You see, the problem is that all exit points of our VPNs are in Europe. These too can be banned quite easily. Where to will we run next, given that this cancer tends to spread?
Change the protocols, I guess? Move to some kind of self-hosted or community-run infrastructure? Because to block all of that (EDIT: to block that reliably, I mean), you will have to block the entire EU network sector, and we're likely not in "V for Vendetta" or full-blown 1984 scenario for this to be possible.
Let me tell you how it has been in Russia during last 15 years. WE saw targeted blocks that apply after cease and desist letters. Later they learned to block outgoing OpenVPN and wireguard for everybody except firms who applied to a special registry. Then they learned to cut Vless and Trojan and blocked all sites behind freaking Cloudflare due to ECH v3.0 enforced. Here also go proxies (specifically for Telegram'm MTProto) and other stuff like Quic.
The point is if they start — they can proceed way further than you can imagine now.
I know all of that. I'm a native Russian speaker and I have quite a lot of Russian friends, I'm pretty well aware of the situation. Nevertheless, despite all the government’s efforts and the enormous amount of money invested in this, there are still - at least for now - ways to bypass the blocks even there. I suspect that as long as they don’t physically cut the cables, there will always be ways to circumvent censorship. And yes, I’m not talking about carrier pigeons :)
So I hope that in the UK and other European countries, by drawing on Russia’s existing experience, people will be able to adapt to these restrictions before they become too severe. Of course, the government could also adopt Russia’s approach right away, but that’s unlikely, as it would provoke far too much resistance from citizens - they aren’t used to that level of restriction. If Europe does indeed continue moving in this direction, everything will happen gradually, just as it did in Russia; no one will roast a frog with a flamethrower - they’ll cook it according to the classic recipe, so to speak.
OK, got it. But it's important to remember that avoiding restrictions gets harder and harder every year. You have to juggle several protocols, have backup proxies, think about TLS nuances, keep in mind that you are being tracked after all. Lots of casual users just gave up. It's not like we find a solution and it just works — one has to adapt to new restrictive measures continuously.
I just don't understand why some other people in such discussions still think that its only about children and weigh pro and cons when they have an actual example of all these things being implemented.
> But it's important to remember that avoiding restrictions gets harder and harder every year.
Yes, that's right. Now the only reliable protocols to communicate with my friends in Russia seem to be e-mail ones like SMTP, because everything else constantly gets interrupted if not blocked completely. The only thing we can hope for here is that sooner or later, that hell will finally end; we just need to do what we do.
> I just don't understand why some other people in such discussions still think that its only about children and weigh pro and cons when they have an actual example of all these things being implemented.
Maybe I'm being kind of rude, but to me that seems just like... for the lack of better words, it seems like they're in denial. In a psychological sense, I mean.
Maybe I'm being kind of rude, but to me that seems just like... for the lack of better words, it seems like they're in denial. In a psychological sense, I mean.
There's a larger phenomenon than simple denial at work. Infantilization of adults is a necessary component of fascism. We are told, implicitly, that we are all the children of the state. Those who accept that message -- and there will always be some -- will embrace the protection promised by authoritarianism.
The actual children are, as always, just along for the ride.
Which will get blocked and go down, like, in no time. That's literally what happened in Russia - Tor is mostly unusable, you can't even bootstrap properly without some "tricks", so to speak.
Don't know, I use tor every day in Russia. Without it Internet would be unusable. The only problem I see is how to get initial distribution since the tor site is blocked.
Hmm... That's interesting. Maybe that depends on ISP, because my friends have told me they can't use Tor because they can't even bootstrap, even if they're using bridges.
I changed ISPs when moved from one city to another, no difference. Yes, there were several episodes when connecting required about half an hour of playing changing setting but eventually I could connect. Nowadays it seems that the government abandoned their efforts to block Tor traffic and mainly focused on blocking VPN and Telegram.
Now that (abandoning the efforts to block Tor so now it mostly works) sounds like some good news to me! Can you please share your settings or what exactly you use that works for you? Perhaps they will help my friends, too, because previously, they relied on Tor to circumvent the "network blockade", but it just stopped working for them at some point. And yes, they tried to play with settings as well but it didn't really help.
By the way, the level of ban enforcement can also vary from region to region regardless of ISPs (at least that's what I heard from some people), but anyway...
Well, that makes some sense. My friends tried some bridges as well, but some of them didn't work from the beginning, while others got blocked (probably; the exact reason why they don't work anymore is unknown) later.
It would be more like WWII-era Deutsche Welle, given who runs Starlink. Sites offensive to the Minister of Mechapropaganda might find themselves filtered.
