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Comment by neither_color | Hacker News Reader

They can do what all expats in China already need to do to access facebook, google, gmail, instagram, twitter, whatsapp, etc: use a vpn.

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Just to be clear, the USA doesn’t have the infrastructure or legal framework in place to actually block internet traffic. The best they can do is remove DNS entries.

I've read somewhere that they can force the ISPs to ban wechat traffic? I'm not in IT so is this just complete hogwash?

They really can’t. They would need some kind of firewall to do it, and ISPs simply aren’t setup for that. They can’t even ban child porn sites effectively (instead the police must rely on catching viewers of such and shutting down sites physically if possible).

Indian government frequently does this, so technically it's possible even with multiple ISPs in a big country.

They could block WeChat from app stores, which would basically be fatal. Especially for iPhone users, who don't even have the option to sideload without jailbreaking.

This is an interesting argument against walled gardens I don't often see: that it gives your government an easy chokepoint to prevent users from using software it doesn't like.

Facebook is not listed on the Chinese App Store, but you can install it easily by switching your region to the USA, installing Facebook, and then switching your region back to China, without losing apps from either region. (I know this because I owned an iPhone while living in China)

Much easier than having to bother with a VPN, and many Chinese people are already used to jumping through such hoops.

China puts up with it for whatever reason, but the US doesn't have to. The US can just as easily order Apple and Google to remove it from every region of every app store.

They can’t actually do that. There are good reasons apples Chinese App Store is run by their Chinese subsidiary. That would be like China ordering Apple to remove Facebook from their American App Store.

Must feel good to say China's getting what they deserve but it's the ordinary people who are suffering the most. The ban is a victory to no one, and just shows the US is the copycat this time around.

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