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by abc-xyz 2777 days ago
Right now I think GitHub is the best way to share news that the Chinese government doesn't like, because it's the only Western platform that they rely on and are afraid to ban.. that being said, I doubt a Microsoft-owned GitHub will protect the users the same way GitHub did before the acquisition.
1 comments
flap 2777 days ago
too late, github is already banned in China
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abc-xyz 2777 days ago
No it's not. Just asked my friends in China and tested with https://www.comparitech.com/privacy-security-tools/blockedin... (try with github.com and reddit.com). The Chinese are heavily invested in GitHub, so if/when they do ban it then you can be sure it won't go unnoticed.
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yorwba 2777 days ago
GitHub has been banned in the past and yes it didn't go unnoticed ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5090700 ), but that's not much consolation when you suddenly can't access it. Currently they mostly don't block it ( https://en.greatfire.org/https/github.com ), but if GitHub ever became popular among ordinary citizens (as opposed to programmers) downloading e.g. censorship circumvention tools from GitHub, they'd probably find a way to mirror most git repos, except those they want to block.
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abc-xyz 2777 days ago
Indeed, and they've resorted to DDoSing GitHub precisely because it's so difficult (in terms of value lost) for them to block it (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub).

Sure, they could setup a selfhosted GitLab and mirror repos, but doing so would severely hurt them.

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est 2777 days ago
Kids these days forgot how Google or Gmail was banned.

Yeah it's very difficult to "block Google" and they are "afraid are afraid to ban" Gmail.

Why makes you think that a gov use tanks against its own people have anything to fear?

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abc-xyz 2776 days ago
Obviously there is a limit to what GitHub would be able to get away with before getting banned..

My point is that GitHub currently provide so much value to Chinese research and tech that banning it would be extremely costly for them. Would they ban CNN for writing a negative article that not a single Chinese citizen had seen? No doubt. Would they ban GitHub for hosting a repo sharing the truth about the Tiananmem Massacre, the concentration camps, etc? No, at least not until this repo gained a lot of traction in China, and the question then is how many people would they allow to see the content before finally pulling the trigger? I'm imagining a lot.. And I also suspect that they would respond by attacking GitHub/Microsoft and even open up for GitHub again when they felt the storm had been weathered. FYI, all of these assumptions are based on their past actions with regard to GitHub and other websites/companies.. if you read up on it then you would probably reach the same conclusion.

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