Digg now contains a supposed "hack" to the Chinese censored version of Google. Although some comments evince some doubt as to whether it even works within China (especially now that it has been given a very high profile), the majority of "techies" who post seem to be wallowing in gleeful abandon that China has been "pwnd" by a simple hack.
Without getting into the demographics of digg or even the broader english-speaking internet which has covered this issue, there are many reasons which lead to me to believe that the amount and degree of coverage that this whole censored chinese google thing is getting is bullshit.
Notwithstanding the fact that there is really no good alternative, what google has "done" really has very little effect--if any.
- Chinese people are not stupid. Contrary to popular belief, the "Great Firewall" is relatively easy to bypass. Proxy servers, TOR, and other technological bypasses allow mainlanders to access any amount of smut they can handle, which leads me to my next point:
- Chinese people do not go around searching for human rights crap on the internet, especially not without taking safeguards.
- Chinese people know what happened on 6/4/89 (contrast what the average blogger knows about the event--OMG teh commies killed 1000s of ppl for wanting DEMOCRACY!!! OMG!!!!)...THEY aren't the ones who need to look it up on google.
- With respect to contemporary human rights or "sensitive" issues (of which the english-speaking blogosphere is generally uninformed), Chinese have many ways of obtaining the information regardless of a silly search filter (technical and otherwise).
- When Chinese mainlanders DO want to look up this kind of information, they would have to be absolutely retarded to try it unanonymized. See 1, supra. Surprisingly to some, Chinese people have a natural aversion to jail, and they know (or at least justifiably fear) that the commies may very well crack down on them if they are openly looking up blocked information. If the person in question knows how to use anonymizing software, then they surely they must also know how to get around the censors.
- If you look at the other ways in which China censors the internet, this google thing is de minimis to the point of absurdity. Take email tracing for example--the Chinese government has been known to read peoples' private emails and on occasion requires ISPs to reveal the identity of senders. See ESWN at Comparing Yahoo and MSN Spaces. In my opinion, THIS has a much bigger chilling effect than the censoring of websearch content--rather than affecting the n00bs looking for essentially dated information (things won't come up in a search until after google has crawled the pages--sometimes days), email siphoning hits hardest right upon the activists who are conducting the "sensitive" activities the n00bs are searching for.
There's more to write here, but due to time constraints, I will leave you to mull over the foregoing until I have more time later.
