So here's a more serious discussion of what 'GitHub' is, and why Microsoft's acquisition of it is so important: China can't block GitHub's pages about the Tiananmen Square massacre.
-
Show this thread
-
China has their Great Firewall to block 'bad' content. It can't block individual GitHub pages because GitHub forces the use of SSL/TLS, which encrypts the connection, so the Firewall can't see which pages are being accessed.
3 replies 29 retweets 105 likesShow this thread -
The only option would be to block the entire site, all access to http://GitHub.com , but China can't do that either, because so much source code is hosted on GitHub -- source code their industry needs in order to build products.
8 replies 22 retweets 108 likesShow this thread -
There are few websites on the Internet so powerful as to be above blocking by the Chinese government, and GitHub is one of them.
6 replies 70 retweets 175 likesShow this thread -
When Microsoft buys GitHub, however, China will now have leverage, threatening other Microsoft interests in China in order to pressure Microsoft into censoring some GitHub pages.
6 replies 125 retweets 248 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @ErrataRob
Rather than censoring github pages they'd likely just pressure them into having cdn inside China and giving backdoor access to monitor which ips access which content.
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes -
Replying to @RichFelker
That's a good point. It'd be harder to detect what's going on, too.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
This is going to be a theme in general. With transport secured, malicious govts (pretty much all) will be pressuring for domestic cdn nodes with backdoor access. And encouraging site bloat to apply soft pressure for everyone to use cdns.
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.