fredag 21. august 2020

Why Google And YouTube Are Now China’s Most Wanted

“Without any solid evidence,” a Chinese government spokesperson complained last week, “some people in the U.S. have been abusing the concept of national security to suppress non-American enterprises. These U.S. moves are utterly disgraceful.” You can use Google to find those comments on the ongoing TikTok pantomime if you like—they’re online. Obviously you can’t use Google if you’re in China, though, because Google is banned—alongside Facebook and Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. Yet again, the irony of the situation is there for all to see.

Chinese citizens with a thirst for non-censored news and social media resort to virtual private networks—or VPNs—to hide their IP addresses, secure their traffic and access sites that would not be available without such masking. This week, the curious folk at one of those VPNs—Nord—decided to take a look at what those Chinese citizens craved most, what it was they most wanted to use a VPN to access. It turns out that it’s not Facebook, Twitter or the BBC—it’s Google and YouTube, and by some considerable margin.