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I'm not sure that this is so accurate. GitHub is not blocked at all and neither was Reddit until recently. The recent "996" debacle on GitHub has demonstrated t

I'm not sure that this is so accurate. GitHub is not blocked at all and neither was Reddit until recently. The recent "996" debacle on GitHub has demonstrated that Chinese people are able to "talk to each other" through these foreign sites with no trouble at all.

abc-xyz 8y ago
China (and a few other authoritarian countries) have blocked and attacked GitHub numerous times due to repos that are critical of the government or help bypass censorship (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub). But blocking GitHub has proven to be very costly so they're often forced to revert the decision. That's why GitHub appear to be the perfect place to host and promote truthful content (e.g. wiki articles about tiananmen massacre, xijiang concentration camps, etc) along with detailed instructions to bypass censorship. Right now it appear that at best China can prevent a specific URL from being shared on weixin/weibo/etc but can't stop people from opening the repo if they find a creative way to share it after (e.g. put the link in an image and modify the image slightly to change its hash before sharing it).
- teknologist 8y ago
  Who let the wumaos out? More specifically, who gave them control over this site? YCombinator should really fix this broken “points” system to prevent downvote spam.
  - dang 8y ago
    This breaks the site guideline against insinuations of astroturfing. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do that on HN. More explanation and links in this post upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19538691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19538691.
outlace 8y ago
GitHub was blocked in the past but it was unblocked after much protest from Chinese developers
- NicoJuicy 8y ago
  It's incrementally more difficult to use GitHub outside normal working hours.

abc-xyz 8y ago

China (and a few other authoritarian countries) have blocked and attacked GitHub numerous times due to repos that are critical of the government or help bypass censorship (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub). But blocking GitHub has proven to be very costly so they're often forced to revert the decision. That's why GitHub appear to be the perfect place to host and promote truthful content (e.g. wiki articles about tiananmen massacre, xijiang concentration camps, etc) along with detailed instructions to bypass censorship. Right now it appear that at best China can prevent a specific URL from being shared on weixin/weibo/etc but can't stop people from opening the repo if they find a creative way to share it after (e.g. put the link in an image and modify the image slightly to change its hash before sharing it).

teknologist 8y ago
Who let the wumaos out? More specifically, who gave them control over this site? YCombinator should really fix this broken “points” system to prevent downvote spam.
- dang 8y ago
  This breaks the site guideline against insinuations of astroturfing. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do that on HN. More explanation and links in this post upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19538691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19538691.

outlace 8y ago

GitHub was blocked in the past but it was unblocked after much protest from Chinese developers

NicoJuicy 8y ago
It's incrementally more difficult to use GitHub outside normal working hours.