News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on OpenDrop: An Open Source AirDrop Implementation. Parent comment

Re:OpenDrop: An Open Source AirDrop Implementation by arghwhat on Monday August 19, 2019 @06:14AM (#20736452)
They are not using AirDrop to bypass the GFW for themselves, they are using it to spread information to citizens that are otherwise normally subject to GFW and therefore only have government-approved or government-generated information available to them.

Mainland news put HK protesters as violent, rebellious youngsters that are causing trouble and injury to everyone else by having greedy demands of something better than what mainland has. Such story leads to minimal sympathy and curiosity.

Even knowing that this information is filtered, few will end up truly questioning it, and thus even when they leave GFW, they will not know that there is conflicting information to find.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:OpenDrop: An Open Source AirDrop Implementation by gruez on Monday August 19, 2019 @08:42AM (#20737191)
That’s a very loose definition of the word “evade” and the headline is definitely misleading. The average person was probably expecting to find some sort of censorship evasion while current being censored.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:OpenDrop: An Open Source AirDrop Implementation by arghwhat on Monday August 19, 2019 @05:25PM (#20741973)
Censorship evasion is doable within minutes for most, which is well known for those interested in it.

However, many do not feel compelled to evade it, and have no idea of what happens "on the outside".

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:OpenDrop: An Open Source AirDrop Implementation by sjnair96 on Monday August 19, 2019 @06:09PM (#20742282)
Censorship evasion is no longer trivial. Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) exists and makes it difficult to use even VPNs. Shadowsocks works but has limited UDP support out of the box iirc.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:OpenDrop: An Open Source AirDrop Implementation by arghwhat on Tuesday August 20, 2019 @08:22AM (#20746075)
There are massive regional variations, so what I say is likely not universal, but my non-techie acquaintances still successfully use VPNs, in their case to use services like Facebook and WhatsApp.

I do not know what provider they use, but their knowledge of VPNs go no further than knowing that "VPN = facebook access", so it would seem that "commoners" still manage at least in some bigger regions.

[ Parent | on HN ]