I have always wanted to ask such questions, as such projects come from a different kind of crowd, internet anarchists with a free world utopia in mind. Since these projects are also used by Chinese netizens, what do people think about this?
While Tor Project was DARPA made, many people benefit from it. Same goes for internet preservation projects, since internet is largely a creation of West.
I seek the perspective of native mainlanders and Chinese born here importantly, because I have not seen this being discussed anywhere.
Edit: I hate how armchair westerners have an issue with letting this topic be discussed calmly.
You’re not going to find the perspective of mainlanders here and sites that are allowed in the great firewall such a sensitive question would be quickly deleted. To answer your question tho tor,archive.org and the eye are blocked by the great firewall of china since they’d allow citizens to get uncensored information about China and the world.
Fun fact, both Lemmy.ml and Lemmygrad are accessible in all parts of China.
http://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=lemmy.ml
http://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=lemmygrad.ml
As are most or all of the other major Lemmy instances.
The project homepage too: http://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=join-lemmy.org
Still doesn’t change my point that mainlanders are not likely to use lemmy and that they would get in trouble for asking this on weibo and the like
Dunning Kruger, fellowman. You should know reality instead of whatever Reddit told you this week. I know the Reddit talking points come from a place of ignorance, which is why I asked actually informed people here. If you do not know, just stop derailing this thread I made.
China allows netizens to use VPNs to access foreign websites. The idea that China wants to hide criticism in an absolutist way is moot.
Vpns are not legal they’re just tolerated and if you really think that they support criticism you should go there and try it yourself
VPNs are legal in China, just that they are government approved. You should talk after knowing on ground reality, not hearsay from American internet echo chambers.
It really doesn’t change my point that they don’t want you to freely access information why else do you think they would only allow use of official approved ones
Because you do not understand what it is like to be a country/individual being attacked by a drove of Western countries/majority of the internet chatroom.
Do free-speech-loving western countries allow to flourish projects like libgen, Sci-Hub, or the numerous bittorrent sites that have been forcibly shut down (often with operators going to prison)?
My question is not directed in the way you think. I want to know the opinions of, and interest of Chinese people in this kind of internet anarchist culture. Everybody knows what goes on in Western world, but China is a place where people prefer civillity over chaos and rude behaviour, and good faith trust is important.
While there isn’t a Chinese version of the Internet Archive (as far as I know), the Chinese government maintains freely accessible archive sites of important public documents, both historical, like from before the CPC, and modern.
I do know that known Tor nodes are blocked in China. Not sure if it’s actually illegal to access them as long as you don’t use the Tor network to do anything else illegal (probably not). I’ve never heard of anyone being charged in China just for accessing Tor (or bypassing the firewall for that matter), the only arrests are if they committed a separate crime while doing so. It’s still relatively easy to access Tor in China using a bridge, either way.
More adding to @cypherpunks@lemmy.ml’s comment: Officially, piracy and copyright infringement is illegal in China. But people there torrent media, even Western media that people outside China assume are banned in China, all the time. No VPN or anything to hide their traffic either, and I’ve never heard of anyone getting charged for it. There are also a lot of “free” Chinese streaming sites who probably don’t have the rights to the media they’re showing, especially since they have large libraries of Western media and why would Western media companies give them the streaming rights. So as far as I know it’s not really enforced all that much. You’d think if the government wanted to crack down on this, they could simply have Chinese ISPs block the BitTorrent protocol and/or go in and shut down those streaming sites.
That is a valuable insight. It is hard to learn more about how Chinese society works, as it prefers being reserved away from bad faith chaos (example in this thread), and I feel intrigued by many such things. I would love to know more, how Chinese intranet works for example.
I am sick of the Reddit/Twitter mindset on these topics. I want to talk in good faith, and I know very few people exist in the current way world works, who value morals, civillity and grace in discussions.