* * * * *
                                        
  A neat idea, but I can see this leading to the Balkanization of the Internet
                                        
I did not expect my recent post about blocking a Chinese web bot [1] to
generate such a large discussion at Hacker News [2] and to a lesser degree,
Lobsters [3] (for the record, I did not submit my post to either site).
Reading over the comments at both sites, I think my favorite comment so far
is:

> > "I'm seriously thinking that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) encourage
> > this with maybe the hope of externalizing the cost of the Great Firewall
> > to the rest of the world. If China scrapes content, that's fine as far as
> > the CCP goes; If it's blocked, that's fine by the CCP too (I say, as I
> > adjust my tin foil hat)."
> > 
> 
> Then turn the tables on them and make the Great Firewall do your job! Just
> choose a random snippet about illegal Chinese occupation of Tibet or human
> rights abuses of Uyghur people each time you generate a page and insert it
> as a breaker between paragraphs. This should get you blocked in no time :)
> 

“Hacker News comment on “Bro, ban me at the IP level if you don't like me”
[4]”

There's also the 1989 Tiananmem Square massacre [5], Falun Gong persecution
[6] and last but not least, that Xi Jinping looks like Winnie-the-Pooh [7]. I
was considering the idea to include such information in each post, but then
in a follow-up comment to that one:

> I just tried this, i took some strings about Falun Gong and the Tianmen
> thing from the chinese wikipedia and put them into my SSH (Secure Shell)
> server banner. The connection attempts from the Tencent AS ceased
> completely, but now they come from Russia, Lithuania and Iran instead.
> 

“Other Hacker News comment on “Bro, ban me at the IP level if you don't like
me” [8]”

Russia and Iran don't surprise me, but Lithuania? Weird. But ultimately, yes,
I get China to block me, only for them to outsource their scraping to other
countries.

Sigh.

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2025/08/21.1
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45010183
[3] https://lobste.rs/s/pmfuza/bro_ban_me_at_ip_level_if_you_don_t_like_me
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45011309
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Winnie-the-Pooh_in_China
[8] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45011309
---

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Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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