A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.
Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".
Getting started on Fediverse;
As the comment there says, the surprise is that not every instance is blocked yet.
But I've seen hardly any Chinese on the fediverse, so they probably don't care that much. And it's not just that I've stuck to the English-speaking parts, there's been lots of Japanese and various European languages. I suppose even if it otherwise would have a chance to catch on there, Chinese users know that if it did it quickly would get blocked.
I've only seen Taiwanese on Mastodon, especially as they're leaving Twatter due to Chinese bot activity.
Wouldn't they just use a VPN? I know they're technically illegal in China but from what I've heard lots of people still use them regularly.
VPNs are not illegal in China. And one can use it to circumvent any restrictions.
Non-approved VPNs used to circumvent the great wall are absolutely illegal, though largely tolerated (and observed), but the authorities can and have used them as an excuse to bring people in.
Source: have actual been to China and played the whole "which VPN will work on which network" game many times.
I assume all vpn services accessible from china are run by government and they monitor the traffic
I feel like I should say that a VPN isn't a magic bullet. Even if its configured correctly to totally obfuscate the data and the final endpoint of the traffic it's still blatantly obvious that a VPN is in use. Given that the CCP monitors all of this stuff it wouldn't surprise me to learn that if you run a VPN long or often enough without providing stating why that it'll either end up blocked or you'll end up in trouble.
Given that the CCP monitors all of this stuff it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that if you run a VPN long or often enough without providing stating why that it’ll either end up blocked or you’ll end up in trouble.
How do you know this? I have friends living in China that states otherwise.
As far as I know there are specific legal provisions for foreigners living in China in regards to VPN use, so what might be true for your friends isn't necessarily true for a regular Chinese person.
Even if its configured correctly to totally obfuscate the data and the final endpoint of the traffic it's still blatantly obvious that a VPN is in use.
Which is why Chinese users don't use standard VPNs, they use obfuscated proxies with protocols like Shadowsocks and V2Ray, which mask the tunneled traffic as innocuous HTTPS traffic.
That's a fair point, but what you are talking about isn't a "VPN", at least not as they're commonly known and understood. Please remember that my response was directed to a user whose comment boiled down to "Get a VPN, that will solve the problem." A regular VPN will absolutely not the solve the problem.
I'm sure lots of people do, it's a big country. But for the vast majority I imagine that the risk of getting in trouble for it, plus the risk of the one you paid for getting successfully blocked, plus the difficulty of finding out which ones are allowed to operate only because they share all your data with the authorities, plus the cost, plus the usual difficulties in finding a good vpn outweigh any desire to communicate freely with foreigners.
It's like when your dad doesn't love you
how will we ever recover from this epic pwnage 🥱
Please, someone tell comrade ~~Stalin~~ Xi that this is all just a terrible mistake!
Does anyone know a reliable site for checking? This is just a random one I found: http://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=lemmy.ml
lemmy.world seems to not be blocked. I have no idea how they make these decisions 🤷
Edit to add: FWIW Wikipedia has a short list of test sites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_mainland_China#External_links
Isn't lemmy.ml full of tankies?
I made an account a long while ago when it was the only instance with any content but I'm just a lurker looking for memes and tech news. Feeling like I should change instance these days...
Any social networks that have non-censored participants are. Usually, China's presence in social networks outside of its borders are for propaganda purposes.
Why would State Capitalists allow discussions about actual communism? God forbid he people get it into their head to form trade unions..
To be fair, .ml bans you pretty quickly for discussing anything outside of a pretty narrow stripe of Marxist Leninist orthodoxy as well.
I don't consider myself a Marxist, Leninist, or communist of any stripe and haven't had a problem so far. I'm far enough left that I refuse to call myself a liberal, but I suspect the folks who consider themselves Marxists probably think I'm too far right to self-identify as a leftist. (Although I do.)
Shitload of downvotes a time or two, but that's about it. I just wanted to be on a Lemmy instance that was honoring the fedipact, and preferred it to have an instance ethos to the left of mine rather than to the right of it.
I like it here.
I don't think that's a fair criticizm. After all my dumb ass hasn't been banned (so far).
This is just a meme everyone repeats until they believe it.
I imagine that the dynamic here is reminiscent of the western media's self-censorship. Western journalists learn to conform to certain standards and topics because they understand what kinds of articles are more likely to be published and advance their careers. This is largely influenced by the preferences of media company owners and advertisers, creating a selection pressure for content producers to conform to these expectations.
In contrast, in China, censors strive to identify potentially politically sensitive content and tend to err on the side of more aggressive censorship. This is due to the understanding that being overly cautious in such matters will not result in negative consequences, encouraging a more conservative approach to content regulation.
