GitHub Suspected of Actively Blocking Mainland China IPs, Access Situation Changes Abruptly!

Dear developer friends, today we may have to face a frustrating reality.

In the past, although direct connections to GitHub were slow, laggy, or even inaccessible in some regions, this was largely attributed to network filtering issues, and GitHub was not completely blocked within China.

However, the situation seems to have fundamentally changed starting today: numerous users report that GitHub has begun actively blocking IP addresses from Mainland China. This means that if you do not use tools to bypass restrictions, you may be completely unable to access most of GitHub's content.

Based on current observations:

• Without logging in: Access to GitHub almost completely fails. You might barely load the homepage, but attempting to access repositories, profile pages, or any other content generally results in an Access Denied error.
• While logged in: Some users who remained logged in report that, without using bypass tools, pages may load extremely slowly, but the experience is significantly worse than before, and it's unclear how long this will last.
• Key indicator: More concerningly, tests show that even GitHub's login page (github.com/login) is now directly returning a 403 Forbidden error (as shown in the image below).

What Does This Signal?

Blocking even the core login page entirely is unlikely to be solely for anti-crawling purposes. Posts reporting this issue have appeared in GitHub's official discussion groups, but as of now, there has been no official explanation or response.

The specific reasons behind this blocking remain unknown. However, it's clear that this has shifted the access path for domestic developers from previous "one-way difficulties" (mainly due to local network environments) to a current "two-way blockage" (with GitHub actively blocking).

This sudden "dual-sided obstruction" undoubtedly adds to the challenges faced by China's open-source developers and users who rely on GitHub for learning and work. The future implications and underlying causes can only be monitored over time...