> China's not blocking out the sharing of ideas though. Until a few months ago, Andrew Ng worked at Baidu!
Ok they are bottlenecking data... As I've already mentioned this is an extremely inefficient way to share data. Sharing data using physically present word of mouth is a lot more expensive and slower than sharing it instantly via an open internet connection.
Is there any indication that scientists predominantly use whatsapp, so this would block innovation? When you say "this is an extremely inefficient way to share data", what do you mean? It's not like China doesn't have its own messengers, and it's not like whatsapp is the only way for people to communicate over the Internet..
You commonly hear scientists complain that they spend a lot of time trying VPNs and working around the latest crop of GFW restrictions, yes. Whatsapp isn't the only limited thing in China.
Last I heard academics had started getting filtered internet connections too, and were finding it hard to collaborate with non-Chinese academics as a consequence.
Ok they are bottlenecking data... As I've already mentioned this is an extremely inefficient way to share data. Sharing data using physically present word of mouth is a lot more expensive and slower than sharing it instantly via an open internet connection.