Thread by @RealSexyCyborg

Excellent video on the Great Firewall by @SimonWhistler- with an understandably clickbaity thumbnail and title- and who am I to throw stones in that glass house?😂
Once you've watched it, see my comment🧵 below-

Really only very minor subjective points I might quibble over as a Chinese national and high-profile VPN user. In the future, Google Translate's speech function does an excellent job of teaching the correct pronunciation of unfamiliar words- I use it myself quite often.

One important aspect of VPN use I’d add is the level of permissiveness involved. The Chinese government can actually completely disrupt VPN services to the point they are nearly unusable and this has been done periodically for special events.

This has a disastrous effect on local academia, research, and foreign trade because while legal unfiltered access can be obtained, the process is so cumbersome most people in these professions have a personal VPN.
Without those VPNs- businesses would quickly grind to a halt.

The “solution” to this is to strictly enforce laws against selling and providing VPN access, but to take a fairly hands-off approach to actually using a VPN- provided of course, that the VPN user does not cross certain unwritten lines.

This means that more educated, middle-class, English-speaking, and technically proficient users are generally able to get over the firewall if they feel the need, while the vast majority of Chinese- whom the government is interested in shielding from foreign ideas, cannot.

Even if you obtain a VPN- some caution is still warranted. There are a variety of technical means to deanonymize VPN users in China, and some of the more effective VPN services are in fact owned by Chinese shell companies.

The thinking is- if people are going to climb over the wall anyway, it's best to allow them over on a ladder that can be monitored, and they will feel confident in engaging in incriminating activities- if that is their intent.

Overall, if you are simply running your online store, watching YouTube videos- it is very unlikely you will have any trouble.

If, as I do, you run a YouTube channel, or actively engage in political commentary that is at times unfavorable to the CPC- there is always a chance you could be invited to “drink tea” as we say- have a discussion with the local authorities.

The first time is fairly cordial if you continue to create a problem, increasingly more severe. No one knows exactly where the line is- although we can guess, but most of us are able to participate in online discourse with a reasonable amount of agency.

While detractors are insist every Chinese national posting outside the firewall must be an agent of the CPC that’s simply an ad hominem- a way to address the problem of our view from inside China, not aligning precisely with the narrative that is accepted by many outside China.

For example, the existence of a Black-Mirror-like "Social Credit System" in China is accepted as fact by many Westerners and has been widely reported on by very credible news outlets. Yet almost no Chinese have even heard of- let alone experienced such a thing.

When we say as much, it's assumed we must be acting on behalf of the government. These constant accusations leave even Chinese moderates reluctant to participate in a global online discourse via VPN so people often underestimate just how many of us there are online.

Overall, the video is excellent, would be perfect for junior high school or high school students in the West, aligns perhaps 90% with a "typical" Chinese view of things, and covers most of the relevant facts without excess nationalism or Sinophobia. Well done👍🏻

*Update- awww, my comment on the video got hidden☹️ Not sure what the problem was, it's just the same as above but understandable if the creator feels the need to curate, it's easy for the content section to devolve into a firestorm if you don't.