I tried github several times and every time it fails to load at least for a couple of the places but it does load intermittently from all of the servers. I wonder what that means - is it being throttled so that it loads slowly? The same doesn't happen with other websites - for example, my website consistently shows ok from all servers.
I typed in https://news.ycombinator.com/ and it removed the https:// from my query. http and https are not the same URL, and in particular may have different "blocked" statuses!
As someone who travels to China fairly frequently I can say I've found this site to be inconsistent.
That said, different locations within China have inconsistently differing levels of blockage (for instance, you can access many more places from within the greater Shanghai area than from within nearby Hangzhou and can find differences in what is available between Hangzhou and Beijing) so I think it is difficult to definitely state that this or that site is completely unavailable from anywhere within China.
Lots of it is applied at province level, as I understand it. There is not 'one firewall'. That's probably why this site gives you a result for five different provinces.
actually what blockedinchina.net does it, it takes the website URl from form and query it from a system whose internet is tunneled to a China based server. So the qurey reply is based on internet on that particular server(internet on a particular computer or ISP in China), hence this might not be reliable.
Amazingly, it was the response page itself that got blocked(, TCP reset to be precise). Perhaps the Great Fire Wall read 'www.facebook.com' as a substring in url, and subsequently killed it.
A page like this might be really useful, but it's very difficult for it to tell the whole story, and the story is always changing.
In my experience, China's government uses many methods to sabotage the Internet, and the methods used against specific services change very often. I believe change so often because it's more disruptive.
Some services seem "just plain" blocked, as in the connections are being sniped by RST or something. Others (e.g., Google services like Maps) are in what I believe to be a "degrade" mode, where perhaps half the page is allowed to load, but not enough to be functional, in order to make the service look broken and to be more annoying to the user. I met many people in China who hated Google services because they were so slow and/or defective--due entirely to the sabotage.
They also seem to mess up a lot of stuff via DNS. They also seem to disrupt VPN. They also inject ads into page content, e.g., ads in the lower right corner of espn.com or whitehouse.gov.
Also, each Chinese ISP is quite different in what is blocked: even if their are some popular givens (facebook, youtube, twitter), there is some flexibility with respect to imugr, wikimedia, and Google PLUS.
> I met many people in China who hated Google services because they were so slow and/or defective--due entirely to the sabotage.
If you call up your ISP and tell them you can't get to Facebook, they'll tell you it must be Facebook's fault. The government won't admit to blocking or interfering with these websites...the GFW technically doesn't exist.
Right on time since I'm going there for Christmas holidays. I used to use HotspotShield as a VPN when I was in Beijing but that was 5 years ago, anyone knows a good VPN right now?
wikipedia.org was unreachable in Shanghai one week ago whether blocked or not. Wikipedia is incredibly useful, I can understand blocking individual articles (as they do in Saudi Arabia, for example) but not the site as a whole.
actually what blockedinchina.net does it, it takes the website URl from form and query it from a system whose internet is tunneled to a China based server. So the qurey reply is based on internet on that particular server(internet on a particular computer or ISP in China), hence this might not be reliable.
One question: Is Tor now totally blocked in China?
Tor does not work here for me, even with bridges. Any words of wisdom?
Otherwise: A lot of useful comments here already.
- what is blocked today, maybe blocked or not blocked tomorrow. E.g. I could not make my CC payment yesterday. After some hours, the site worked. I doubt it was the banks fault.
- Different providers seem to block different sites
- Many VPN are blocked, https often does not work (e.g. with wikipedia)
The blockedinchina.net seems a little bit like snake oil with very little reliability.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 87.4 ms ] threadAlso FYI: it gave an error when I entered this HN submission, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6666214
That said, different locations within China have inconsistently differing levels of blockage (for instance, you can access many more places from within the greater Shanghai area than from within nearby Hangzhou and can find differences in what is available between Hangzhou and Beijing) so I think it is difficult to definitely state that this or that site is completely unavailable from anywhere within China.
It leads to inconsistency but it stops some of the mistakes that result from an overly centralized government.
Amazingly, it was the response page itself that got blocked(, TCP reset to be precise). Perhaps the Great Fire Wall read 'www.facebook.com' as a substring in url, and subsequently killed it.
In my experience, China's government uses many methods to sabotage the Internet, and the methods used against specific services change very often. I believe change so often because it's more disruptive.
Some services seem "just plain" blocked, as in the connections are being sniped by RST or something. Others (e.g., Google services like Maps) are in what I believe to be a "degrade" mode, where perhaps half the page is allowed to load, but not enough to be functional, in order to make the service look broken and to be more annoying to the user. I met many people in China who hated Google services because they were so slow and/or defective--due entirely to the sabotage.
They also seem to mess up a lot of stuff via DNS. They also seem to disrupt VPN. They also inject ads into page content, e.g., ads in the lower right corner of espn.com or whitehouse.gov.
> I met many people in China who hated Google services because they were so slow and/or defective--due entirely to the sabotage.
If you call up your ISP and tell them you can't get to Facebook, they'll tell you it must be Facebook's fault. The government won't admit to blocking or interfering with these websites...the GFW technically doesn't exist.
Lists that weibo is blocked! http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=weibo.com
http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=google.com
I actually want it to be blocked in China.
Otherwise: A lot of useful comments here already. - what is blocked today, maybe blocked or not blocked tomorrow. E.g. I could not make my CC payment yesterday. After some hours, the site worked. I doubt it was the banks fault.
- Different providers seem to block different sites
- Many VPN are blocked, https often does not work (e.g. with wikipedia)
The blockedinchina.net seems a little bit like snake oil with very little reliability.