I mean, imagine a reality where a bunch of humans end up using the same service like that, between two countries at odds, and they realize that they have a lot more in common than they thought possible. It could be a bridge that changes a world.
The answer is Fediverse. From last time I checked while I am in Mainland China, lemmy.world is not banned (yet lemmy.ml is banned lol)
I am also able to use my own Mastodon instance in Mainland China.
Fediverse is the key and tool to break the Great Firewall.
I saw people in some Chinese source saying XiaoHongShu is updating the algorithm to segregate Chinese users and foreign users (image 1) and hiring English Post Inspectors (image 2) to moderate English contents due to China’s policy
Image 1:
Image 2:
It’s kind of like why there are Weixin and WeChat, Douyin and TikTok, Taobao and AliExpress, Pinduoduo and Temu
The emotional part of me yells “shut up and take my money”, but the rational part of me tells me that it will be another useless piece of junk on my shelf
Then there is Japanese that have to worry if their system still working tomorrow because of Showa 100 Year Problem
Short summary: Basically similar to Y2K, when changing era in Japan last last time from Showa to Heisei, in order to save space, programmer at the time continue to use Showa as base so Heisei 2 actually recorded in computer as Showa 65. Tomorrow, which is 2025, is Showa 100. And you get the idea.
Also some addition: a lot of people in China does not host the Fedi server in China, mostly because the requirement of obtaining ICP License if they want to host in China
As a China-born Hongkonger, little to none for Lemmy as far as I know, but there are actually a lot of people in mainland China uses Fediverse but mostly on Mastodon and Misskey. I do have two friends in mainland China who are able to use Mastodon without VPN.
Also some fun fact(?): Each time when I need to go back to mainland China, I always check if several instances are blocked. As far as I tested last time, lemmy.world is not banned in mainland China
That’s a plugin called oil.nvim, which allows you to navigate and edit filesystem as if it’s a neovim buffer