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Comment by JVIDEL | Hacker News Reader

Good luck with that: the great firewall of China doesn't works, you don't need to be a hacker to punch a hole through that POS system and the Iranians don't even have the manpower to make a firewall like that so whatever they do will be even lamer and full of holes.

Besides there's the social factor: the Chinese are cool with their government for now because despite all the crap you hear they are still much better off than 20 or 30 years ago. Iran on the other hand is doing like shit, the embargo has destroyed their economy and the people has already revolted before, and the ayatollahs are scared shitless about the Arab Spring.

This might be the last straw...

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But the great firewall of China works so well. Yes, it's trivially circumvented by anyone who knows how things works, but the vast majority of Chinese people don't fall in that category.

The purpose of these systems is to keep the general population in the dark, it's not targeted at knowledgeable intellectuals. You can't keep them in the dark anyway and they already know. It's only point is to stop knowledge dissipating to the masses.

I have a Chinese friend who is an average computer user, and knows about proxies that can bypass the firewall. I'd argue that the majority, especially young people, know how to bypass it whether they are hackers or your average computer user.

If a chinese has a foreign friend and is able to communicate with you in English, then he/she is no where near average. He/she is probably an average among the middle or upper middle class, but definitely not an average among all chinese. However the bigger problem in China is not that they don't know how to bypass the firewall but that most people simply don't have the motivation to do so even if they know. The chinese version (copycat) like Baidu(google), Weibo(twitter) or youku (youtube) etc is simply good enough or better for them.

The thing is, knowlegable intellectuals (at 60 years after the revolution at least) are going to be upper class folks who benefit from the system. They are either already on the regime's side or have no interest in changing the status quo. The worst you'll get is thoughtful and considered reform, which is healthy and good for the regime rather than fundamentally subversive.

Parallel how educated Americans' exasperation with the TSA or War on Drugs has less impact on the current political situation than the specter of gay marriage....

How does it work, though - isn't it trivially detectable that you are using a proxy? Maybe they don't block you, but you end up on some interesting government internal lists?

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