this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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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.
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.
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.
But using a VPN is not illegal in China… why would you even have to explain why you’re using one?
https://www.scmp.com/abacus/tech/article/3095201/man-punished-using-vpn-scale-chinas-great-firewall-and-watch-porn
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/vpn-punishments-05212020103537.html
Lmao South China Morning Post and Radio Free Asia are literally propaganda mouthpieces for the CIA
Fair enough.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/chinese-man-arrested-after-making-1-6-million-from-selling-vpn-services/
That one details several such cases and includes links to local coverage from Litchi News from one of them.
Then there's this showing that the CCP banned unregistered VPNs in 2017. It's partially why they prosecuted the people in the previous article.
https://www.neowin.net/news/china-will-block-vpn-access-for-individuals-companies-must-register-with-the-government/
If you don't like that then here's The Guardian with a separate incident:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/22/man-in-china-sentenced-to-five-years-jail-for-running-vpn
Seriously, I can find articles like that detailing different incidents in every major mainstream media source. So either all of them are lying to me -or- you are trying to gaslight me.
Guess which one I think is more probable?
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.