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980 points nkcmr | 26 comments | | HN request time: 0.206s | source | bottom
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toxik ◴[] No.27415754[source]
Chinese originated spam and abuse is so outrageously widespread, I don’t understand why there isn’t a conversation going on about cutting them off from the wider internet. They blocked most of it anyway.
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1. wyager ◴[] No.27415770[source]
I would rather have a global network with marginally more spam than a regional network with marginally less.
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2. systemvoltage ◴[] No.27415826[source]
I believe in reciprocity. China has blocked a lot of the western traffic. So, the west should block China. If they open up, we should welcome them with open arms. Similar spirit as some open source licenses - reciprocity creates fairness and increases collaboration, prevents hawks in a population of doves and improves stability.

We are already doing this with trade. The amount of leeway and free lunch China has gotten from the west is insane. I don’t blame China, I blame the west and the rest of the world for not preventing it. Asymmetrical policies are often exploited by capitalism and governments have been caught off guard.

I’m not an Anti-China lunatic. It’s just common sense.

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3. jjeaff ◴[] No.27415879[source]
I don't think every country in the world minus one or two would be "regional".
4. yarcob ◴[] No.27415887[source]
I really don't think blocks and embargoes are going to help anyone. They just suck for all the affected people, but I don't think they are very effective at convincing foreign governments to open up.
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5. systemvoltage ◴[] No.27415980{3}[source]
We're talking about blocking IPs originating from China. How would that hurt the affected people outside of China?

In regards to trade war, HN has discussed this ad-nauseum, I think we should restrict the discussion to internet traffic even though I brought it up as an analogy about asymmetric response from the west in general: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=trade+war

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6. kortilla ◴[] No.27416080[source]
This false dichotomy is impressive. A single country accounting for for 50+% sets up the choice to be, “a global network with a lot less spam and a regional island with a lot of spam” vs “a global network with a ton of spam barely connected to a regional network that much of the spam originates from”.
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7. dvfjsdhgfv ◴[] No.27416359[source]
The lives of people in China trying to use Internet services outside are already miserable; let's not make it worse and alienate others. We should treat them just like the rest: if extensive malicious traffic arrives, we drop it, but we don't ban the entire country.
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8. yarcob ◴[] No.27416384{4}[source]
> We're talking about blocking IPs originating from China. How would that hurt the affected people outside of China?

Most of the affected people would obviously be inside China.

9. toxik ◴[] No.27416503{3}[source]
The internet is built on institutional trust. You can’t have a properly functioning network when a sizable part is just not giving a shit about its users abusing your users.

It very much echoes the problems of intellectual property theft in China.

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10. snowwrestler ◴[] No.27416704[source]
The Chinese government operates their Internet blocks (the “Great Firewall”). But overwhelmingly, it is the Chinese people who are trying to access information on the public Internet.

Blocking the entire country will do little to hurt the government (who can employ state resources to get whatever information they want) and do quite a bit more to harm the Chinese people by reducing whatever level of information independence they still have.

If there is going to be significant change in China, it will have to come from the Chinese people. Cutting them off from the Internet vindictively does not advance that goal.

There are specific people in China doing specific bad things with specific computing resources. It would be far better for the U.S. government to dedicate more resources to finding and partnering with orgs and projects (like icanhazip or Cloudflare) to find the info they need to apply targeted mitigations.

“China does it, so we should do it too” only makes sense as a strategy if our goal is to become exactly like China is today. I don’t think that should be our goal.

replies(1): >>27416831 #
11. npteljes ◴[] No.27416708[source]
That "single country" is of 1.4B people.
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12. crumbshot ◴[] No.27416709{4}[source]
This supposed 'intellectual property theft' is mostly just reverse engineering of technology.

It's not really a problem anyway. If some capitalists in the US and Europe don't get to skim off a slice of profit from another country's manufacturing output, then so what?

13. systemvoltage ◴[] No.27416831{3}[source]
> “China does it, so we should do it too” only makes sense as a strategy if our goal is to become exactly like China is today. I don’t think that should be our goal.

I very strongly disagree. An eye for an eye is exactly what needs to be done and should have been done from the beginning. Unfortunately, it is too late. 1989 massacre should have been condemned more solidly and trade restrictions should have been placed in the 90's. The bet that western alliances made is that China would open up in the 2000s leading into 2010s. That has gone horribly wrong.

The west is finally waking up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Parliamentary_Alliance_o...

14. wyager ◴[] No.27417204[source]
I’m very glad that my government is probably not allowed to prevent me from accessing content from China. That’s why I live here and not in China.
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15. wyager ◴[] No.27417210{4}[source]
> The internet is built on institutional trust.

No it’s not. What is this even supposed to mean?

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16. yesenadam ◴[] No.27417330[source]
> I believe in reciprocity. China has blocked a lot of the western traffic. So, the west should block China. If they open up, we should welcome them with open arms.

This sounds like a couple of people I've met, who have a philosophy of "treating people the way they treat me". And what if the other person/side also "believes in reciprocity", what happens then? This seems to rely on other people being nice first, and then always treating them how they treated you, imitating their behaviour, like Tit-for-tat[0]—except Tit-for-tat begins by being nice. It's not easy to put my finger on what seems fishy about that strategy, but it doesn't at all seem the easy solution to being fair and just (or whatever word you most prefer here) its proponents seem to think it is.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat (See particularly "Problems" and the next section)

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17. Ir0nMan ◴[] No.27417515{3}[source]
To be fair, I think OP's suggestion was more like blocking "incoming" traffic from China.
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18. systemvoltage ◴[] No.27418433{3}[source]
One can have a tit-for-tat policies on a geopolitical scale but also excercise forgiveness in most situations in life. I think Tit-for-tat is a terrible strategy on the whole and agree with your philosophical stance - I hope you didn't mean it on the personal level.
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19. TchoBeer ◴[] No.27418539{4}[source]
I don't see how that's any different than what GP was talking about
20. posguy ◴[] No.27418753{5}[source]
Autonomous system (AS) operators should not act in bad faith towards other AS networks they peer with. BGP hijacking is an example of abuse of this institutional trust, same for DNS hijacking.

If this trust is repeatedly broken, peering networks may be forced to depeer the AS as a result, like what happened to McColo when they were depeered.

21. yesenadam ◴[] No.27418780{4}[source]
Sorry—you hope I didn't mean what on the personal level?
replies(1): >>27418929 #
22. systemvoltage ◴[] No.27418929{5}[source]
Apologies, I was hoping you didn't mean to judge my personal character from a single data point on China's policy. I think I am pretty forgiving and excercise tolerance because I know when these things are difficult is exactly when it matters the most. Tolerance is the price we pay for freedom and liberty.
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23. sumedh ◴[] No.27419195{3}[source]
Why does that matter?
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24. alach11 ◴[] No.27419291{4}[source]
Calling China "a single country" minimizes the fact that it contains 18% of the world's people. It's hard to call something a "global network" if it leaves out that much of the world.
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25. sumedh ◴[] No.27419573{5}[source]
What is your definition of global then?

Why isnt 82% of the worlds's people global?

26. yesenadam ◴[] No.27419844{6}[source]
Hehe no, sorry to give you that impression. Thanks for explaining!