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China is blocking all language editions of Wikipedia
- tim333 7y agoMaybe part of the trade war retaliations?
- rqs 7y agoTo block a non-profit website? I don't think so. BTW: It been blocked days ago. The with no obvious reason, but the time is a (loose) match, weird.
- SiempreViernes 7y agoYeah, this seems like it's done for domestic reasons, and the timing might well be dominated by simple administrative delays.
- amelius 7y agoShutting down access to knowledge is not going to help them much, I suppose.
- onion2k 7y agoRestricting access to information will help the Chinese government retain power over the Chinese people. That's the point..
- OscarTheGrinch 7y agoYes, but another way to look at it, does China's micromanagement of the domestic flow of information result in more or less prosperity for their people? To misquote Hayek: communism is ultimately like telling every car where they should go rather than just putting up street-signs. * Please add to the debate rather than down-voting. Also Hayek wasn't musing about future autonomous cars, its a metaphor about how deciding what everyone in society should do/think doesn't scale.
- bloak 7y agoChina's economy isn't by any stretch of the imagination "communist", but telling every car where to go is perhaps the right solution for the future, with computer science making it feasible and overpopulation making it desirable. However, I'm not sure that's in any way relevant to freedom of thought and freedom of information.
- geofft 7y agoAnd Google already does it: take a look at the stories of small towns wishing Google would stop routing people through a certain surface road and not knowing how to make that request. People trust their navigation apps because in general those apps have earned their trust. In general I am skeptical of "Communism is bad because the government will X" arguments where private industry is capable of doing X in as thorough a way for the average citizen's practical liberty and especially where private industry is already trying X.
- StreamBright 7y agoYes communism is bad because of other reasons, and because it failed every single time it was tried. Btw. China is not a communist state for a long time.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoJust run by a party that happens to identify themselves as the Communist Party China (CPC). Also the kids that still have to take Marxist and Mao theory in high school and university wish the country would admit to no longer being communist also.
- StreamBright 7y agoYeah but naming can be safely ignored. Examples: North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic
- elfqh 7y agoI assume they have their own wikipedia.
- thaumasiotes 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu_Baike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu_Baike
- saagarjha 7y agoHow’s the quality of the content as compared to Wikipedia’s?
- elfqh 7y agoCan't be worse than Spanish Wikipedia.
- TulliusCicero 7y agoWhat's wrong with Spanish Wikipedia?
- r3bl 7y agoI don't know about the Spanish one, but the Croatian one caused a lot of controversy both internally and externally because it was took over by extremely conservative (and sometimes blatantly pro-faschist) group of mods, to the point where a Minister of Education discouraged students of using it as a source. https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/croatian-wikipedia-fascist-takeover-controversy-right-wing/ https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/croatian-wikipedia-fascist-t...
- butler14 7y agofunny to think that, back at college (circa 2003) , when wikipedia was still a relatively new and scary things for academics, we were actively discouraged from using it as a reference for information, let alone a source to cite
- avcdsuia 7y agoMore probably for the impending 30th anniversary of 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
- saagarjha 7y agoWere there protests in previous notable anniversaries?
- wodenokoto 7y agoNo, not really any protests. But there were all sorts of web shutdowns leading up to previous anniversaries.
- avcdsuia 7y agoSadly the main commemorative events only take place in Hong Kong and Taiwan(Macau is not included), but you know the consequence of going against totalitarian government right?. And you miss the whole point of censorship. It's about making people reluctant to remembering it.
- simonh 7y agoAny attempt at any kind of protest in China is slammed on very swiftly. There have been attempts in the past eg by Falun Gong supporters at Tiananmen Square, but it’s usually all over in minutes as the area is heavily monitored. There is no real independent media, they all have embedded censors, so even when there is a protest it doesn’t get covered. What protests do occur are usually over local issues and foreign media occasionally manage to piece together the story after the fact.
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- KingMachiavelli 7y agoAs the artical mentions, the Chinese version has been blocked since 2016 - shortly after Wikipedia made the decision to move to mandatory HTTPS via HSTS. I'm not sure how recent this is but it seems that the site is also on the HSTS preload list used by most browsers - even within China (it seems Chrome is very popular there). It seems they have just gotten arround to blocking all of the other languages this year. ESNI seems like it would work pretty well. Although the PRC firewall could likely be used to block ESNI and/or TLS 1.3 and force plain-text SNI.
- jerryzh 7y agoWell actually they have been blocked all language about a week ago on May 6th or 7th.
- anfilt 7y agoSigh and this is why plain text SNI is was not a good idea...
- KayEss 7y agoI was wondering what happens if you skip the SNI bit and just rely on the Host header in the data. Does that work?
- andreareina 7y agoThat's called "domain fronting", the major cloud providers disallow it and enforce that the Host header must match the SNI.
- yardstick 7y agoThis is likely the major reason why China has not yet blocked the major cloud providers. As soon as they allow ESNI/domain fronting, all bets are off as to what China will block.
- lostmsu 7y agoThey explicitly started doing this after Telegram used domain fronting to work around Russian censorship, which caused large chunks of AWS and GCP addresses to be blocked in Russia.
- richardwhiuk 7y agoYou can only do that if you can present a single valid certificate for all of the hosts behind the IP address.
- ttflee 7y agoIf SNI poisoning does not work for censoring, the whole IP range of service would be blocked instead. You cannot always count on changing IP addresses which would be a cat-and-mouse game.
- 7y ago
- bspammer 7y agoThis makes me sad. Wikipedia is surely one of humanity's greatest accomplishments to date. Having such a resource be off limits to a large section of our population is truly depressing. Of course, there was always the language barrier, but zh.wikipedia.org could definitely have been as high quality as the English version given the chance.
- yorwba 7y agoIs zh.wikipedia.org not as high-quality as the English version in your experience? I don't use it that frequently, but for topics like famous Chinese people or linguistics of Sinitic languages, the English article is often just a stub, while the Chinese version has all the information I'm looking for.
- paulgerhardt 7y agoIn my experience zh.wikipedia.org is largely authored by Taiwanese residents. The quality is high but local narratives are often written with some bias not entirely unlike what one would expect from a displaced population resulting from a fairly recent civil war.
- ekianjo 7y agoThe English version of Wikipedia is not free of bias either. Wikipedia is not a source of truth for everything out there.
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- madez 7y agoWhen I see that articles about the same thing in different languages state different and incompatible numbers, then I always think that this is an obvious and easily solveable problem; separate the data from the language and reference it in the text. That way each language uses the same data. This shouldn't just be done with numbers, but with dates, and other easily convertible information. Yes, this will create conflicts as to which information is correct, but Wikipedia has had this problem since forever, and deals with it.
- magpi3 7y agoDoes wikipedia have any read only mirrors?
- ddalex 7y agoYou can download it - the index of human knowledge isn't that big that it wouldn't fit on a stick. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#Offline_Wikipedia_readers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#Of...
- magpi3 7y agoI am in China:-). That link is blocked.
- whiskers08xmt 7y agoYou should be able to find a torrent file for whichever subset of wikipedia you need, which isn't too dated. There's even something like this, that lets you browse via bittorrent: https://github.com/mafintosh/peerwiki https://github.com/mafintosh/peerwiki
- magpi3 7y agoThank you!
- andreimiulescu 7y agoUse this vpn: https://tunnelhero.com https://tunnelhero.com
- NamTaf 7y agoJust FYI, their IKEv2 isn't likely to work, and Wireguard isn't necessarily available on all device types. My standard process is to spin up a Streisand instance before I go there and give me multiple options (Shadowsocks and Wireguard are my main two).
- 7y ago
- netcan 7y agoBlocking the greatest encyclopedia that ever existed is the best example of what this kind of censorship is.
- ekianjo 7y agoSince Wikipedia can be dumped onto a memory card I am not sure how effective the ban is supposed to be. It will constrain its spread but it is very hard to block all means of transmission of information.
- krapht 7y agoOn the contrary it will be extremely effective at keeping 95% of the Chinese population ignorant of Wikipedia.
- ekianjo 7y agoHow many were already using Wikipedia in the first place? I assume that before the ban happened it was already pretty much hidden from results in Baidu and the like?
- Scirra_Tom 7y agoSo you agree, banning access and gateways to Wikipedia is effective.
- jjcc 7y agoYou are right but no need for a memory card. Hundreds of millions of Chinese tourists go aboard[1] every year. Most of them travel within Asia so most HN readers don't feel it. Let alone VPN that most educated people can use if they really want to. [1]https://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/nielsenglobal/cn/docs/Outbound%20Chinese%20Tourism%20and%20Consumption%20Trends.pdf https://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/nielsenglobal/cn/docs/Ou...
- netcan 7y ago"it is very hard to block all means of transmission of information." I think this is something to understand about modern political information manipulation/restriction. The 1.0 version totalitarian censorship aimed for full information control. This is what the soviets and pre-1990s CCP tried to do. It's difficult because (as you say) information is hard to control. The 2.0 version is about enough control. You can use a vpn (or memory stick), but most won't. This gives one version of events a major advantage over the others. Easy-to-find praise for the government, difficult-to-find dissent.It's about dominant influence, not absolute control. When needed, regimes can temporarily increase control, like erdogan did during the last turkish coup attempt. A soft paralel is social media "bubbles." They don't "control" the information you can access, but they are enough to influence your opinions in a direction. There are lots of exceptions, but on average, these have a big influence on who we think the good and bad guys are.
- kostajh 7y agoThis article was accurate at the time but AFAIK the situation has changed. For context: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T208263#5170123 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T208263#5170123 tl;dr There were unintended consequences from refactoring DNS configuration and the situation should be back to “normal” now.
- JayXon 7y agoI think they were talking about wikimedia.org also being blocked due to CNAME to wikipedia.org which is now blocked, and they fixed it by CNAME to dyna.wikimedia.org instead, but wikipedia.org is still blocked: https://en.greatfire.org/https/en.wikipedia.org https://en.greatfire.org/https/en.wikipedia.org
- henryaspegren 7y agoA favorite quote of mine “The best way to build an authoritarian regime is not to indoctrinate someone but to convince them that there is no such things as truth”
- MichaelMoser123 7y agoI think with totalitarianism notions of truth are supposed to be subordinate to some 'higher' rational such as race or party allegiance.
- JacksonGariety 7y agoWho wrote that? (Asking out of curiosity.)
- netcan 7y agoSound like Orwell, maybe paraphrased.
- eeZah7Ux 7y agoIt sounds smart but it's plain false. History proves otherwise.
- Yuioup 7y agoStupid question, but does Encyclopedia Britannica still exist?
- sorryforthethro 7y agoYes, youtube links to it below many "conspiracy theory" videos
- HAL9000Ti 7y agoI assume that this is in preparation of the upcoming 30th anniversary of the Tiananen massacre, they always make changes to the censorship when a big event is comming up. For instance for the 2008 olympics many blocked sites were opened up, and conversely they tighten everything up before every National People's Congress elections.
- paulcarroty 7y agoChinese government are hyper coward, it's going to be fun. ”You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.” – Winnie the Pooh
- waldovr 7y agoDo you think this has anything to do with the social credit system?
- porlune 7y agoSide-note: Winnie the Pooh has been used as a sort of caricature of Xi Jinping.
- throwtt78oo65 7y agoAdditional side-note: Winne the Pooh is not banned in China, despite what the media is reporting.
- namelosw 7y agoAdditional (additional side-note): 'Winne the Pooh' movie has been banned[0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-winnie-the-pooh-film-to-stop-comparisons-to-president-xi https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-win...
- throwtt78oo65 7y agoAdditional (Additional (additional side-note)): No it’s not. The Guardian and other articles are wrong. [0] [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/au5hd6/is_winnie_the_pooh_really_banned_in_china/ https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/au5hd6/is_winnie_the... In addition, Peppa Pig is not banned and neither are time travel shows. In 2018, there were over 20 TV shows that had time travel in them.
- paulcarroty 7y ago
- CallMePK 7y agoI still remember that last year during my internship in Mainland China, clone git repository from GitHub and GitLab is a pain and my professor even have to use VPN too. China is basically hell for developers. I am afraid the new generations in China will no longer know about the real Internet. *sigh
- vaylian 7y agoInteresting comment. You make it sound like the real internet happens to be US-centric. Yes, many important projects are hosted on Gitlab and Github, but there are also other ways to share code. And these alternatives might not be that well known to us developers in the western world.
- pimmen 7y agoThere are probably other ways but they lack the network effect of people already being there, and the fact that many major companies use Github to distribute and administer their open source projects. In the West we have the choice to use the service that gives us all these benefits. Mmm, choices.
- EForEndeavour 7y agoFor a software developer (or student thereof), the useful parts of the internet are indeed quite US-centric. Off the top of my head, losing access to any of the following platforms will hamper your professional development: Github, Stack Overflow, cloud services leaders (AWS, GCP, MS Azure, etc.), Coursera, Udacity, Youtube, Khan Academy, Google Search, Google groups, Slack. At best, you'll have to use a VPN, or maybe resort to a domestically developed and probably inferior alternative. At worst, no such alternative exists.
- barry-cotter 7y agoUdacity has a local Chinese version. Slack works, kind of. Google groups is a shuffling zombie abandonware project outside China so I fail to see how the lack of access within China will impact anything there.
- NedIsakoff 7y agoI lived in China for 15 years. This is probably only temporary leading up to May 35. It happens every year.
- gastlygem 7y agoTook me a few seconds to realize what you are talking about..
- pimmen 7y agoOf course they are, it's almost June 4th which is the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. You know that events is going to be the featured article on one of the Wikipedia editions, or at least be mentioned in the "On this day" section.
- basetop 7y agoConsidering how politicized wikipedia ( like most of tech industry has gotten in recent years ), doesn't shock me. Jimmy Wales has pretty much come out and said wikipedia will no longer be user driven but ideology driven. Which is one of the reasons the other co-founder of wikipedia has criticized wales and wikipedia. Wikipedia is great for most generic topics, but for "sensitive" topics, it's pretty much propaganda. Considering how heavily wikipedia is censored by wikipedia itself, maybe a taste of their own medicine will make them change their position, but I doubt it. Sadly, as more and more people use the internet, it'll be censored more and more by the elites in china, US, russia, EU, etc. What we are seeing is the internet becoming an overt tool of propaganda rather than a platform of discussion or exchange of ideas. Even worse, it seems like there are tons of support for censorship, especially amongst the young "educated" demographics.
- orwin 7y agoIf you are making claims like this, you might want to source it. Like a Jimmy wales interview link, a wikipedia link to a "sensitive" topic that have been politized (that does not prove anything but still show that you've done some research). Also generalization is bad. You might want to visit a skeptic association and follow a course about human cognitive bias (it is helpfull, but it won't "cure" you from them, just make you more self-aware).
- amai 7y agoIs Stackoverflow still accessible in China? Or how do programmers work there?
- blaesus 7y agoYes. Many Chinese developers are not fluent English users though. There's a "Chinese StackOverflow" called segmentfault.com, and I often see people asking fellow developers in WeChat groups. Source: Am Chinese in China
- dwohnitmok 7y agoYes but it's very very slow (as in on the order of minutes for a page to load). I think this has to do with how Stack Overflow's front-end code is written. There's some non-essential Javascript that is blocked by the Great Firewall which blocks the rest of the page from loading for a long time before the page gives up and displays a banner that some Javascript failed to load. All programmers I know have software to circumvent the Great Firewall and view it as a necessary condition of their profession.
- magnamerc 7y agoIf only we had censorship resistant ledgers..
- keepmesmall 7y agoDoes China have something like the Cuban sneakernet, or is there a clear reason why that wouldn't work there?
- cooper12 7y ago> or is there a clear reason why that wouldn't work there? There are Chinese-based alternatives to Wikipedia that are much more popular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_China#Online_encyclopedias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_China#Online_encyc....
- xvilka 7y agoAnd at the same time Wikipedia blocks edits from public VPNs.
- cooper12 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Open_proxies#Rationale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Open_proxies#Rationa...
- nerder92 7y agoThis direct attack on culture and knowledge is just both sad and scary. Thank you OONI and ellais for this report tho. Keep up the good work!
- sepent 7y agoI used the same method to see what is the blocking mechanism in Iran. I tried to connect to www.bbc.com which is blocked in Iran. The DNS injection is obviously in place. But something strange happened when I checked the SNI filtering. The curl command stopped at "TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS alert, Client hello (1)" and never exited when I tried to connect to www.bbc.com but with a --connect-to that is not blocked. Nothing strange until now. If SNI blocking is in place, they probably drop all the remaining packets of the connection. The strange thing is that when I try the opposite test and I connect to www.kernel.org (not blocked in Iran, too!) but with www.bbc.com SNI it still stops at TLS client hello. First I thought they blocked the IP address, but I was able to connect to 212.58.244.210 (the IP address of www.bbc.com) on port 443 with telnet command. So, is Iran's regime using some other blocking mechanism that I'm not aware of? Or am I doing some kind of mistake?