4 ms·

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

by dluan 2y ago

nmfisher 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.

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

by dluan 2y ago

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

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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.