
GitHub Has Become a Haven for China's Censored Internet Users - js2
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/10/709490855/github-has-become-a-haven-for-chinas-censored-internet-users
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smaili
Wouldn't this just add more fuel to the fire for China to crackdown on access
to GitHub and ultimately make it even harder for engineers there to use and
contribute to projects? Only asking because I recall a time where they did
indeed block GitHub because of some of the projects hosted and I'd imagine
this might potentially cause a similar course of action.

~~~
_bxg1
I don't think they could afford to block it because China's tech sector is
dependent on lots of American-developed open source projects hosted on it.
They could set up their own git service and fork them, but they wouldn't get
the benefit of ongoing development; they'd be on their own. It's almost like
connecting with the rest of the world has tangible benefits...

~~~
johnzim
Yup the PRC's approach so far has been to force the rest of the world of
kowtow, company by company, to their ridiculous petulant insecurities and
autocratic fascism. That way they get the best of both worlds - a connection
to a wide world the paranoid, boot-black politburo need not fear.

~~~
throwaway32366
Is that not what most countries would do if they had the power to?

~~~
johnchristopher
I was recently told on HN that Russia is trying to set up something like that
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19521584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19521584)

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mmastrac
One of my long-idle projects is oddly popular in China (it's about 30 lines of
shell script total) so I've been adding pro-Tibet and pro-Taiwan messaging.
Figured it's worth using it for _some_ good.

Anyone have a suggestion for a good pro-democracy message that could be
targeted at Chinese developers?

~~~
fxbl0i
I find it concerning that someone might think it's appropriate to add
political messages to software projects. Imagine if some software developer
added a "fuck Bernie Sanders!!!" remark to the README of a popular repo. Just
my two cents.

~~~
mmastrac
Well if Bernie Sanders becomes a totalitarian dictator that starts suppressing
democracy, I'll be more than happy to add "fuck Bernie Sanders" to all my
repos.

~~~
wesammikhail
who defines what a totalitarian dictatorship is? you? Here is an example:

If you ask most christians (or minorities) in Syria what they think of
Bashar´s leadership, they´d hail him as their christ and savior. Meanwhile,
for us here in the west he´s a dictator and a murderer.

I am not justifying any actions or atrocities committed by such an actor. I am
merely point to the fact that if you want to politicize an aspect of our
lives, you need to at least have rigid and firm definitions. Otherwise, all
you end up doing is giving ammunition to your opposition to do the same. Ex. I
can add the same about Trump now into my repos and call him a fascist, or do
the same thing when Obama was in office. Or heck, imagine having "LOCK HER UP"
at the top of each ReadMe.

That cannot possibly be a healthy way of going about things.

~~~
mmastrac
I'm more that comfortable with my stance. You're invoking the slippery slope.

~~~
BoorishBears
That's not "the slippery slope", it's a valid point.

Yeesh not everything has to be a fallacy, and honestly if even if it had been
he still had a point, a fallacy doesn't magically invalidate the argument
being made.

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yorwba
Text-only version:
[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=709490855](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=709490855)

Also, previous discussion of 996.icu:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507620)

and about Chinese-made browsers blocking the GitHub repo (not 996.icu itself):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19553681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19553681)

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cronix
I think all this will do is eventually lead to China copying repositories from
github that they agree with, make their own internal repo system and block
access to the actual github.

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neuro
Github's has also become a haven for starred repositories gamed from China.

~~~
Bombthecat
Could you please explain what you mean? Or what the benefits would be?

~~~
glasslion
If you have a 1k+ star repo, you might get a higher salary when finding a new
job

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aasasd
Sometime in 2018 or '17 I've read that GitHub is again blocked and programmers
have to switch jobs because it's pretty hard to do programming without GitHub
now. So, _they_ can come after your repos too.

(The source of the info was a Chinese redditor who makes Arduino-like robots,
so I hope she knew what she was talking about.)

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js2
Prior discussions (didn’t notice these when I submitted this story):

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=996](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=996)

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pixelperfect
I'm surprised Microsoft-owned GitHub hasn't started censoring yet. I suspect
it's only a matter of time.

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MrZongle2
Headline from next week: "GitHub _Was_ a Haven for China's Censored Internet
Users".

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SurrealSoul
Microsoft is in a really awkward position with this now, curious how it will
play out

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nukeop
I subscribe to a couple of newsletters that send the most popular repositories
in several languages to my email every week. There's been a trend of
increasing Chinese activity for months now. The problem with Chinese
programmers is that they very rarely bother to use English, as the rest of the
world, rendering their technically "open source" code largely useless for most
of us. There's clearly a niche for a Chinese language counterpart of Github,
and I suspect it's going to be filled soon.

~~~
yorwba
Chinese programmers use English at about the same frequency as programmers
from other non-English-speaking countries, but there are so many of them that
the minority using Chinese for everything is still very visible.

FWIW, most of the Chinese-only repos I've seen on GitHub are tutorials, other
study materials or social gathering places like 996.icu, so I don't think
you're actually missing a lot of relevant open source code.

The most likely contender for a Chinese-language GitHub-replacement is
probably the hosted GitLab instance offered by Alibaba:
[https://code.aliyun.com/explore](https://code.aliyun.com/explore)

