China Blocks Twitch (engadget.com) 72
After becoming the third most popular free app on China's App Store, Twitch is now no longer accessible and the Twitch app has been removed from the country's App Store. Engadget reports: While Twitch was available in China previously, it never gained much traction since its service is much slower than it is elsewhere. But when the country's CCTV state broadcaster chose not to air the Asian Games, those wanting to watch the event's eSports competitions sought coverage from other outlets. Now, with Twitch seemingly blocked in the country, it follows in the footsteps of other banned sites, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Abacus first reported the news.
Re: (Score:2)
'China can Twitch my DAMN balls.'
Would have been way better.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No doubt the likes of Weibo or Baidu are concocting a "me too" rip off of the Twitch platform, and in order to ensure its success the govt there helps local services by blocking competition. Welcome to a Communist regime, one step beyond socialism.
Re: (Score:3)
It is logical to favour local internet developments of foreign. It is the sane thing to do, not neccesarily block but certainly deny them all government business but certainly if they want to block they should besides cunts like google offshore the income with claims of massive costs in foreign countries so they pay zero taxes.
Pay no tax in a country, than why the fuck should they allow you business to operate there, especially an internet business. Honestly with the way those cunts like Google et al behav
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
too late
Re: (Score:1)
Never forget it was Bill Clinton who negotiated and signed the deal to allow China into the WTO...
https://www.iatp.org/sites/default/files/Full_Text_of_Clintons_Speech_on_China_Trade_Bi.htm
Re: (Score:2)
Here's a tip. The people who run your country (and mine) couldn't give a fat rat's ass if the Chinese government kills kittens in its spare time.
It's not just the Chinese making money.
Re: (Score:2)
If you refer to giving up freedom for security: I'd rather consider that convergent development, not the US and EU taking China as an example. The UK might still be leading there.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd rather say that they tend to value human rights differently than they tend to be valued in the West.
Let's consider the universal declaration of human rights [un.org].
Surely, people in the West have for quite a while tended to consider the rights in articles 18 to 21 particularly important (though even in the west there is quite some difference - freedom of speech tends to be valued higher in the US than in Britain or Germany.
On the other hand, people in China tend to value the rights in Articles 22 and 23 more (
Re: (Score:2)
Isolating China might have kept them weak. But as you can see by the example of North Korea that doesn't mean it would have resulted in a less authoritarian government. It would very likely have had much worse impact on the people of China than the actions of their current government.
By now it seems too late anyway. Even if the West could agree on such a policy, few other countries would follow. And US+EU+a few minor countries would probably loose such that second cold war.
The best option seems to be to con
Re: (Score:2)
Isolating China would have been dumb but tit for tat laws regarding partnering with local corporations would have made sense all day long. Sadly, nobody even tried that as a means of getting them to change their policies.
Re: (Score:2)
American companies might be able to move production out of China. That means the Chinese factories will the produce for other companies (mostly Chinese, as they already do, a bit for other parts of the world). I don't think the US has the know-how or skills to reindustrialize within one year. At least not to today's standard. The US are still great in a few key industries today, but that's it.
Viewer numbers? (Score:3)
And? (Score:1)
Re:And? (Score:4, Insightful)
Freedom isn't valuable to you? I mean its China and I realize talking about "freedom" in that context is like kicking the rubble after the building's already collapsed.. but every additional kick is one less pebble the Chinese people have available to them.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
And exactly what freedoms do you consider to be non-trivial? Do you really think that only specific freedoms are worth having?
Never mind the fact that _any_ user-driven content is a potential avenue for someone to tell their story for the world to see. Video is video. Twitch may be associated primarily with games, but as far as I know there's nothing stopping someone from uploading any other type of video content, other than "soft" measures like terms of service agreements.
Alternative Reason - Protectionism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Even the casual streamer easily has a few hundred viewers, which on Twitch would be considered pretty good. The big time streamers have at least 100K viewers at any time.
Yeah, but they have 1.3 billion people so you would expect higher audience numbers.
Re: (Score:2)
Huya, Pandatv, Douyu are all alternatives to Twitch. They also have MUCH MUCH higher viewer levels than Twitch does. Even the casual streamer easily has a few hundred viewers, which on Twitch would be considered pretty good. The big time streamers have at least 100K viewers at any time. Any Chinese streamer trying to make a living on Twitch versus the alternative would be crazy.
Chinese streaming numbers are generally considered to be padded.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
China has a number of popular domestic streaming platforms, perhaps the move to block twitch as it became popular is also to protect their buddies.
It's probably really the following.
1) Twitch isn't based in China and it does live streaming. That makes it threat because Chinese Twitch users might be able to live broadcast The Revolution - if it ever happens there.
2) It helps China based competitors who also cooperate with the government to stay in business and the government does have a way to get them to very quickly stop streaming The Revolution - again, if it ever happens.
3) For some reason I really don't get, right now China is becoming anti
Re: (Score:2)
China knows its people. Asians are strange beings. Look at Japanese and Koreans. They become incredibly obsessed with things, to the point of dedicating every moment of their lives to that thing. Sometimes for good, when craftsmen make amazing things. Other times for bad, when kids waste their lives in internet cafes playing videogames.
China relies on cheap labor. Having their workers play all night and come in tired to work won't do.
V
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty sure the asians were obsessed with things long before "socialism" was even a concept. Japan was never socialist. South Korea wasn't either. And both (especially the japanese) have invented A LOT of things.
And let's not forget that the chinese were civilized when Europe was still barbaric.
Same China that was going to keep buying our chips (Score:2)
If we only hadn't of stood up to them on trade ?
Or is this a different China that has a "What's mine is mine, what's yours we'll talk about, and do you dare complain" policy.
Stand up (Score:1)
First they came for Facebook and I said nothing because my last name was not Zuckerf**k, ...
Then they came for twitter and I said nothing because I'm not a twat,
Then they came for twitch
Re: (Score:2)
stuck in the country (Score:1)