Oddbean

I have defeated the great firewall a few years ago to access gmail and watch jewtube when I was in China. It was fairly simple. Torrents worked flawlessly too. I'm not a whiny coward, you see. If something is a problem, I push myself to fix it.

Sounds badass 👍 keep it up VPN use in China is a whole can of worms. A few one-off uses by tourists for a couple months at a time seems simple enough (businesspeople even get free VPN access at hotels -- seriously don't use it) , but keeping up VPN use for a decade and not end up on any list is another. Servers get shut down, payments get frozen, lots of problems the friends across the Strait deal with that badasses like you don't 😵‍💫

My Chinese friend has been using a VPN for 10 years. It's annoying but not difficult. I keep hearing people talk about those lists. Where are they? Are those completely secret? Then who cares? If they're used to control your bank account, then the bank must be able to see it. Do you have any evidence that it exists? I have used bitcoin to buy illegal drugs online like thousands of other people and none of us ever faced any punishment. This is the main type of censorship in the US and EU (less so). Stop being afraid. Likely the supposed watchers are not competent, and they don't give a shit about your data.

Oh that list is definitely real 🫠 for example, any list that Joshua Wong is on. The censorship apparatus is so well known that there's a whole dialect of online slang built around it. Get real. Good to hear your friend is a well behaved citizen that hasn't done anything meaningful to lose access. Sounds like a good boy. (No one cares about your drugs, or torrents behind the firewall btw). Hey, maybe your Chinese friend proves you right and the billions in China are all cowards and the chilling effect doesn't exist.

They're not cowards. They're lazy. They think the firewall is a good filter against bad US propaganda. There is censorship on the other side of the great firewall too. Copyright and drugs. I'd even half count Trump being kicked out social media too. Most people are too lazy to learn torrents and crypto to buy drugs. They'd rather pay cash and get netflix, or local dealer. For this same reason Nostr will remain small.

Not really. It's now 9 hours of phone instead of 9 hours of TV. People wanna turn on the TV, and turn off their brains. Your efforts are wasted trying to fix that. I'd like a communication platform based on quality instead of quantity, but how will it be funded without ads? Drug trade is the only possibility I see.

Funded by zaps of course 🥳 humans are clever and will go wherever their time is valued. What's fun about working for Bitcoin (directly or indirectly) is that your time is never wasted. Saying there's no communications platform possible without ads propping it up is like saying there's no money without money printing and theft (i.e. fiat). Those platforms were never necessary and those incentive models only existed because uncorruptible digital money wasn't ready yet. Back to the Bitcoin chatroom 🫣

Show me who's making 10+M SAT a month. Who's the most zapped user? IRC (freenode) survived as a non profit, but kinda dying now. I'm pondering to go back there or matrix. Nostr is hit or miss. Often very little responses or interesting talks. Fiat buys food, bitcoin doesn't. Fiat puts fuel in your tank. What's the point of your bitcoin knowledge aside from number go up?

Thanks. I like a few random people who pop up. It reminds me of IRC a lot. Different format, but similar vibe. Small and cozy. Not like twitter where your meme can easily get 10K shares and likes. I'm waiting for Letr to come out. It sounds more appropriate for deeper thoughts.