YouTube Partially Unblocked In China

hackingbear writes "After China unblocked certain sensitive keywords in search engine baidu.com last week, YouTube is now partially, quietly unblocked. Users inside China can, without bypassing the Great Firewall, visit the site, search for sensitive keywords, and see uncensored results and comments. The videos themselves, including those not related to politics, remain blocked, however. Given that the Chinese government likes to make major changes in gradual, experimental steps, it is unclear what this round of Internet loosening will lead to eventually. At the meantime, many netizens in the country express their welcome of the moves as a good start through microblogging."

Not for me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I can't reach it from my town at all. I don't get a 'connection terminated' message anymore, but it never loads.

Slashdot in China?

[Bananatree3]

wonderful news!

Re:

[Yvanhoe]

Sssshhh, we are talking about the filthy commie censorship here, not the moral and understandable capitalist one...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here, city of Yantai, Shandong province.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here in Sanya, Hainan province.

Probably a better title would be YouTube partially unblocked in parts of China.

Not that I really care about it, I haven't really missed not having youtube and I've been more productive for it.

Re:

[Gwala]

Same here, Shanghai.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here in Shanghai, with ChinaNet FTTH. mtr shows that the IPs are null-routed (or blocked with -j DROP):

Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1. 192.168.2.1 0.0% 14 1.1 1.7 1.0 4.1 0.9
2. x.x.x.x 0.0% 14 3.7 23.8 2.8 258.6 67.7
3. x.x.x.x 0.0% 14 5.7 4.3 2.4 10.5 2.1
4. x.x.x.x 0.0% 14 4.2 16.9 4.2 101.8 27.9
5. 61.152.86.58 0.0% 14 5.7 5.8 4.7 7.7 0.8
6. ???

(sorry for obfuscating the IPs and p

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as anon for the simple reason that I am currently in Kunshan, China. I can report that www.youtube.com alternates
between "The connection has timed out" and "The connection has been reset". The sequence is:

1. Upon first visit to the website the "The connection has been reset" pops up instantly.
2. All subsequent retries become "The connection has timed out".

IMHO I do not think that it is so much the politically sensitive things that are the problem but the good old fashion protectionism.
Give it time a

Re:

[jabbany]

Seems to differ cross ISPs and only the HTTPS version works where I am (no video as well).

Re:

[Universe22]

Wuhan, Don't make sense. It's still "The app is currently unreachable."

Re:

[hackingbear]

Read the TFA

At the mean time, internet users from Guangdong province, Fujian Province, and big city like Shanghai and Beijing are able to access YouTube by using HTTP secure method. Any type of video contents can be successfully search and comments can be read, but most of the videos are unable to play.

So try the HTTP secure method maybe. I can't verify myself here outside of China.

Ooops.

[Formalin]

It turns out someone at party headquarters plugged in the wrong patch cable, after all.

Not

[Anonymous Coward]

I am in Beijing. YouTube is not accessible from here, using http or https. A bad prank or a slip up of the Great Firewall network engineers which has probably been patched up by now.

Re:

[sdk4777]

In Shanghai, the connection also times out.

bait

[shentino]

I don't think this is so much a loosening of restrictions as it is a honeypot operation to entice people to get caught with redder hands than before.

Re:

[unreadepitaph]

I think you hit the nail on the head.
Crushing the next generation of opposition before it starts?

Re:

[AHuxley]

Yes it shows you have news from outside or are trying at random times to get the service.
What the system expects is everybody to feel so watched they don't even think about trying.
News like this from "outside" just makes people glow on the networks. You join a list and a count starts.

Re:

[Yvanhoe]

Except, from what I have gathered, a wide spectrum of light opposition exists in China. There are lines you cannot cross, but talking about corruption, talking about pollution, is tolerated for instance. I doubt that people merely looking for information would be bothered a lot. They already have a hard time preventing people from posting opinions, I doubt they are willing to spend the resources to go after the people reading them.

There are voices in the Chinese communist party to ditch censorship totally

Proof that the Chinesd gov't has a sense of humor

[Jeremi]

"Oh, you want to try YouTube? No problem! Here you go -- videos are all blocked, but you can read YouTube's high quality comments sections as much as you like!"

It's beyond perverse...

Re:

[zAPPzAPP]

So it's just like YouTube access from Germany now.

Damn you chinese, stealing all our ideas! What's next, a note saying "GOMA" is responible for the blocking?

Re:

[meowris]

That's what I call backward innovation. Not the speak the trolls roaming and commenting around the YouTube... Ugh

Still down in ...

[enickel]

... Guangdong. Time to clean the tubes

Chinese government just did a power move.

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Ever see any youtube video comments? Some of the stupidest things you'll ever hear are on youtube comments. Chinese citizens will think the rest of the world is populated by idiots and they'll beg for isolationism.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese citizens will think the rest of the world is populated by idiots

For the most part, they'd be correct.

Confirmed, not unblocked

[LS]

It is currently still blocked (posting from Beijing).

Re:Confirmed, not unblocked

[ShanghaiBill]

It is currently still blocked (posting from Beijing).

The censorship policy in China is pretty much a local affair. My experience is that censorship in Beijing is stricter than in Shanghai. Censorship tends to be even looser away from the big cities. So when you see these announcements about "site xyz is unblocked in China", it is usually really just a change in one locality.

Re:

[GPLHost-Thomas]

Yet, TFA has:

At the mean time, internet users from Guangdong province, Fujian Province, and big city like Shanghai and Beijing are able to access YouTube by using HTTP secure method.

Which is simply plain wrong...

Reality and Accepted Submissions...

[bdabautcb]

I will be the first to admit that I don't know dick about Chinese internet availability. I have one high school buddy who has been teaching and living in China for 4~5 years, and married a Chinese girl. As far as I can tell from his experience, told to me: the censorship issue is manifest mostly in that western entertainment media are the most contained. Social and internet access to most websites are okay, but when he came to visit I explained the concept of Justified to him. He had not seen the show, nor

It's a show!!!

[triplaA]

Don't let this intentional act fool you, the Chinese communist party (CCP) often use other events to distract something INSIDE China. There is a power struggle within the communist part, you get this temporary unblock so others can talk about instead of the power struggle. When the news of Tibet self immolation is on the news / high speed crash cover up, you get China is in feud with Vietnam over the oil exploring ship being "sabotaged" ...

In the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar:

[Gravis Zero]

IT'S A TRAP!

I'm Chinese

[conscarcdr]

And look at the all the fucks I give.