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GitHub Has Become a Haven for China's Censored Internet Users

64 points by js2 8y ago

thwythwy 8y ago
stop snitching
js2 8y ago
Prior discussions (didn’t notice these when I submitted this story): https://hn.algolia.com/?query=996 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=996
aasasd 8y ago
Sometime in 2018 or '17 I've read that GitHub is again blocked and programmers have to switch jobs because it's pretty hard to do programming without GitHub now. So, they can come after your repos too. (The source of the info was a Chinese redditor who makes Arduino-like robots, so I hope she knew what she was talking about.)
MrZongle2 8y ago
Headline from next week: "GitHub Was a Haven for China's Censored Internet Users".
neuro 8y ago
Github's has also become a haven for starred repositories gamed from China.
- Bombthecat 8y ago
  Could you please explain what you mean? Or what the benefits would be?
  - glasslion 8y ago
    If you have a 1k+ star repo, you might get a higher salary when finding a new job
mmastrac 8y ago
One of my long-idle projects is oddly popular in China (it's about 30 lines of shell script total) so I've been adding pro-Tibet and pro-Taiwan messaging. Figured it's worth using it for _some_ good. Anyone have a suggestion for a good pro-democracy message that could be targeted at Chinese developers?
- fxbl0i 8y ago
  I find it concerning that someone might think it's appropriate to add political messages to software projects. Imagine if some software developer added a "fuck Bernie Sanders!!!" remark to the README of a popular repo. Just my two cents.
  - mmastrac 8y ago
    Well if Bernie Sanders becomes a totalitarian dictator that starts suppressing democracy, I'll be more than happy to add "fuck Bernie Sanders" to all my repos.
    - wesammikhail 8y ago
      who defines what a totalitarian dictatorship is? you? Here is an example: If you ask most christians (or minorities) in Syria what they think of Bashar´s leadership, they´d hail him as their christ and savior. Meanwhile, for us here in the west he´s a dictator and a murderer. I am not justifying any actions or atrocities committed by such an actor. I am merely point to the fact that if you want to politicize an aspect of our lives, you need to at least have rigid and firm definitions. Otherwise, all you end up doing is giving ammunition to your opposition to do the same. Ex. I can add the same about Trump now into my repos and call him a fascist, or do the same thing when Obama was in office. Or heck, imagine having "LOCK HER UP" at the top of each ReadMe. That cannot possibly be a healthy way of going about things.
      - mmastrac 8y ago
        I'm more that comfortable with my stance. You're invoking the slippery slope.
smaili 8y ago
Wouldn't this just add more fuel to the fire for China to crackdown on access to GitHub and ultimately make it even harder for engineers there to use and contribute to projects? Only asking because I recall a time where they did indeed block GitHub because of some of the projects hosted and I'd imagine this might potentially cause a similar course of action.
- _bxg1 8y ago
  I don't think they could afford to block it because China's tech sector is dependent on lots of American-developed open source projects hosted on it. They could set up their own git service and fork them, but they wouldn't get the benefit of ongoing development; they'd be on their own. It's almost like connecting with the rest of the world has tangible benefits...
  - johnzim 8y ago
    Yup the PRC's approach so far has been to force the rest of the world of kowtow, company by company, to their ridiculous petulant insecurities and autocratic fascism. That way they get the best of both worlds - a connection to a wide world the paranoid, boot-black politburo need not fear.
    - throwaway32366 8y ago
      Is that not what most countries would do if they had the power to?
      - johnchristopher 8y ago
        I was recently told on HN that Russia is trying to set up something like that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19521584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19521584
  - bliblah 8y ago
    Or just have a separate instance that automatically forks all pre-approved projects while blocking off the rest, similar to how Google does it. Honestly I don't see how Github will remain unaffected by the Chinese Government.
nukeop 8y ago
I subscribe to a couple of newsletters that send the most popular repositories in several languages to my email every week. There's been a trend of increasing Chinese activity for months now. The problem with Chinese programmers is that they very rarely bother to use English, as the rest of the world, rendering their technically "open source" code largely useless for most of us. There's clearly a niche for a Chinese language counterpart of Github, and I suspect it's going to be filled soon.
- yorwba 8y ago
  Chinese programmers use English at about the same frequency as programmers from other non-English-speaking countries, but there are so many of them that the minority using Chinese for everything is still very visible. FWIW, most of the Chinese-only repos I've seen on GitHub are tutorials, other study materials or social gathering places like 996.icu, so I don't think you're actually missing a lot of relevant open source code. The most likely contender for a Chinese-language GitHub-replacement is probably the hosted GitLab instance offered by Alibaba: https://code.aliyun.com/explore https://code.aliyun.com/explore
yorwba 8y ago
Text-only version: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=709490855 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=709490855 Also, previous discussion of 996.icu: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507620 and about Chinese-made browsers blocking the GitHub repo (not 996.icu itself): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19553681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19553681
SurrealSoul 8y ago
Microsoft is in a really awkward position with this now, curious how it will play out
m0zg 8y ago
Likely not for long. Comrade Xi can make Microsoft do whatever he wants by threatening its business in China.
cronix 8y ago
I think all this will do is eventually lead to China copying repositories from github that they agree with, make their own internal repo system and block access to the actual github.
pixelperfect 8y ago
I'm surprised Microsoft-owned GitHub hasn't started censoring yet. I suspect it's only a matter of time.

64 points by js2 8y ago

stop snitching

js2 8y ago

Prior discussions (didn’t notice these when I submitted this story): https://hn.algolia.com/?query=996 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=996

aasasd 8y ago

Sometime in 2018 or '17 I've read that GitHub is again blocked and programmers have to switch jobs because it's pretty hard to do programming without GitHub now. So, they can come after your repos too. (The source of the info was a Chinese redditor who makes Arduino-like robots, so I hope she knew what she was talking about.)

MrZongle2 8y ago

Headline from next week: "GitHub Was a Haven for China's Censored Internet Users".

neuro 8y ago

Github's has also become a haven for starred repositories gamed from China.

Bombthecat 8y ago
Could you please explain what you mean? Or what the benefits would be?
- glasslion 8y ago
  If you have a 1k+ star repo, you might get a higher salary when finding a new job

mmastrac 8y ago

One of my long-idle projects is oddly popular in China (it's about 30 lines of shell script total) so I've been adding pro-Tibet and pro-Taiwan messaging. Figured it's worth using it for _some_ good. Anyone have a suggestion for a good pro-democracy message that could be targeted at Chinese developers?

fxbl0i 8y ago
I find it concerning that someone might think it's appropriate to add political messages to software projects. Imagine if some software developer added a "fuck Bernie Sanders!!!" remark to the README of a popular repo. Just my two cents.
- mmastrac 8y ago
  Well if Bernie Sanders becomes a totalitarian dictator that starts suppressing democracy, I'll be more than happy to add "fuck Bernie Sanders" to all my repos.
  - wesammikhail 8y ago
    who defines what a totalitarian dictatorship is? you? Here is an example: If you ask most christians (or minorities) in Syria what they think of Bashar´s leadership, they´d hail him as their christ and savior. Meanwhile, for us here in the west he´s a dictator and a murderer. I am not justifying any actions or atrocities committed by such an actor. I am merely point to the fact that if you want to politicize an aspect of our lives, you need to at least have rigid and firm definitions. Otherwise, all you end up doing is giving ammunition to your opposition to do the same. Ex. I can add the same about Trump now into my repos and call him a fascist, or do the same thing when Obama was in office. Or heck, imagine having "LOCK HER UP" at the top of each ReadMe. That cannot possibly be a healthy way of going about things.
    - mmastrac 8y ago
      I'm more that comfortable with my stance. You're invoking the slippery slope.

smaili 8y ago

Wouldn't this just add more fuel to the fire for China to crackdown on access to GitHub and ultimately make it even harder for engineers there to use and contribute to projects? Only asking because I recall a time where they did indeed block GitHub because of some of the projects hosted and I'd imagine this might potentially cause a similar course of action.

_bxg1 8y ago
I don't think they could afford to block it because China's tech sector is dependent on lots of American-developed open source projects hosted on it. They could set up their own git service and fork them, but they wouldn't get the benefit of ongoing development; they'd be on their own. It's almost like connecting with the rest of the world has tangible benefits...
- johnzim 8y ago
  Yup the PRC's approach so far has been to force the rest of the world of kowtow, company by company, to their ridiculous petulant insecurities and autocratic fascism. That way they get the best of both worlds - a connection to a wide world the paranoid, boot-black politburo need not fear.
  - throwaway32366 8y ago
    Is that not what most countries would do if they had the power to?
    - johnchristopher 8y ago
      I was recently told on HN that Russia is trying to set up something like that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19521584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19521584
- bliblah 8y ago
  Or just have a separate instance that automatically forks all pre-approved projects while blocking off the rest, similar to how Google does it. Honestly I don't see how Github will remain unaffected by the Chinese Government.

nukeop 8y ago

I subscribe to a couple of newsletters that send the most popular repositories in several languages to my email every week. There's been a trend of increasing Chinese activity for months now. The problem with Chinese programmers is that they very rarely bother to use English, as the rest of the world, rendering their technically "open source" code largely useless for most of us. There's clearly a niche for a Chinese language counterpart of Github, and I suspect it's going to be filled soon.

yorwba 8y ago
Chinese programmers use English at about the same frequency as programmers from other non-English-speaking countries, but there are so many of them that the minority using Chinese for everything is still very visible. FWIW, most of the Chinese-only repos I've seen on GitHub are tutorials, other study materials or social gathering places like 996.icu, so I don't think you're actually missing a lot of relevant open source code. The most likely contender for a Chinese-language GitHub-replacement is probably the hosted GitLab instance offered by Alibaba: https://code.aliyun.com/explore https://code.aliyun.com/explore

yorwba 8y ago

Text-only version: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=709490855 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=709490855 Also, previous discussion of 996.icu: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507620 and about Chinese-made browsers blocking the GitHub repo (not 996.icu itself): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19553681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19553681

SurrealSoul 8y ago

Microsoft is in a really awkward position with this now, curious how it will play out

m0zg 8y ago

Likely not for long. Comrade Xi can make Microsoft do whatever he wants by threatening its business in China.

cronix 8y ago

I think all this will do is eventually lead to China copying repositories from github that they agree with, make their own internal repo system and block access to the actual github.

pixelperfect 8y ago

I'm surprised Microsoft-owned GitHub hasn't started censoring yet. I suspect it's only a matter of time.