Like ships in the night

You forgot the third car using a VPN to get all the content they're actually paying for on all of their streaming apps

A 4th car is going to the highseas.
- Baton down the hatches and raise me sails matey!
I just want to watch the Japanese Netflix anime drops. Is that so much to ask for natively?

Texas residents using a VPN for porn

Don't forget Virginia!
- Virginia living up to its name with the state mandated NoFap challenge.
- I live close enough to Tennessee that I turn off my WiFi and let the cellular take me there haha.
- Don't forget Utah
Can someone explain it to Europeans?
- Several states with republican leadership have required identification to view sites that have "adult content". You technically can still access it without a VPN in these states, but I'm not trusting these sites with personally identifying information. Depending on the state I think you have to upload an image of your ID and other information. It's really sketchy.
Bout to be CO too, not just limited to red states unfortunately.
Admittedly, it's not just for porn, but social media in general. Either way, the same reasoning applies, I'm not giving a third party company my identity just for a social media account and I'm certainly not going to do it for porn
Oh man, this is a much better comparison.
It's still not perfect, though, since technically porn isn't banned, but it's effectively banned by requiring ID checking, which major websites like pornhub refuse to do.
But this also allegedly targets "culture", just like China's great firewall. It's pretty damn stupid.

Chinese citizens using VPN to access TikTok too.

Specifically American tiktok. The tiktok they have isn't the same. Iirc It's only educational stuff, and you get a time limit.
- It is not American tiktok. It is tiktok for the world except China who owns tiktok.

Off topic but I really enjoyed much of this show (Umbrella Academy), particularly I was so impressed with how the child actor actually pulled off carrying the entire show, he was not only the leading & most interesting character but also IMO had one of the best performances on it. Come to think of it, I should look into what else he's done.

Anyway, what episode is this from, do you know? (I know it's just a meme format now, worth a shot tho)

Excellent post btw, I gave all the upvote I could

The umbrella academy was hard carried by five. The actor really pulled off the adult stuck in a kid's body thing. The actor that played the guy with addiction issues was great too.
Five and Klaus carried the show
- If you like Klaus you should watch a show the same actor did years ago called Misfits! He kind of carried that show too, it was never quite as good after he left lol
I'm introducing my partner to the show now. We're just about to finish S1. Gotta be ready when the final season drops.

They're gonna be real disappointed with the version of "Tiktok" available in China

TikTok isn't banned in canada, or the UK, or a number of other english speaking non-US countries
- There are...other countries? WHAT!? 🫨
Why would they VPN to the version of the app that has less English speakers?
- to learn? To experience something new? Monolingual life starts loosing it's charm.
I've got Chinese GenZ TikTok pegged as 10x more entertaining than American Boomer Facebook.

嘿，宝贝，想换VPN吗？(Hey babe, you wanna swap VPNs?) 🥵

That’s kinda funny. Do people really use that pun?

This is the kind of thing that gets to me in this whole TikTok situation the most.

China bans most American based social media and what it doesn't ban is heavily monitored censored and regulated.

Why would we (Americans) want to willingly use a Chinese owned/based/operated social media platform like TikTok?

We should never have started using it in the first place or at least immediately dropped it as soon as it became common knowledge that it had substantial ties to china.

There is so much hypocrisy on all sides of this issue.

What's funny about this is that the fear of Chinese Authoritarianism leads Americans straight into American Authoritarianism.
It's this close to self awareness and then veers straight into hypocrisy
- It does smack of hypocrisy but I've been feeling more it's a paradox of tolerance thing. Which itself a sort of hypocrisy now that I'm thinking about it. Huh.
- Well, they probably read Machiavelli and may not always have our best interests at heart so it's not inconceivable it's entirely intentional.
China censors what its people sees on its platforms so its people started using facebook. Then China started demanding that facebook censor itself in China (there was a major terror attack that sparked this) but Facebook refused so they banned it. Same thing happened with reddit and such.
Meanwhile, the US started censoring its major media platforms people either fled to niche libre sites like this or the shiny new addictive app from China. China doesnt care about what americans see. It'll happily let americans see Israelis document their war crimes. The US said, sell to american investors, and be censored or be banned. ByteDance chose being banned. Welcome to the great american firewall.
- I don't know if Chinese government actually reaches out to social platforms before banning them, I remember reddit was avaliable in China in 2015 - 2016ish. Then it got banned, I believe its because of its political contents (r/china and such).
We are not in China, are we? The (american) government should NOT have control over what information its citizens have access to. We should not strive to be like China in this regard.
- I think they mean that the users shouldn’t use it. Not that the government should ban it.

I'm using a VPN to byapass porn blocks while I'm stuck as an inpatient in hospital.

Fun fact, VPNs are regulated by the state in China

that's not how VPNs work
- Regulated doesn't mean they control all VPNs, it means they usually have laws requiring any use of VPN to be licensed, and usually is allowed for businesses rather than individuals. They also block via their firewall many providers. Of course, you could always use one illegally as long as traffic isn't blocked. Just don't get caught.
- Sure it is. But it means that they can tell the VPNs to block the same stuff that everyone else is told to block.
Internet itself is regulated by the nation state.
Same in Russia. I worked with a banking company that had a Russia office, and the company had to get government approval for the BOVPNs that were used.
What's the point then?
- False sense of security. It will still provide some privacy against ad tracking.
- Security and testing localization will be big use cases. But privacy and or using banned apps, no so much. They don’t call it the Great Firewall for nothing. ISPs, VPNs, etc.
  If you want to use western social media , it’s not as simple as jumping into a VPN.

using VPNs*

Fun fact, China doesn’t even have TikTok, their version is strictly educational and can only be used certain times of the day, to my understanding

is strictly educational and can only be used certain times of the day
Nope and nope. Like normak tiktok, douyin have all sort of things, depends on what you view. You can login to it (doesn't have to), and the account is connect to your cellphone number which is connected to your national ID. I don't know if theres time limitations if you are a minor though.
- Huh, neat
I've sideloaded douyin before, it isn't strictly educational but I do believe if a child is using the device there is time limits. and also you can't sign up without a Chinese ID but it doesn't require an account. I actually did find some Americans on there who somehow found a way to sign up.
- The IDs of criminals are sometimes leaked on the web. People use those leaked IDs to register their account. Many systems don't actually check whether the ID is already registered, it works as long as the ID itself is valid.
- They are hackermans (or have China issued IDs)
China has indeed blocked tiktok, but their version, douyin likely runs on similar systems and have similar types of contents. These two versions just don't share content and probably have different moderation and privacy policies.
I think you are confusing the tiktok block with the computer game ban, which requires excessive verifications (even biometric) to play games. And underaged children can only play games in assigned time slots with time limit:
In 2019, the country imposed a cybercurfew barring those under 18 from playing games between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.
Recognizing that wily teenagers might try to use their parents’ devices or identities to circumvent the restrictions, the Chinese internet conglomerate Tencent said this week that it would close the loophole by deploying facial recognition technology in its video games.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/business/video-game-facial-recognition-tencent.html

Russians using VPN to access ~~gosuslugi in 2024~~ telegram in 2018.

Please, don't even touch this. With our RKN and useless pinnocchios banning random things extrajudiciously, I'd be surprised if we'd have any access to the internet in 2026. For those without a government issued pass and active service in bot farms, I mean. If I'd get limited to local resources, I feel like I'd give up on internet altogether. Can't discuss shit there without pseudo-trad weirdos chiming in.
It may be a major plus for the Internet as a whole if the cable is cut completely, but I feel like it'd only be cut for dissenting folks, while carriers of the official talking points wouldn't ever get limited.

Except Tik Tok hasn't been banned yet. And it's not being banned for even remotely the same reason.

The issue with Tik Tok is that it's owned by a company with ties to the CCP. The CCP, conversly, has "the great firewall", which is directly intended to facilitate Chinese propaganda efforts to control their people.

Lmao. You people think CCP will use your data to control you? No way your American government can do the same, right?
Ssshhhhh.. the toktok ban is ONLY about preventing speech!
You're kinda stupid if you think big nation states outside of China do not participate in what China does. China learned from other influential countries as the CCP are the new kids on the block
- Doesn't mean American companies should be allowed to platform chinese apps.
China built their firewall to protect themselves from foreign "disinformation" campaigns. Just like we are now.

You forgot there is a tram service to Lemmy

Meh, entirely different type of SM, what we really need is the defederated version of TT
But video is expensive so it probably won't happen for a long time
Now if TT redoes their app to be defederated to evade US law that would be hilarious
- TT is the defederated TT
  I think you mean federated ;)
- Supposedly Pixelfed or Peertube just added shorts.
  A big issue with that is when I signed up to peertube 10 months ago, literally the only videos I could find were French language protestors.
- I saw a post for this service yesterday I think. I don't remember the name of it or I'd post a link, but it is created now and I think it's active, or will be soon. It's only for short-form video though, like TikTok, which isn't my style of content.
- Stay tuned Loops
not a lot of videos hosted on lemmy

Dumbest meme format

Hahaha.

Tiktok and their inconsistent very sick snowflake moderation with punishing the appeals should be avoided. Ive stopped using it, deleted from my phone