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Everybody in Russia who is not a complete idiot already has a VPN that allows to circumvent censorship (for now). Source: I'm in Russia now. In the end it'll

Everybody in Russia who is not a complete idiot already has a VPN that allows to circumvent censorship (for now). Source: I'm in Russia now. In the end it'll likely end with whitelists of allowed IP addresses, and that will indeed insure that nobody would be able to access banned resources.

grishka 10mo ago
> In the end it'll likely end with whitelists of allowed IP addresses I already had this idea of tunneling traffic through the voice/video calls in the Max messenger app. No one has done it in practice, yet, but I see no reason why it should not be possible. Обход блокировок, который ловит даже на парковке ;)
- throwaway290 10mo ago
  great idea. use the app tied to your passport and gosuslugi to make sure they know who is the genius when they detect it. edit: didn't know they allow anything except belarus, cool... as long as you can anonymously register that number
  - grishka 10mo ago
    I don't think they would care as long as you don't do something stupid that would show up on their dashboards. But if you're paranoid, you can use phone numbers from, for example, Armenia or Kazakhstan. There are 8 countries besides Russia whose numbers they allow.
- 14 10mo ago
  That does not seem like a good idea at all. Even if you are “not doing something stupid” the fact that you would be circumventing their app to bypass censorship they may deem you treasonous and a possible risk. Who knows what they could arrest you for.
  - culebron21 10mo ago
    Law enforcement in Russia works differently than in the US, especially in politically charged fields. An exapmel: in the US, one man was charged of breaking construction codes because he was doing chemical experiments in the basement of his single-family house, in a block zoned accordingly. I understand this is extreme, but a good illustration. He was doing something on his own, and was charged. Such enforcement is extremely unlikely in Russia even in todays situation. For instance, a recent law explicitly banned _searching_ for extremists materials, e.g. Navalny's party website (they're labelled as extremists ex-court by the Interior or the Justice ministry, I don't remember). But there's been just 1 court case since then. You can search whatever you want as long as you're not public about it. As soon as you get enough publicity, you do get on the radar. Same kinds of examples: in the 1950's USSR some musicians were shadow-banned (there was no legal ban on them), and not published. A man made a lathe and carved disks with their music on used x-ray films. He was arrested when he got enough publicity and sold good deal of copies. He was charged not for copying them -- there was no ban on this -- but for illicit enterpreneurship, or speculation as it was called back then. Had he been doing this alone, he'd probably have not got under arrest. I actually, think it's roughly the same as dealing with Torrent and trackers in the Western world nowadays.
    - grishka 10mo ago
      Technically, the act of bypassing censorship by itself is still not even illegal. They did make it recently such that writing about VPNs is grounds for blocking wherever you've written about it. https://www.cnews.ru/news/top/2024-11-22_v_rossii_zapretili_publikovat https://www.cnews.ru/news/top/2024-11-22_v_rossii_zapretili_...
      - throwaway290 10mo ago
        > Technically, the act of bypassing censorship by itself is still not even illegal Seeking extremist materials is illegal as of September. If that is not "bypassing censorship" then what is? By the way. Extremist materials is a big list of thousands of things that no one can always know. What it means for a normal person? If you use VPN you can be finding extremist materials, if you don't = then you don't (because they are all helpfully blocked) After 3 months there is one guy with a case for looking up Azov for example https://meduza.io/amp/cards/mvd-vpervye-popytalos-oshtrafovat-rossiyanina-za-poisk-ekstremistskih-materialov-a-kak-politseyskie-voobsche-uznali-chto-guglil-polzovatel https://meduza.io/amp/cards/mvd-vpervye-popytalos-oshtrafova...
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
throwaway290 10mo ago
"everybody who is not a complete idiot" not true. looks like you're in your tech bubble and you think everybody else who is a regular person is an idiot. using VPN for circumventing censorship is illegal in Russia. fine is worse if if you promote it. for people who can't afford to spend a few thousands it's enough. some people don't care about fines, but new ISP equipment detects and ban VPNs quickly so people always need to keep trying new servers. so people get used to not using VPN more and more because it's annoying and unstable.
- coryrc 10mo ago
  > everybody else who is a regular person is an idiot. Looking at your dictator's approval levels and the number of people willingly signing up to die while killing innocents, that sounds correct. You all need help breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma.
  - throwaway290 10mo ago
    you are offtopic, but I will entertain your comment because I'm so confused/amused by what you say and what means "idiot" in your world. - are you saying people forced to sign up for the war by force or rapists who do it to get out of jail in Russia are idiots? - are you saying being pro putin/pro war is like being an idiot in Russia? - are you saying russians in tech are saints and all like one are "not idiots" against the war? maybe you need a reminder about unit 26165 and APT28 - are you saying "everyone in russia/china/israel/iran/north korea/republican party is an idiot"? then allow me to congratulate you on such nuanced understanding of the world, enough said!
    - coryrc 10mo ago
      I'm saying the vast majority of people who support Putin are idiots, just like the vast majority of people who support Trump are idiots, and the religious rural fundies of Iran are mostly idiots. There's a lot of idiots out there and they don't like to think. It causes them pain to think hard. So they like people who tell them simple lies. Others are immoral or evil smart people. Unless you're working to undermine your dictator, that might be you.
woctordho 10mo ago
There are plenty of ways to circumvent whitelists, such as domain fronting. Some are already battle-tested in China and we'd be happy to share them with the rest of the world.
Lapsa 10mo ago
I would argue use of VPN is idiotic
- Lapsa 10mo ago
  for (likely corrupt) down voters - one argument would be that it's basically a subscription to browser fingerprinting. vpn providers even openly state when such doings will begin

grishka 10mo ago

> In the end it'll likely end with whitelists of allowed IP addresses I already had this idea of tunneling traffic through the voice/video calls in the Max messenger app. No one has done it in practice, yet, but I see no reason why it should not be possible. Обход блокировок, который ловит даже на парковке ;)

throwaway290 10mo ago
great idea. use the app tied to your passport and gosuslugi to make sure they know who is the genius when they detect it. edit: didn't know they allow anything except belarus, cool... as long as you can anonymously register that number
- grishka 10mo ago
  I don't think they would care as long as you don't do something stupid that would show up on their dashboards. But if you're paranoid, you can use phone numbers from, for example, Armenia or Kazakhstan. There are 8 countries besides Russia whose numbers they allow.
14 10mo ago
That does not seem like a good idea at all. Even if you are “not doing something stupid” the fact that you would be circumventing their app to bypass censorship they may deem you treasonous and a possible risk. Who knows what they could arrest you for.
- culebron21 10mo ago
  Law enforcement in Russia works differently than in the US, especially in politically charged fields. An exapmel: in the US, one man was charged of breaking construction codes because he was doing chemical experiments in the basement of his single-family house, in a block zoned accordingly. I understand this is extreme, but a good illustration. He was doing something on his own, and was charged. Such enforcement is extremely unlikely in Russia even in todays situation. For instance, a recent law explicitly banned _searching_ for extremists materials, e.g. Navalny's party website (they're labelled as extremists ex-court by the Interior or the Justice ministry, I don't remember). But there's been just 1 court case since then. You can search whatever you want as long as you're not public about it. As soon as you get enough publicity, you do get on the radar. Same kinds of examples: in the 1950's USSR some musicians were shadow-banned (there was no legal ban on them), and not published. A man made a lathe and carved disks with their music on used x-ray films. He was arrested when he got enough publicity and sold good deal of copies. He was charged not for copying them -- there was no ban on this -- but for illicit enterpreneurship, or speculation as it was called back then. Had he been doing this alone, he'd probably have not got under arrest. I actually, think it's roughly the same as dealing with Torrent and trackers in the Western world nowadays.
  - grishka 10mo ago
    Technically, the act of bypassing censorship by itself is still not even illegal. They did make it recently such that writing about VPNs is grounds for blocking wherever you've written about it. https://www.cnews.ru/news/top/2024-11-22_v_rossii_zapretili_publikovat https://www.cnews.ru/news/top/2024-11-22_v_rossii_zapretili_...
    - throwaway290 10mo ago
      > Technically, the act of bypassing censorship by itself is still not even illegal Seeking extremist materials is illegal as of September. If that is not "bypassing censorship" then what is? By the way. Extremist materials is a big list of thousands of things that no one can always know. What it means for a normal person? If you use VPN you can be finding extremist materials, if you don't = then you don't (because they are all helpfully blocked) After 3 months there is one guy with a case for looking up Azov for example https://meduza.io/amp/cards/mvd-vpervye-popytalos-oshtrafovat-rossiyanina-za-poisk-ekstremistskih-materialov-a-kak-politseyskie-voobsche-uznali-chto-guglil-polzovatel https://meduza.io/amp/cards/mvd-vpervye-popytalos-oshtrafova...

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

throwaway290 10mo ago

"everybody who is not a complete idiot" not true. looks like you're in your tech bubble and you think everybody else who is a regular person is an idiot. using VPN for circumventing censorship is illegal in Russia. fine is worse if if you promote it. for people who can't afford to spend a few thousands it's enough. some people don't care about fines, but new ISP equipment detects and ban VPNs quickly so people always need to keep trying new servers. so people get used to not using VPN more and more because it's annoying and unstable.

coryrc 10mo ago
> everybody else who is a regular person is an idiot. Looking at your dictator's approval levels and the number of people willingly signing up to die while killing innocents, that sounds correct. You all need help breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma.
- throwaway290 10mo ago
  you are offtopic, but I will entertain your comment because I'm so confused/amused by what you say and what means "idiot" in your world. - are you saying people forced to sign up for the war by force or rapists who do it to get out of jail in Russia are idiots? - are you saying being pro putin/pro war is like being an idiot in Russia? - are you saying russians in tech are saints and all like one are "not idiots" against the war? maybe you need a reminder about unit 26165 and APT28 - are you saying "everyone in russia/china/israel/iran/north korea/republican party is an idiot"? then allow me to congratulate you on such nuanced understanding of the world, enough said!
  - coryrc 10mo ago
    I'm saying the vast majority of people who support Putin are idiots, just like the vast majority of people who support Trump are idiots, and the religious rural fundies of Iran are mostly idiots. There's a lot of idiots out there and they don't like to think. It causes them pain to think hard. So they like people who tell them simple lies. Others are immoral or evil smart people. Unless you're working to undermine your dictator, that might be you.

woctordho 10mo ago

There are plenty of ways to circumvent whitelists, such as domain fronting. Some are already battle-tested in China and we'd be happy to share them with the rest of the world.

Lapsa 10mo ago

I would argue use of VPN is idiotic

Lapsa 10mo ago
for (likely corrupt) down voters - one argument would be that it's basically a subscription to browser fingerprinting. vpn providers even openly state when such doings will begin