
Twitch is reportedly blocked in China - beerlord
https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/20/twitch-blocked-china/
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dhnsmakala
Why are these digital service blocks seen as anything but tariffs by the US
government? They cost American companies billions of dollars and help enrich
Chinese companies.

Yes, maybe censoring is the purpose, but the financial effect is the same.

I'm not opposed to foreign countries fighting against tech monopolization
either, it makes sense from their perspective.

I'm just wondering why the US government doesn't seem to see it as a hostile
act and respond likewise. Do they just not understand the effect it has on
American companies? That senator asking Zuckerberg how Facebook can offer a
free service comes to mind...

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rqs
_Cyber Security Law of the People 's Republic of China_[0] give it a read. On
the surface, it's _like_ GDPR or other similar data regulation, but focus on
different purpose.

The law basically gives the China government a legal foundation to block any
service that does not comply with it, and most foreign service does not.

If you DO completely obey the law however, then you can operate in China.
Amazon.com for example, can be accessed directly in China. But the law was
very restrict and tricky, for most companies (Twitch for example) it's not
worth the trouble.

(Maybe you don't know, China's game streaming service are heavily controlled:
you could only stream few games that are selected by the platform. Streaming
_illegal_ game that is not approved by the authority (Battlefield for example)
is not allowed and likely results a ban)

BTW: Do we have any international treaty that can prevent political
censorship?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Internet_Security_Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Internet_Security_Law)

~~~
dhnsmakala
Thanks for the info.

Yes, I read about a Chinese gaming company that was affected by these
restrictions, so it could be that censorship is the end game.

It's hard to ignore that US companies have lost hundreds of billions of
dollars because they cannot operate in China, though.

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Mathnerd314
Should link to the original article, which is either of:
[https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/20/17883736/twitch-china-
blo...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/20/17883736/twitch-china-block-app-
store) [https://www.abacusnews.com/digital-life/twitch-vanishes-
chin...](https://www.abacusnews.com/digital-life/twitch-vanishes-china-weeks-
after-spike-popularity/article/2165056)

~~~
etatoby
Thank you. The main link only shows a blank page.

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jdoliner
I wonder how this is going to work for say, The International 9, which is
going to be in China. Is the government really going to block streaming of an
event that so many of their citizens will have national pride riding on. Just
hosting the event is something I expected the government to be proud of given
Dota's profile in China.

Edit: Actually they're probably going to have it on national TV, that will
allow them to have a layer of control over the broadcast.

~~~
tylerhou
One of China’s larger tech companies also owns a competing streaming service
with casting in Chinese, so most Chinese viewers generally don’t use Twitch.

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TaylorGood
Wouldn’t surprise me. Last trip to mainland China and nothing worked online.
Apps like Instagram, sites like Google, etc. except Bing and WeChat. Perfect
WiFi yet everything filtered.

~~~
chj
To any one coming to China, get a shadowsocks server ready first! Or let me
know if need help.

~~~
Macuyiko
To be even more prepared: spin up two Digital Ocean Shadowsocks servers in
case one gets throttled down (which happens after extensive usage). I often
combine this with ExpressVPN as well, which still works in China (although
many are sceptical of how ExpressVPN has managed to do so over the years, so
expect there to be logging).

I wonder how long it'll take before Steam going offline as well, now that they
are both thinking about implementing streaming and the fact that gaming is
seen as unharmonious these days (e.g. refer to Tencent's recent stock drop).
Steam is currently handled by Perfect World Games as the Chinese partner, so
I'm curious to see what will happen.

~~~
chj
vultr works even better

~~~
ksec
I wonder if it is because so many are using vultr for this purpose now they
started to accept WePay.

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rasz
in other news Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba's video streaming services, VERY
successful after "unfortunate" youtube ban, move into the new game streaming
market.

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nayuki
The Chinese Internet already blocks nearly all western social media sites.
Twitch is a form of social media. Secondly, in June this year, China blocked
livestreaming even on domestic sites. So it should come as no surprise that
Twitch would be blocked under these rules.

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shanghaiaway
Can confirm. Wasn't blocked yesterday but is not reachable right now.

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dustinmoris
I've been to China and before entering the country I was hugely critical of
all the things we read on our mainstream media. However, after spending time
travelling through large parts of China I'm on the opposite side now. People
in China are so calm, so polite and helpful. Their streets are extremely quiet
because there is not a single motorized two wheel vehicle. Even though it is a
1.4 billion nation, the largest on the planet, people live comfortable lives,
they have space and time to recreate together (you literally see people
exercise before and after work everywhere) and most importantly the nation is
not divided. Yes, they have problems and not everything is perfect, but heck,
they are 1.4 billion people and their president is not Trump, they don't hate
each other and nobody shoots children in schools, people don't spend all day
on Twitter to kill each other and nobody gets publicly shamed for a small
mistake. Their problems in relation to their size are literally peanuts. Maybe
democracy and freedom the way we know in the Western world is not that great
for everyone after all. They are in a unique position and China is doing
pretty well, so whatever they do which makes you think is bad, it seems to
work for them better than for the US.

On one hand we read how foreign nations manipulate and taint the minds of our
people through social media and that we drown in fake news, biased one sided
reporting and an agressive ad driven consumerism which makes us vulnerable,
but on the other hand we are critical of a nation which basically says no to
this through censorship. Maybe the only way to keep 1.4 billion people at
peace is through censorship, who knows? We only have one country to measure
this experiment and they seem to be doing fine, right?

EDIT:

Lol, lots of people saying I was in China only for a day or what not and
pointing out all the problems the country had to justify their criticism. I
don't say they don't have problems, I'm saying their problems in relation to
their unique size are actually not that big. The US has also lotsbof big
problems, 100s of years of slavery, Vietnam war, Iraq war, killing lots of
innocent people for no reason, Guantanamo bay, torture, etc

Yes, China is not a role model in human rights when you look at their history,
but please save your poor criticism if you can't honestly compare two things
without national pride and bias.

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tmpthrowtmp2
This is an idiotic comment made by an obvious fly-by tourist that hasn’t lived
in China for more than a few days.

If you actually lived in the country you would be infuriated by

\- toxic milk powder. Which the government has done very little to punish the
offenders. The offenders got rich and fled. Oh yeah, if you complain in we
chat, you get censored

\- disgusting air in Beijing and elsewhere.

\- tons of ponzu schemes that go unpunished. And hey if you protest, you get
jailed and your sesame score goes way down

Etc etc etc

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beaconstudios
to say nothing of the people-eating escalators.

