this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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Ask Lemmygrad

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Do Lemmygrad and Hexbear work on China without a VPN? (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 7 months ago by Skipper1402@lemmygrad.ml to c/asklemmygrad@lemmygrad.ml
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[–] rigor@lemmygrad.ml 26 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I can confirm Lemmygrad is accessible. Hexbear is, but loads VERY slowly in my experience. No such issue for Lemmygrad.

By the way, the firewall varies slightly in different provinces. That being said Lemmygrad seems accessible everywhere.

ps: most sites are accessible. Only big American tech sites that don't want to follow local law (Google, Facebook, etc.) are blocked. Many other websites are not blocked but just load really slowly. Not certain why, part of it may be the websites throttling IP address from China.

[–] qwename@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

About Google, they still have a (valid?) ICP license ICP证合字B2-20070004号 registered to their company in China 北京谷翔信息技术有限公司, and ICP record 京ICP备13004732号-2 for google.cn that was last reviewed in 2020.

The following are basically just the .cn mirror versions of the .com counterparts with some minor differences (like hints for links that may not be accessible in China).

https://developers.google.cn/ https://source.android.google.cn/ https://developer.android.google.cn/

Microsoft's Bing (and other products) is legally operating in China at https://cn.bing.com (registered to 微软移动联新互联网服务有限公司), and they display the relevant licenses at the bottom of the page:

You can look up the ICP records of domains operating in China at https://beian.miit.gov.cn/, a handy service provided by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, either search by company name, domain name or ICP record.

As for why no American social media services are operating in China, they just can't handle the regulatory burden of upholding socialist values.

Edit:

Just remembered that Microsoft's Skype is still working in China, that counts for American social media... or at least American chat software. Discord is partially blocked (see my definition of "partially blocked" in my main comment here: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/3886144) but I couldn't get it to work without a VPN because they use WebSocket. Matrix works but matrix.org is partially blocked, so you'd have to use other non-blocked homeservers like genzedong.xyz.

[–] Aru@lemmygrad.ml 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Hexbear got banned because there's a crypto currency called hexbear

[–] anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

No, Hexbear got banned for French liberal propaganda.

[–] Skipper1402@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Wait what? Can you please elaborate more?

[–] anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Hexbear servers are located on French soil and everyone that uses it is a lib spreading liberal propaganda.

They really are located on French soil, though.

[–] davel@lemmygrad.ml 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If these tools are are accurate, lemmygrad is accessible but hexbear isn’t. Don’t read too much into that, though, because lemmy.world is also accessible. I have no idea how these decisions get made.

[–] Galli@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago

yeah this one's on me, sorry everyone. I posted a picture of winnie the pooh bear so Xi posted this picture hexbear-retro on the great firewall captioned "do not let in this bear!!1!!"

[–] qwename@lemmygrad.ml 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

lemmygrad.ml is working fine, hexbear.net and lemmy.ml are partially blocked. Side note: prolewiki.org is also partially blocked.

When I say partially blocked, it means that the IP addresses aren't blocked, so I can still connect to them without a VPN by doing some HTTP trickery with a custom Firefox extension. Fully blocked means the IP addresses are blocked so you must use proxies like VPN/IPFS/Tor to connect.

In other news, here's a list of US government sites (and one IBM subdomain) I encountered that blocks Chinese IPs:

[–] Skipper1402@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 7 months ago

Which is this http trickery that you are taking about?

[–] 82cb5abccd918e03@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Lemmygrad works, hexbear doesn't.

Lemmy.ml got blocked while I was there, it stopped working one day back in July/August, I forgot.

Lemmy.world was working last time I checked.

It doesn't really matter though since you can see posts on hexbear from lemmygrad.

[–] Skipper1402@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 7 months ago

Lemmy.world 🤣 . The most reactionary of them all works

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 7 months ago

ping @qwename@lemmygrad.ml