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Devil's advocate response: If these content blockers are just 'futile games of whack-a-mole', then why are you getting up-in-arms about their existence? Should

Devil's advocate response: If these content blockers are just 'futile games of whack-a-mole', then why are you getting up-in-arms about their existence? Should be easy to avoid them if you truly believe what you say.

walrus01 6y ago
Stuff like what the UK is trying to do with a DNS based "black list" of bad things on the internet? Futile game of whack a mole. Authoritarian regime that forces all ISPs in a country to run networks funnelling all traffic through a government run central point where they do DPI and flow analysis on it (Chinese GFW for instance)? More of a real threat. For instance there is one ASN in Iran that has transit connections to the outside world. All ISPs are forced to be downstream of it. https://bgp.he.net/AS12880 https://bgp.he.net/AS12880
- joosters 6y ago
  Well, yes, the original article is about funneling traffic through a centralised DPI content blocker, and not a trivial DNS blacklist. Agreed, the UK's DNS filtering is definitely a simple to defeat by anybody whack-a-mole (e.g. thepiratebay.org is blocked? Oh no! Let's just google for Pirate Bay and pick one of the many, many unblocked mirrors) But the kind of DPI, forced blocking utilised by these middleboxes is certainly a step above that, to the point that most people will not be (say) using measures like a VPN to bypass the block.
conception 6y ago
Because they create tools governments will use to restrict legitimate speech and freedoms. As history has shown they do.
- joosters 6y ago
  ...So, again, they can't be 'futile games of whack-a-mole', if they work, then?
  - jmholla 6y ago
    I think it's more like taking the whack-a-mole bat and going and beating up people all around the arcade.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    There are easily measures that will cause the closure of your small business if used against you personally that would not stop A drug dealer let alone all drug dealing.
- falcolas 6y ago
  Create and normalize. "What's one more site to denylist?"
pixl97 6y ago
Because they will block unintended things. "Oh, you want to do breast cancer research, sorry, boobies R bad, the sky God said so"
a1369209993 6y ago
Because whacking even 5% of moles looking for ways around government[0] censorship is a unconscionable travesty. 0: eg, China, Iran, etc; if you don't think people getting caught is a problem then I question your basic human decency; if you don't think 5% of people getting caught is a problem then I question your sense of scale and/or ability to multiply numbers by other numbers.

walrus01 6y ago

Stuff like what the UK is trying to do with a DNS based "black list" of bad things on the internet? Futile game of whack a mole. Authoritarian regime that forces all ISPs in a country to run networks funnelling all traffic through a government run central point where they do DPI and flow analysis on it (Chinese GFW for instance)? More of a real threat. For instance there is one ASN in Iran that has transit connections to the outside world. All ISPs are forced to be downstream of it. https://bgp.he.net/AS12880 https://bgp.he.net/AS12880

joosters 6y ago
Well, yes, the original article is about funneling traffic through a centralised DPI content blocker, and not a trivial DNS blacklist. Agreed, the UK's DNS filtering is definitely a simple to defeat by anybody whack-a-mole (e.g. thepiratebay.org is blocked? Oh no! Let's just google for Pirate Bay and pick one of the many, many unblocked mirrors) But the kind of DPI, forced blocking utilised by these middleboxes is certainly a step above that, to the point that most people will not be (say) using measures like a VPN to bypass the block.

conception 6y ago

Because they create tools governments will use to restrict legitimate speech and freedoms. As history has shown they do.

joosters 6y ago
...So, again, they can't be 'futile games of whack-a-mole', if they work, then?
- jmholla 6y ago
  I think it's more like taking the whack-a-mole bat and going and beating up people all around the arcade.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  There are easily measures that will cause the closure of your small business if used against you personally that would not stop A drug dealer let alone all drug dealing.
falcolas 6y ago
Create and normalize. "What's one more site to denylist?"

pixl97 6y ago

Because they will block unintended things. "Oh, you want to do breast cancer research, sorry, boobies R bad, the sky God said so"

a1369209993 6y ago

Because whacking even 5% of moles looking for ways around government[0] censorship is a unconscionable travesty. 0: eg, China, Iran, etc; if you don't think people getting caught is a problem then I question your basic human decency; if you don't think 5% of people getting caught is a problem then I question your sense of scale and/or ability to multiply numbers by other numbers.