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Is there a way to find out why? It could be anything from "most new websites get blocked by default, or automatically" to "a censor didn’t like a specific thing

Is there a way to find out why? It could be anything from "most new websites get blocked by default, or automatically" to "a censor didn’t like a specific thing." I’m not a fan of bowing to censorship (to say the least), but at this point I am even less a fan of being verbally spit on, called a thief, and being included in lawsuits. I’d take the lesser of two evils, since there’s no way to even do any work in the first place in America. (I’ve been depressed for months that the inevitable outcome of all the LLM lawsuits is that book authors will demand licensing fees, which completely kills open source AI models for all but the most funded institutions. I.e. my original work would’ve been completely impossible.)

yorwba 3y ago
Most websites do not get blocked. When it happens, the censors won't tell you, but if there's a search bar, it's usually easy to find content that explains the block: https://annas-archive.org/search?q=Prisoner+of+the+State+Zhao+Ziyang https://annas-archive.org/search?q=Prisoner+of+the+State+Zha...
- sillysaurusx 3y ago
  Thank you. I have no way of knowing anything about China, so this kind of thing is super helpful. I wouldn’t have even known what to search for to trigger the censors.
  - rfoo 3y ago
    In principal it's easy to explain - as long as you have uncensored content on your website, it's going to be blocked. For example, HN is blocked. If it didn't happen, then it's because you are not big enough. A few cases: - FB, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Youtube are all blocked: user generated content and without outrageous censorship effort (Douyin has 100k employees dedicated to censor and is top cost center, Weibo 50k IIRC) it is very predictable, just assume such things get blocked. - Google is blocked. They announced in 2010 they didn't want to censor any more. - A censored version of Bing is not blocked. - Dropbox is blocked: the same reason. - Notably, GitHub is NOT blocked. GitHub pages and Gist are blocked. This is because GitHub does censor repos upon government request, plus that when it was once blocked scientist spent effort and managed to reverse the decision. - WhatsApp and Signal are blocked. SMS from Signal is also blocked for all +86 numbers so people simply can't register. - iMessage is not blocked. This is, IMO, an outlier. My guess is it's because Apple + no group chat + incompetence.
    - error_logic 3y ago
      Didn't Apple agree to store data inside China for their citizens in a separate server system, thus making it subject to scrutiny on a national level? If that has been the case and people think otherwise...well, it shows how hard it is to navigate the abstractions of networked systems.
      - rfoo 3y ago
        They did. But iMessage is end-to-end encrypted. As long as you avoid the iCloud caveat (iCloud backups are by default not E2E encrypted) you get an actual uncensored E2EE messaging app in China.

yorwba 3y ago

Most websites do not get blocked. When it happens, the censors won't tell you, but if there's a search bar, it's usually easy to find content that explains the block: https://annas-archive.org/search?q=Prisoner+of+the+State+Zhao+Ziyang https://annas-archive.org/search?q=Prisoner+of+the+State+Zha...

sillysaurusx 3y ago
Thank you. I have no way of knowing anything about China, so this kind of thing is super helpful. I wouldn’t have even known what to search for to trigger the censors.
- rfoo 3y ago
  In principal it's easy to explain - as long as you have uncensored content on your website, it's going to be blocked. For example, HN is blocked. If it didn't happen, then it's because you are not big enough. A few cases: - FB, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Youtube are all blocked: user generated content and without outrageous censorship effort (Douyin has 100k employees dedicated to censor and is top cost center, Weibo 50k IIRC) it is very predictable, just assume such things get blocked. - Google is blocked. They announced in 2010 they didn't want to censor any more. - A censored version of Bing is not blocked. - Dropbox is blocked: the same reason. - Notably, GitHub is NOT blocked. GitHub pages and Gist are blocked. This is because GitHub does censor repos upon government request, plus that when it was once blocked scientist spent effort and managed to reverse the decision. - WhatsApp and Signal are blocked. SMS from Signal is also blocked for all +86 numbers so people simply can't register. - iMessage is not blocked. This is, IMO, an outlier. My guess is it's because Apple + no group chat + incompetence.
  - error_logic 3y ago
    Didn't Apple agree to store data inside China for their citizens in a separate server system, thus making it subject to scrutiny on a national level? If that has been the case and people think otherwise...well, it shows how hard it is to navigate the abstractions of networked systems.
    - rfoo 3y ago
      They did. But iMessage is end-to-end encrypted. As long as you avoid the iCloud caveat (iCloud backups are by default not E2E encrypted) you get an actual uncensored E2EE messaging app in China.