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posted by takyon on Friday September 21 2018, @05:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the trickle dept.

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

China Blocks Twitch Game-Streaming Service

Video game-streaming service Twitch has been blocked in China.

Since 20 September, Twitch's website has been unreachable from the country and its app has been removed from the local Apple App Store.

Twitch has confirmed that it is being blocked but it has not said why the authorities have imposed the restriction.

The service was cut off shortly after enjoying a significant bump in popularity among Chinese gamers. The streaming service has been gaining a larger following in China over the last few months. Many keen gamers flocked to it in late August to watch eSports matches being played at the Asian Games in Jakarta.

Not a fan of Twitch myself, but I'm even less of a fan of censorship.


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  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday September 21 2018, @05:39PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Friday September 21 2018, @05:39PM (#738262) Journal

    We need to recognize.... the Untwitchables.

    Thanks. Be sure to tip SN, 'cause I can't afford to at the moment.

    --
    This sig for rent.
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by zugedneb on Friday September 21 2018, @05:49PM (8 children)

    by zugedneb (4556) on Friday September 21 2018, @05:49PM (#738265)

    "Not a fan of Twitch myself..."
    How so?
    1. it is interesting to see pro players players, one can learn a lot...
    2. it can be run in the background like a random radio show, there are some interesting streamer-viewer interaction on certain channels, at least...

    --
    old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 21 2018, @06:03PM (7 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday September 21 2018, @06:03PM (#738273) Journal

      Could be more fun to watch Twitch compilations on YouTube, where someone has gone and screened out the hours upon hours of boring parts. Or Mr. Beast donating thousands of dollars to streamers [youtube.com].

      That said, I agree with #2, there is enough content on YouTube (autoplay on), online live news channels (CBSN, Al Jazeera, or all of the big ones with a Kodi setup), Twitch, internet radio streams, etc. to be playing something in the background goddamn forever.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 1) by zugedneb on Friday September 21 2018, @06:09PM (6 children)

        by zugedneb (4556) on Friday September 21 2018, @06:09PM (#738280)

        none of that explains the reason for stating explicitly in your summary: "Not a fan of Twitch myself..."
        am interested in the proportions here...

        --
        old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 21 2018, @06:19PM (1 child)

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 21 2018, @06:19PM (#738286)

          I can't speak for him, but some streams are "semi-professional" like Direwolf20s modded minecraft feed, and thats OK.

          But, merely 99% of the remaining streams are cringe parody of a low quality PBS fundraising drive complete with ridiculous fundraising sound effects.

          You may as well rename the entire genre from "livestreaming" to "Narcissistic personality disorder streaming" although "NPDstreaming" doesn't roll off the tongue. With a side dish of chicks in bikini's eating bananas on camera being an extremely popular subgenre. Lots of jiggle in some streams.

          Basically if you remember the shitty asshat in the back of the high school classroom laughing at his own jokes, that mixed with legalized weed, and some attention whores, is like 99% of twitch.

          Of course its not all trash, merely almost all of it.

          • (Score: 1) by zugedneb on Friday September 21 2018, @06:54PM

            by zugedneb (4556) on Friday September 21 2018, @06:54PM (#738305)

            the "little people" are as they are...
            let them have their fun, and u have yours... =)

            --
            old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 21 2018, @06:27PM (3 children)

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday September 21 2018, @06:27PM (#738291) Journal

          #NotMySummary

          Probably a lot of people here see watching people play video games as a huge waste of time. And are they wrong? Depends on what you care about.

          --
          [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
          • (Score: 1) by zugedneb on Friday September 21 2018, @06:51PM

            by zugedneb (4556) on Friday September 21 2018, @06:51PM (#738303)

            honestly, its not that bad...
            as educated man, it is now evident that with the declining jobs and lack of actual wars with great casualties, it is not the wisest thing to remove entertaining stuff from peoples life...

            or, they will end up occupied with who believes best in God, and who is thinking lewd stuff of who's wife, or even worse...

            let us be sober here...

            --
            old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @07:51AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @07:51AM (#738496)

            Probably a lot of people here see watching people play video games as a huge waste of time.

            To be fair the same argument could be made to consider watching people play sports as a huge waste of time.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @11:56AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @11:56AM (#738524)

              They are both huge wastes of time. So is everything else. Watching other people do something fun rather than do it myself is not something I understand though.

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 21 2018, @05:53PM (2 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 21 2018, @05:53PM (#738268)

    Rumor has it that "Armored Warfare" and "World of Tanks" specifically don't include infantry because they didn't want 4chan and friends stirring up stuff with the Chinese along the lines of streaming and screenshotting re-enactments and parodies of "Tienanmen Square tank guy" (Only gen-X will remember that dude, or the overall event the Chinese have been trying to memory hole for some time)

    That rumor is of course probably BS, but is tasty sounding.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 21 2018, @06:24PM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday September 21 2018, @06:24PM (#738289) Journal

      Sounds like /pol/ or /v/ making shit up.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 21 2018, @06:38PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 21 2018, @06:38PM (#738294)

        I'm not disagreeing. Still, its probably the most "NPC-compatible" explanation provided of why nobody releases combined arms games anymore.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Friday September 21 2018, @06:11PM (2 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 21 2018, @06:11PM (#738282)

    Its a weirdly censored BBC story, even by politically active BBC story standards, that they didn't mention Sina Weibo, Ifeng, and AcFun.

    China's been censoring live streaming in general for almost two years now.

    The only interesting aspect of the story is how twitch avoided the category-wide ban for almost two years.

    Amusingly the BBC has a long history of reporting Chinese censorship of live streaming that I've now apparently researched in greater depth than the linked "journalist" did. Take for example:

    https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-36226141 [bbc.com]

    I'm sure for strictly scientific dietary research purposes we've all seen video footage of attractive scantily clad young women stroking entire bananas in and out of their mouths while begging for streaming video money, and the link above describes the BBC's report more than two years ago of the Chinese banning that specific sort of livestream. Its completely lacking in animated gifs of the infraction... come on BBC ya gotta report the whole story. Apparently not long after that the Chinese got sick of monitoring every individual THOT's stream and just said fuck it we're banning entire services now, they wiped several services, and finally twitch relatively recently got the axe. Its kinda ridiculous, like where do you think Chinese young women get their daily potassium minerals from, anyway?

    So... were the Chinese merely lazy? Or did Twitch ban streamers from China "for bandwidth reasons" or some BS? Or did twitch pay off China and recently stopped or they were paying off the wrong guy? The real story is probably more interesting than the linked twitch story while still being less exciting than the banana ban story.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 21 2018, @06:26PM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday September 21 2018, @06:26PM (#738290) Journal

      Western services don't tend to be nearly as popular in China, especially new ones.

      Google seems to want to re-insert themselves into China with a new censored search engine, but I don't think it will go well for them.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @07:12AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @07:12AM (#738493)

        Don't worry it will be very good for google and the chinese dictators. Only the rest of the world will suffer.

  • (Score: 2) by Apparition on Friday September 21 2018, @08:33PM

    by Apparition (6835) on Friday September 21 2018, @08:33PM (#738347) Journal

    This may have something to do with China's current video game freeze [gamesindustry.biz], in order to "protect the children's eyesight."

    A freeze on new video games being approved for release in China has slowed the country's gaming market considerably, and it seems that the end may not be in sight for some time.

    [...] The freeze has been in effect since March of this year, though until recently the Chinese government had not offered any hints as to why it was not approving any new licenses. Just over a week ago, however, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued recommendations to reduce child myopia [gamesindustry.biz], which included limiting new game licenses, and The South China Morning Post reports that the government is centralizing license approvals to a single bureau as a part of that reduction.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @12:42AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @12:42AM (#738425)

    when you watch most live streams, you're thrown into IRC. It doesn't say anywhere on the screen that you're actually in IRC, instead it appears like you're just in a nice little web chat.

    WRONG.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday September 22 2018, @03:01AM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday September 22 2018, @03:01AM (#738464) Journal

      Uh, it's not bad because it's IRC, it's bad because on popular Twitch channels thousands of people are trying to say dumb stuff or spam emojis all at the same time. So you are looking at 10+ messages per second, and that might be with Twitch slowing it down or removing duplicate messages.

      The Twitch chat can be interesting under rare circumstances. Like with things like Twitch Plays Pokemon, or the chat accompanying footage of the recent Jacksonville game tournament shooting.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @04:11AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @04:11AM (#738478)

        Uh, it's not bad because it's IRC,

        Uh, yes it is. Especially bad when you are not clearly informed on the stream page that you are really in IRC!

        There are massive privacy/security implications here IMO and it's just overlooked or waved away as benign.

        The average Joe probably has no ad blockers on, all kinds of scripts are running, so they are not only, IMO,
        targeted in the browser but also through IRC. The immediate combination of the two for Joe User is cause
        to shudder. But these are the same people who use proprietary applications like Discord and just don't
        care.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @01:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @01:48PM (#738536)

      It doesn't say anywhere on the screen that you're actually in IRC

      Actually, no, you aren't in IRC. You're in their custom-built chat system dubbed TMI [twitch.tv], which happens to have a very slim compatibility with actual IRC (that is to say, an IRC client can happily connect, but most commands don't work because they're not implemented, and even the nick list doesn't work.)

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