Here is my guide to the global Internet.
Note: This blog is written in early 2025.
Global Websites/Platforms
Social Media
| US | China | Russia | EU | Japan/Korea | Open-Source & Other | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Video | YouTube, Twitch | Bilibili， 抖音, Tiktok (blocked in China)， 微信视频号 | Vk Video, Rutube | Stream.cz (Czech) | Niconico, SOOP, Naver TV | Likee (Singapore)， PeerTube (Open-source), Aparat (Iran) |
| Chat | Whatsapp, Discord, Facebook Messenger, Signal | 微信, QQ | Telegram (UAE), Vk Messenger, Max | Viber (Cyprus) | Line, KakaoTalk | Matrix (Open-source) |
| Micro-Blogging | X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Tumblr | 微博,小红书 | Vk, Ok | / | Mixi, BAND | Mastodon (Open-source), Eitaa (Iran) |
| Forums/Q&A | Reddit, Quora, Hacker News | 知乎,贴吧 | Pikabu, Ответы Mail | Gutefrage (Germany), Jeuxvideo (France) | Chiebukuro, 2channel, DCinside | Lemmy (Open-source) |
| Blogging | Medium, Substack | 微信公众号, 知乎专栏,CSDN | Dzen, Habr | / | Note.com, Naver Blog, Daum Cafe | Ghost (Open-source), Wordpress (Open-source) |
Utility
| US | China | Russia | EU | Japan/Korea | Open-Source & Other | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | Google, Bing | 百度,搜狗 | Yandex | Seznam (Czech) | Yahoo, Naver | / |
| Cloud | AWS, Azure, GCP, Cloudflare | 阿里云,腾讯云,华为云 | Yandex Cloud, Selectel, Timeweb, DDoS Guard | Ionos (Germany), Hetzner (Germany), Upcloud (Finland), OVH (France) | NTT, Fujitsu, Naver, Kakao, Samsung | / |
| LLM | Google Gemini, Grok, Claude, HuggingFace | DeepSeek, Qwen | Gigachat, Yandex Alice | Mistral AI (France) | / | / |
| Shopping | Amazon, eBay | 京东,淘宝,拼多多 | Ozon, Wildberries | Zalando (Germany) | Rakuten, Coupang | / |
| Money | Paypal, Google Pay | 微信,支付宝 | SberPay | / | Line Pay, Naver Pay, Kakao Pay | / |
| Mobile Provider | AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile | 中国移动, 中国联通, 中国电信 | МТС, МегаФон, Билайн | Deutsche Telekom (Germany), Orange (France) | NTT Docomo, SoftBank, KDDI, SK Telecom, KT, LG U+ | MTN Irancell (Iran) |
Entertainment
| US | China | Russia | EU | Japan/Korea | Open-Source & Other | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Movies | Netflix, IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes | IQIYI, 豆瓣电影 | IVI, Kinopoisk | AlloCine (France) | Watcha, Naver Movie | / |
| Books | Goodreads | 豆瓣读书 | Livelib, Яндекс книги | LovelyBooks (Germany) | Bookmeter, Aladin | / |
| Sports | ESPN, NBC | CCTV5 | Match TV | Kicker (Germany), Sport.cz (Czech) | NHK Sports, Naver Sports, Daum Sports | Varzesh3 (Iran) |
Resources
| US | China | Russia | EU | Japan/Korea | Open-Source & Other | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Git | Github | Gitee | Gitflic | / | / | Gitlab (Open-source) |
| Maps | Google Maps, Apple Maps | 高德地图, 百度地图 | Yandex Maps, 2gis | Here Maps (Germany), Mapy.cz (Czech), Mappy (France) | Yahoo! Japan Maps, Naver Map | OpenStreetMap (Open-source) |
| Wiki | Wikipedia | 百度百科 | Ruwiki | / | Namu (Korea) | EcuRed (Cuba) |
| Online Courses | IAS | / | МФТИ, МГУ, EIMI | Carmin TV (France) | / | IMPA, UNAM |
| Tech | / (mostly independent) | / | Yandex ML, МФТИ | / | / | / |
| Archive | Internet Archive | / | / | archive.today (Czech) | / | Anna's Archive |
- Internet Archive: Many websites can be archived, for example, Wikipedia pages (since everything changes), Reddit, or YouTube channels before they delete their videos. Internet Archive has a limit of around 200 MB for files and if the webpage contains too much content it won't be able to save everything in external links.
- Extensions, Userscripts: It's basically like automatically running code in the debugging console. You can change the page layout, add keyboard shortcuts, redirect websites, etc. A popular extension is Ublock Origin
mp4,m3u8, DASH, Torrent: Local videos usemp4. Many websites usem3u8to control streaming and quality change by dividing videos into small chunks. You can listen on the network tab to scrape the videos on most websites. YouTube uses a specific format called "DASH" and InnerTube APIs to stop scraping and you can't play YouTube videos sometimes if you have no cookies, so it's constantly a cat-and-mouse between independent developers and the platform.yt-dlpis an open-source tool to scrap videos from a list of popular websites. Torrent is a decentralized tool to distribute files P2P (legal or illegal). Some other relevant articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/123Movies, https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/wiki/megathread, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuTracker.org- Proxy, VPN, Tor, Browser Fingerprinting: Proxy/VPNs are tools to bypass geopolitical limits, website rate limits, or simply try to be anonymous online. Some relevant websites: clash, proxy marketplace, Github repo, Internet censorship Wikipedia, wireguard. Tor is a protocal to be anonymous online (though nothing is always anonymous) by routing through onion nodes, see here. Onion websites (many highly illegal and taboo) are only accessible through tor. If you set up tor, you can access onion websites or normal websites in a normal browser like firefox/chrome, or through just conveniently through the tor browser (tor browser protects against browser fingerprinting). Browser fingerprinting is a technique to log your language settings, screen, os, hardware, useragent, timezone, etc, to "guess" who you are and when you accessed the website before, which can be surprisingly accurate, you can check here.
- Politics, Violence, Fringe: They aren't onion websites, and Google removed many websites from the search result, but most are just one search away from Yandex. If you look up the DNS records, they usually use "alt-tech" platforms such as DDoS-Guard, Tencent DNSPod, Frantech Solutions, Rumble Cloud, Private Layer, Mevspace, No Ack, etc for CDN/DDoS proection, utilizing geopolitical loopholes. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Right-wing_websites (I focus on technology, and I do not endorse any fringe movements or any illegal practices beyond pirating)
Now the tide is rolling in
I don't wanna win
Let it take me, let it take me
I'll be on my way
How long can I stay?
In the place that can't contain me
(I'm Tired, Song by Labrinth and Zendaya)