The PRC infamously censors a fair amount of stuff, and I don't mind that. I have my disagreements and criticisms, but I'd much rather give up some libertine behaviors in media than have all the shit that happens when you dont censor things.
But like...what are the actual policies?Besides "don't advocate for the overthrow of the government."
For instance, I recently picked up "Sultans Game," which is a very good game. But it's also very sexual. It has artistic nudity and makes constant references to sex, homosexual relationships, and rape. It's not super explicit, but it's still a lot more than i would've expected when told "this game was made in China." [Although i am playing outside of China, so maybe the version in China is censored]. But games like Genshin Impact and certain animes are censored for lewd content fairly regularly, to my knowledge.
There's also books. For instance "I love my mom" is banned [despite appeals] while other books with sexual content aren't banned [to my knowledge. Also i haven't read that aforementioned book, so if it's just an exception for extreme nature, let me know]. Or how one of Hong Ying's works literally references the Tianenmen Square "massacre?" I'm unsure if it's published in China, but I would have assumed that she'd be blacklisted for that.
The last question i have is, what's the point of banning something if you're allowed to have it anyway? For example, hearts of iron 4 is banned in China. But also it's not? Tbh the language barrier makes figuring out this stuff hard, whether something is banned or not or if that thing is just going through a Different service or what.
The point is to not allow people making money from things that are banned and make these things less relevant.
If you're not allowed to legally purchase stuff, people won't make much money from it.
You can access western social media through VPN but most people won't bother and their influence will be negligible.
I also saw people from China say that it acts as a filter, like if you can figure out how to use a VPN then you can access the internet. Creating that little bit of a barrier tends to be enough to make it unappealing for the majority of people to bother.
I know this is not china, however I think this is the reason that the US really disincentives second language learning, and does an astonishingly bad job in secondary school teaching it. It creates a natural barrier to most forign news that most people will not bother with
For sure, and I find the US is one of the most insular cultures in the world in general.
Can confirm [not on the untention part though]. But the (current) inability for me to speak a second language really hurts, and not having the pathways necessary to easily learn foreign languages makes me feel like a foolish old man, but with no gods to move the mountains in response to my determination
I can say it is helpful for Firefox it has a built in machine translator that ranges from rough to pretty good and it helps quite a bit
Are VPN free in China? Is there a cost barrier?
Im in china rn and theres a fair bit of v2ray vpn providers i only paid 26cny for mine, though none of these are reliable (hosting your own is the most reliable) and will be throttled in the evening, Theres also a technical barrier as you'll need some know how on setting it up.
Thank you for sharing that.
Not really sure about that.