[robjan]

There is a difference between China and North Korea's internet access. North Korea works on a "whitelist" basis, whereas China operates on a "blacklist" basis. The Chinese people have access to the majority of the internet but, for cultural and language reasons, are not interested in most Western websites. Yes, many western social media and news sites are blocked but they are not "the internet" and if you consider them as such then the west has exactly the same problem as the one you have just described.

[Markoff]

please, i was living in China more than 5 years, Chinese government won't let me to video chat with my family, every single app was blocked unless i wanted my family to install Chinese spyware on their devices, even the Skype which is supposed to be not blocked is essentially slowed down to speed marking it useless for video

pretty much every photo sharing website is blocked

Chinese "internet" is essentially using white list, it's easier to say what's not blocked than list everything which is blocked

[robjan]

I travel into the mainland regularly and use video and voice chat on WhatsApp all the time without any problems. Things are changing.

[nneonneo]

FWIW, Apple FaceTime worked fine for me three years ago (video calling between China and the US).

[PerfectDlite]

> Yes, many western social media and news sites are blocked but they are not "the internet"

Says who?

> and if you consider them as such then the west has exactly the same problem as the one you have just described.

What? So, "the evil west" considers social media and news sites "not internet" and blocks access to them?

[arjo129]

Local sites are considerably faster than foreign sites which don't work if they use https.