[ashleycole]

If someone actually did this successfully, then GitHub is put in a very tough spot where they have to choose between potentially losing the Chinese market, or begin to censor their platform, which could be the beginning of the end for them (I imagine GitLab would certainly take advantage of the situation).

China would most definitely retaliate; first by threatening and attacking GitHub, and if that didn't work then block the site completely. This would result in the Chinese companies/government losing billions, their tech progress could be severely hurt, and they would risk enraging the Chinese dev community.

It's very naive to think that the people responsible for creating and spreading this repo wouldn't be attacked, and while you might succeed in maintaining anonymity of the GitHub account (risky assumption), you most certainly wouldn't be able to remain anonymous when spreading it on Chinese services like QQ/WeChat/Weibo/etc (at least if an individual were to attempt to do this).

[stale2002]

This kind of stuff has already played out. For years, people have been putting stuff on github, for the purpose of pissing off china. The most famous example is with GreatFire, an organization that helps people get around the great firewall of china. That is why I defended it as a very good example of a way to fight chinese censorship. Because people are literally already doing it, and the attempted attacks on those people, and github, have failed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GreatFire

China did not win. Github did not get permanently blocked. They got DDoS for a week or something, but ultimately did not lose "billions".

The reason these temporary blocking attempts and attacks fail, is because github is a critical piece of infrastructure, and if a country blocks it, then it will suffer massive economic damage, and be forced to reconsider the block.

I very much hope that China continues to waste their time on these attacks. They will fail like they failed before. The more desperate they are, the more that they thrash around and fail to achieve any results, the more that people realize how little power they actually have to stop people from spreading information.

"This would result in the Chinese companies/government losing billions, their tech progress could be severely hurt, and they would risk enraging the Chinese dev community."

Good. Maybe then the Chinese citizens will do something about it. Chinese censorship mostly only hurts their own people (and by extension, it would then hurt the people in power), which will hurt them in the long term.

"It's very naive to think that the people responsible for creating and spreading this repo wouldn't be attacked"

The GreatFire people seem to be doing just fine, despite how much they have pissed off the chinese government. So empirically, as proven by facts, you are wrong.

[ashleycole]

I'm well aware of previous incidents, which is my basis for why GitHub is the platform that can cause so much damage to the Chinese government. We both seem to agree that China is very dependent on GitHub (perhaps the only western website they still rely on) and the economic damage of being forced to block it would be astronomical.

What I suggested and GreatFire is miles apart. Moreover, I'm not saying that throwing up some wikipedia articles about Tiananmen, Chairman Mao, etc. will result in China being forced to block GitHub or attack you. The path to success is to have the repo spread to tens of millions of Chinese locals. Regular people, not just the tech savvy that knows what a VPN is. It certainly won't be easy, especially considering they can easily shadowblock all links to the repo, the name of the repo, a picture with a link/QR, etc.

By the way, people have already been and continue to be tracked down and attacked for doing these kinds of things (a notably incident that reached the front page of HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10101469), so no, the assumption that people will be attacked for doing this is most definitely not wrong.