ventures and technology transfers don't sound much like "Market Economy" to me.... :-/
- sureshv 9y agoDeveloping nations get a lot of leeway - see India's FDI restrictions, etc.
- amadvance 9y agoI interact daily with colleagues from China, and I think it's a lot more problematic to have work resources blocked than WhatsApp. They cannot even do a simple search with Google. It's frustrating for me, I can only imaging how is for them. I'm even worried to raise the issue to not jeopardize their jobs. Really sad.
- mads 9y agoBig news. Which one are safe now (in US and China)? Telegram?? I remember back in the days, when you wrote "fuck" in Skype from China and it would get censored. Which one is a trusted messenger these days?
- FabHK 9y agoSignal. Maybe Wire.
- sparky_ 9y agoThe most surprising thing to me is that WhatsApp was not already blocked in China. I'd just assumed it would have been, given so many other Western messaging apps are.
- doglover7869 9y agoAnything that harms FB directly or indirectly is a good thing.
- creatrixcordis 9y agoI visited China for a month and my view is limited, but i do not think the average Chen in China cares about this, just like the average John in America doesn't. They are happy to be able to grow their personal GDP as much as they can. A lot of people there are part of the waves of the population that are provided incentives to relocate from rural areas to urban areas. Censorship is their least concern. They are happy to be able to have access to new products and start businesses and help their kids develop as best they can. Throughout my travels in other countries in Asia, i met a few students which will be going to Chinese universities. One of their reasons was that Chinese universities have bigger budgets for research compared to their respective countries. So that was highly attractive to them in their educational development. From walking around i got the impression that China inflates their GDP by constant construction and tear down and construction again. I am inclined to believe that this happens also in the tech industry. This churn creates jobs, companies in a loop and makes the economy look stronger that it actually is. I also saw many empty apartments and was told about this as well. Imagine how much money China would loose if people would solely use western alternatives of the apps they currently use. This GDP churn they have going there could not be done if your population is using solely western products. I do think there is an economic reason as well. I happen to like WeChat, you can do many things with it. I watched this dude i met there buy a hat from a street vendor and payed her with the app, super easy. The convenience that is baked in that app is awesome. I wish we had something like that in the US.
- mads 9y agoI lived in China for many years and you are right. Most Chinese people reaction will be "Meh.." and they will move on with their life and just use a VPN if they really really need WhatsApp. A lot of western people are now probably frantic to get the WeChat addresses of the Chinese people they only had on WhatsApp, so they can ensure their production line or development people are on track. We need them more than they need us. That is the problem.
- the_common_man 9y ago> We need them more than they need us. That is the problem. Actually the problem is that the west has no higher moral ground than the east. Not a single US person here uses a chinese app or plans to use one. There is a reason for this.
- geff82 9y agoThou-Shall-Not-Do-Business-With-Dictatorships!
- cnsrshpthroaway 9y agoChinese oversea student here. Just taught my gf how to use WhatsApp on her phone last week because we were tired of the poor video chat quality on WeChat and the video call on WhatsApp was surprisingly good. We planned to have another video call this Wednesday. This news is so frustrating. I just can not make sense of this kind of censorship. It is so sad to see China slowly drifting to a similar direction of North Korea. At first it was YouTube. Then it's Google search. That's understandable because yeah, there really is a lot of fake news bashing the Chinese gov out there. PPTP, L2TP never had worked. OpenVPN got filtered out. SSH tunneling got detected too, even with obfuscation. I had my best experiences with Cisco's VPN protocol, but it was hard to find a provider with that option and I suspect the traffic was monitored as well because the gov had actually worked with Cisco. There was then a protocol called ShadowSocks, which served me well until I moved to study abroad, but the original maintainer was then threatened by the gov and moved away from that project. I support my government fully for all their effort on making the country and economy stronger and its people's life better. I understand the censorship of neo-nazi propagandas and the like, but is this much censorship really needed? Very few people in China use WhatsApp. Those "bad guys" will always have resources to go around censorship. Good citizens with lawful needs don't. I suspect China's AI ambition has a lot to do with more advanced censorship. When still using ShadowSocks, I stumbled across posts on how the GFW (Great Firewall) was implementing machine learning to detect ShadowSocks traffics. Looks like China's global "inter"-net firewall is really slowly changing into an operation based on whitelists.
- libpcap 9y agoBoycott WeChat!
- Keyframe 9y agoIs Viber working or is that on the kill list as well?
- pankajdoharey 9y agoStan : OH My GOD - they Killed Whatsapp!! Kyle : You China!!!
- sctb 9y agoPlease don't post like this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- spullara 9y agoWe (the US) have to start treating the blocking of our internet applications as trade embargoes. They are the future of our economy.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoChina does not officially list the websites it blocks for this reason: they don't want to turn it into a WTO case. If you ask China telecom why Facebook isn't working, they'll say...must be Facebook's fault. Anyways, the US probably doesn't care that much as we probably make more on trade with China (even American retail marks up China-sourced cheap items), that we don't find it worth rocking the boat over this. Also, by keeping out international services, Chinese services never face competition to become worldwide competitive, meaning they are basically leaving the rest of the world to established mainly-USA players.
- llamataboot 9y agoAside from the speculation about why, does anyone have any speculation about HOW this disruption is occurring?
- darkhorn 9y agoUSA should block Chinase chat apps too.
- martin1975 9y agocoincidentally, I just bootstrapped my own Tor exit node in the USA... Hopefully Chinese and everyone else whose freedom of speech is usurped can still hook up to the Tor network.
- WhitneyLand 9y agoWhy can't steganography be used on top on the Chinese government endorsed app (WeChat)? It wouldn't have to use images, it could use any data in the system or even spread it amount mutilple apps within WeChat. By the way, a couple suggestions if you haven't used WeChat: 1) There is a really nice, canonical one pager out there for explaining WeChat to Americans, I highly recommended it. 2) Its important to note that WeChat despite its name, is miles away from being a simple chat app. It's an entire platform, almost OS like, complete with its own apps within an app. Their platform is incredibly rich, to the point that any significant business has some services available or at least a presence. Before going to China on business I hadn't heard much about it, and only knew it existed because of some Chinese friends. However if you are planning a trip to China, go ahead an install it now because it's ubiquitous. There is an English version and last time I checked it was reasonably up to date, although seemed to be missing a few features.
- WhitneyLand 9y agoIt's interesting that for so long there was conventional wisdom suggesting a large reason the Soviet Union economy failed due to inefficiencies of communism and oppression. We now know not only did that not stop China, it's not clear that the ceiling of economic success of their system has been determined.
- rubber_duck 9y agoChina has a market economy - more government controlled and regulated than the west - but it's not centrally planned economy like the Soviet Union. They tried that in the past - google Great Leap Forward to see how it ended up.
- AmIFirstToThink 9y agoAnd Facebooks blocks free speech. In the race to control what people say, think and see, between the governments and the mega corporations, it's the people who are losing. China blocks whatsapp... meh.
- pmarreck 9y agoYeah, isolating yourself from the outside world will cause you to lose. See: North Korea.
- lerax 9y agoWell done, China.
- nameisu 9y agowill facebook stock drop?
- artur_makly 9y agowhy not.. when they already have this : https://twitter.com/0XDEDBEEF/status/912026226658652160 https://twitter.com/0XDEDBEEF/status/912026226658652160
- TaylorGood 9y agoFrom a search and social standpoint, when I was in China, only Bing and Wechat worked. Instagram, etc. wouldn't refresh.
- bigbang2017 9y agoIn fact, this is the government's conspiracy. Now WeChat a lot of data by the government control, always monitor people's remarks. Why to prohibit whatsup, because because of a broke the Chinese government to lead the corruption of the rich, Guo Wengui. The domestic intelligence provider used whatsup to provide him with information, so the government began to suppress whatsup。https://youtu.be/DWVxf2ARuOg https://youtu.be/DWVxf2ARuOg
- hellbanner 9y agoLot of posts about the economic effects of this. From my armchair this looks to be political more than economic. China wants to be in control of how their citizens communicate. They don't trust Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg or any of the US government. Letting their citizens chat on an encrypted channel made by a foreign "superpower" seems disingenuous. It's not as if Americans are going to boycott Chinese goods, so I don't see any direct loss for China here.
- intrasight 9y agoAs long as China isn't breaking any WTO rules, they are free to block internet services and apps. If other countries aren't happy with this, they should change the WTO rules. If WTO rules are being broke, then clearly those rules have no teeth. Why would China block things? Various excellent reasons are discussed in this thread, and they all boil down to political and commercial. Are the Chinese people harmed? I would argue not. None of these "services" do anything really important nor irreplaceable. Most are just new spins on ancient tech like email and FTP, and the new versions that are blocked don't really have any differentiating features compared to what is available locally. The feature that is new is Digital Identity. And so my final thought is that they are playing a long game with respect to digital identity - which is the long game of most of these blocked services. In Cyberspace, am I going to be Chinese or American? I aM not Chinese, but I expect that most Chinese will want to also be Chinese in Cyberspace, and so the Chinese government is fulfilling that desire.
- kcanini 9y agoThe Chinese people are harmed if any end-to-end encrypted communications services are blocked to ensure the government is able to spy on them.
- intrasight 9y agoIf you want secure communication then you have to use your own secure channel. That is true everywhere.
- nick32m 9y agoYou do know that Wechat's chat history stored in Tencent's database in plain text? The authorisation could check/monitor any Chinese citizen who uses Wechat, if they say something bad about the government or spread the rumours of some officials corruptions, they will be in big trouble?!? How do you mean Chinese people are not harmed? Their privacy is absolutely harmed and they have less choices for chatting and that's what the Chinese government wants - they want everyone in China to use Wechat so they could absolutely control/monitor
- popcorncolonel 9y agoGod, living in China sounds like absolute hell.
- DigitalSea 9y agoChina has been going on a ban spree lately. First, they turn the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency world on its head banning Bitcoin and other restrictions and now WhatsApp is being banned. What is banned next?
- rahimnathwani 9y ago"The blocking of WhatsApp text messages suggests that China’s censors may have developed specialized software to interfere with such messages" They don't need any 'specialized software'. You can just block the list of hostnames and IP address, found here: https://github.com/ukanth/afwall/wiki/HOWTO-blocking-WhatsApp https://github.com/ukanth/afwall/wiki/HOWTO-blocking-WhatsAp...
- Chiba-City 9y agoI have no privileged state secret information to disclose. But a former employee of mine (and Orbital Sciences, NSA before that) was in Queen Noor Of Jordan's entourage. WhatsApp was one of the dominant messaging apps in the Arab Spring aftermath. I suspect the miraculous purchase price might reflect that. I could be wrong. Boy genius working class hero miracle narratives should be discounted however possible for better business lesson learning. WhatsApp is a rounding error in China and likely a genuine military or trade secrets security threat. Our proclamations of self-identity as guardians of democracy are as important to us as our own enforcement and good example. Focus on what and who matters where.
- chetanahuja 9y agoChinese debt is a ticking time bomb. http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-debt-risk-to-financial-stability-2017-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-debt-risk-to-financia... When (not if) it goes off, it'll not only be a huge shock to the world economy, it'll most likely also result in huge unrest inside China. The only political tool the communist party has known is to suppress dissent. I expect things to get worse in the next few years... not better.
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- blondie9x 9y agoToo much concern about if China can innovate and create Western alternatives. I don't think it's about that at all. It's about privacy and the freedom to choose. That Chinese people cannot choose what they use and how they can live their lives online what is private and what isn't is the biggest issue with the WhatsApp move along with other services. It would be sad to be Chinese living in China as the government takes choices away from me and my people.
- theylon 9y agoI'm in a relocation in China for the past 2.5 years, and it was obvious this is coming since they released end to end encryption back in 2016. China is not a democracy, surveillance is one of the most important issues in China (see link), and allowing their citizen to talk outside of their reach of surveillance is unacceptable. Wechat - the so-called Whatsapp + Facebook all-in-one app (Wechat can be the only app on your phone) is a 1) fantastic app and extremely innovative, Many things to learn from it in the west. 2) perfectly demonstrates how the Chinese government pushes for centralization, for the sake of government supervision. (have all the users in just one place, talking to their friends, ordering food, flights, trains, paying for everything, ordering things online etc. *https://twitter.com/0XDEDBEEF/status/912026226658652160 https://twitter.com/0XDEDBEEF/status/912026226658652160
- known 9y agoChina is like a GIANT Jail :)
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoWith really good food then.
- anthony_barker 9y agoYawn... Wechat already dominates and is generally better. Watching them try to ban bitcoin (another US invention) is more interesting.
- NicoJuicy 9y agoI'm seriously wondering why we open up our markets to China, if they won't ever allow our companies to thrive there. They shouldn't be allowed to take over companies too.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoMany of our companies do thrive in china, and the rich people in the USA make lots of money off the arrangement. Don't think for a second that the relationship is one sided. Still, china could be a bit more fair and symmetrical in our trading relationship.
- NicoJuicy 9y agoPerhaps you are not aware of how hard it is to get your money out of China. And others end in 'partnerships'
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoHaving done it myself many times, I'm totally aware. Thankfully, as a foreigner or foreign company, I only need to present tax receipts. Still a PITA, but there are no hard limits at least.
- NicoJuicy 9y agoHaven't ever done it, but at least I see it's a PITA. As I thought :p
- bigbugbag 9y agoGood move China. Now if the rest of the world could also block anything facebook so the spying would be contained to the US it would be great.
- sidcool 9y agoThe powerful will always get away with wrongdoings.
- WillReplyfFood 9y agoI think in the long run we will see silo-driller middleware overcoming all these obsticles as service. You specify which of your We-Chat friends shall get your facebook updates and the bridge middleware takes care.
- FractalNerve 9y agoWhat are the downsides for 1) China and 2) chinese citizens from an objective PoV?
- knubie 9y agoWhy does the US allow China to block so many American technologies? To me this is almost akin to banning the import of American cars, or any other domestic export. The United States has such a huge trade deficit with China, you would think the government would fight for whatever little "export" they can get, whether it be a technological export or otherwise.
- Arathorn 9y agoFor what it's worth, the Matrix protocol (matrix.org) isn't blocked in China at all to our knowledge, meaning folks get both decentralised & e2e encrypted comms. Given the transport is just HTTPS and can hit any arbitrary server, it's relatively hard to fingerprint and block in the manner that WhatsApp has been.
- antoniuschan99 9y agoThis Tech Altar video is very relevant to the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swuir_7YIPs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swuir_7YIPs
- swfsql 9y agoThis is just wealth destruction. Government intervention will create an artificial higher demand for those services. Maybe the same developers would be building something else that THEY would believe would be about more interesting or profitable. So chinese will miss those OTHER OPPORTUNITIES to innovate (even if still innovates, it could be "even better"), or other opportunities to "copy cat" other services. The question is: who should decide whats done and whats not done? The consumer or the government? Read Bastiat. It's easy and obvious to point at something that's being built by government or (indirectly) by the government intervention. The hard part, that needs some economics stretching, is to wonder about the invisible, non-existing projects that actually are never felt missed.
- styfle 9y agoI had a long layover in Shanghai recently and was a bit surprised that so many of the web sites I use regularly were blocked. It seems all google products were blocked including gmail and google voice which are my primary means of communication. Are there many Android users in China?