China Is Already Blocking Google+ | Hacker News Reader

China Is Already Blocking Google+

techcrunch.com

64 pointsobtino32 comments

I think the main reason that Western Social Networks are blocked in China is, to give Chinese web companies time to grow a Chinese rip-off version of the Western site. Looking forward to "百度圆圈" (Baidu Yuanquan) or Sina加一 or similar.

In Google's case its probably also to get back at them for having said the truth too many times.

very true.

Tumblr isn't blocked

recently two clones launched (diandian and one from sina)

I'm sure it will be blocked soon

While I don't doubt that blocking competition is a happy incidental, the timing of when facebook and twitter were initially blocked makes it clear what the primary purpose was. July 2009, just after the big Iranian election demonstrations that were fueled at least in part by social networks, and immediately following domestic upheaval at the Ürümqi riots. And while I realize this isn't a popular idea among western tech populations, one should realize how much of an opportunity there is for foreign intelligence services [1] to play agent provacateur on these networks when they're controlled by "the home team".

[1] Solicitation for Persona Management Software by USAF (also solicited by SOCOM, etc.): http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/person...

I'm in Beijing right now, using otherwise-filtered internet. I can't access Youtube or Facebook or Twitter, but I can access Google Plus without any noticeable slowdown. Everything feels pretty responsive.

Maybe the filters just haven't gotten to me yet?

Same here in Shanghai

I find it silly that China blocks Google+, but not 4chan.

(http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=4chan....)

4chan doesn't threaten their political power the way an effective social network does.

The birthplace of many groups that have ruffled more than a few feathers has been 4chan (Anonymous, lulzsec, etc.). I think a place that actively encourages anonymity and contrarian thought is surely something to worry about for any government, arguably more than social-networking sites.

4chan doesn't make money.

No one on the mainland has copied it and then paid to have it blocked

4chan is an English-language site. Most Chinese people aren't going to be able to understand it, and those that do are likely already a lost cause with regards to censorship.

I read HN from google reader. And it tells me that someone had just liked this news.

The freedom of China's intranet needs to be fought for by its own people. But how could anyone `like' current situation like this?

They like the post alerting people to this fact. The like it to share it with more people, making them aware. They aren't liking that China is doing this.

Liking that something is posted is not the same as liking the news.

Someone who agrees that maintaining the current 'social stability' in China outweighs the benefits brought by yet-another-social-network.

You need to also assume that filtering the web increases 'social stability'. For many young people in China the amount of government interference with the web is literally their number one complaint.

Uhhh...what?

Try 'working conditions'...or actually...try 'just getting a job'.

You must know some super rich Chinese young people if their number one complaint is Google access.

By young think 15 not 25. The problem is not so much they are going to create a revolution today, rather the government is poisoning the well by eroding peoples trust.

That's what all the dictators say. "We need to maintain stability, so keep doing what we tell you. Don't you dare even question us - for the sake of our society, of course."

Actually, its the other way around. Don't even dare to mention stability or you get lynched in the West.

Ask people in Rhuanda/Burundi what happened when their dictator president got shot down. Or in Somalia. Or how the real situation in Iraq or Afghanistan is. Sometimes stability actually is paramount. It's even empirically measurable and relates to average household income. But I don't want to bore you with science on the topic. There are many books and papers on the topic. And its not just theory, I am living in developing and "unfree" countries for many years to see the practical part as well.

Stuff's not just "black and white" -- there is a lot more to it.

But that wasn't the topic of this debate anyways.

Out of curiosity, can you link to the science on the topic?

A few good reads on the topic are F. Fukuyama "Trust: Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity" and P. Collier "The bottom Billion" and "Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places".

This also seems just patently obvious: why would you bother trying to create wealth if someone is likely to come along and steal it from you?

"like" is just a marketing label for the button/link. The actual function of it is to increase the visibility of the story. A lot of people have figured this out and use the facility for what it does rather than how it is labeled. I see this on FB a lot, too.

I reckon China is blocking foreign social networking sites for economic reasons rather than anything else. They have a market that everyone else wants to tap into. So why let others in when they can "innovate" internally and provide a made-in-China alternative.

Lovely thought, but not true.

The internet are changing rapidly, a breaking news may spread to the world in minutes. The government seeing the power shift. They want's everything in control, they are watching you. They want to make sure they can censor/delete/block/FUD when things out of there control.

They can not control Google, so they degradation it.

Have they purposefully gone and blocked google plus, or do they simply block *.google.com and have an exception list?

I think they've blocked Google in general... there's no reason to give exception since it's a conflict in corporation management. You know... China.

The Chinese government didn't block Google in general, that would cause too much chaos. They interference/degradation all Google services instead, especially https.

The experience may vary basic on where you located and which ISP is. According to some of my frineds, it's very slow when they access to https://plus.google.com directly, make it unusable for real.

It seems that an obvious attack against the Chinese filtering system would be fooling it into blacklisting a huge number of neutral sites - I mean the good old poisoning with fake keywords technique. Yet I haven't heard about anyone trying this approach.

Has anyone with a startup that wanted China as a potential growth opportunity ever try and address this problem? The only reasonable solution I can think of, is having family in high places lobby for you. Thoughts?

Censorship is not the only problem - the filter also makes visiting foreign web sites intolerably slow, so people don't even bother.

One solution is to host your stuff in Hong Kong (which is what Google did). It's fast for both foreign and Chinese mainland visitors, it's not under the juridiction of the censorship bureau, and there's a more mature legal system in place.

AFAIK, every western company that does business in China and every Chinese company that does businesses overseas has a presence in Hong Kong.

Piracy and licensing is other huge problem. Stealing licences of software product is normal approach even in companies which have close ties with corporations in US. Meaning even repackaging and distributing copies of enterprise software to other clients.

Bigger problem is cost of registering a legal Chinese company and then collecting payments, along with restrictions on foreign ownership.

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