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China doesn't actually ban American social networks, not officially at least. They just don't work for some reason due to technical issues. China has never said

China doesn't actually ban American social networks, not officially at least. They just don't work for some reason due to technical issues. China has never said "we ban Facebook and Google", you just wake up one day and they aren't working anymore.

vitorgrs 3y ago
And as far I know, if you go there with roaming ON with your phone, these social networks still work as well.
- tivert 3y ago
  > And as far I know, if you go there with roaming ON with your phone, these social networks still work as well. That's because roaming phone traffic is routed through your home carrier, through whatever telephone traffic peering agreement the phone companies have. If a Chinese person roams to the US using a Chinese cell phone plan, it works in the other direction. So their phone is still behind the great firewall even though they're physically outside of China.
dluan 3y ago
in practicality it doesnt matter because you can easily circumvent it with a VPN and nearly every single person does
- nmfisher 3y ago
  That was the case when I was living there, but I've read a lot of people saying that VPNs aren't nearly as effective any more.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    I was never good at VPNs. We would find one that worked, they wanted a one year subscription up front and...then they would stop working. I assume most VPNs in China are just a scam to make some shady money. Who are you going to complain to, the Chinese government?
    - insane_dreamer 3y ago
      China would try to block them so you had to find new alternatives. I used one for years that stayed up, but yes it was often frustratingly slow. You had to really make an effort, and most people aren't going to do that, and then there's the language barrier.
  - chrischen 3y ago
    My experiences before was that they were doing some machine learning to detect my socks proxy and slow it down eventually. Last visit I went to China a few months ago I found my Wireguard VPN running at full speed. Either technology has improved or they stopped trying as hard, which makes sense now that the local internet economy has matured.
- Aunche 3y ago
  Every Chinese person a Westerner may talk to has a VPN, but you can't compete with Chinese-owned social media without the other 90% of the population. Also, China has been very aggressive with VPN throttling and random outages, since the pandemic.
  - dluan 3y ago
    depends on time and place. its true that now there is less dependence on foreign internet and you can now be fully decoupled from english internet with the number of domestic apps. most people only use a VPN now just to access email (e.g. gmail, university), if they even need to at all. and yeah, if youre in beijing during a congress, then VPNs will be slow. but its trivial to set up and use a VPN, even my 88 year old grandma has one.
  - throwawayq3423 3y ago
    I promise you Uyghur muslims don't all have VPNs installed on their phones. That alone will get you disappeared into a prison camp. "Every Han Chinese of a certain background" is the more accurate reference.
- insane_dreamer 3y ago
  this was never the case and is even less so now. the vast majority of the population cannot easily use a VPN, especially not on their phone which many people use instead of a PC
- throwawayq3423 3y ago
  If you try and operative a service that relies on frictionless access by saying your users have to fly abroad to download it, and use an illegal and increasingly spotting VPN service to access it, it's banned. You simply cannot succeed under these conditions.
- stubish 3y ago
  It is not easy. One day your VPN stops working, and you need to ask your friends for a new recommendation, and maybe they have if theirs didn't start failing last month, and set that up and hopefully it keeps working for a while longer, maybe until your original routes around the issue. It is high friction, and was a constant pain trying to maintain a functioning satellite office behind the Great Firewall.
jeremyjh 3y ago
So...what? We know they've disabled it and they know we know. We can just call it a ban.
hi-v-rocknroll 3y ago
Perhaps the GFOC must officially support an app via allowlisting, so that it's banned unless it's allowed by inaction, which is effectively the same thing. Most/all apps aren't banned outright, but they require VPNs to access. I wonder: Are there any Western apps which Chinese citizens would lose social credit or are officially prohibited from using?
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  VPNs are unreliable and frustrating to use. They were never really solution for anyone I knew while living in China, especially for 4K video
  - hi-v-rocknroll 3y ago
    Ouch. When I was there last 20-some years ago, high-speed interest was just becoming a thing and internet cafes were everywhere. Getting access to the outside world then was also a pain. For Westerners, could they get GFOC-excluded commercial PoP internet connections or wireless carriers? Perhaps in the near future, China's middle- and upper-class will insist on specific changes in policy like unfettered internet access as a bargain for not demanding democracy. With all of the advances in economic mobility and details of life outside the GFOC, there will be more asks.
    - insane_dreamer 3y ago
      > China's middle- and upper-class will insist on specific changes in policy like unfettered internet access as a bargain for not demanding democracy. So long as the CCP delivers on economic prosperity this won't happen; people will not risk it. Those who can't handle it, and have the means, emigrate or have a plan B (i.e., their kids at a US university who can continue their career abroad; many Chinese would come to the US just to have a baby to ensure their kid had US citizenship--the US has clamped down on that). This is why the CCP's survival depends on economics.
      - hi-v-rocknroll 3y ago
benced 3y ago
This is unfortunately a common tactic of the Chinese government (see their recent dealings with Lithuania). I do not believe a trade barrier not being explicitly stated is a barrier to bringing a WTO case though.
insane_dreamer 3y ago
They could operate there if they submitted themselves to Chinese government censorship (aka "local laws"). Google pulled out because it refused to. Facebook really wanted to (Zuck even made a trip there to talk to Chinese officials) but ultimately decided (correctly) that doing so would greatly hurt it in the US/Europe. Same for Twitter (pre-Elon).
- thanksgiving 3y ago
  No, it should just work. I can understand having to abide by China PR laws if you have actual money transactions on the mainland but if all my customers are outside China PR and all I'm doing is making my website available to the people in China PR assuming I'm not breaking any laws, my website should be available to users in China PR. I guess this last part is the loophole they will drive a truck through in hindsight. They will make up some nonsense or maybe even find a legitimate scam and ban Facebook based on that? But really once they ban Facebook, we should be able to reciprocate and ban tick tack.
  - insane_dreamer 3y ago
    You can still be breaking “public safety” and “consumer protection” laws if the CCP doesn’t like your content.
  - connicpu 3y ago
    If all you do is open your website to china and don't perform any transactions in the country you're gonna have a hell of a time with your business model. All of these websites rely on advertisers to make money.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    China isn't a rule of law country, they admit that they don't even aspire to be a rule of law country, calling it an imperialistic western ideal not compatible with eastern culture. There is no way your expectation can be satisfied.
    - 3y ago
a_random_canuck 3y ago
“Officially” is meaningless here. The blocking exists, and it is at the direction or under the control of their government. They are yet same thing. You know, if it looks like a duck. This is standard operating procedure for the communist party. They rarely say any kind of topics or activities are banned outright. It’s just that if you say the wrong things in the wrong place, a bunch of plainclothes police will come to your home in the middle of the night.
- b112 3y ago
  Indeed. And this solidifies their control, because anything may be illegal at any moment.
ngcc_hk 3y ago
That is as silly as argument as it is. We know what the game china played and it is not because of technology. Really someone can “hack” the technology. But if one pretend to sleep, you cannot wake them up easily.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
throwawayq3423 3y ago
I thought you were going with "China doesn't ban American companies, American companies simply refuse to obey Chinese law". The laws in question are becoming a subsidiary of the state, of course.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  The laws don’t exist. China has a constitution that guarantees freedom of speech, assembly, press, religion, etc…so actually writing a law that censors the internet isn’t very feasible. The official class just controls the courts (no judicial review allowed) so can do whatever.
  - throwawayq3423 3y ago
    Isn't that a distinction without a difference? If the constitution isn't upheld by rule of law, what does it matter what is says?
chottocharaii 3y ago
These kinds of comments are legally ignorant. I’m always taken aback by these kinds of “but actually” comments on HN that ‘correct’ another user without any regard to how the law would be applied.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  I read the persons comment differently: reading between the lines I see them saying that the Chinese government finds other ways to work around the rules in bad faith.
jdjshdvegj 3y ago
Within the past week China told Apple to take several social media apps off their App Store. It’s an official ban.
deviantbit 3y ago
You haven't been there then. Google, YouTube, Twitter are all banned there. They are blocked completely. You cannot download the apps. In fact, the Google Play Store doesn't work there. They have cracked down on all VPN's now as well. We could only access western social media through a corporate network. One side note, the United States Embassy has free Wi-Fi if you're close enough to it. You can get access to everything through it.
- basch 3y ago
  I don’t have a no YouTube and Roblox policy at my house. However, mysteriously they usually arent working. It’s a lot less contentious that way
- raincole 3y ago
  You didn't read the parent comment right then. Let me paraphrase it: Yes, you can't use these services in China. But unlike the US's TikTok ban, China will not officially tell everyone what they banned. It just suddenly stops working. They banned, allowed and banned again GitHub. Without any explanation. Your parent comment is correct.
  - deviantbit 3y ago
    I don't remember if they announced it or not. I've been there a total of 4 times over the past 15 years. There are these Kiosks where you get Wi-Fi Access. You scan your passport, and it gives you a username and password. It specifically states accessing prohibited internet sites is a crime. Then you click the link, and Facebook, Twitter, Google, ... are all on the list. They're pretty in your face about it. There are some odd things though. You can access Steam in some areas, but not in others. Internet Cafe's have signs saying Steam Games allowed, while others don't. Some will say New York Times available. Leaving the country was much harder than entering now. We missed several flights and were in the Airport for almost 2 days before they allowed us to leave. This last trip in February, I made the mistake of buying an Unicom SIM card. So get this, I go through US Customs, they point me over to a desk with a curtain, a guy reads my declaration document again, then walks me over to do a door, and opens it. In side is a little waiting area. I sit down, and about 10 minutes later a woman slides the glass window open and asks me for the SIM card. They already knew I had bought it when I arrived. There is no SIM card declaration on the form. She told me I should probably destroy the phone. I don't think any of us have any idea what is going on. I won't be returning to China. They have made it very clear they're not interested in Americans investing or visiting.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
troll_v_bridge 3y ago
From facebooks perspective it’s always been official

vitorgrs 3y ago

And as far I know, if you go there with roaming ON with your phone, these social networks still work as well.

tivert 3y ago
> And as far I know, if you go there with roaming ON with your phone, these social networks still work as well. That's because roaming phone traffic is routed through your home carrier, through whatever telephone traffic peering agreement the phone companies have. If a Chinese person roams to the US using a Chinese cell phone plan, it works in the other direction. So their phone is still behind the great firewall even though they're physically outside of China.

dluan 3y ago

in practicality it doesnt matter because you can easily circumvent it with a VPN and nearly every single person does

nmfisher 3y ago
That was the case when I was living there, but I've read a lot of people saying that VPNs aren't nearly as effective any more.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  I was never good at VPNs. We would find one that worked, they wanted a one year subscription up front and...then they would stop working. I assume most VPNs in China are just a scam to make some shady money. Who are you going to complain to, the Chinese government?
  - insane_dreamer 3y ago
    China would try to block them so you had to find new alternatives. I used one for years that stayed up, but yes it was often frustratingly slow. You had to really make an effort, and most people aren't going to do that, and then there's the language barrier.
- chrischen 3y ago
  My experiences before was that they were doing some machine learning to detect my socks proxy and slow it down eventually. Last visit I went to China a few months ago I found my Wireguard VPN running at full speed. Either technology has improved or they stopped trying as hard, which makes sense now that the local internet economy has matured.
Aunche 3y ago
Every Chinese person a Westerner may talk to has a VPN, but you can't compete with Chinese-owned social media without the other 90% of the population. Also, China has been very aggressive with VPN throttling and random outages, since the pandemic.
- dluan 3y ago
  depends on time and place. its true that now there is less dependence on foreign internet and you can now be fully decoupled from english internet with the number of domestic apps. most people only use a VPN now just to access email (e.g. gmail, university), if they even need to at all. and yeah, if youre in beijing during a congress, then VPNs will be slow. but its trivial to set up and use a VPN, even my 88 year old grandma has one.
- throwawayq3423 3y ago
  I promise you Uyghur muslims don't all have VPNs installed on their phones. That alone will get you disappeared into a prison camp. "Every Han Chinese of a certain background" is the more accurate reference.
insane_dreamer 3y ago
this was never the case and is even less so now. the vast majority of the population cannot easily use a VPN, especially not on their phone which many people use instead of a PC
throwawayq3423 3y ago
If you try and operative a service that relies on frictionless access by saying your users have to fly abroad to download it, and use an illegal and increasingly spotting VPN service to access it, it's banned. You simply cannot succeed under these conditions.
stubish 3y ago
It is not easy. One day your VPN stops working, and you need to ask your friends for a new recommendation, and maybe they have if theirs didn't start failing last month, and set that up and hopefully it keeps working for a while longer, maybe until your original routes around the issue. It is high friction, and was a constant pain trying to maintain a functioning satellite office behind the Great Firewall.

jeremyjh 3y ago

So...what? We know they've disabled it and they know we know. We can just call it a ban.

hi-v-rocknroll 3y ago

Perhaps the GFOC must officially support an app via allowlisting, so that it's banned unless it's allowed by inaction, which is effectively the same thing. Most/all apps aren't banned outright, but they require VPNs to access. I wonder: Are there any Western apps which Chinese citizens would lose social credit or are officially prohibited from using?

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
VPNs are unreliable and frustrating to use. They were never really solution for anyone I knew while living in China, especially for 4K video
- hi-v-rocknroll 3y ago
  Ouch. When I was there last 20-some years ago, high-speed interest was just becoming a thing and internet cafes were everywhere. Getting access to the outside world then was also a pain. For Westerners, could they get GFOC-excluded commercial PoP internet connections or wireless carriers? Perhaps in the near future, China's middle- and upper-class will insist on specific changes in policy like unfettered internet access as a bargain for not demanding democracy. With all of the advances in economic mobility and details of life outside the GFOC, there will be more asks.
  - insane_dreamer 3y ago
    > China's middle- and upper-class will insist on specific changes in policy like unfettered internet access as a bargain for not demanding democracy. So long as the CCP delivers on economic prosperity this won't happen; people will not risk it. Those who can't handle it, and have the means, emigrate or have a plan B (i.e., their kids at a US university who can continue their career abroad; many Chinese would come to the US just to have a baby to ensure their kid had US citizenship--the US has clamped down on that). This is why the CCP's survival depends on economics.
    - hi-v-rocknroll 3y ago

benced 3y ago

This is unfortunately a common tactic of the Chinese government (see their recent dealings with Lithuania). I do not believe a trade barrier not being explicitly stated is a barrier to bringing a WTO case though.

insane_dreamer 3y ago

They could operate there if they submitted themselves to Chinese government censorship (aka "local laws"). Google pulled out because it refused to. Facebook really wanted to (Zuck even made a trip there to talk to Chinese officials) but ultimately decided (correctly) that doing so would greatly hurt it in the US/Europe. Same for Twitter (pre-Elon).

thanksgiving 3y ago
No, it should just work. I can understand having to abide by China PR laws if you have actual money transactions on the mainland but if all my customers are outside China PR and all I'm doing is making my website available to the people in China PR assuming I'm not breaking any laws, my website should be available to users in China PR. I guess this last part is the loophole they will drive a truck through in hindsight. They will make up some nonsense or maybe even find a legitimate scam and ban Facebook based on that? But really once they ban Facebook, we should be able to reciprocate and ban tick tack.
- insane_dreamer 3y ago
  You can still be breaking “public safety” and “consumer protection” laws if the CCP doesn’t like your content.
- connicpu 3y ago
  If all you do is open your website to china and don't perform any transactions in the country you're gonna have a hell of a time with your business model. All of these websites rely on advertisers to make money.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  China isn't a rule of law country, they admit that they don't even aspire to be a rule of law country, calling it an imperialistic western ideal not compatible with eastern culture. There is no way your expectation can be satisfied.
  - 3y ago

a_random_canuck 3y ago

“Officially” is meaningless here. The blocking exists, and it is at the direction or under the control of their government. They are yet same thing. You know, if it looks like a duck. This is standard operating procedure for the communist party. They rarely say any kind of topics or activities are banned outright. It’s just that if you say the wrong things in the wrong place, a bunch of plainclothes police will come to your home in the middle of the night.

b112 3y ago
Indeed. And this solidifies their control, because anything may be illegal at any moment.

ngcc_hk 3y ago

That is as silly as argument as it is. We know what the game china played and it is not because of technology. Really someone can “hack” the technology. But if one pretend to sleep, you cannot wake them up easily.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

throwawayq3423 3y ago

I thought you were going with "China doesn't ban American companies, American companies simply refuse to obey Chinese law". The laws in question are becoming a subsidiary of the state, of course.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
The laws don’t exist. China has a constitution that guarantees freedom of speech, assembly, press, religion, etc…so actually writing a law that censors the internet isn’t very feasible. The official class just controls the courts (no judicial review allowed) so can do whatever.
- throwawayq3423 3y ago
  Isn't that a distinction without a difference? If the constitution isn't upheld by rule of law, what does it matter what is says?

chottocharaii 3y ago

These kinds of comments are legally ignorant. I’m always taken aback by these kinds of “but actually” comments on HN that ‘correct’ another user without any regard to how the law would be applied.

andsoitis 3y ago
I read the persons comment differently: reading between the lines I see them saying that the Chinese government finds other ways to work around the rules in bad faith.

jdjshdvegj 3y ago

Within the past week China told Apple to take several social media apps off their App Store. It’s an official ban.

deviantbit 3y ago

You haven't been there then. Google, YouTube, Twitter are all banned there. They are blocked completely. You cannot download the apps. In fact, the Google Play Store doesn't work there. They have cracked down on all VPN's now as well. We could only access western social media through a corporate network. One side note, the United States Embassy has free Wi-Fi if you're close enough to it. You can get access to everything through it.

basch 3y ago
I don’t have a no YouTube and Roblox policy at my house. However, mysteriously they usually arent working. It’s a lot less contentious that way
raincole 3y ago
You didn't read the parent comment right then. Let me paraphrase it: Yes, you can't use these services in China. But unlike the US's TikTok ban, China will not officially tell everyone what they banned. It just suddenly stops working. They banned, allowed and banned again GitHub. Without any explanation. Your parent comment is correct.
- deviantbit 3y ago
  I don't remember if they announced it or not. I've been there a total of 4 times over the past 15 years. There are these Kiosks where you get Wi-Fi Access. You scan your passport, and it gives you a username and password. It specifically states accessing prohibited internet sites is a crime. Then you click the link, and Facebook, Twitter, Google, ... are all on the list. They're pretty in your face about it. There are some odd things though. You can access Steam in some areas, but not in others. Internet Cafe's have signs saying Steam Games allowed, while others don't. Some will say New York Times available. Leaving the country was much harder than entering now. We missed several flights and were in the Airport for almost 2 days before they allowed us to leave. This last trip in February, I made the mistake of buying an Unicom SIM card. So get this, I go through US Customs, they point me over to a desk with a curtain, a guy reads my declaration document again, then walks me over to do a door, and opens it. In side is a little waiting area. I sit down, and about 10 minutes later a woman slides the glass window open and asks me for the SIM card. They already knew I had bought it when I arrived. There is no SIM card declaration on the form. She told me I should probably destroy the phone. I don't think any of us have any idea what is going on. I won't be returning to China. They have made it very clear they're not interested in Americans investing or visiting.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

troll_v_bridge 3y ago

From facebooks perspective it’s always been official