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Lemmy.ml is supposedly blocked in China
(emacs.ch)
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this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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As the comment there says, the surprise is that not every instance is blocked yet.
But I've seen hardly any Chinese on the fediverse, so they probably don't care that much. And it's not just that I've stuck to the English-speaking parts, there's been lots of Japanese and various European languages. I suppose even if it otherwise would have a chance to catch on there, Chinese users know that if it did it quickly would get blocked.
Wouldn't they just use a VPN? I know they're technically illegal in China but from what I've heard lots of people still use them regularly.
I feel like I should say that a VPN isn't a magic bullet. Even if its configured correctly to totally obfuscate the data and the final endpoint of the traffic it's still blatantly obvious that a VPN is in use. Given that the CCP monitors all of this stuff it wouldn't surprise me to learn that if you run a VPN long or often enough without providing stating why that it'll either end up blocked or you'll end up in trouble.
Which is why Chinese users don't use standard VPNs, they use obfuscated proxies with protocols like Shadowsocks and V2Ray, which mask the tunneled traffic as innocuous HTTPS traffic.
That's a fair point, but what you are talking about isn't a "VPN", at least not as they're commonly known and understood. Please remember that my response was directed to a user whose comment boiled down to "Get a VPN, that will solve the problem." A regular VPN will absolutely not the solve the problem.