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US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
https://freedom.gov https://freedom.gov
- rdudek 8mo agoWhat about all the age restriction stuff coming online here in the US in various states? Those are cool right? This service is definitely a honeypot for tracking.
- agnishom 8mo agoI don't think that Europe has a censorship problem, but a US government funded VPN sounds great!
- xvxvx 8mo agoThe world will be exposed to hardcore pornography, child endangerment, AI CSAM, and militant algorithms by force, if needed! Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine (2018) directly claims the internet is “the most effective weapon the government has ever built,” tracing its roots to Pentagon counterinsurgency projects like ARPA’s efforts in Vietnam-era surveillance. The book argues surveillance was “woven into the fabric” from the start, linking early ARPANET development to intelligence goals, and extends to modern tech giants like Google as part of a military-digital complex.
- reisse 8mo agoWhen U.S. Govt sponsors Tor, which does expose exactly what your describe, the reaction is usually positive.
- rkagerer 8mo agoOr they could just make a donation to Tor and similar projects, and get way more mileage for their money.
- gzread 8mo agoThe point is for them to track their users, which they can't do if their users are all using Tor.
- kyboren 8mo agoThey do support Tor, actually[0]. Which makes this even more confusing. [0]: https://www.torproject.org/about/supporters/ https://www.torproject.org/about/supporters/
- greyface- 8mo agoThat funding was recently cut: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47070658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47070658
- sgnelson 8mo agoWhy? Seriously, why do we care so much about this? Do we not have better uses of our money. Also the irony considering recent moves by the US government in terms of control of the internet and free speech.
- carlosjobim 8mo agoThese things have been going on forever. Since WWII and until right now, there has been radio stations broadcasting into enemy territory, to bypass censorship.
- throw-the-towel 8mo agoIronically, this effectively is a pro-Trump comment because it's the Trump administration that defunded US propaganda outlets.
- idiotsecant 8mo agoNo, the Trump administration is an enormous supporter of propaganda outlets, just not the ones that already existed. They don't care about maintaining the rules based world order. Their propaganda is much more inward-focused.
- throw-the-towel 8mo agoYou're probably right, I was speaking as someone from outside the States, and hence more familiar with the outside-focused US outlets.
- ericmay 8mo ago> Also the irony considering recent moves by the US government in terms of control of the internet and free speech. Well you've got plenty of countries doing it, including France, Iran, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Brasil, Australia, you name it. Not that it's good, but a criticism for the goose is a criticism for the gander, as a manner of speaking. As to which, why or why do we care so much about this? Idk, same reason our government funds tens of thousands of initiatives and cares about lots of different things that people find equally important or unimportant.
- silexia 8mo ago[flagged]
- sequence7 8mo agoWow, it's actually real: https://freedom.gov/ https://freedom.gov/
- dang 8mo agoThanks - we'll put that link in the toptext.
- throw-the-towel 8mo agoAnd the site even has a French translation.
- verdverm 8mo agoWhat even is this? It looks to technically be Next JS with a single canvas element. But what does in protend...? visuals with the only text on screen being... --- "Freedom is Coming" Information is power. Reclaim your human right to free expression. Get ready.
- apothegm 8mo agoWhat it is is a teaser for what will undoubtedly be a giant load of far-right propaganda.
- verdverm 8mo agoTurns out it's to "uncensor" content blocked in other countries, which we know will be a process free of bias /s They also gutted the prior org that helped people do this in other countries on the ground
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- entropyneur 8mo agoPrevious discussion: https://www.reuters.com/world/us-plans-online-portal-bypass-content-bans-europe-elsewhere-2026-02-18/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us-plans-online-portal-bypass-... Weird title, but worthy of discussion. From the little info available so far this appears to be little more than political posturing. If you want to fight censorship, an "online portal" to access all the censored content is the wrongest possible way to go about it. But we'll see.
- dang 8mo ago(This comment was posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47072613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47072613 but we merged the threads)
- silexia 8mo ago[flagged]
- stronglikedan 8mo ago> bureaucrats you're too kind
- astro1138 8mo agoIs that going to accelerate copyright violations for AI training? https://cuiiliste.de/domains https://cuiiliste.de/domains contains just a lot of piracy sites.
- general1465 8mo agoIt is like ultimate throwing stones in a glass house. Americans are dependent on other countries following IP and copyright protections and yet they will go great lengths to undermine it because it is short term beneficial for their companies.
- ortusdux 8mo agoThe quest for quarterly returns will be our downfall.
- Hamuko 8mo agoThe joke that I saw online was "Does it have Colbert on it?"
- cyberax 8mo agoYes, but you'll have to spend equal time browsing Pravda^W Truth Social.
- derelicta 8mo agoGreat! I sure hope it means Americans will stop censoring pro-Palestinian and pro-workers movements!
- walthamstow 8mo agoSo it'll have porn?
- general1465 8mo agoI wonder if American citizens from states which requires age verification to access porn (25 US states today) will be fine with it or these states will start demanding ID to access freedom.gov. It would be delicious irony.
- Animats 8mo agoRight. Porn will probably be most of the traffic. The number of people in Europe who really want to access US neo-Nazi sites is probably not large.
- graemep 8mo agoThere is a lot more blocked than porn and neo-nazis. This will also allow access to sites that block access because of laws: Imgur is not accessible from the uk, nor are a lot of smaller US news sites. Ofcom are after 4 chan too.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- mvc 8mo agoOh no! Not 4chan. How ever will we Europeans keep up with the latest theories about which celebrities are actually AI influencers.
- pembrook 8mo agoAmazed to see so many government bootlickers on "hacker" news these days. Gone are the days of the misfits and pirates and the innovators. "Tie me up and tell me what I'm allowed to do daddy government, I will agree no matter what, you know what's best."
- freitasm 8mo ago"Portal team includes former DOGE member Coristine" "...user activity on the site will not be tracked." Ok, stopped reading right there.
- reisse 8mo agoFun hypothetical question - will it be restricted to users in sanctioned locations (where it's most needed) because of, well, sanctions?
- iugtmkbdfil834 8mo agoAmusingly, there typically are various exceptions made for those. All technical and whatnot, but for example, Iran is heavily sanctioned, but has all sorts of exceptions for stuff like that precisely because of the impact it can have.
- pjc50 8mo agoBut will they put the complete Epstein files on there?
- alistairSH 8mo agoWon't those other nations just ban freedom.gov?
- crest 8mo agoThey wouldn't dare ban a .gov domain and we will hide all of behind Cloudflare! /s
- Aloisius 8mo agoNothing stops them from hosting it on fbi.gov, state.gov, etc. It's one thing to block some random .gov site unused for anything else, it's another thing to block a domain used for, say, filing flight plans.
- tjohns 8mo agoNit: If you're filing a flight plan, you do it with the country you're departing from. Even if you're piloting an aircraft departing into the US, it wouldn't have any effect on operations if you couldn't reach US websites. There's also several alternative ways for pilots to file flight plans outside of the web. (The flight plans get passed between countries via AFTN/AMHS, which are dedicated telecommunications networks independent of the Internet.)
- Aloisius 8mo agoI thought airlines still had to file passenger manifests with CBP separately, no?
- tjohns 8mo agoYes, though that's separate from the flight plan. There's also several different ways to transmit the passenger manifest to CBP - including over a CBP-provided VPN and IATA "Type B" messages sent through ARINC/SITA. The network for Type B messages is also independent of the Internet (it was developed 60 years ago).
- crossroadsguy 8mo ago
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 8mo agoHow long until Europe says, "fuck your copyright claims then?"
- crest 8mo agoJust tell everyone who wants to downloads warez to use the US .gov VPN and refuse to resolve the IP addresses when they complain.
- Nnnes 8mo agoCool, maybe I'll be able to access www.census.gov from outside the US now
- crest 8mo agoAt least the starting page is reachable from Germany without a VPN.
- schoen 8mo agoI just chaired a session at the FOCI conference earlier today, where people were talking about Internet censorship circumvention technologies and how to prevent governments from blocking them. I'd like to remind everyone that the U.S. government has been one the largest funders of that research for decades. Some of it is under USAGM (formerly BBG, the parent of RFE/RL) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Global_Media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Globa... and some of it has been under the State Department, partly pursuant to the global Internet freedom program introduced by Hillary Clinton in 2010 when she was Secretary of State. I'm sure the political and diplomatic valence is very different here, but the concept of "the U.S. government paying to stop foreign governments from censoring the Internet" is a longstanding one.
- reactordev 8mo agoIt goes deeper than that. The U.S. Government funds it, discourages other nations from using it, and spies on all web traffic as a result of it. Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA. Within a quick drive to Langley, Quantico, DC, and other places that house three letter agencies I’m not authorized to disclose.
- recursive 8mo agoSpeed of light establishes certain latency minima. Experimental data can falsify (or not) at geographical locations far enough from VA.
- reactordev 8mo agoCorrect but local governments using Palantir will need to provide it to them somehow.
- reactordev 8mo agohttps://amp.dw.com/en/german-police-expands-use-of-palantir-surveillance-software/a-73497117 https://amp.dw.com/en/german-police-expands-use-of-palantir-... https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/15/us-tech-firm-palantir-extends-deal-with-french-intelligence-agency_6748523_7.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/15/us-tech-... https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/05/calls-to-halt-uk-palantir-contracts-grow-amid-lack-of-transparency-over-deals https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/05/calls-to-ha... https://theweek.com/tech/palantir-influence-in-the-british-state-mod-mandelson https://theweek.com/tech/palantir-influence-in-the-british-s... https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2026/02/01/palantir-in-australia/ https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2026/02/01/palantir-in-aus... Mmmmkay…
- tills13 8mo agoA state sponsored vpn is probably not (only) gonna do what you think it's doing.
- soulofmischief 8mo agoIt probably will do what I think it's doing.
- ReflectedImage 8mo agoSo going forward all countries will be providing citizens of other countries free access to the internet whilst censoring their own citizens?
- LAC-Tech 8mo agoBetter than the alternative where they don't, I suppose. Kind of like how for some political things you have to use yandex to search because US search companies suppress the results.
- freakynit 8mo agoThis will be like a global circus of free speech: Country-1: "Absolutely free speech! Except when it's about Country-4 -> rights revoked." Country-2: "Criticize Country-4 all you want, but talking smack about Country-5 is treason buddy." Country-3: "Wait... so I can roast Country-4 but not Country-5... and also not Country-6? My head hurts." Country-4: "We don't block anything! ...Just not that thing you're talking about." Country-5: "See Country-3? We absolutely love speech. As long as it praises us. Freedom yay!" In the end, we might end up having the very same private vpn';s (or tor) routing their traffic over these gov. vpn's based on keyword matches in the request.. or customer's will be able to choose .. kinda like auto-model feature on openrouter lol.
- Kenji 8mo ago[dead]
- 13415 8mo agoThe irony is big in this one.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- sunshine-o 8mo agoI would have loved to be in the meeting where they were wondering how to replace the highly costly and complex influence tool that was USAID, and then someone said: - Why don't we just make a website? - Yes let's just do that.
- ivan_gammel 8mo agoIf something looks like MITM, chances are it is MITM.
- engineer_22 8mo agoWhat's MITM?
- trelane 8mo agoMan In The Middle. They're saying that the US is intercepting the traffic.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 8mo agoWhat do you think cloudflare is? This is just them coming out with it now.
- ivan_gammel 8mo agoIt is much more convenient to catch the fish that eats particular sort of worms putting such worm on a hook than finding the right fish among many others in a fishnet.
- trelane 8mo agoI am not claiming the OP ist right or wrong. I am merely explaining what MITM is and what the OP meant.
- cortesoft 8mo agoAlso MITM? The comment you are replying to in no way implies that this is the only MITM.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 8mo agoSince they masquerade as example.com with an https certificate that your browser will trust: yes.
- tracker1 8mo agoUntil you have to validate your id/age to continue... Seriously though... we have one segment undermining foreign lockdowns while the same and other segments are literally doing the same here.
- MiiMe19 8mo agoits like we have different smaller governments that can pass their own laws inside of one larger government or something
- feature20260213 8mo agoThis comment made my day :)
- tracker1 8mo agoWhile I get that... I'm talking about hypocrisy not sovereignty in that it's the same or overlapping group doing both.
- mlh496 8mo agoSad that western Europe is pushing so hard for limits to free speech & privacy. I'm not surprised given their history, but it's sad nonetheless.
- touwer 8mo agoIt's not sad. It's smart to ban hate speech, blatant lies and things like that. We know, we had the Nazis. Seems the US still has to learn a lesson or two, considering the current political situation. Hope it will not be as bad
- LAC-Tech 8mo agoThis argument has always struck me as ridiculous. You think if only the Weimar Republic had had Hate Speech laws everything would have been fine?
- perching_aix 8mo agoRight, I guess the people there just magically all woke up one day hating the jews and voting in Hitler. Crazy how that happens. Why do political factions even spend money on campaigning? Those silly geese.
- LAC-Tech 8mo agoWait, your operating theory on why the NSDAP became popular is because they... tricked everyone into hating jews? You are not only entirely misunderstanding why the NSDAP appealed to people, you're also completely misunderstanding what post WWI Germany was - a republic hastily brought about with little care so that Woodrow Wilson would offer Germany peace based on his 14 points (he didn't). It was doomed to fail from the very beginning. If not the NSDAP it would have been some other extremists. The idea that freedom of speech was what led to its downfall does not stand up to even the smallest scrutiny. Or the idea that an aged, pacified 2026 Germany would immediately return to 1930s Nazism if they had free speech is even more ludicrous.
- _ydf0 8mo ago[flagged]
- JumpinJack_Cash 8mo agoFrance of all countries is the least I expected, but I guess their stance on libertine sex has nothing to do with porn
- tristor 8mo agoFrench courts /love/ to do blocking orders. Of all the Western European nations, they have the most expansive use of DNS blocking, and other technical orders from courts. Sometimes related to the mundane things you might imagine like counter-terrorism, anti-piracy, and obscenity, but sometimes for absolutely bonkers reasons nobody agrees with. Knowing what I know about French blocking orders, I wouldn't be surprised if all of Reddit got blocked because of an order related to a single comment, instead of some larger reason that might make sense in the meta.
- Keats 8mo agoIt isn't blocked? I'm in France and I can see it just fine.
- Mesmoria 8mo agoI couldn't find any news items or announcement about France blocking access to reddit. Any links to this?
- rkomorn 8mo agoReddit is currently blocked nationwide in France? I can't seem to easily find corroborating info.
- aucisson_masque 8mo agoI'm in France, I browse reddit daily. Don't know what the two of you were smoking while in Paris but it must have been very strong.
- touwer 8mo ago
- JumpinJack_Cash 8mo agoAfter the Trump checks and the Trump jabs ....the Trump porn? I'd rather not...
- csrse 8mo agoFantastic! Now EU just needs to setup freedomgov.eu that bounces off freedom.gov so americans also can browse whatever with no restrictions.
- Aloisius 8mo agoWhat restrictions do Americans have now that would make that useful?
- Hikikomori 8mo agoFacts on .gov websites.
- kg 8mo agoIncreasingly widespread age restriction laws?
- GlacierFox 8mo agoLike the ones we have in the UK? I can't even look at the craft beer Sub-Reddit anymore without handing over my ID.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- tick_tock_tick 8mo agoWhat's the point of the EU hosting an empty page? While tons freedoms and content is legal in the USA that isn't in the EU I don't know of any opposites. Do you have any examples?
- 0xy 8mo agoLink to the US government banning free speech on the internet. You have no credibility when the UK, Spain, Germany and France have been railing against free speech and calling it "bullshit" in the last month.
- 8mo ago
- PaulDavisThe1st 8mo agoDo they plan to allow residents of various US states to access sites that are now required to have documented ID evidence?
- touwer 8mo agoMaybe they can redirect from stupid.gov
- panny 8mo agoCan I use freedom.gov to bypass age verification though? :)
- nomilk 8mo agoCan someone ELI5 how it actually works? Say I'm a UK citizen with advanced glioblastoma (implying loss of faculties, seizures, and pain; no cure, and things to worsen before eventually passing away, possibly some time from now). Suppose I wish to view websites on euthanasia options, but am blocked from doing so by the UK's Online Safety Act. How does/will Freedom.gov help? (is it essentially a free VPN?) Also, as others have pointed out, couldn't the censoring government simply block access to freedom.gov?
- andrewflnr 8mo ago[flagged]
- andrewflnr 8mo agoI didn't expect "Trump does yet another symbolic, counterproductive stunt" to be the political hot take that ticked off the hive.
- gpt5 8mo agoAccording to Reuters, it will essentially be a free VPN. https://www.reuters.com/world/us-plans-online-portal-bypass-content-bans-europe-elsewhere-2026-02-18/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us-plans-online-portal-bypass-...
- isodev 8mo agoFree Trump VPN to go with one's Trump Phone?
- touristtam 8mo agoSo you're not paying for it? In corporate america how is that going to be moneytized?
- EagnaIonat 8mo agoVPNs are in no way secure. I'm sure they will be taking all your data and using it.
- diego_moita 8mo agoCan it be used to help people in the Bible Belt watch porn?
- nomilk 8mo agoI think the states themselves don't block porn, but require sites to verify users' ages, and sites would rather block access in those states than comply. (although not sure how they do that from a technical standpoint, based on IP geolocation, perhaps?)
- reconnecting 8mo agoLast copy if from 2005 (2) according to the Web Archive. I like vote from 1998, if Internet Remain Tax Free (3). 1. https://web.archive.org/web/20050209024923/http://freedom.gov/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050209024923/http://freedom.go... 2. https://web.archive.org/web/19981201060504/http://freedom.gov/ https://web.archive.org/web/19981201060504/http://freedom.go...
- nomilk 8mo agoAnd before that, looks like the domain was used to give updates from the House Majority Leader (e.g. things like voting info, social security updates, legislative changes, tax info etc).
- reconnecting 8mo agoGov't Not Ready For Y2K! https://web.archive.org/web/19990423190847/http://www.freedom.gov/y2k/default.asp https://web.archive.org/web/19990423190847/http://www.freedo...
- neom 8mo agoThe speak out about cloning gif is wild. Dolly the sheep anyone?
- jadenPete 8mo agoThen won’t foreign governments just ban freedom.gov? This problem has already been solved with networks like Tor and I2P. It seems like it would be more strategic to fund those projects instead.
- badgersnake 8mo agoYes. And then, if he doesn’t like the regime because they haven’t done him enough favours the orange one will rage about it on his social network.
- nickorlow 8mo agoUS can probably use their soft power to influence them not to do that. Also would imagine the US gov could also set up some more censorship resistant access methods.
- ohyoutravel 8mo agoWell, maybe USAID could have helped here. Or a robust State Dept.
- chatmasta 8mo agoWait until you find out who funded Tor development...
- paulryanrogers 8mo agoThe US Navy. Why would that be surprising?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- copperx 8mo agoWhich soft power are you talking about?
- black_puppydog 8mo agoSorry, but whatever you think about the laws that lead to these blockages, how else are european governments supposed to take that than a direct attack on their executive powers by a foreign government? This being besides the fact that the folks crying wolf over "censorship" regularly conflate flat-out lies with valuable and protected speech. Edit: I mean, I love tor as much as the next person, but imagine the reaction you'd get if an EU state (say, Germany) was to launch an official page with the express goal of allowing access to information censored by the Chinese government, targeting it directly to chinese citizens. Could you make a moral case for this? Probably. But would you be surprised or offended if the Chinese government took any measures they saw fit to strong-arm Germany into shutting that site right back down? Probably not. And the crowd here would probably go "bruh what did you expect?" ... Now waiting for examples of exactly that having happened already. :D
- nradov 8mo agoIn enlightened, civilized countries speech is protected regardless of whether anyone subjectively considers it to be "valuable".
- black_puppydog 8mo agorofl, go ahead try spreading lies about someone in the US. IIUC, the slander laws are just as draconian over there. the difference is in whether you can spread the same lies about someone with or without deep pockets without retribution.
- m000 8mo agoDoes this mean we will be able to read RT from Europe again?
- lbrito 8mo agoThis is also going to debut in Saudi Arabia, right? ...Right?
- Ancalagon 8mo agoWill this bypass the porn bans in conservative states
- stubish 8mo agoGovernments around the world could setup, in solidarity with the US, freedom.ca, freedom.eu etc. Hosting provided by Pornhub. Maybe Pornhub could even start registering the TLDs now where available.
- shadowgovt 8mo agoExcellent. I look forward to other service providers responding by cutting traffic from the US. If the goal is to balkanize the internet, this administration has hit upon an excellent step.
- api 8mo agoScreams giant honey pot to me. And my taxes need to fund a VPN when there’s 50 cheap VPNs on the market? What happened to reducing spending?
- amarant 8mo agoWhat content bans does Europe have? /Confused European
- seattle_spring 8mo agoThere's a hate speech / violence law in the UK that is getting some people arrested for saying things like "round up all people of race X, put them into a hotel, and burn the hotel down." People like Joe Rogan and his ilk are re-packaging those examples as "people being arrested for just sharing their opinion."
- amarant 8mo agoOh, is that what y'all are on about? I'm not too worried then. About Europe.
- stinkbeetle 8mo agoI don't know what Joe Rogan says or who his ilk are, but this is a pretty extreme characterization of the situation that I don't think is accurate. For example, UK police track what they consider to be undesirable "non-crime" speech, build databases of people, and intimidate them for these non crimes (knock on their doors, invite them to come to police station, advise them not to say such things, etc). This is quite a new thing, within the past ~10 years. There have also been other high profile cases of people being arrested for posting things that were not like that burn the hotel down case. They arrested 12,000 people in 2023 and convicted 1,100 of those. For cases where the evidence is as cut and dried as posts made online, they could only secure convictions in 8% of cases, which seems staggering to me when UK's conviction rate generally is like 80%. Even the conviction rate, even if you say yes there are laws to prohibit certain speech, how far is too far? Are these kinds of laws and convictions needed? Why don't all other countries need them? Why didn't UK need them 20 years ago when there was still internet and social media? Is it not concerning to you that we're told this kind of action is required to hold society together? I'm not saying that calls to violence don't happen or should be tolerated, but if it is not a lie that arresting thousands of people for twitter posts and things is necessary to keep society from breaking down then it seems like putting a bandaid on top of a volcano. It's certainly not developing a resilient, anti-fragile society, quite the opposite IMO. Is nobody allowed to be concerned about any of this without being some horrible underground extremist, in your opinion?
- tachyons 8mo agoIt's kind of ironic given how much USA is censoring content based on their interest.
- andsoitis 8mo ago> It's kind of ironic given how much USA is censoring content based on their interest. What’s a good example?
- mjmsmith 8mo agoTikTok.
- andsoitis 8mo ago> TikTok. Case that it's not censorship: it is not about what content TikTok shows, it's about who owns the algorithm and data. Forcing a sale to a US owner keeps the platform available while removing a (perceived) national security risk. The government isn't suppressing any particular speech. Case it is censorship: forcing the sale of a platform used by 10s of millions of Americans does affect speech of both creators and viewers. The government is making a structural intervention in a speech platform based partly on the potential for future manipulation. The argument that some would use is that it is more accurately framed as economic nationalism or geopolitical competition dressed in free speech clothing. Others see it as a legitimate national security risk with acceptable free speech tradeoffs.
- _HMCB_ 8mo agoSee yesterday’s FCC hearing before congress. It’s hypocritical for the US to be doing the exact opposite of what they’re doing at home.
- petcat 8mo agoWhich content is being censored?
- sega_sai 8mo agoI guess it will allow to access information unless it is about abortion or it is negative about DJT. It is really a joke to pretend that current US cares about freedom of internet access, given all the attacks on free press it things like voice of America radio in the states. I assume US will also provide a portal to Russian citizen if it is so eager to allow people to bypassing content bans (/s).
- mjmsmith 8mo agoFinally, a resource for oppressed people in backward countries to find information about abortion.
- 1970-01-01 8mo ago"The Net Interprets Censorship As Damage and Routes Around It" https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/07/12/censor/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/07/12/censor/
- comex 8mo agoThis project is hardly some emergent property of the Internet or even Internet culture. The existence of VPNs and proxies in general is. They are easy to set up and hard to block. But this project, if it launches, will be a single well-known target which, at a technical level, countries could easily block access to. Whether blocking actually occurs will depend on the whims of geopolitics, but it’s not exactly a robust situation.
- tantalor 8mo agoThat's not very "America First" Why are my taxes paying for benefits for Europeans? They already killed USAID.
- bdangubic 8mo agothis administration is the least “america first” we’ve had … like ever!
- 1970-01-01 8mo agoThey will force their users to pay for the service in Trump's crypto and call it a win for freedom.
- josefrichter 8mo agoFor Europeans? They don’t need anything like this, zero benefit. May benefit someone in North Korea, China or the United States.
- aembleton 8mo agoOr the UK
- speedgoose 8mo agoThe cost of running such a VPN is perhaps worth it when you consider the value of the intelligence it can collect.
- tencentshill 8mo agoNon-monetary, indirect value (Goodwill, "soft power", leverage, future gains) is not, and has never been a consideration for President Trump [1]. All accounts must be settled immediately. Funny how he had to take out a full-page ad, because he couldn't get this opinion actually published in any newspaper. [1] Donald Trump - Letter on Foreign Policy - September 2, 1987
- sunaookami 8mo agoI like that the US government finally speaks out about the rampant censorship from the EU regime but I wouldn't trust a state VPN. But they put the topic on the radar. Hope they can pressure enough to abolish the DSA. And USAID was just funding for propaganda outlets.
- 1970-01-01 8mo agoI'm guessing China will simply block it at the firewall. It would be hilarious to witness the US Gov validating The Pirate Bay's hydra domain approach. Maybe some squatting isn't a bad idea: freedom.live freedom.xyz freedom.space etc.
- shakna 8mo agoI wonder of China can pay Trump with a golden limosuine to get backdoor access to it.
- dfee 8mo agoat one point, HN was anti-censorship. this discussion shows how ideologically aligned this concept has become. there are volleys back and forth of "what censorship" followed by links to wikipedia enumerating it. RT and Joe Rogan are thrown in the mix. when did this experiment fail?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- _HMCB_ 8mo agoAll the while the FCC was grilled yesterday for trying to shut down free speech. Make it make sense.
- Buttons840 8mo agoPoliticians want power over people in the country, but also internet technology is one of the only things the US is best at, and so we don't want the entire world dividing into separate internet silos. (The other things we're best at is having a huge military and having legally protected free speech, which is ironically being weakened, as you say.)
- doggojenkins 8mo ago[flagged]
- doggojenkins 8mo ago[flagged]
- FpUser 8mo ago>"and added that user activity on the site will not be tracked" Until it will. Please do not make me laugh. This will probably be used to help organize converting regimes or look for potential spies. Not denying possible positive value. If they're so generous they should expose Youtube this way and some generic communication platform if they believe they can pull it off (reliable ban bypassing)
- dangus 8mo agoAnother dumb idea by our braindead administration. The site will just be blocklisted by countries who don’t want you to use it. Duh. You’d have to have some horrendous security instincts to use a government-hosted VPN. Remember January 2025 when we were pitched the idea that the Trump administration was going to make the federal government efficient and cut frivolous programs? Let me know when the budget deficit starts to decrease!
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 8mo agoText-only, no Datadome Javascript, HTTPS optional: https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1WCCeV/ https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1WCCeV... Simple HTML: { x=AA1WCCeV ipv4=23.11.201.94 echo "<meta charset=utf-8>"; (printf '%s\r\n%s\r\n\r\n' \ "GET /content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/$x HTTP/1.0" \ 'Host: assets.msn.com') \ |nc -vvn $ipv4 80 |grep -o "<p>.*</p>"|tr -d '\134' } > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm
- nimbius 8mo agoWild flex from the country that literally bought their own tiktok to control the propaganda.
- crossroadsguy 8mo agoSuch an irony that there are two sides trying to control the Internet in their own lovely ways and in the end it's the people who will have to suffer one way or the other. But I do think countries around the world should have a hard look at how the Internet is, even today, de facto controlled by the US. Take ".com" and ".net" domains for example. Like there are efforts underway to get away from SWIFT (and hopefully one day USD as well), this should be independent. In a way, at least in the long term, this US administration might be a net positive for the world at least in the term of depolarisation. Or maybe the focal points will shift from existing ones to new ones.
- IAmGraydon 8mo agoYou think you want US influence to weaken, but you may feel very differently should it happen. There is a lot you’re taking for granted.
- seszett 8mo agoThese days what people receive of the US influence is mostly interference in politics to favour the far-right, military threats and economic war through tariffs. As well as just random verbal attacks on local politicians on local matters. I'm sure there is a positive side to the US influence, but it's well hidden and they definitely don't advertise it.
- jjtwixman 8mo agoSince you guys voted for Trump 2 it's guaranteed and it's happening right now. But, at least you deserve it.
- bastawhiz 8mo agoAs someone who lives in North Carolina and can't even open most mainstream porn sites, I too am waiting for the freedom
- balls187 8mo agoPorn Sites? How about an interview with a politician on a late-nite network television show.
- hdgvhicv 8mo agoIs YouTube blocking that in your state?
- avh02 8mo agois that really the point? you don't see the rest of it all as a little... disturbing?
- kjksf 8mo ago[flagged]
- guerrilla 8mo agoThere has never been a leftist government in the US. You seem a bit lost.
- TacticalCoder 8mo ago> There has never been a leftist government in the US. You seem a bit lost. I'll give you three examples of the dems sliding left. Biden did make sure all the borders were wide open and american forklifts, operated by americans, have been used to facilitate the mass migration of millions and millions of non-US citizens into the US. Under the same government there have been politicians passing laws so that there'd be tampons in men's restrooms. And you now have a mayor in NYC explaining publicly, to americans on US soil, that it's time to "look at the life of the prophet Muhammad" (I encourage everyone to go and buy a quran and go read it to actually learn about the muhammad but this may make want you to switch from democrat to republican). I understand that people who vote democrats don't want to be called leftists but I don't think anyone disputes that dems have been slanting towards the left more and more. Democrats having no issues with a politician lecturing them as to how they should look at the life of the prophet of islam makes me think something serious is going on. I'm not sure who is lost here.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- eviks 8mo agoDo they plan online portal for content banned in the U.S.?
- EGreg 8mo agoThis reminds me of "Radio Free Europe" and "Radio Liberty", which were basically bankrolled (and likely largely influenced) by the CIA. They wanted to distribute all kinds of programming into USSR that was banned there, same with Solzhenitsyn's books etc. Eventually the USSR fell apart. Now they are treating Europe like they treated USSR. Musk and other big influencers on X have already been calling for the breakup of the EU, after the EU fined X $100M. I bet that was at least some of the reason behind this. The irony is that the Trump admin has been deporting non-citizens for speech, his FCC has been intimidating media like ABC and CBS into firing people or canceling programs and interviews, his DOJ has been telling social networks to fork over the identities of citizens who criticized ICE online, and his CBP will begin demanding that tourists hand over 5 years of their social media history, as well as their biometrics, family's information and whatever else. This is the administration who would lecture Europe about freedom of speech? Didn't they just get through 10 years of telling European countries to be "nationalist" and resist the influence of their own federal government in Brussels -- but I guess we can just ignore their laws and broadcast anything into their countries, tempting them to set up a "great firewall" like China. Well, if freedom of speech means violating other countries' laws, in this case can European governments just start streaming copyrighted movies for free to US viewers, and piss off the RIAA / MPAA? Or maybe they can do what Cory Doctorow has been proposing: https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2026-01-29-post-american-canada-ottawa-0a9df32d23f7 https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2026-01-29... It's like when USA ignores European trademarks (actually even stronger, PDOs) like Champagne or Parmesan but expects Europeans to honor US trademarks.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- c420 8mo agoAnyone know why this would be appearing on the front page but completely absent from https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- calmworm 8mo agoOrwellian quotes are bandied about so much these days… does anything more need to be said?
- mcs5280 8mo agoAll content will likely be pre-approved by Larry Ellison and his other billionaire friends, so how much freedom will this really have?
- viking123 8mo agoWill be Pre-approved by Israel*
- iamnothere 8mo agoPerhaps Europe can offer its own freedom VPN, then we can finally read whatever we want by switching back and forth.
- syspec 8mo agoMeanwhile, you can't even go on pornhub in certain states in the US, but yes let's let people go on X and engage in hate speech. In fact I'm sure bad actors will use that site FROM the us, to anonymize their hate speech from Russia/China
- beej71 8mo ago> Meanwhile, you can't even go on pornhub in certain states in the US. Hilarious to think that freedom.gov might be the workaround.
- xp84 8mo ago> let people go on X and engage in hate speech So interesting to see it become a popular opinion that we should "not let" people say certain things. Like, if necessary, we should jail people for speaking. I remember learning about the ACLU[1] as a teen, 25 years ago, and how they took a lot of flak for defending people who said things we all agreed were gross, which at first glance seems disgusting. But the lesson we were taught was that the Constitutional guarantee of "freedom of expression" wasn't qualified with "as long as the opinions being expressed are cool ones." Really, "hate speech" is defined as "any ideas counter to beliefs I hold dearly." Right wingers think some or all porn is the "bad" kind of expression and apparently banworthy, and left wingers think saying pretty much anything about trans ideology (other than full-throated endorsement) is hate speech. I'm aware that many who are of the "don't let people do 'hate speech'" aren't Americans and don't owe any respect for the ideas of our particular Constitution, and that's fine -- but many Americans also now feel that citizens should only be able to speak the subset of ideas that one party endorses, and that any other ideas should be punishable, as they are in the UK.[2] [1] If I understand it correctly, I think the ACLU is under new management, and no longer defends anyone whose ideas are uncomfortable. [2] https://factually.co/fact-checks/justice/uk-arrests-for-tweets-30-per-day-fact-check-f846b0 https://factually.co/fact-checks/justice/uk-arrests-for-twee... This fact-check points out that "only" 10% of the 30 arrests per day for online postings end up with convictions, and that it's rare to have "long" prison sentences. Very comforting.
- jeroenhd 8mo ago
- riffraff 8mo agoCan't wait for them to realize this allows sidestepping geoblocks on media and Hollywood to freak out.
- astahlx 8mo agoIn the end, facts are useless. You belief what you think your social bubble, and in particular, the group you think you belong to, is thinking. And many people do not speak up. Mostly those with strong (often selfish) interests speak up, and often in a manipulative way. Having narcissist or sociopaths as leader can indeed be a bad thing. Some sort of media control is good, to protect core values, to protect the law against mass manipulation.
- DeathArrow 8mo agoThe EU will probably build its own version of the Great Firewall of China.
- mesk 8mo agoCool, so the US students will be able to read school banned books ? Or US state banned research papers ? Or US state banned historic books or photos ? Or soft banned late night shows - so Colbert will continue ? Kimmel ? Or domains of shadow book libraries banned by FBI/corporate requests ? And it will circumvent geoblocking enforced mostly by US companies ? Cool, such a heroic effort to remove censorship from theinternet that US enforces on us :-) Ooh, almost forgotten there also some porn and media pirating sites blocked in the EU that will surely get also unblocked. But who cares, there are thousands of theese.... Btw. did Putin and Xi allowed this ? Or their `free` internet will remain free as before.
- Manuel_D 8mo agoWhen has the US ever banned students from reading certain books or research papers? What research papers can I not legally read? The domains of shadow libraries are banned for copyright infringement, you can still read the books legally by purchasing a copy.
- mesk 8mo agoHere you can find short sample of those `dangerous` books: https://pen.org/banned-books-list-2025/ https://pen.org/banned-books-list-2025/ And https://climate.law.columbia.edu/content/cdc-orders-retraction-or-pause-publication-research-manuscripts https://climate.law.columbia.edu/content/cdc-orders-retracti... And, I know those shadow libraries are banned because of copyright, but that's just an excuse. If someone pushes such a broad understanding of Freedom as US does, than copyright should maybe not be the one exception that's ok. People should have freedom to publish anything and other should have freedom to read/play/watch anything. If US can ban something because of so abstract as copyright, why can't EU ban something because of so abstract as `its all lies and state sponsored propaganda` ? NOTE: just playing devils advocate here, to show the hypocrisy of it all...
- Manuel_D 8mo agoThose book "bans" are just librarians' decision on what to use finite shelf space to stock. Students are 100% free to bring any of the "banned" books to school and read them. By this logic, when a librarian changes out an older set of YA novels with a newer set, those older novels are being "banned". So to answer your question: > Cool, so the US students will be able to read school banned books ? The answer is "whenever they want." Furthermore, the CDC's calls for retraction don't prohibit anyone from reading the retracted papers.
- randomNumber7 8mo agoPersonally I think the EU goes too far when I'm not even allowed to access books on the internet where the author died more than 100 years ago. So I like it xD
- Doxin 8mo agowhich books?
- randomNumber7 8mo agoSorry I'm not allowed to tell you.
- ruszki 8mo agoWhich book is that?
- randomNumber7 8mo agoGutenberg.org was DNS blocked for a very long time. Now it's not DNS blocked anymore but I think it will detect your IP and restrict access for some books if you are in the EU. Of course very easy to circumvent if you know s.th. about tech.
- ruszki 8mo agoWhat is the difference between those cases and Steamboat Willie? Besides the obvious that those happened in different countries.
- jeroenhd 8mo agoThe Americans are just as bad when it comes to intellectual property (70 years after the death of the author or 95 years after publication). By American copyright standards, you can read The Silmarillion for free around 2072. The difference in approach (American companies suing and financially ruining a select few downloaders versus European lobbyists going attempting to block the distribution points) makes piracy slightly less convenient in Europe but the basis for the copyright problem was turned into a global problem at the Berne Convention.
- paganel 8mo agoAs an EU citizen this is damn nice. The US might have some things to still work on/improve, but when it comes to freedom of speech it is still light years ahead of everybody else, and good for them.
- Lio 8mo agoThis comes across not as some noble to support free speech and more an attempt to exempt US firms like Grok, Meta, etc. from laws banning AI generated child porn and deliberately addicting social media.
- pms 8mo agoIt's a waste of resources, but please do it! The entire "European Union censors" narrative is a hoax [1], so the portal will achieve nothing, but you've got to do what you've got to do! [1] First, the EU countries have much higher World Press Freedom Index than the US. Second, once you start reading how little there is of the alleged "censorship" in the EU, you realize it's a no-brainer aiming to protect people.
- piekvorst 8mo ago[flagged]
- dgxyz 8mo agoUS talks about freedom and enforces other things... The constitution is just words on paper.
- piekvorst 8mo agoI don’t deny that the current state of the U.S. is unfortunate, even irrational. It has been this way for a very long time. Freedom is the foundational root, not the current fruit. And it’s a testament to freedom that she could withstand for so long.
- dgxyz 8mo agoIn the last 50 years of observing the US I haven't seen any evidence to support that being the case.
- Argonaut998 8mo agoPress freedom !== entirety of freedom of speech European politicians are calling every day to censor social media. People are arrested regularly for social media posts. Censorship is absolutely an issue in Europe and it’s only getting worse. I welcome such an attitude as this.
- 8mo ago
- jimnotgym 8mo agoI see, there is a danger of US propaganda not getting through, so they are trying a new way.
- jimnotgym 8mo agoWill I be able to use this to watch Democrats get interviewed by Stephen Colbert?
- GoblinSlayer 8mo agoWithout net neutrality it's kinda dead on arrival.
- anovikov 8mo agoThis is good. But because societies are democratic, and most voters are now economically irrelevant, something has to be done about possibility to create discontent simply to shake things and weaken countries - because there is nothing this discontent can achieve (you can't turn objectively irrelevant people, relevant again). If top 10% of people create half of all spending and more of the spending on nonessentials, thus feeding majority of economy/creating majority of value, things will revolve around them. Something has to be done so that the other 90% won't be trying to break things down just for the sake of it. It's also that top 3% pay half of all federal taxes. Can we expect that the government will really care about others? It's also that same top 3% have a net worth of $5-6M and up - in the "never have to work again unless it's real fun" range. If the majority of government funding and good half of corporate value comes from people who don't care anymore because they have arrived, can we expect anyone to be a responsible voter? We are firmly in 'bread and circuses' area.
- mcintyre1994 8mo agoSo instead of using a VPN that might have weird relationships with spy agencies, you just use one run by the US government? Clever idea to spy on the stupidest people in the world I guess. Also I’m guessing they won’t allow this to be used to get around the sorts of content blocking project 2025 calls for in the US.
- blumtyoty 8mo agoAh yes the 'freedom' USA is giving other people 'freedom'. Has nothing to do with propaganda or with just reading all the traffic for the cia/fbi/whatever snowden told us. USA became so fast an enemy, its crazy :( They should start again funding services like https://nsidc.org/ice-sheets-today https://nsidc.org/ice-sheets-today instead of 'freedom'.gov
- zombot 8mo agoThis is so very strange. I don't trust the motivations behind this.
- sschueller 8mo agoSo can this be used to loop back to US age restricted content?
- sschueller 8mo agoSo I will finally be able to access those US news websites that block EU access because of the cookie banner?
- Ylpertnodi 8mo ago> I will finally be able to access those US news websites that block EU access because of the cookie banner? They block the EU not because of cookie banners, but because they don't understand GDPR. Or vpn's.
- duckerduck 8mo agoMaybe the EU can open a book portal for the US. https://pen.org/report/the-normalization-of-book-banning/ https://pen.org/report/the-normalization-of-book-banning/
- BSDobelix 8mo agoBanned in public schools...
- k3vinw 8mo agoSo not books banned from the general public? Got it!
- BSDobelix 8mo agoIf you compare that list of "really banned" books, it sounds like creating a European portal would be a net negative. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments#West_Germany_(1949%E2%80%931990)_and_Germany_(1990%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_govern... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_govern... The US list one (1) banned book in a earlier version (Operation Dark Heart) because of national security. >The first, uncensored printing of 9,500 copies was purchased for $47,300 in early September and destroyed by the publisher at the request of the Pentagon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dark_Heart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dark_Heart
- joenot443 8mo agoThe whole book banning thing is a little weird in 2026, IMO. It's exciting to think about, we all liked Fahrenheit 451, but a book not being bought for elementary schools doesn't really make it "banned" IMO. There are a lot of books which probably shouldn't be in schools. I don't think children should be given copies of Mein Kampf or Camp of Saints, nor the random dark fantasy novels which are so popular today. It feels disingenuous to pretend that school-book-choice is anything comparable to government level "book banning" when literally any of the books written about in that article can be freely checked out from any public library in the country.
- k3vinw 8mo agoGood. I’m bypassing the UK altogether since they can throw you in jail for thought crimes. https://www.newsweek.com/policing-thought-crime-should-have-no-place-uk-opinion-1775891 https://www.newsweek.com/policing-thought-crime-should-have-...
- koonsolo 8mo agoAh yes, freedom of speech for the Europeans! And when we travel to US, they need to check our social media to see if our opinions align with the US government.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- d--b 8mo agoThis is just weird. I mean… Spending tax dollars so that foreigners can watch porn without age verification sounds like a bad use of budget.
- ramon156 8mo agoAnything but help your citizens I guess. Go capitalism
- jonny-puma 8mo agoAs a retaliation the EU should set up a barge in international waters right outside the US east coast where Americans can get unpasteurized cheese, kinder surprise and cheap insulin
- objektif 8mo agoWhen can we get our kinder egg portal?
- LetsGetTechnicl 8mo ago> added that user activity on the site will not be tracked. Oh I'm sure
- kingnothing 8mo agoWon't they simply blacklist freedom.gov?
- rbanffy 8mo agoTo best destroy the idea of an objective truth, you need to control it first.
- hsuduebc2 8mo agoI suppose it works for banned websites and pornsites banned in US some states right? Other wise it would be pretty hypocritical.
- lunatuna 8mo agoAnyone check out the site? Wild that freedom right now is basically a gif of a cowboy riding a horse with a gun pointed out front. Just shooting our way to freedom seems reasonable 'in these times'. What's the meaning of this? Is it just theatre? And what is the message of the show? Is it a real fear that people have of lack of information that will set them free and they need to cowboy up and get there no matter what? Struggling to get this.
- joe463369 8mo agoIt is undemocratic that European countries insist on making laws that Americans don't like.
- moogly 8mo agoI'm looking forward to going there to find out what's happening in Palestine.
- mcv 8mo agoWill it also bypass content bans in the US? Or should Europe create its own freedom.eu for that? I'm sure I don't have to point out the irony of the current censorship-happy government in the US pretending to be a champion of free speech in other countries. I mean, there are plenty of countries with far worse censorship of course, but for the US to attack the EU specifically on this, is pure propaganda.