Apple has complied with the Chinese government’s request to remove several popular communication apps from its app store, including WhatsApp, Threads, Signal, and Telegram, due to national security concerns. This action was taken following a directive from the Cyberspace Administration of China. These apps have been crucial for political dissidents globally, especially in China where political expression is heavily regulated. Despite previous reliance on VPNs to access these platforms, they are now unavailable for download in China through the official app store. This move by Apple comes amidst increasing tensions between the U.S. and China in the realm of consumer technology, with discussions in the U.S. Senate about the future of TikTok, a popular social media app owned by a Chinese parent company
NK has not only a software “firewall”, but control over hardware and more physical control as well. So barely an example and def not applicable to a big country.
And also - wonder how high Tor usage friction is in China? Where I live, just obfs4 works and they’re fairly easy to get. Doesn’t China just need a different type of bridges?
VPNs are pretty common in China, and on top of the VPN you can run Tor no worries. Most of the VPNs get throttled to unusability eventually.
I don’t think the goal is to stop every VPN, but cause enough friction that most people don’t use it, and get enough signal intelligence so you know who does - if you should ever need to take more direct action.
The same for banning Signal from the app store, I don’t think signal ever worked directly in China, you would have to use the bridges they have, which was already a PITA.
It is pretty much same here - everyone uses VPNs anyway. So a lot of friction was removed when “they” blocked the big social media, after which people sighed and downloaded whatever sketchy VPNs just to keep the entertainment they are used to.