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Iran plans permanent break from global internet, say activists
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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China too.
Are you not aware of the great firewall?
Different. Iran's proposal would, if enacted, literally makes communications to the outside world impossible, since they are literally disconnecting the internet from the outside. It's more like North Korea. In constrast, VPNs are still a thing in China... for now at least. Not every western site gets blocked. There's a Chinese lemmy instance btw. Information flows in and out of China all the time.
What's the chinese lemmy instance?
fasheng.ing
It's very close the Mandarin Pinyin of 发声音 (fāshēngyīn) (to make noise / to speak)
I don't think they have too much activity tho
China seems to vary. When I was there, VPNs worked, even Meta and Google sites were accessible on my T-mobile SIM. Other times those things are not accessible
Most people in China can't get a foreign sim lol, so that roaming thing only applies to foreigners.
I watched a video about how to bypass the firewall. Apparantly you could visit a hotel that tourists go to and like just book a room and you can use their wifi... to access the world wide web without the firewall.
Or you somehow order an iPhone or Samsung that's made for the international market, and if you have to import it, hope that the customs overlooks it (I mean it's just a cell phone, not a drone or radios or anything scary looking, shouldn't be too suspicious), then once you get it, purchase an overseas esim and then you can use that roaming and get access to the outside internet.
Or just walk up to some random foreigner and be like: "Ay yo, can you help me get a VPN, I can pay you in cash" (I mean you probably need a translator app if you grew up in mainland China) and hope they don't find you too sus and actually helps you.
Or if you know diasporas willing to help...
I mean I could probably buy a vpn here in the US, then send the vpn credentials and the .exe or .apks via an encrypted .7z compressed file to their qq email with an innocuous-looking title, then say the password over the phone, or mail the password... I doubt they inspect every letter.
Eh in my pretty touristy hotel I was not able to use Google or Meta sites on wifi. But I was surprised vpn worked and allowed me to access anything I wanted over wifi. I had prepared with shadowsocks configured as a contingency but didn't end up needing it. But people visiting a year earlier had reported vpn did not work for them.
China kinda did already. But they could make it official.
BRICS internet.