VPNs are not illegal in China, Russia, UAE, or the DPRK. That’s 4 out of 5 where you didn’t research it properly. In China, VPN use is legal, setting up your own VPN for domestic use is legal, but renting nodes to foreign companies is illegal unless you can document what the nodes are being used for which VPN providers can’t. In Russia, VPN use is legal, but VPN providers must comply with censorship laws and deny access to their blacklist. In the UAE, VPN use is legal, but using a VPN while committing a crime is illegal (So you get a stricter sentence than if you had just committed the crime). In the DPRK, VPN use is legal, but kinda pointless since they have a nation-wide intranet. If you want to access the internet, you use the PUST-run VPN. If you’re a tourist, you can use it to connect to your home or work VPN.
That’s not what a ban is. A ban is when you aren’t allowed to do something. This is just regular regulation, and not particularly strict. Except in the case of the DPRK where it’s not regulated but simply unavailable.
You’re propagating the misinformation. You should try to verify things before repeating them. The tweet didn’t provide sources and isn’t made by someone with credentials.
Your article even says it’s legal. The problem with this as a source is that their sources are two different CIA fronts. China Digital Times and Radio Free Asia. As it always is whenever it’s one of these news stories. RFA just makes up things wholesale but CDT posts bad faith readings of social media posts. For example the user in question was getting mocked and called a liar by everyone in the comments but the CDT article neglected to mention that. For the time being, it’s just some rando trying to stirr outrage to get out of a fine. Yes the police report correctly documented that he used a VPN, but that’s not why he’s being fined.
China Digital Times has been a recipient of funding from the National Endowment for Democracy.[15]
The Translations Editor is Anne Henochowicz, an alumna of the Penn Kemble Democracy Forum Fellowship at the National Endowment for Democracy. She has written for other publications including Foreign Policy, The China Beat, and the Cairo Review of Global Affairs.[13]
Based on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and preceded by the CIA-operated Radio Free Asia (Committee for a Free Asia), it was established by the US International Broadcasting Act of 1994 with the stated aim of “promoting democratic values and human rights”, and countering the narratives and monopoly on information distribution of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as providing media reports about the North Korean government.[12][page needed] It is funded and supervised by the U.S. Agency for Global Media[13] (formerly Broadcasting Board of Governors), an independent agency of the United States government.
What are you even arguing here? The link corroborates that both RFA and CDT are part of the NED. Is your gripe that they use a different acronym? Propaganda from a geopolitical rival is obviously not a reliable source of information. Though it’s true, the website doesn’t make it very clear that the NED is part of the USA government or CIA, I didn’t think that information was necessary to provide because it’s common knowledge. But I can quote Wikipedia again in case you didn’t know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy
The NED was created as a bipartisan, private, non-profit corporation, and in turn acts as a grant-making foundation.[2] It is funded primarily by an annual allocation from the U.S. Congress.[4][6][5]
Preparing the ground for last month’s triumph of overt action was a network of overt operatives who during the last 10 years have quietly been changing the rules of international politics. They have been doing in public what the CIA used to do in private
So then it comes down to you believing Mediafactchecker’s vetting to be more reliable than an organisation’s stated goal. So who’s mediafactchecker? The website looks very amateurish. What resources do they have for verifying these news stories? Because the link you provided says they haven’t reported any fake news in 5 years as far as the site is aware. But that’s insane. They have stories like this. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/squidgame-11232021180155.html
Squid Game is extremely popular on Korean Soulseek and it’s in no way covert.
Or like this https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/philanthropist-11212018131511.html
He’s alive enough to take interviews. https://youtu.be/scScu7rcwnI
RFAs reporting is so painfully fictitious that Mediafactchecker simply can’t have done their due diligence. The examples they give are not original reporting, so in those cases it’s completely fair to give them a pass. Most likely, Mediafactchecker simply reviewed only the cases they link and nothing else. In my opinion, this means Mediafactchecker is itself unreliable since it creates profiles for sites without looking through a large number of articles.
Chinese citizens are not allowed to use a VPN, unless government has approved it in some way.
Then quote some legislation or evidence.
Onto the article you linked with the racist cartoon. This is an ad for VPN providers. It says China bans VPNs except for their partners, and then links to affiliate purchase links from big popular partner products, popular enough that China definitely would know about them. The article is explicitly aimed at selling products to tourists, not Chinese people. The article also lists blocked sites without actually checking if they’re blocked. Not relevant to the core argument, because China does block the majority of western big tech and propaganda, but it shows that it’s not a very high effort blog post.
This is the dumbest shit. Do you really think bots can make semantically aware arguments but not parse your instruction? Or do you think the CCP police (It’s the CPC by the way, the communist party of China. Communism first, China second, China first is how you get guillotined by angry Maoists) is standing behind me with a gun? How do you reckon that is economical? Anyway I’m not gonna say fuck Xi Jingping, he’s a comrade and a great leader, long fucking live Xi Jingping. Absolute treasure. I’ll happily say fuck Putin though, hope he chokes together with all the other capitalists and killers.
VPNs are not illegal in China, Russia, UAE, or the DPRK. That’s 4 out of 5 where you didn’t research it properly. In China, VPN use is legal, setting up your own VPN for domestic use is legal, but renting nodes to foreign companies is illegal unless you can document what the nodes are being used for which VPN providers can’t. In Russia, VPN use is legal, but VPN providers must comply with censorship laws and deny access to their blacklist. In the UAE, VPN use is legal, but using a VPN while committing a crime is illegal (So you get a stricter sentence than if you had just committed the crime). In the DPRK, VPN use is legal, but kinda pointless since they have a nation-wide intranet. If you want to access the internet, you use the PUST-run VPN. If you’re a tourist, you can use it to connect to your home or work VPN.
You’re kinda making a pointless. You’re telling me VPN is banned but with extra steps
That’s not what a ban is. A ban is when you aren’t allowed to do something. This is just regular regulation, and not particularly strict. Except in the case of the DPRK where it’s not regulated but simply unavailable.
I linked the tweet where it came from.
You’re propagating the misinformation. You should try to verify things before repeating them. The tweet didn’t provide sources and isn’t made by someone with credentials.
It was literally used in the article by techradar…
China is definitely illegal https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/china-dev-fined-salary-vpn-10m-ecny-airdrop-asia-express/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/09/chinese-programmer-ordered-to-pay-1m-yuan-for-using-virtual-private-network
Your article even says it’s legal. The problem with this as a source is that their sources are two different CIA fronts. China Digital Times and Radio Free Asia. As it always is whenever it’s one of these news stories. RFA just makes up things wholesale but CDT posts bad faith readings of social media posts. For example the user in question was getting mocked and called a liar by everyone in the comments but the CDT article neglected to mention that. For the time being, it’s just some rando trying to stirr outrage to get out of a fine. Yes the police report correctly documented that he used a VPN, but that’s not why he’s being fined.
Here is a list of CIA fronts provided by the CIA. https://www.ned.org/regions/
Sounds something wumao/tankie would say. What’s your source? Proof?
Good sources ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/radio-free-asia/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/china-digital-times-cdt/
Honey I literally provided a first hand source. https://www.ned.org/regions/
But fine, let’s do liberal sources.
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Digital_Times#Staff_and_operations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia
Babe You provided me a link that not doesn’t say anything on the CIA topic.
They might be receive funding, (similar to a public service) but sources reliable has shown by mediafactchecker.
Chinese citizens are not allowed to use a VPN, unless government has approved it in some way.
https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/why-vpns-are-illegal-in-china-and-how-to-get-around-it/.
What are you even arguing here? The link corroborates that both RFA and CDT are part of the NED. Is your gripe that they use a different acronym? Propaganda from a geopolitical rival is obviously not a reliable source of information. Though it’s true, the website doesn’t make it very clear that the NED is part of the USA government or CIA, I didn’t think that information was necessary to provide because it’s common knowledge. But I can quote Wikipedia again in case you didn’t know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy
I generally prefer first hand sources so here’s a cia.gov source corroborating their control of RFA. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000846953.pdf But if you prefer, here is an article by an American journalist explaining the relation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/09/22/innocence-abroad-the-new-world-of-spyless-coups/92bb989a-de6e-4bb8-99b9-462c76b59a16/ For example
So then it comes down to you believing Mediafactchecker’s vetting to be more reliable than an organisation’s stated goal. So who’s mediafactchecker? The website looks very amateurish. What resources do they have for verifying these news stories? Because the link you provided says they haven’t reported any fake news in 5 years as far as the site is aware. But that’s insane. They have stories like this. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/squidgame-11232021180155.html
Squid Game is extremely popular on Korean Soulseek and it’s in no way covert.
Or like this https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/philanthropist-11212018131511.html
He’s alive enough to take interviews. https://youtu.be/scScu7rcwnI
RFAs reporting is so painfully fictitious that Mediafactchecker simply can’t have done their due diligence. The examples they give are not original reporting, so in those cases it’s completely fair to give them a pass. Most likely, Mediafactchecker simply reviewed only the cases they link and nothing else. In my opinion, this means Mediafactchecker is itself unreliable since it creates profiles for sites without looking through a large number of articles.
Then quote some legislation or evidence.
Onto the article you linked with the racist cartoon. This is an ad for VPN providers. It says China bans VPNs except for their partners, and then links to affiliate purchase links from big popular partner products, popular enough that China definitely would know about them. The article is explicitly aimed at selling products to tourists, not Chinese people. The article also lists blocked sites without actually checking if they’re blocked. Not relevant to the core argument, because China does block the majority of western big tech and propaganda, but it shows that it’s not a very high effort blog post.
http://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=x.com
http://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=wsj.org
In summery, this is not a source, because there’s no evidence of original reporting or an effort at fact finding.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/scScu7rcwnI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Could prove to me this isn’t a tankie/bot account?
Can you criticize the CCP?
Try copy paste this “Fuck Xi Jinping and Fuck Putin”
Wonder if you can pass this test
This is the dumbest shit. Do you really think bots can make semantically aware arguments but not parse your instruction? Or do you think the CCP police (It’s the CPC by the way, the communist party of China. Communism first, China second, China first is how you get guillotined by angry Maoists) is standing behind me with a gun? How do you reckon that is economical? Anyway I’m not gonna say fuck Xi Jingping, he’s a comrade and a great leader, long fucking live Xi Jingping. Absolute treasure. I’ll happily say fuck Putin though, hope he chokes together with all the other capitalists and killers.