Comment on Iran plans permanent break from global internet, say activists

• floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Are you not aware of the great firewall?

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  • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Different. Iran’s proposal would, if enacted, literally makes communications to the outside world impossible, since they are literally disconnecting the internet from the outside. It’s more like North Korea. In constrast, VPNs are still a thing in China… for now at least. Not every western site gets blocked. There’s a Chinese lemmy instance btw. Information flows in and out of China all the time.

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    • dantheclamman@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      China seems to vary. When I was there, VPNs worked, even Meta and Google sites were accessible on my T-mobile SIM. Other times those things are not accessible

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      • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Most people in China can’t get a foreign sim lol, so that roaming thing only applies to foreigners.

        I watched a video about how to bypass the firewall. Apparantly you could visit a hotel that tourists go to and like just book a room and you can use their wifi… to access the world wide web without wirewall.

        Or you somehow order an iPhone or Samsung that’s made for the international market, and if you have to import it, hope that the customs overlooks it (I mean it’s just a cell phone, not a drone or radios or anything scary looking, shouldn’t be too suspicious), then once you get it, purchase an overseas esim and then you can use that roaming and get access to the outside internet.

        Or just walk up to some random foreigner and be like: “Ay yo, can you help me get a VPN, I can pay you in cash” (I mean you probably need a translator app if you grew up in mainland China) and hope they don’t find you too sus and actually helps you.

        Or if you know diasporas willing to help…

        I mean I could probably buy a vpn here in the US, then send the vpn credentials and the .exe or .apks via an encrypted .7z compressed file to their qq email with an innocuous-looking title, then say the password over the phone, or mail the password… I doubt they inspect every letter.

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    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Exactly, China filters their Internet. Just like Facebook and Twitter do. Instead of being at the whims of two rich individuals it’s at the whim of the government.

      Not that one is better than the other, but US users experience the same (from a technical standpoint, no ideologically) kind of filtering but they’re not told that it is the great Zuck firewall or the great Elon firewall even though it is used in the same way to filter topics and ideas that the owner doesn’t like.

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      • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Exactly, China filters their Internet. Just like Facebook and Twitter do. Instead of being at the whims of two rich individuals it’s at the whim of the government.

        Not that one is better than the other, but US users experience the same (from a technical standpoint, not ideologically) kind of filtering but they’re not told that it is the great Zuck firewall or the great Elon firewall even though it is used in the same way to filter topics and ideas that the owner doesn’t like.

        The US doesn’t really block VPNs or many websites. I can access Baidu and QQ stuff in the US without a VPN. My parents regularly use WeChat here in the US without a VPN. In contrast, in China you can’t access a lot of western sites like Facebook/Twitter/Wikipedia, and, intermittently, Reddit, gets blocked without a VPN, and VPNs are much more difficult to obtain and use in China compared to the US.

        As for Facebook/Twitter censorship, that’s on the people. They could easily switch to alternative platforms without using any VPNs but they just choose not to.

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    • Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      What’s the chinese lemmy instance?

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      • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        fasheng.ing

        It’s very close the Mandarin Pinyin of 发声音 (fāshēngyīn) (to make noise / to speak)

        I don’t think they have too much activity tho

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• vpol@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  China kinda did already. But they could make it official.

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  • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Stop trying to make BRICS happen it’s not going to happen.

    Also it sounds like you want BRICS to be a group of country where they don’t have freedom of speech? Why would this be a good thing?

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    • vpol@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I don’t try.

      Just based on China, Iran, and Russia, it seems kinda logical for them to agree on the tech side of things (just to make it look like a big thing).

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