escalation
Roskomnadzor has been censoring via DNS like the rest of the world for years, but the latest actions are yet another escalation. VPN providers who do not comply are to be shut down - just like Modi's move in India.
Tor is also fought once more.
then and now
So far, Russia's filters were relatively harmless and trivial to overcome, but it looks like there is more conflict to come. Russia has blocked genuinely malicious content on and off, like the degenerate Facebook/Instagram/Twitter. Not their own VK unfortunately, which supports the same kind of malice. (It's similar to Facebook.)
Yes, western 'social' (?!) media is a crime against humanity, but VK isn't better.
The blocking game has been ridiculous, especially in Russia. Russians are not nearly as robotic as e.g. the German parrots, and routinely use VPNs. Outside the western bubble it doesn't seem unusual in general, with plenty of popular proxy services about. The west loves to pretend.
The latest attack on providers is dangerous and must be stopped. It's a slippery slope in the hands of a system that is not all that different from the (w/r)est. Russia may have shown mercy and finally stepped in to help Donbas after more than a decade, but it's still a capitalist oligarchy.
Even in the land of sycophants, Germany, the lemmings learned to use VPNs. For all the wrong reasons, though. As far as I can tell, almost all VPN use is just for piracy, for endless consumerism. Or because some greedy 'youtube influencer' has a deal with the usual scam VPN providers, selling his 'subscribers' lies of 'security'. (No, VPNs do not magically provide some undefined 'security'.)
The few genuine activists that are not government informants use Tor. Any attack on Tor is extremely dangerous, as it's the only reasonably safe and accessible path to a common network.
let's debunk the propaganda
Of course, as this involves Russia, it's being used in the globalist propaganda machine. Relentless in their assault on truth, as usual.
Is censorship bad? If so, there must be none of that in the west, right? Hah!
Our favorite Germany allows pro-animal-rape organizations (Not linked here for obvious reasons, but you can search 'Zoophilia Verein ZETA' if you desperately desire to vomit.) yet suppresses independent thinkers since decades. Any independent site with enough attention is eventually blocked. It doesn't matter which chicken wing it belongs to. The system hates any independent thinking. Even popular so called 'left-wing' (The 'wing' concept is inane, but that's another topic.) sites have been taken down, their operators raided with brutal force.
That's the most common kind of ban, but of course they appeal to corporate leeches and go after 'piracy' as well.
They engage in exactly the same kind of abuse, yet face zero media coverage. All mainstream media is owned and controlled by the same groups, so no surprise there.
The ghost of 'state media' is yet another argument in their propaganda, yet they behave exactly identical. There have been increased efforts to hide their information behind a gazillion fake NGOs and foundations, but you can still find how the boards and major 'investors' magically overlap and always come back to the same people. It is state media too, period.
A few years ago, Russia briefly blocked Telegram. Outrage in the west. Trendy Reddit-users and Insta-spammers foaming at their mouths. (Seeing how Telegram turned out, that would've been a good decision, more on that later.) Surprise, Germany tried to block Telegram too! Amidst their COVID terror, starving, dying people (Not from COVID, of course.) abused by the government crooks took refuge on Telegram. Didn't quite work, fortunately, as the rulers are clueless, their million dollar advisors chosen by business interests rather than competence.
Germany censors and controls mass media, like Facebook, and even has its own 'think tank' tax-fraud foundation to censor with maximum efficiency.
Their own ministry of truth, straight out of the "1984" they love to shill.
Switzerland, which is always hailed as a beacon of neutrality, is not so neutral either. The fearmongering led to the Swiss accepting ever more abuse as well. They too have mass-collection of data and censorship (albeit much less visible). With zero success in their alleged goals, of course. There are still child abusers and entire 'rings' operating since decades. With just the slightest effort, you too can find them online. The capitalist, materialist state is not interested in helping people, never was. There used to be a Swiss project simply called 'DNS-Zensur' to find such censorship, but it seems to have been taken down.
tech outlook
VPNs
Banning VPN providers is a serious threat. As the globalist tyrants have banned Russian citizens from making regular payments (and vice versa), they can't just use outside providers.
The ideal VPN provider if you're in Russia would be outside it. If you're in Germany, Russia would be a good location. That's impossible now by regular means.
'Crypto' is not a real solution, as every single meaningful exchange is bound to the most abusive and frankly ridiculous 'KYC' 'verifications'. The only way to use it properly would be finding real life cash exchanges with non-rich, non-commercial, ordinary humans. Those don't really exist. The ones you can find are typically bigger and involve 'verification' or some tracking.
You could go through all that and then find someone online to convert to e.g. Monero, which is not perfect, but better. But by then you lost a huge amount on fees and fluctuations. And of course 99% of all offers are just scams, so you lose even more in fees as you have to take itty-bitty bites.
Australia banned Monero and other more privacy-friendly 'coins' by the way. Do they even know what it is? We're ruled by clowns in suits without the slightest idea of what they're even ruling over. You cannot just ban this without banning all the rest too. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Ergo: Commercial VPN service is out of reach.
Tor
Can be banned, but requires DPI (Deep Packet Inspection), which is not in widespread use for censorship outside of China. It is used for tracking everywhere, of course.
Even if public nodes are blacklisted, there are still options via Tor bridges. That should make it fairly difficult to get rid of Tor. The 'official' bridges can currently only be requested by accepting a self-declared 'left' chicken wing group, though. The usual hypocritical, hate-filled 'progressive' kind. But anyone with funding and access to an unblocked location can run a bridge.
Hosting exit nodes (= providing access to the public internet) is almost impossible these days, and likely the reason why there is such extreme concentration. But relays are easy. Ish. Most hosting companies massively oversell resources instead of having honest and transparent policies (same fraud like fractional banking), so they typically are not happy about full load all the time and tend to blacklist operators fast. You can easily limit bandwidth for your relay though and contribute a little bit. The minimum recommended speeds are quite high, though, so it's not doable for just anyone.
Non-exit Tor nodes/relays don't cause any trouble and every legitimate hoster must accept them. That particular node will of course be public, so we also need said bridges.
Globalist cooperation and organized abuse would make it trivial to ban all of that. That's why we must fight in every country, even if you feel complacent right now. Use Tor responsibly, help with nodes!
So what?
love and friendship
The tyrants can't stop you from simply sharing with Russian buddies and them sharing with you. With current methods, that is. You can set up stuff for them, they set it up for you. If you have contacts abroad, ask them! Better than any commercial product.
dystopia
As long as TCP/IP exists and there are no blacklists on that level, we can use our own P2P networks. The biggest and most trusted is of course Tor, but there is also I2P among a dozen others.
We should all save fallbacks to our friends. Direct addresses, hidden services.
An easy option for anyone is Retroshare: https://retroshare.cc/ They call it a 'friends-network'. Cute yet appropriate. Direct connections to friends, with friends themselves being the network. Like torrent, but just for you.
DPI could interfere, but direct connections can just be plain HTTP and look like other traffic.
This is closer to oldschool human interaction than anything else in this antisocial era.
