: Great Firewall took out all traffic to port 443 at a time Beijing didn't have an obvious need to keep its netizens in the dark

Activist group Great Firewall Report spotted the outage, which it said disrupted all traffic to TCP port 443 – the standard port used for carrying HTTPS traffic.

“Between approximately 00:34 and 01:48 (Beijing Time, UTC+8) on August 20, 2025, the Great Firewall of China (GFW) exhibited anomalous behavior by unconditionally injecting forged TCP RST+ACK packets to disrupt all connections on TCP port 443,” the group wrote in a Wednesday post.

That disruption meant Chinese netizens couldn’t reach most websites hosted outside China, which is inconvenient. The incident also blocked other services that rely on port 443, which could be more problematic because many services need to communicate with servers or sources of information outside China for operational reasons. For example, Apple and Tesla use the port to connect to offshore servers that power some of their basic services.

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      11 hours ago

      For example, in China the film industry censors LGBT-related films. Filmmakers must resort to finding funds from international investors such as the “Ford Foundations” and or produce through an independent film company.

      Good read. Fuck censorship. Fuck the CCP.

    • Nougat@fedia.io
      2812·
      16 hours ago

      Pro tip: Posting in non-relevant places about the controversy you personally find very important - even if you’re right - is counterproductive to the very thing you want changed.

      • SoupBrick@pawb.socialEnglish
        303·
        16 hours ago

        My friend, this post is about China getting cut off from the rest of the word, most likely due to government censorship.

        The title of this community is Technology.

        It is a PSA about the current steps the US is taking towards similar levels of censorship. This is pretty damn relevant to both the community and the post topic.

        I know some people don’t like it, but politics is part of tons of different communities. Even a crafting community would be affected by the current tariffs.

          • SoupBrick@pawb.socialEnglish
            82·
            16 hours ago

            Just as a reminder, you are able to block users if you do not like what they are posting.

            • BaroqueInMind@piefed.socialEnglish
              94·
              16 hours ago

              Cool, but I hate living in an echo chamber, and worry remaining an ignorant dipshit like most people here, and I also don’t mind reading things that hurt my feelings. So, no.

            • Nougat@fedia.io
              310·
              16 hours ago

              I don’t like to resort to that, but since you’ve suggested it - yeah, I’ll never hear about your concerns again. Thanks! Good job!

              • _cryptagion [he/him]@anarchist.nexusEnglish
                17·
                16 hours ago

                “I don’t like how you’ve chosen to express yourself, so I’m going to stick my head into the sand so I don’t hear your concerns.”

                How very white liberal of you. Really channeling your inner Jordan Lund.

                • SoupBrick@pawb.socialEnglish
                  3·
                  15 hours ago

                  Eh, I would rather get blocked than have a troll that follows me everywhere.

                  I don’t know for sure if this user is one, but everybody wants something different from their online experience and I don’t think there is anything wrong with curating it.

                  IF they hate politics and don’t want to see it anywhere on their feed, that is their choice. It may come back to bite them in the ass with IRL “leopards ate my face” style consequences when they realize that politics affects everyone, but it is still their choice.

                  The midset of “Everyone’s opinion is valid and should be heard” is a neo-liberal perspective with their “centrist” (right leaning) approach. That is how we got to institutions platforming literal Nazis on debate channels.

                  I think there is a happy medium where it is alright to block users or hide posts if their messaging is just counterproductive or inflammatory.

                  Also it is better to block trolls than rag on them, their goal is typically to get any reaction.

                  I like to give them a chance to discuss and try to introduce them to a new perspective, but the second they throw a blatantly bad fatih comment, I am going for the block button.

                  https://youtu.be/2S-WJN3L5eo

                  • _cryptagion [he/him]@anarchist.nexusEnglish
                    21·
                    15 hours ago

                    I think the midset of “Everyone’s opinion is valid and should be heard” is more of a neo-liberal perspective

                    well, that’s not what I said, so yeah, I agree with you.