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Many Chinese-Americans have no choice when they need to communicate with family and friend living in China. No outside communication tools allowed in China.

fiblye 6y ago
Outside of China, we're pretty lucky that we can just register for random sites like HN with nothing more than a username and password and start talking. Every Chinese site I've ever used requires phone number or ID verification. Most of them only allow Chinese-registered phones, meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat. But I fear the rest of the world looked at China and thought, "Wow, we should've done that a long time ago!" Accounts I registered about a decade ago now demand I confirm an email and sometimes a phone number. Email accounts I've had half my life lock me out unless I link it to my phone number and prove my identity. Some services ask for a fucking ID card scan, which prompts me to just drop the service. Some things I've used in the past only accept US phone area codes, which having left the US, means those services are now completely inaccessible to me. China says it's for state security. They're at least kind of honest that their intention is to keep the population in check and watch their every movement. The rest of the world says it's for personal security. Then another day passes and another heap of phone numbers, names, SSNs, and addresses leak and another identity is stolen.
- xemdetia 6y ago
  Yes, it really is getting out of hand. If there was a reasonable equivalent that was an alternate (like an email address used to be), that would be one thing but even with a US phone all of a sudden your phone dies and you are completely stranded and even sites you used to be able to access are now no longer accessible because they are asking for phone numbers and confirmation of said numbers. It feels really awful.
  - lazylizard 6y ago
    Why not setup your own? Or use email? Stuff like deltachat works over smtp? Letschat is 1click deploy on heroku?
- seppin 6y ago
  > meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat. I've never heard it phrased this way before, dangerous indeed.
- devtul 6y ago
  We will give our freedoms away in name of preventing toxicity and hate speech. Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away
  - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
    >Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away That doesn't enter the equation for what I would imagine is 99.99% of users. It's the erosion of privacy in the name of a) "Safety" and b) convenience The average person of the world has shown that they will trade virtually anything for the perception of convenience, or "safety". Look at the most recent gun ban in Canada for an obvious example; An act riddled with nonsense, already acknowledged to be completely ineffective at preventing gun crimes, pushed through by a minority government during a pandemic to the applause of a large part of the populace there in exchange for the false perception of "safety". The most frightening thing is just how effective it is.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Yes, the ban may not be perfect, but as a Canadian, I can say unequivocally: I don't need perfect to be the enemy of good. There's no reason to possess these weapons any more than there's a reason to possess nuclear warheads. The next bill can ban more, fix the bugs, etc, but the flag has been planted: there's no room for those weapons in Canada. A huge number of people have wanted to ban weapons like these since Ecole Polytechnique [1] -- and probably much further back. We've been lucky to have few enough such mass murders to remember many by name, and it also makes them horrifying enough that we're not going to sit back and pray the crime away. The Liberal Party (currently in power) ran on banning these weapons. Then they banned the weapons. They did the job they were elected to do. I don't think that's a good example tbh. [edit] Let's be super clear when you say "pushed through by a minority government during a pandemic" -- you're seeming to imply that the minority is somehow strong-arming the majority. That's the exact opposite of how that works in the Canadian parliamentary democratic system. A minority government is in a very weak position and can be removed at any time. If this was at all controversial the next confidence motion would be swiftly defeated and the government would fall. A minority government wouldn't do something like this without absolute confidence. Unlike a majority government a minority government must rule by consensus or face immediate removal. I think they normally don’t even make it past the 3 year mark. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_Polytechnique_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_Polytechnique_massacre
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- rhizome 6y ago
  >Every Chinese site I've ever used requires phone number or ID verification Frankly, this happens a lot in the West these days, too. Take OKCupid, for instance. And the third-party doctrine.
  - mrcodedude 6y ago
    Probably a decent security idea to have minimal PIE requirements for a dating site.
  - JamesG124 6y ago
    Twitter too. Every Twitter account I registered locked me out and asked for phone number after an hour or so
- hzhou321 6y ago
  > Most of them only allow Chinese-registered phones, meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat. Indeed. I am very appreciative to wechat that I can keep in touch with my family and friends and enjoy the technology. By valuing my freedom and the freedom of my Chinese contacts, I do not communicate sensitive materials on wechat. The freedom is only ensured within boundary so know thy boundaries. I have plenty of channels to enjoy my western freedom. Whether we should impose our western freedom upon "Chinese freedom"? That is a good question. Fortunately that is not a question I need to resolve. It is illuminating that those who try to exercise their western freedom on the Chinese domain is helping China to the opposite of their goals. If you have that honorable goal, do your due diligence of educating yourself with the right technology.
- hank_z 6y ago
  Only 9% of Chinese population have a bachelor degree. Only 10% of Chinese population have been abroad. 1 billion Chinese never take a flight. Most of the profitable industries in China are state-owned where most of their staff are part of or have some connections with communist party. It is not easy for the unprivileged people to make a living in China. These unprivileged people have a high likelihood to become scammers. Therefore, ID verification is a way to prevent scammers. Despite of the security reason, there is not way to find out how companies handle personal data. Chinese legal system has no respect to personal data. Additionally, Chinese education system encourages obedience and penalises people who distrust/challenge the authority. Simply because the authority can easily find another to replace you given the fact that there are 1.3 billion Chinese people. Therefore, people live in China have no choice but to accept whatever is given by the authority.
idra 6y ago
"Have no choice" is false. Fortunately, email still works. As does any messenger through a VPN. Using Wechat is simply being complicit with censorship out of laziness.
- fiblye 6y ago
  Keep in mind that most major domains outside of China are blocked. Chinese services aren't going to be any more lax with surveillance than WeChat and have the same registration requirements. You could maybe try registering your own server, but do you want to have the possibility of questionable messages being saved on a server that you own when dealing with Chinese authorities? Any "oops, sorry" goes out the window when they think you're actively dodging filtering to that extent.
  - idra 6y ago
    The parent is talking about communicating with friends and family. My point is not about evading surveillance, it's about not using one of the main tools of the CCP censorship apparatus. If you're inside China and care about your safety, you would think twice about sending "questionable" messages even on the most secure channel because you're still physically vulnerable to rubber hose cryptanalysis.
    - fiblye 6y ago
      And I didn't say anything about sending anything. If anybody messages you or your family/friends receives something suspicious something and the Party suspects you're intentionally avoiding their watchful eye with a custom mail server, I think you might end up worse off. All it takes is one goofball finding a vulnerability in your system and dropping a joke image or bit of text to royally screw you. Furthermore, while it's nice in theory to deploy your own servers and get all of your friends and family to exclusively chat through your homemade application, it's very unlikely. WeChat is basically an OS all its own these days. It's a social network, chat app, payment app, shop, and more. People are incredibly reluctant to give up convenience unless they're very motivated and technologically inclined. And for people inside of China, getting a VPN or non-Chinese messenger is quite difficult thanks to locked down app stores and most people communicating only through phones. I don't use Facebook and won't budge on that issue. My parents won't use anything that's not Facebook. If they won't take 10 seconds to register for anything else, then they certainly won't want to deal with anything I'd try to scrap together. The end result is that I make a VOIP call to their phone about once a month and they ask me to just give up and use Facebook at some point. It's probably a similar situation with most people wanting to leave XYZ terrible messenger.
kevinchen 6y ago
I don’t think this is true. iMessage works in China (they can’t block all of Apple)
- gaoryrt 6y ago
  But iMessage in China was supported by yunshangguizhou(https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%91%E4%B8%8A%E8%B4%B5%E5%B7%9E https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%91%E4%B8%8A%E8%B4%B5%E5...), a state-owned enterprise.

fiblye 6y ago

Outside of China, we're pretty lucky that we can just register for random sites like HN with nothing more than a username and password and start talking. Every Chinese site I've ever used requires phone number or ID verification. Most of them only allow Chinese-registered phones, meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat. But I fear the rest of the world looked at China and thought, "Wow, we should've done that a long time ago!" Accounts I registered about a decade ago now demand I confirm an email and sometimes a phone number. Email accounts I've had half my life lock me out unless I link it to my phone number and prove my identity. Some services ask for a fucking ID card scan, which prompts me to just drop the service. Some things I've used in the past only accept US phone area codes, which having left the US, means those services are now completely inaccessible to me. China says it's for state security. They're at least kind of honest that their intention is to keep the population in check and watch their every movement. The rest of the world says it's for personal security. Then another day passes and another heap of phone numbers, names, SSNs, and addresses leak and another identity is stolen.

xemdetia 6y ago
Yes, it really is getting out of hand. If there was a reasonable equivalent that was an alternate (like an email address used to be), that would be one thing but even with a US phone all of a sudden your phone dies and you are completely stranded and even sites you used to be able to access are now no longer accessible because they are asking for phone numbers and confirmation of said numbers. It feels really awful.
- lazylizard 6y ago
  Why not setup your own? Or use email? Stuff like deltachat works over smtp? Letschat is 1click deploy on heroku?
seppin 6y ago
> meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat. I've never heard it phrased this way before, dangerous indeed.
devtul 6y ago
We will give our freedoms away in name of preventing toxicity and hate speech. Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away
- cmdshiftf4 6y ago
  >Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away That doesn't enter the equation for what I would imagine is 99.99% of users. It's the erosion of privacy in the name of a) "Safety" and b) convenience The average person of the world has shown that they will trade virtually anything for the perception of convenience, or "safety". Look at the most recent gun ban in Canada for an obvious example; An act riddled with nonsense, already acknowledged to be completely ineffective at preventing gun crimes, pushed through by a minority government during a pandemic to the applause of a large part of the populace there in exchange for the false perception of "safety". The most frightening thing is just how effective it is.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Yes, the ban may not be perfect, but as a Canadian, I can say unequivocally: I don't need perfect to be the enemy of good. There's no reason to possess these weapons any more than there's a reason to possess nuclear warheads. The next bill can ban more, fix the bugs, etc, but the flag has been planted: there's no room for those weapons in Canada. A huge number of people have wanted to ban weapons like these since Ecole Polytechnique [1] -- and probably much further back. We've been lucky to have few enough such mass murders to remember many by name, and it also makes them horrifying enough that we're not going to sit back and pray the crime away. The Liberal Party (currently in power) ran on banning these weapons. Then they banned the weapons. They did the job they were elected to do. I don't think that's a good example tbh. [edit] Let's be super clear when you say "pushed through by a minority government during a pandemic" -- you're seeming to imply that the minority is somehow strong-arming the majority. That's the exact opposite of how that works in the Canadian parliamentary democratic system. A minority government is in a very weak position and can be removed at any time. If this was at all controversial the next confidence motion would be swiftly defeated and the government would fall. A minority government wouldn't do something like this without absolute confidence. Unlike a majority government a minority government must rule by consensus or face immediate removal. I think they normally don’t even make it past the 3 year mark. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_Polytechnique_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_Polytechnique_massacre
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rhizome 6y ago
>Every Chinese site I've ever used requires phone number or ID verification Frankly, this happens a lot in the West these days, too. Take OKCupid, for instance. And the third-party doctrine.
- mrcodedude 6y ago
  Probably a decent security idea to have minimal PIE requirements for a dating site.
- JamesG124 6y ago
  Twitter too. Every Twitter account I registered locked me out and asked for phone number after an hour or so
hzhou321 6y ago
> Most of them only allow Chinese-registered phones, meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat. Indeed. I am very appreciative to wechat that I can keep in touch with my family and friends and enjoy the technology. By valuing my freedom and the freedom of my Chinese contacts, I do not communicate sensitive materials on wechat. The freedom is only ensured within boundary so know thy boundaries. I have plenty of channels to enjoy my western freedom. Whether we should impose our western freedom upon "Chinese freedom"? That is a good question. Fortunately that is not a question I need to resolve. It is illuminating that those who try to exercise their western freedom on the Chinese domain is helping China to the opposite of their goals. If you have that honorable goal, do your due diligence of educating yourself with the right technology.
hank_z 6y ago
Only 9% of Chinese population have a bachelor degree. Only 10% of Chinese population have been abroad. 1 billion Chinese never take a flight. Most of the profitable industries in China are state-owned where most of their staff are part of or have some connections with communist party. It is not easy for the unprivileged people to make a living in China. These unprivileged people have a high likelihood to become scammers. Therefore, ID verification is a way to prevent scammers. Despite of the security reason, there is not way to find out how companies handle personal data. Chinese legal system has no respect to personal data. Additionally, Chinese education system encourages obedience and penalises people who distrust/challenge the authority. Simply because the authority can easily find another to replace you given the fact that there are 1.3 billion Chinese people. Therefore, people live in China have no choice but to accept whatever is given by the authority.

idra 6y ago

"Have no choice" is false. Fortunately, email still works. As does any messenger through a VPN. Using Wechat is simply being complicit with censorship out of laziness.

fiblye 6y ago
Keep in mind that most major domains outside of China are blocked. Chinese services aren't going to be any more lax with surveillance than WeChat and have the same registration requirements. You could maybe try registering your own server, but do you want to have the possibility of questionable messages being saved on a server that you own when dealing with Chinese authorities? Any "oops, sorry" goes out the window when they think you're actively dodging filtering to that extent.
- idra 6y ago
  The parent is talking about communicating with friends and family. My point is not about evading surveillance, it's about not using one of the main tools of the CCP censorship apparatus. If you're inside China and care about your safety, you would think twice about sending "questionable" messages even on the most secure channel because you're still physically vulnerable to rubber hose cryptanalysis.
  - fiblye 6y ago
    And I didn't say anything about sending anything. If anybody messages you or your family/friends receives something suspicious something and the Party suspects you're intentionally avoiding their watchful eye with a custom mail server, I think you might end up worse off. All it takes is one goofball finding a vulnerability in your system and dropping a joke image or bit of text to royally screw you. Furthermore, while it's nice in theory to deploy your own servers and get all of your friends and family to exclusively chat through your homemade application, it's very unlikely. WeChat is basically an OS all its own these days. It's a social network, chat app, payment app, shop, and more. People are incredibly reluctant to give up convenience unless they're very motivated and technologically inclined. And for people inside of China, getting a VPN or non-Chinese messenger is quite difficult thanks to locked down app stores and most people communicating only through phones. I don't use Facebook and won't budge on that issue. My parents won't use anything that's not Facebook. If they won't take 10 seconds to register for anything else, then they certainly won't want to deal with anything I'd try to scrap together. The end result is that I make a VOIP call to their phone about once a month and they ask me to just give up and use Facebook at some point. It's probably a similar situation with most people wanting to leave XYZ terrible messenger.

kevinchen 6y ago

I don’t think this is true. iMessage works in China (they can’t block all of Apple)

gaoryrt 6y ago
But iMessage in China was supported by yunshangguizhou(https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%91%E4%B8%8A%E8%B4%B5%E5%B7%9E https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%91%E4%B8%8A%E8%B4%B5%E5...), a state-owned enterprise.