13.1. 996.ICU (2019)

Repository published in 2019-04 protesting against excessive work hours by Chinese programmers.

At some point it moved its README to English.

This was not directly censored to our knowledge, but the fact that it was published on GitHub rather than Chinese social media highlights the obvious fact that Chinese programmers were weary of doing it under CCP controlled media which they do not trust.

The project name refers to:

Reached 180k stars in a week, and was the second most starred repository as of 2019-10 https://github.com/search?q=stars%3A%3E100&s=stars&type=Repositories (archive)!!!

This is therefore the best example for Chinese tech workers that freedom of speech is a good thing.

Coverage:

Related:

996ICU
Figure 147. 996.ICU logo. Source.