Experience the censored Chinese internet at home!

October 27, 2008 8:48 AM

China Channel Firefox Add-on: Experience the censored Chinese internet at home!

The Firefox add-on China Channel offers internet users outside of China the ability to surf the web as if they were inside mainland China. Take an unforgetable virtual trip to China and experience the technical expertise of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (supported by western companies). It's open source, free and easy.

posted by chunking express (14 comments total)

Interesting. I wanted to try it, but the plugin doesn't seem to work for me. I see the red "GO" button, but the only choice in the drop-down box is "None."

I like the idea of the single input for two computers.
posted by roll truck roll at 9:13 AM on October 27, 2008

Well, that was slow. The only differences were the speed and the blocked websites (of which there weren't actually that many.) The website chinaisevil.com isn't blocked, I found that funny.
posted by cardern at 9:23 AM on October 27, 2008

Pretty brilliant idea.

Comparing Google results is interesting.
posted by rokusan at 9:33 AM on October 27, 2008

b4d m1lk.
posted by Artw at 9:49 AM on October 27, 2008 [3 favorites]

Excellent! Now Palin can add China to the list of countries she has foreign experience with!
posted by mannequito at 9:50 AM on October 27, 2008 [3 favorites]

Chinastan!
posted by cjorgensen at 9:56 AM on October 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

I can't wait for the Australian version.
posted by Mr_Zero at 10:06 AM on October 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

My experience was that the Great Firewall was far less obtrusive than the firewall at the Department of Homeland Security. It was also far easier to bypass.
posted by Pollomacho at 10:06 AM on October 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Be careful, this thing is liable to annex certain nearby less powerful servers on your computer.
posted by Liquidwolf at 10:10 AM on October 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Google [___Porn____] [_Search_]
Did you mean: Glorious Chairman Mao

Google [___Drugs____] [_Search_]
Did you mean: Great Leap Forward

Google [___Motorhead____] [_Search_]
Did you mean: Ways to undermine the neoliberal pigdogs
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 10:20 AM on October 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Where did MetaFilter go?
posted by clearly at 12:12 PM on October 27, 2008

Thanks but I subscribed earlier!
posted by Abiezer at 1:19 PM on October 27, 2008

mannequito: "Excellent! Now Palin can add China to the list of countries she has foreign experience with!"

If Palin knew how to install a Firefox extension, let alone knew how to browse the web unassisted, I'd be surprised.
posted by Effigy2000 at 1:38 PM on October 27, 2008

I was in China for four months (though with plenty of means to go around the firewall). When I was going through the firewall, only one interesting thing happened. I was surfing Wikipedia and clicked on the Freenet article to see what it was up to these days. All of a sudden, Wikipedia was not an accessible host. Like, instantly. Requests for other Wikipedia pages failed faster than I've ever seen any other request fail. Other internet sites worked fine. After about 15 minutes, it went back to normal.

Also, everything (everything) was slow. But that might have just been my shitty DSL connection.
posted by 0xFCAF at 7:25 PM on October 27, 2008