Seems like the fediverse would be a good way for Chinese citizens to get around censorship.

Does anyone know if they are using it?

  • @callmepk
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    216 days ago

    As a China-born Hongkonger, little to none for Lemmy as far as I know, but there are actually a lot of people in mainland China uses Fediverse but mostly on Mastodon and Misskey. I do have two friends in mainland China who are able to use Mastodon without VPN.

    Also some fun fact(?): Each time when I need to go back to mainland China, I always check if several instances are blocked. As far as I tested last time, lemmy.world is not banned in mainland China

    • @callmepk
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      156 days ago

      Also some addition: a lot of people in China does not host the Fedi server in China, mostly because the requirement of obtaining ICP License if they want to host in China

  • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed
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    146 days ago

    A good way for Chinese people to get around the censorship is emigrate. (Btw, I’m a US Citizen that was born in China. Lets hope I dont get deported under Project 2025)

    But seriously tho, the language barrier is gonna make like 99% of Chinese people not visit foreign sites, the Great Firewall is not really needed, but Xinnie Pooh-bear be paranoid af. My parents, who live here in the US, don’t even use western social media, and use WeChat all the time, even my mother who speaks some level of English, still uses WeChat

    I think there were like only one user that had their solo-user instance that said he actually living in mainland China, forgot their username.

  • @[email protected]
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    86 days ago

    Yes, there are plenty of big Chinese mastodon instances. https://m.cmx.im/explore is likely the biggest one, and GFW people definitely attempt to blocked it.

    There are many others, but I am not sure if you work for GFW 😉.

      • Orbituary
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        16 days ago

        Who do you think runs Hong Kong? Even when the Brits did, they only had it on a 99 year and 1 day lease from China.

        • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed
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          6 days ago

          Hong Kong hasn’t been fully absorbed by China yet. But when that happens, the level of internet censorship will become the same, but currently, Hong Kong is less censored than Mainland China.

          • @[email protected]
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            56 days ago

            It’s pretty much fully absorbed. That’s what the protests were about. They have freer internet but look at all those arrested

            • Justin
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              66 days ago

              They even started teaching Xi Jinping Thought in HK schools this year

    • @[email protected]
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      96 days ago

      ml is more like a Chinese lovers tankie instance. Not a Chinese one.

      I think OP is asking about a Chinese nationals one, written in mandarin and used by people living there.

      • @[email protected]
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        66 days ago

        Yeah, most of the Chinese people I know on the fediverse are most certainly not gonna vib with the like of hexbear, grad, and ml.