HN Explorer

55 comments

[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] thread
ikeboy
What?
mpiedrav
Winnie the Pooh is a tongue-in-cheek monicker for Xi Jinping. While it's banned behind the Great Firewall, it _should_ be available outside China. But, outside China, the link now redirects to a generic regional Disney site.

Nowadays, anything that upsets the Chinese government seems to be out of bounds for large corporations. It's always about profit and reputation.

Edit: redirection through JS is in place for some countries: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21211422

Way simpler than editing DNS zones.

HenryBemis
Seriously, even if someone doesn't like South Park (I'm more of a Rick and Morty type) you/we all have to watch South Park - Band in China. A very simple way to describe how China is playing this game (and we let them win).
mpiedrav
> (and we let them win)

That's indeed the key point. While the Chinese government can censor whatever it pleases and enforce any policies on its citizens, it's up to US corporations to decide whether they want to keep in line with them.

For what it's worth, corporations will be gradually replacing public institutions and governments in a few decades from now (at most in a century). Not by coups, but by making them largely irrelevant in everyday life.

Democracy will then be as archaic as monarchies.

smitty1e
And governments will do victory laps about protecting free speech, while the tyranny is outsourced to corporations.
jrs235
That's the point of (politicians) supporting mega corps. When only a few mega corps determine if you have a job and therefore can buy and survive they can indirectly control the masses.
Moru
Awkward, that episode is not awailable in Sweden on their homepage. You get redirected to another site that does not have season 23.
th0ma5
Site seems up for me https://winniethepooh.disney.com
tjoff
Swedish 404 for me.
llarsson
Works for me in Sweden (Ownit as ISP).
glenndebacker
Also in Belgium as it redirects to Disney.be/Winnie which does not exist
vnchr
Site is up but empty of content for me.
Sendotsh
Redirects to the Disney.com.au homepage for me (Australia).
HenryBemis
UK: tries to load a page and forwards me immediately to Disney.com landing page (checking from smartphone, Firefox), I didn't get to see any Winnie ;)

I watched Band in China (nice wordplay with BANneD) yesterday, this has already started... and for now the dictators are winning this battle. I hope they don't win this war.

Edit: South Park - Band in China.

mpiedrav
Redirects to Disney Latino (in Costa Rica).
radarsat1
Redirected to tv.disney.es for me (Spain)
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
Kuinox
Redirect to the french version of the shop and I can buy Winnie the Pooh branded things.
logotype
HK: redirects to Disney HK site (displays 404).
catalogia
Where are you that it's 404ing? Works fine for me in Japan.
jdkee
I am not sure why we are allowing China to censor the internet. The internet was designed to route around damage, which in this case is the prohibition of free speech. Despite what a despotic regime would prohibit.
oarsinsync
Layer 2 and Layer 3 of the internet continue to permit routing around damage at Layer 1.

Layer 8 continues to be able to create new damage at Layer 7. There's no technology in the world that can prevent people doing things that other people disagree with.

ReptileMan
China is not censoring anything. American companies are trying not to offend them.
remarkEon
This.

Redirect (or bifurcate) your anger, fellas.

JohnJamesRambo
What spineless imbeciles are at the head of these companies? Removing Winnie the Pooh? It’s like living in an absurd Monty Python sketch gone haywire.
nneonneo
Beloved as Winnie may be, he probably hasn't generated substantial revenue for Disney in a long time. People are only noticing that he's missing from parts of the Internet now that there's focus on him, but the reality seems to be that his internet presence has been fading for a long time.
spats1990
Seems up for me but redirects to Disney Korea's site because I'm in Korea.
Razengan
Whomever said they didn't know how World War III will be fought has their answer: Censorship and tariffs.

It has begun, and it's not nations versus nations, it's corporations versus citizens.

joshspankit
I feel like World War III was economic, and China already won.
Razengan
Rich people won. The peasants lost.

As it should be, eh?

awa
Works fine in the us right now
nneonneo
Site works for me. It appears to be a dynamic JavaScript redirect in certain countries:

    Disney.redirect = new Disney.Rdr({
        "can:qc": "http://www.disney.ca/",
        "usa,gum,pri,asm,vir,mnp,can": true,
        "bel": "http://www.disney.be/winnie/",
        "bgr": "http://www.disney.bg/disney-knigi-i-spisanija/",
        "cze": "http://www.disney.cz/medvidek-pu/",
        "zaf": "http://www.disney.co.za/winnie-the-pooh/",
        "bra": "http://www.disney.com.br/winniethepooh/",
        "dnk": "http://www.disney.dk/peter-plys/",
        "esp": "http://www.disney.es/winnie-the-pooh/",
        "fin": "http://www.disney.fi/nalle-puh/",
        "grc": "http://www.disney.gr/winnie-the-pooh/",
        "hun": "http://www.disney.hu/micimacko/",
        "isr": "http://www.disney.co.il/winnie-the-pooh/",
        "nld": "http://www.disney.nl/winnie-de-poeh/",
        "nor": "http://www.disney.no/ole-brumm/",
        "pol": "http://www.disney.pl/kubus/",
        "prt": "http://www.disney.pt/winnie-the-pooh/",
        "rou": "http://www.disney.ro/winnie-de-plus/",
        "swe": "http://www.disney.se/nalle-puh/",
        "tur": "http://www.disneyturkiye.com.tr/winnie-the-pooh/",
        "jpn": "http://character.disney.co.jp/winnie-the-pooh/",
        "chn": "http://www.dol.cn/minisite/winnie/",
        "kor": "http://www.disney.co.kr/",
        "twn": "http://www.disney.com.tw/pooh/",
        "hkg": "http://www.disney.com.hk/characters/",
        "sgp": "http://home.disney.com.sg/characters/classic/winnie-the-pooh/pooh/",
        "mys": "http://home.disney.com.my/characters/classic/winnie-the-pooh/pooh/",
        "rus": "http://www.disney.ru/pooh/",
        "col,ven,ecu,pry,ury,chl,per,bol,mex,cri,dom,slv,gtm,hnd,nic,pan,blz,arg": "http://www.disneylatino.com/winniethepooh/",
        "bhr,egy,jor,kwt,lbn,omn,pse,qat,sau,som,are,yem,dza,mar,tun": "http://www.disneyme.com/winnie-the-pooh/",
        "ita,vat,smr": "http://www.disney.it/winnie-the-pooh/",
        "aus,nzl": "http://home.disney.com.au/disneyfilms/winniethepooh.html",
        "gbr,irl": "http://www.disney.co.uk/winnie-the-pooh/",
        "deu,aut": "http://www.disney.de/winnie-puuh/",
        "fra,glp,mtq,reu,hti,myt": "http://www.disney.fr/winnie-l-ourson/"
    }).run()
In some jurisdictions (Quebec, Korea, Hong Kong) it redirects to a generic landing page, but in others it goes to a country-specific Winnie the Pooh page. Interestingly, in China it appears to redirect to "http://www.dol.cn/minisite/winnie/", although I cannot access th...
Moru
They seem to all end in 404 for me (Sweden). Maybe they are just in the middle of redesigning the homepage?
nneonneo
The redirects themselves haven't changed for 6 years, so they've probably suffered from link rot. Disney historically appears to have let individual country-specific sites manage themselves, and only more recently moved to unify them which probably broke all the links.

So yeah, they are definitely in the middle of redesigning all of the country sites.

bArray
Hmm, the Chinese site seems to be down in general: http://web.archive.org/web/20160604100313/http://www.dol.cn/...

Translating the page [1]:

> can not find this page

> The page you are searching for may have been deleted,

> renamed, or temporarily unavailable.

>

> Please try the following:

>

> Make sure the website address shown in the address

> bar of your browser is spelled and formatted correctly.

> If you reached the page by clicking the link, contact

> your webmaster to let them know that the link is not in

> the correct format.

> Click the Back button to try another link.

>

> HTTP Error 404 - File or directory not found.

> Internet Information Service (IIS)

>

> Technical information (for technical support staff)

>

> Go to Microsoft Product Support Services and search

> for titles that include "HTTP" and "404".

> Open IIS Help (accessible in IIS Manager (inetmgr))

> and search for topics titled "Site Settings," "General

> Administrative Tasks," and "About Custom Error Messages."

Looks like the website hasn't gone anywhere for a while now.

[1] https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto...

gamblor956
Winnie the Pooh is still visible from America.
shakna
I wonder if this means efforts to release my family's IP from Disney would be more likely now.

I'm a cousin so I'm less directly involved, but the Milne's have been trying to get Pooh released to the Public Domain for years.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
pcl
It works for me from my VPN sites in:

US, NL, IN, AU, JP

It fails from my sites in:

NO, HK, CN (Shanghai; redirects to the HK domain), SG, IL

In many of the failing countries, it simply turns into a redirect to the country-specific Disney domain, but Norway and HK get not-found messages after the redirects, and the Singapore domain doesn’t load at all.

(I couldn’t test my Canada VPN site, as my corporate VPNs stopped connecting, presumably due to some sort of rate limiting.)

rambojazz
But what was the problem with Winnie the Pooh? Who is offended by it so much to require a complete removal?
mizzao
Only one comment so far in this thread has mentioned the obvious timing: Winnie the Pooh is often used to poke fun at Xi Jinping, and as the Hong Kong protests have started to garner more attention the CCP is starting to pressure more companies to censor undesirable content.