[slacka]

I lived in China when Google announced that they were refusing to comply with government censorship. Shortly after the announcement Google was blocked by the great firewall. When big sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Google are blocked, it drives the general population to alternatives like Tor and VPNs, making censorship less effective.

http://gizmodo.com/5446712/google-refuses-to-continue-censor...

[akurtzhs]

Are those sites really that big in China? I'd think Baidu and Sina Weibo are far more relevant to the general population.

[slacka]

Before it was censored, Google had about 1/3 of the browser market. People with education always used it for english or foreign searches but generally prefered Baido for Chinese.

I lived in Shenzhen which borders Hong Kong. Facebook is huge in HK, so there was a demand for access in SZ. Surprisingly many people asked me for my facebook and I saw many coworkers using it too. When I was in Beijing and Shanghai, I didn't see it used as much except with the young, wealthy international crowd.

For wikipedia, the engineers loved to use it. I even introduced a few of them to Tor when they asked me how they could use it outside of the office.

[matthewrudy]

Weibo and Weixin are incredibly popular. But middle class intellectuals who want to prove their western credentials will generally have a facebook account. VPNs and proxies are fairly common, so access isn't really a problem, its just a hassle.

[seanmcdirmid]

That was before they started their vicious attacks on VPNs. We've been through 3 paid ones this year, and still can't find one that works.

[slacka]

I have a free Amazon EC2 VPN that's also acting as a Tor Bridge. Over the past 4 years, between Tor and my personal VPN, I've never once been blocked in China.

Setting up the bridge takes about 5 min: https://cloud.torproject.org/#get_started

Setting up the PPTP server another 5 min: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PPTPServer

If you want facebook on your phone, you'll need to setup a L2TP VPN, since China Unicom blocks PPTP. Instructions can be found here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/L2TPServer

NOTE: A bridge is not the same as an exit node. Exit notes attract attention from authorities, not bridges. If you are just running a bridge, you are only helping people circumvent government firewalls to join the Tor network. The default EC2 Tor Cloud images only run as a bridge.

[seanmcdirmid]

Amazon ec2 is blocked on my home ISP.

[slacka]

You can always use Tor to set it up from home. I was in China when I setup mine. Since I returned, I never had an issue accessing it from any ISP in the states.

[matthewrudy]

I was using VPN ninja without problems earlier in the year. Haven't been to the mainland since march though.

[libian]

So my friends working at Google said that Google decided to go out of China because of Tibet, i.e. Google supports Tibet's independence from China as separate country, and that the whole thing about content censorship was something that Google was able to put up with and wasn't the reason for its leaving.

Not sure if this were actually the case, but my friends were pretty firm about this. If it were actually true, lol, the whole world is fooled. Let's go figure out how to make Tibet free so that Google can go back to China. =P

[seanmcdirmid]

Google and Wikipedia have been blocked but not very often, and they've been pretty reliable for the last couple of years (no longer get penalty boxed on google).

[chrischen]

The general population of China do not use Google, gmail, wikipedia, or facebook.

Surprisingly, google maps is doing ok.