..on Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 08:37:31PM +0800, Martin Johnson wrote: > Good link Julian. The article makes some very good points. Others are > misleading though. For one, most porn sites are not blocked, and I don't > think that's a reason for circumventing the GFW (that and more in > https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/dec/8-absurd-quotes-censorship-china). > Also, I've never seen messages like "Sorry, the host you were looking for > does not exist, has been deleted, or is being investigated." The error > messages you get when you try to access blocked websites are standard > errors set by the browser - "The connection has timed out", "The connection > was reset" etc. > > I also think the estimates of how many people circumvent the GFW are often > exaggerated. Facebook itself doesn't claim to have more than a million > users in China. That is, they reach less than 0.2% of the Internet > population.
Thanks for the clarifications Martin. Again, it's good to read people 'on the ground'! Cheers, Julian > On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 8:19 PM, Julian Oliver <jul...@julianoliver.com>wrote: > > > ..on Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 02:01:10PM +0200, Maxim Kammerer wrote: > > > On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 1:03 PM, Martin Johnson <greatf...@greatfire.org> > > wrote: > > > > Yes, the question is what you call "working well". The > > censorship-warning > > > > feature added last year was clearly improving the user experience. > > Removing > > > > it worsened the user experience again. > > > > > > Is this backed up by actual user experiences from China? > > > > > > “When Wired.co.uk spoke to a few Chinese residents about the disabled > > > Google feature, they were not even aware of it because they used VPNs, > > > demonstrating Google might not be taking into account just how savvy > > > its users are at all.” [1] > > > > I found the article 'Five Myths about the Chinese Internet' a very useful > > read, > > especially as regards savvy-factor of users. We in the West love to > > generalise > > 'the situation' in China but often have little or no idea as to the scale, > > scope > > or dynamics at play. Another reason I find it particularly valuable to be > > reading people on this list that are operating there. > > > > The article was walled off at ForeignPolicy.com (ironically) but is > > available > > here in its entirety: > > > > Five Myths about the Chinese Internet: > > > > > > http://strategicstudyindia.blogspot.de/2012/11/five-myths-about-chinese-internet.html > > > > "Chinese Internet users are cosmopolitan, educated, and informed. Many > > use, > > or at least know they can use, circumvention technology like VPNs > > (Virtual > > Private Networks) to access blocked content." > > > > Cheers, > > > > -- > > Julian Oliver > > http://julianoliver.com > > http://criticalengineering.org > > -- > > Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: > > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech > > > -- > Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- Julian Oliver http://julianoliver.com http://criticalengineering.org -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
