[HN Gopher] Cloudflare starts blocking pirate sites for UK users
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Cloudflare starts blocking pirate sites for UK users
Author : gloxkiqcza
Score : 192 points
Date : 2025-07-15 14:33 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| xandrius wrote:
| Shouldn't surprise absolutely nobody, once you become the
| gatekeeper of the Internet, you're going to gatekeep.
|
| Now it's torrent sites and next it's going to be other things the
| party in charge doesn't like.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| About a decade ago, there were proposals for a "driver's
| license for the internet."
|
| Nowadays... I actually think it might be a lesser evil. Picture
| such an ID, if there were a standard for it, enrolled into your
| computer.
|
| If it were properly built, your computer could provide proof of
| age, identity, or other verified attributes on approval. The ID
| could also have micro-transaction support, for allowing
| convenient pay-as-you-go 10 cents per article instead of
| paywalls, advertising, and subscriptions everywhere. Websites
| could just block all non-human traffic; awfully convenient in
| this era of growing spam, malware, AI slop, revenge porn, etc.
| Website operators, such as those of small forums, would have
| far less moderation and abuse prevention overhead.
|
| Theoretically, it would also massively improve cybersecurity,
| if websites didn't actually need your credit card number and
| unique identity anymore. Theoretically, if it was tied to your
| ID, it's like Privacy.com but for every website; much lower
| transaction friction but much higher security.
|
| I think that's the future at this rate. The only question is
| who decides how it is implemented.
| 63stack wrote:
| This is so naive. Big tech would be the first to get various
| exceptions to train their greedy AIs. They would lobby so
| hard to lock down personal computers, just to make sure you
| are not tampering with your digital passport. Google would
| finally have their wet dream of locked down PCs that have no
| adblock.
|
| Politicians would be salivating at the idea of getting the
| real identities of dissenters, and religious fucks would
| finally have their way of banning porn and contraceptives.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| You're assuming this isn't already in the works; I simply
| see it as we can make the standard now, or let the standard
| be dictated.
|
| We're already seeing it piecemeal, with Cloudflare
| supporting skipping CAPTCHAs on verified iOS and macOS
| devices; mobile driver's license enrollment options on iOS;
| age verification rollouts for websites with no-doubt people
| thinking how to streamline things; etc.
|
| I personally think we are one big cyberattack from the
| whole concept returning fast. One big cyberattack from
| governments (and people in general) saying they've had
| enough of the free-for-all status quo. This isn't a good
| place to be.
| 63stack wrote:
| I'm aware that this might very well be "in the works",
| what's your point with that? Who is this "we" you are
| talking about? Are you going to publish a repository on
| github about what you believe is the ethical way to do
| this, and you expect Google to follow, or ???
|
| What is this "one big cyberattack away" that you are
| talking about? Large sites get hacked all the time, and
| _nobody_ in power gives a single flying fuck. There are
| zero people held responsible for storing passwords in
| plaintext, or the admin password set to "123456" or
| passwords left as the default.
|
| Seriously, what are you talking about?
| dingnuts wrote:
| oh good, and your authoritarian government can know you're in
| the closet and trying to figure out how to leave the country,
| too!
|
| no, fuck this idea so hard. if this is inevitable, our duty
| is to build technology that defeats it
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Local ID Proofs =/= Surveillance
| dingnuts wrote:
| it absolutely will mean surveillance, unless you were
| born yesterday. governments will implement what you're
| describing in a way that is not privacy preserving
|
| this is supposed to be HACKER news, not fucking
| bootlicker news
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Yes, and we're losing. Why do you think the internet is
| covered in ads, 25% Cloudflare, infested with CAPTCHAs
| and IP blocking, and the problem gets worse every year?
|
| There are real problems that haven't been fixed; the
| driver's license concept _correctly implemented_ might be
| better than continuing down this path. I view it as we
| can make a good standard; or let a bad standard be
| dictated.
| dingnuts wrote:
| > Yes, and we're losing. Why do you think
|
| Obviously. Why do YOU think I'm angry-posting about it on
| the orange shithole site with the username "dingnuts" ?
| ipaddr wrote:
| The drivers license id doesn't solve anything but adds a
| layer of nonsense on top.
|
| That doesn't stop cloudflares marketshare takeover. It
| doesn't stop CAPTCHA which will filter out bots using
| these ids. It provides an easy method for hackers to use.
| It filters out the curious kids.
|
| In the end it solves nothing and creates more problems.
| int_19h wrote:
| Most ads that I see these days are from Big Tech
| megacorps. Do you seriously think that having a "driver
| license for the Internet" would mean that the likes of
| Google and Meta would stop?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Those are trivial problems compared to an internet linked
| to your identity.
|
| Clicking through some captchas and installing an
| adblocker just isn't the hard life you're trying to claim
| it is.
| immibis wrote:
| At least in the current system, there are some websites
| where you don't have to prove your real identity. Hacker
| News, for example.
|
| In an internet driver's license system, remember that
| your computer would have to be locked down, and only able
| to access government-approved websites using government-
| approved clients - something like they have in China, or
| like using an iPhone but worse.
|
| Once the ability for any site to verify your identity was
| set up, all sites would have to verify your identity, or
| lose their own verification, under one of many standard
| excuses like protecting the children.
| derektank wrote:
| You can create an ID card system that reliably verifies
| some sort of personal attribute (such as age) without
| revealing other personal information or a validation
| request being sent to the government which shares what
| sites you may or may not have been browsing
| pjc50 wrote:
| I think the point is that "can" is not the same as
| "will".
| perching_aix wrote:
| Because only people who are engaging in cynicism can
| predict the future.
| secstate wrote:
| Cynicism wins the day because negative outcomes are
| easier to plan for than positive outcomes. Humans
| defaulting to optimistic outcomes of the future often end
| up littering the ground with externalities that they
| failed to consider. And we also only have a single model
| for infinite growth (cancer) that always leads to
| destruction, so relentless optimism as a biological
| organism means a need for infinite growth, which we only
| know to be a path to destruction.
|
| The answer, therefore, is not bitching on the internet
| about all the wet blankets who only see negative
| outcomes, but acknowledging that everything we know needs
| to end eventually including ourselves, and balancing
| optimism for the short term with cynicism for the long
| term. And thus discovering that a healthy cynicism for
| the future predictions is probably appropriate, unless
| you truly want to live forever and have infinite energy
| for everything. But that's a god.
| perching_aix wrote:
| Easier to plan for is an interesting lens to look
| through, can't immediately discard it for sure.
|
| From my perspective, negative expectations do have a
| higher chance of turning out real, but because negative
| expectations most often are just code for human
| misalignment. We have some philosophical, instinctual, or
| aesthetic (etc.) preferences, but then reality is always
| going to be broader than that. So you're bound to hit
| things that are in misalignment. It takes active effort
| to cultivate the world to be whatever particular way. But
| this is also why I find simple pleas to cynicism
| particularly hollow. It comes off as resignation, exactly
| where the opposite is what would be most required.
| secstate wrote:
| That's a fair counter argument, and I do genuinely
| believe (not know) that everyone needs a balance of
| cynicism and optimism to function optimally as a human. I
| also believe the resignation you feel from cynicism is
| rampant exactly because as humans we've become very good
| at basic survival and beyond that it's not totally clear
| what our targets for living should be. Certainly we can
| all agree that trying to harness ever more energy and
| growing forever can't be the target. But that's all we've
| done for two millennia now. How to we avoid becoming a
| cancer to our planet (or any other environment we find
| ourselves in)?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Some of us learn from experience and make predictions
| based on past actions by the governments.
| perching_aix wrote:
| Trauma sufferers also just learned from experience.
| exe34 wrote:
| The rich and powerful have always worked very hard to
| keep their position. They have vastly more resources than
| the rest of us to throw at the problem. It's not cynicism
| to predict that every tool will be used to make our lives
| worse unless it helps them get richer and more powerful.
| johnisgood wrote:
| These are possible, there are zero-knowledge proof (ZKP)
| algorithms and whatnot, but it is not going to happen.
| Aloisius wrote:
| First, while there's research on the math for things like
| ZNP, there is a shocking lack of research on security
| vulnerabilities for the actual implementations of such
| age verification systems which should make anyone using
| them extremely nervous.
|
| Second, if a porn website, social media, video game or
| whatever other thing regulators want to discourage people
| visiting kicks you off into an age verification takes
| requires you to some system/site, even an independent
| one, that requires you upload your ID, a fair number of
| people will simply refuse simply due to lack of
| understanding in how it works and trust that it actually
| is anonymous.
|
| Third, every implementation I've seen doesn't work for
| some/all non-citizens/tourists.
|
| And finally and more importantly, the ease at bypassing
| those systems means it's unlikely to stop anyone underage
| and ultimately is no better than existing parental
| control software, so all one is doing is restricting
| speech for adults.
| jlokier wrote:
| To the surprise of many, Google recently announced it is
| already integrating ZK-proof-of-age into Google Wallet
| with those kinds of properties, open sourcing the
| underlying libraries, and working with governments to
| encourage their ZKP system's adoption for exactly this
| sort of problem.
|
| - [2025-04-29] https://blog.google/products/google-
| pay/google-wallet-age-id...
|
| - [2025-07-03] https://blog.google/technology/safety-
| security/opening-up-ze...
|
| - [2025-06-11] https://zeroknowledge.fm/podcast/363/
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| the number of people who work for (or defend those who work
| for) firms like raytheon, northrop grumman, palantir, meta,
| amazon, microsoft, alphabet, flock et al leads me to
| believe there are not enough people left to care about
| building this technology. we're cooked. too many developers
| lack the moral position necessary to turn the tide in a
| meaningfully widespread way - at best, it's "if not me,
| someone else will do this work anyways, so i might as well
| be the one collecting the paycheck/stock options." at
| worst, it's "i think it's a good thing to create tools to
| surveil/manipulate/kill people."
|
| mourn the loss of the internet we knew and be ready to
| sacrifice ease of use to return to lower-tech/still-
| underground options.
| strken wrote:
| I'm in favour of A) a restricted internet with an encryption
| scheme based on state controlled hardware devices, like
| Estonia has, that's accessible by default from browsers, and
| B) an unrestricted internet that's available to anyone who
| clicks through a few scary browser warnings, but is generally
| regarded as weird, dangerous, and not commercially viable
| except for weird or dangerous stuff.
| xandrius wrote:
| And then wait for when the well-funded and publicly
| supported A decides that B is evil and needs to be taken
| down.
| int_19h wrote:
| Realistically, the moment the two are decoupled, B) is
| going to be banned and blocked outright - and the more they
| are decoupled, the easier it would be to ban. By and large,
| the only reason why it's still possible to access "dark"
| content online is because it's so intermeshed with the more
| mundane stuff on infrastructure level that the most
| efficient blocking methods have unacceptably high levels of
| collateral damage.
| strken wrote:
| I don't see how you'd decouple one from the other, given
| that it's essentially just giving the user their own
| encryption certificate. Have the EU pass legislation
| saying that you can't request that the user sign anything
| unless they're in the process of making an account.
| rendx wrote:
| German national ID has this built-in; you can
| cryptographically prove that you are currently in possession
| of an ID (and its PIN) over a certain age, for example,
| without revealing your date of birth. It's just not in
| widespread use.
| thmsths wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this. I have been frustrated about
| the lack of chip and pin for IDs for years. We have had
| digital IDs in the form of debit/credit card since the 90s,
| and yet the governments have been agonizingly slow to adopt
| this (at least to me) painfully obvious idea. So good job
| Germany!
| Sophira wrote:
| Chip and PIN is almost how electronic passports already
| work - it's just that the 'PIN' is printed in the
| passport itself, so in order for anybody to communicate
| with the chip, it has to see the page which has it
| printed in order to scan for it first.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| CA DMV app lets me add my driver's license to my mobile
| wallet (which works with NFC).
|
| Of course, it doesn't eliminate my legal responsibility
| to carry my driver's license while driving, and while the
| printed piece of plastic lasts five years and my passport
| booklet is legal I.D. for 10 years at a time, the mobile
| driver's license needs to be updated every 30 days.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| Why have the digital version of you need the plastic copy
| still?
| heavensteeth wrote:
| Right, it's only natural; they MitM 20% of the internet.
|
| Similarly, I struggle to believe they're not providing much of
| the data they collect to the CIA.
| anon191928 wrote:
| CIA front like snapchat with all on camera access. Nothing
| surprising
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > Shouldn't surprise absolutely nobody...
|
| ...because this is far from the first time this has happened
| with Cloudflare.
| kragen wrote:
| Is it? When did it happen before?
| crinkly wrote:
| Yes centralising power was such a good idea. Well done big tech.
| Another footgun.
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| How is this a footgun? Big Tech will protect Big Tech, it's
| only an advantage to have a service that will bend to their
| will. The centralization is the point.
| ndr wrote:
| Anything centralized is easier to capture.
| crinkly wrote:
| The bit where we hand everything over and then take the
| consequences for doing so.
| dmix wrote:
| Everyone opted to use Cloudflare, not just big tech. They now
| control much of the internet in a way that any nation state
| could only dream of.
| fnord77 wrote:
| cloudflare is big tech now?
| pmdr wrote:
| It sits between millions of users and the websites they
| desire to visit, and if they're on the right network using
| the right browser, they won't even know it.
|
| It's #24 on this list
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/software/largest-software-
| com... so I'd say it's big tech.
| Havoc wrote:
| Just when streaming site are turning extra crappy and user
| hostile
| gonzalohm wrote:
| Is this because the torrent sites are using cloudfare on their
| end? If so, seems like a simple solution
| Retr0id wrote:
| Torrent sites use Cloudflare to hide their origin IPs, among
| other things, so just not using it isn't an easy option.
|
| Easier for torrent sites to tell people to use VPNs.
| hobbitstan wrote:
| First, they came for 8chan...
| josephcsible wrote:
| This isn't part of that slippery slope, since that was
| Cloudflare's voluntary choice, but this is legally required of
| them. (I do think both kinds are bad, though.)
| airhangerf15 wrote:
| Cloudflare also blocked a popular Internet celebrity gossip
| site and actionably -defamed them in the process, and a
| popular blog, yet still has customers who run animal crushing
| sites (which is literally illegal content in many countries).
|
| Don't defend them. Their decisions are arbitrary and it's
| really sad so much of the web has chosen to use their garbage
| services.
| amiga386 wrote:
| PSA: UK users can visit all their favourite websites in Tor
| Browser. Just don't run your torrent client using the tor
| network. Thank you.
|
| You can also access 4chan, Tattle Life, and other nasty gossip
| websites that the UK nanny state wants to ban.
|
| And you can access the porn on Reddit and Twitter (though in some
| cases you'll have to make an account). And of course the "tube"
| sites work fine.
|
| After you've done that, as a UK citizen, please go to
| https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903 and ask the
| government to repeal their awful law.
| jchw wrote:
| I don't actually _use_ Reddit or Twitter, but I sometimes come
| across NSFW posts from links. I 've found that old.reddit.com
| seems to allow you to bypass the filter(s) without needing an
| account. For Twitter, I tend to use the xcancel.com Nitter
| instance, though there are other Nitter instances that work
| fine.
|
| Bonus for using Nitter here, you can also see the latest posts
| from an account instead of the most popular posts, and see
| replies/interactions to individual tweets. Oh, and it gives you
| plain HTML.
|
| Reddit pisses me off so much that despite the fact that I don't
| even _use_ Reddit, just so that my experience sucks less when I
| 'm linked to Reddit or have another reason to lurk it,
|
| - I use the "Old Reddit Redirect" extension to force the
| browser to go to old reddit
|
| - I use the "Load Reddit Images Directly" extension to bypass
| Reddit's hideous image viewer that tries to load if your
| browser makes the mistake of having text/html in the "Accept"
| headers when opening an image in a new tab. (Dear
| Firefox/Chrome/etc: maybe stop doing that? If I open an image
| in a new tab, there is a _zero_ percent chance I want HTML.)
| peterpost2 wrote:
| The bypass via old.reddit.com stopped working today as well.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| I just googled 'top nsfw Reddit' and aside from some
| disturbing implications of 'top' all opened fine with
| 'old.'. The IP is UK based, is coming up as UK on all geoip
| sites I tried and is in all of the last 30days of maxmind
| as UK based.
|
| It might be some kind of phased rollout of course.
| jchw wrote:
| Oops, I should note that I'm a U.S. citizen in a state
| without any porn age gate laws. I have no idea what the
| status of using old.reddit.com to bypass the NSFW filter
| is in other jurisdictions, or honestly even my own (not
| sure how to test it.) All I know for sure is that it
| worked last time I tried it.
| gh02t wrote:
| Is the reddit equivalent of xcancel/nitter (i.e., redlib
| https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib) also blocked?
| Presumably if the instance is hosted outside the UK it would
| work since I think it effectively proxies your requests.
| godelski wrote:
| Reddit is also very aggressive at blocking VPNs. Mullvad is
| constantly blocked. Occasionally I'll turn it off, but Reddit
| is just a terrible place so I usually go elsewhere (I'm only
| going because of Google search results. I'd rather use an LLM
| than turn off my vpn for Reddit)
| dymk wrote:
| Interesting, are you using any particular exit country for
| Mullvad? I've used Canada and never ran into Reddit
| blocking it.
| godelski wrote:
| Mostly US and Sweden. I'll give Canada a go. Thanks for
| the suggestion
| fnord77 wrote:
| On tor, reddit blocks you from logging in with 90-95% of the
| exit nodes
| v5v3 wrote:
| You are very unlucky
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Reddit runs an onion service. Can you not use that?
| fnord77 wrote:
| Logins almost always give some 4xx error from both their
| onion address and regular address on Tor
|
| You can browse though
| blackhaj7 wrote:
| > Just don't run your torrent client using the tor network. I
| have never used tor so novice question: why not?
|
| > please go to https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903
| Signed!
| Retr0id wrote:
| The tor network essentially relies on donated exit node
| bandwidth, and there's a finite capacity at any point in
| time. Torrenting is a bandwidth hog (and a lot of exit nodes
| will filter it out anyway)
| noisem4ker wrote:
| Is it really just a matter of my bandwidth being hogged up,
| or more a risk of getting my IP address (range) banned, if
| not worse legal risks from activities being traced to me?
| immibis wrote:
| You can't get banned because no one knows who you are.
| You can bring down the entire Tor network. Probably not
| you by yourself, but if enough people do it they can.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I believe OP was responding from the perspective of an
| exit node operator.
| immibis wrote:
| Exit nodes have to deal with much more severe things than
| copyright infringement. They regularly get raided by law
| enforcement for accusations of child porn and hacking,
| and have to defend themselves by pointing out they didn't
| originate the traffic. There's a whole bunch of tips out
| there about how to not go to jail for running an exit
| node (which is legal).
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Yes, an exit node operator will appear as the source of
| the traffic, which can have legal repercussions.
| (Personal risk.)
|
| But on a macro scale, the entire Tor network has fairly
| limited bandwidth and torrenting is a very easy way to
| saturate it. (Existential risk to the network / tragedy
| of the commons)
| mhitza wrote:
| You can use the I2P network for torrenting if that's what
| you want, as that kind of traffic is not frowned upon.
|
| Probably going to be slower than over the Tor network
| without any manual tweaking.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| That's why some "tor-torrent" protocol should be invented,
| where data is sent via torrent network. There's still some
| bandwidth amplification, but as long as someone is seeding
| from within tor, the whole transfer could be done there.
|
| ...would also help with privacy and nasty telco letters.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| > donated exit node bandwidth
|
| Hey, we pay $100B/yr of tax money into the NSA/CIA/etc
| budgets every year so they can run exit nodes among other
| activities, I wouldn't exactly call it donated
| blackhaj7 wrote:
| Thanks!
| kobalsky wrote:
| > I have never used tor so novice question: why not?
|
| bandwidth is a scarce resource on tor.
| staringback wrote:
| No it isn't. https://metrics.torproject.org/bandwidth.html
| ac29 wrote:
| Thats relay bandwidth, I assume exit node bandwidth is
| some fraction of that
| jjmarr wrote:
| Some clients by default leak your IP when using Tor, the last
| I checked. When announcing to other peers, the IP of the host
| machine is provided.
|
| So, you anonymously make the requests through an exit node,
| but the request contains your IP, which defeats the entire
| purpose of Tor.
| blackhaj7 wrote:
| Interesting, thanks
| dtf wrote:
| You'll need more than just an account to access "certain mature
| content" on sites like Reddit - you'll soon need to upload some
| photographic ID.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4ep1znk4zo
| Retr0id wrote:
| I wrote a similar comment but then realised that if you're
| using tor per GP's recommendation, you'd be fine as long as
| your exit node isn't in the UK, or other regressive
| jurisdiction.
| zerotolerance wrote:
| It is trivial to create a digital picture of a false ID.
| Canada wrote:
| Which is why you will need to provide a cryptographically
| secure identity credential issued by the government, and
| you will need to re-verify at regular intervals, not just
| upload a JPEG.
|
| Make no mistake, the plan is to require 'KYC' for Google,
| reddit, Facebook, X soon and all that and then later
| require it for all web sites, even this one.
|
| Australia recently passed a law requiring Google to KYC
| Australian account holders to check ages to decide if the
| user will be allowed to control the "safe search" setting.
| alwa wrote:
| Well. Certainly for people in the room here. One imagines
| regulators know that too, and will draw the line
| accordingly... that they may grudgingly tolerate validation
| systems that allow some degree of individual fraud, but
| stomp on the first of us here to vibe-code our way to a
| fraud-as-a-service site that gets any traction.
|
| I'm reminded of all-around-good-guy @patio11's evergreen
| The Optimal Amount Of Fraud Is Non-Zero...
|
| https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-
| fra...
| johnisgood wrote:
| I hope many UK citizens are going to sign it.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| Crazy stuff
| Retr0id wrote:
| Tor is great but the bandwidth/latency kinda sucks for casual
| browsing activity. A VPN is a more realistic workaround to this
| kind of geofencing.
|
| I almost said "solution" instead of workaround, but of course
| the only _actual_ solution is to fix the legislation.
| mike-cardwell wrote:
| It's actually pretty ok for casual browsing these days. Have
| you tried it recently?
| ReaperCub wrote:
| > Tor is great but the bandwidth/latency kinda sucks for
| casual browsing activity
|
| It is reasonably decent these days. Generally there are
| periods where Tor network is slow.
|
| > A VPN is a more realistic workaround to this kind of
| geofencing
|
| Generally I tend to use a combination of Tor / VPN depending
| on what I am doing. Some gossip sites have onion urls and I
| will use Tor if visiting those. Other sites that are geo-
| fenced (sites like Odysee) are easier to get to via VPN.
|
| > I almost said "solution" instead of workaround, but of
| course the only actual solution is to fix the legislation.
|
| That isn't going to get fixed anytime soon. In fact I expect
| it to get worse over time.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Not really been much advance notice of that to account holders.
| I wonder how the normally sane and well balanced people left
| using Twitter will react to that. Or even how they determine
| "UK account" anyway, given all the usual geographical
| qualifiers.
| pmdr wrote:
| > PSA: UK users can visit all their favourite websites in Tor
| Browser.
|
| And get to solve a dozen whack-a-mole intentionally-slow-
| loading reCAPTCHAs just to see the page, or worse, end up in a
| Cloudflare redirect loop.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I get enough of that between Brave Browser and using Linux as
| my desktop OS.
| mhitza wrote:
| They don't show up significantly more often for me than in
| Brave browser.
|
| Though at that point might as well use Tor in Brave,
| because the additional ad&trackers blockers improves
| drastically the load times.
|
| Now, if only Brave would go the extra mile of having the
| Tor browser window better mimick the Tor Browser.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I've got PiHole and a couple extensions installed that
| block more than Brave itself does. Not really into Tor,
| but I did try it a couple times.
| ReaperCub wrote:
| I use tor semi-regularly to get around stupid UK geo-fencing
| of content and honestly it hasn't been like that in a while.
| chasil wrote:
| It might be necessary to ensure that your exit node is not in
| the UK or another locality that is otherwise blocked.
|
| That procedure depends upon your platform and client.
|
| http://www.b3rn3d.com/blog/2014/03/05/tor-country-codes/
|
| Edit: Use this link instead (thanks mzajc!):
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20180429212133/http://www.b3rn3d...
| sherr wrote:
| I get a "badware" risk on that link from uBlock Origin
| (Firefox).
|
| "uBlock filters - Badware risks"
| mzajc wrote:
| The domain has been squatted and displays typical spam
| advertisements. The last good archive is on https://web.arc
| hive.org/web/20180429212133/http://www.b3rn3d...
| Spivak wrote:
| Tor is great but wouldn't an easier and higher bandwidth (for
| the yarr harr) solution to just buy any VPN service that exits
| outside of the UK?
| v5v3 wrote:
| Yes
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| VPNs are yet another Cloudflare and are next in line to
| implement censorship.
| Spivak wrote:
| They very well could be, but I doubt they remain in
| business for very long were they compelled to block the
| raison d'etre people use them.
| 6510 wrote:
| Strange that they would allow such petitions in North Korea..
| ehh I mean in the uk.
| ReaperCub wrote:
| > After you've done that, as a UK citizen, please go to
| https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903 and ask the
| government to repeal their awful law.
|
| There is literally no point in signing those petitions. The
| only disagreement between the major political parties in the UK
| is _how draconian_ it should be.
| v5v3 wrote:
| Ssshhh
|
| They may work out that UK has a 2 party system where each one
| just takes turns and none of it makes much difference.
| ReaperCub wrote:
| I don't think many of the so called alternatives are going
| to be any better. Wait til they figure that one out!
| teamonkey wrote:
| If it hits 100k then it needs to be debated in parliament.
| However the bill was already debated in parliament and got
| through and the petition doesn't bring anything new to the
| table.
|
| There would be more of an impact if, perhaps, everyone in the
| UK who has had to shut a web site because of this law wrote
| to their MP.
| ReaperCub wrote:
| > If it hits 100k then it needs to be debated in
| parliament.
|
| I don't think so. It says on the site "At 100,000
| signatures, this petition _will be considered for debate in
| Parliament_ ".
|
| I've seen people get excited about petitions before that
| got to 100,000 signatures and it all fizzled out, or it
| wasn't debated seriously in parliament. Often you will get
| a cookie cutter response with these petitions that is a
| paragraph long.
|
| The reality is that most of the public are indifferent or
| supportive of the current legislation and most MPs know
| that.
|
| > There would be more of an impact if, perhaps, everyone in
| the UK who has had to shut a web site because of this law
| wrote to their MP.
|
| Each MP would get maybe a max of 10s of emails/letters
| each. Many of those MPs wouldn't even bother answering you.
| Those that do will often will probably give you the brush
| off.
|
| I've written to my MP before (about encryption
| legislation), spent a lot of time presenting a clear and
| cogent argument and I got a "well I might have a chat with
| the home secretary" and they were still singing the same
| tune years later. What I was telling them was largely the
| same as other industry experts. They don't care and that is
| the unfortunate reality.
|
| The fact is that the direction the UK government (doesn't
| matter whether it was Red Team or Blue Team) has been going
| in has been clear for well over a decade at this point. It
| would take a major political shake up for this to change
| IMHO.
| teamonkey wrote:
| True, but MPs receiving a few mails that say "this law
| has affected me in this way" is IMO far more likely to be
| effective than a petition with 100k signatures that says
| "I don't like this law which you recently approved".
|
| MPs have been known to respond to letters. I have had
| responses to various issues. It obviously depends on the
| MP. Many MPs were very much opposed to this issue.
| ReaperCub wrote:
| > True, but MPs receiving a few mails that say "this law
| has affected me in this way" is IMO far more likely to be
| effective than a petition with 100k signatures that says
| "I don't like this law which you recently approved".
|
| I think they are both ineffective. So I don't believe
| that is true.
|
| > MPs have been known to respond to letters. I have had
| responses to various issues.
|
| Getting a response is one thing. Having something _done_
| is another.
|
| > It obviously depends on the MP. Many MPs were very much
| opposed to this issue.
|
| The legislation was going to happen at some point or
| another. The direction of travel was quite clear. There
| are always going to be some dissenters, but the awful
| legislation got passed anyway. So what did their dissent
| achieve? Nothing.
|
| I came to the realisation a number of years ago that for
| the majority of people, the only care about being able to
| use their Netflix, shopping on amazon, check their email
| and post photos on Facebook. Concerns outside of that are
| simply too abstract/distant to care about.
| teamonkey wrote:
| > I think they are both ineffective. So I don't believe
| that is true.
|
| I disagree that writing to MPs is always ineffective.
| Some campaigns have been successful. Whether it will be
| effective in this case is another matter. Maybe when
| people start to experience the block it will gain
| traction.
|
| Of course if you don't even make low-effort attempts to
| make your voice heard and exercise your democratic
| rights, you can be certain that you'll lose them.
| ReaperCub wrote:
| > I disagree that writing to MPs is always ineffective.
| Some campaigns have been successful. Whether it will be
| effective in this case is another matter.
|
| It won't be effective in this case. It been going in the
| same direction of travel and none of the parties
| (including outsider parties such as the Greens, Reform
| etc) proclaim to believe in in reversing this direction
| of travel. They are much more interested in other issues
| that are much more hot button. Those issues are easy for
| the public to understand because they are likely to have
| encountered them often.
|
| > Maybe when people start to experience the block it will
| gain traction.
|
| No it won't. People will either find a way to circumvent
| via VPN/Tor or some other mechanism (which is what they
| already do) or they will simply shrug their shoulders and
| won't bother.
|
| There has already been a large number of forums/sites
| that have been shutdown or site been blocked in the UK
| and there hasn't been any significant traction on this
| issue.
|
| > Of course if you don't even make low-effort attempts to
| make your voice heard and exercise your democratic
| rights, you can be certain that you'll lose them.
|
| I don't really know how to respond to something like this
| because I believe it is naive on a number of levels. I
| consider myself a realist. I believe "making your voice
| heard and exercising your democratic rights" is about as
| effective as talking to a brick wall (at least on a
| national level).
|
| I have personally made attempts. I wrote to my MP often.
| I cited links, news articles etc to back up my argument.
| It was an utter waste of time. At best you may get a
| short response. I realised I was ultimately wasting my
| time, I stopped and will _never_ do it again. _I actually
| feel stupid for believing that I could make any
| difference at all_. I suspect this is the experience for
| other people and is often not spoken about.
|
| Moreover much more notable people have tried to make
| themselves heard around a number of related concerns
| about freedom of speech, threats to privacy, iffy
| counter-terrorism laws etc. More often than not has
| always been either ignored entirely, responses that
| completely ignored the crux of the issue, or straight up
| lies from successive governments for almost two decades
| now.
|
| Realistically our options will be to learn to live with
| the poor legislation, circumvent it, or leave the
| country.
| MortyWaves wrote:
| I have no idea what Tattle Life is but two clicks in, first to
| "Offtopic" and then "The Lucy Letby case", and Apple Pay pops
| up.
|
| Not a fake one, but the real deal trying to charge me PS0.00.
|
| I don't have the patience to investigate that further but I am
| all behind banning scummy sites like that.
| v5v3 wrote:
| Tor is a bit slow for streaming video.
| ge96 wrote:
| Funny in a US state I'm finding more and more places are
| popping up with an age verification. Doesn't really bother me
| so much content out there but yeah.
|
| It's weird too how I don't want to prove my age, guess it's the
| taboo aspect of it vs. say showing your id at a bar.
| specproc wrote:
| The site suggests that VPNs may be effected. What's the mechanism
| here? Is this likely to cause trouble for all VPNs?
| grumpyinfosec wrote:
| realistically blocking low cost personal VPNs / proxies is
| pretty easy. Any new servers they stand up are gonna get picked
| up by commercial threat intel services with an hour and then
| just blocked. Especially if the CDNs are working with the
| government.
|
| You could roll your own but wireguard/openvpn going to random
| hosting provider is gonna achieve the same thing if they are
| playing hardball.
| pjc50 wrote:
| They're not playing hardball, it's all on a "will this do"
| basis, like the US state-level bans. They're certainly not
| going to start blocking random IPs in hosting providers,
| that's reserved for email spammers.
| johnisgood wrote:
| This is how I block VPNs for game servers:
| https://zolk3ri.name/cgit/schachtmeister2/about/. It could work
| for any servers. It is very easy to do so. It gives you a
| "score" of the IP address (README.md explains it) that
| connected to your server, and you can decide what to do based
| on that, for example in my game servers there are certain
| thresholds. It has been working great.
| instagib wrote:
| DNS blocking via 1.1.1.1 is suggested. So, change to another
| dns.
|
| https://www.cloudflare.com/trust-hub/abuse-approach/
| Retr0id wrote:
| Previously, a convenient and low-latency way to bypass UK
| internet censorship was to proxy via a local datacentre - it's
| only the residential ISPs that are under pressure to censor
| traffic, commercial ones less so.
|
| But if the blocking is happening somewhere other than the ISP,
| this is less effective. A hypothetical TPB user might want to
| proxy via Luxembourg now (seems like the shortest hop to
| somewhere with sane legislation)
| trollied wrote:
| You didn't even need to do that. Just needed an /etc/hosts
| entry for the domain.
| Retr0id wrote:
| My ISP (Virgin Media) does DNS filtering _and_ IP-based
| blocking _and_ TLS SNI inspection. So you have to use ESNI or
| domain fronting, which last time I checked my browser could
| not be easily configured to do.
| grishka wrote:
| You may have some success with DPI bypass tools we've been
| using in Russia for years now, like GoodbyeDPI and Zapret.
| arp242 wrote:
| Is that common for all ISPs or just Virgin? When I lived in
| the UK (already a number of years ago) it was all just DNS-
| based. Running my own DNS resolver unblocked everything. I
| don't recall which ISP.
| Retr0id wrote:
| I _think_ it 's just Virgin doing the SNI stuff, but I
| wouldn't be surprised if others are doing IP filtering.
| I'm not sure if anyone's done a good survey of what the
| different ISPs are doing (it'd be an interesting
| project).
| doublerabbit wrote:
| TalkTalk, Sky, BT & pretty much all domestic mainstream
| ISPs do DPI down to SNI.
|
| They also exercise an IWF proxy so your already MiTM'd.
|
| https://www.iwf.org.uk/
| acheong08 wrote:
| At this point, what's the difference between the UK and
| China other than the specific content they block? Some ISPs
| have even started blocking wireguard here & I've had to
| resort back to xray/v2ray
| Retr0id wrote:
| Very little difference. But blocking wireguard is huge
| change, which ISPs are doing that?
| chickenzzzzu wrote:
| Classic mafia racket economics would claim that Cloudflare
| themselves created the botnet ddos problem so that they
| themselves could solve it, and now they have the power to do
| this, especially when governments ask them very sternly to do so.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Being that botnet DDOS existed before CF that's a pretty strong
| statement.
| a2128 wrote:
| They existed before, but websites selling DDoS as a service
| were easier to track down and competitors would DDoS
| eachother. Cloudflare provided a strong layer of protection
| for everyone, including these DDoS websites, and took no
| action to take them down when reported
| slt2021 wrote:
| botnets are usually coming from residential networks due to
| infected hosts/IoT devices.
|
| if cloudflare were to host malware on their own IPs, it would
| have been trivial to see CF's steps.
|
| Unless you want to suggest that CF is developing and
| distributing sophisticated malware and making botnets across
| the world
| chickenzzzzu wrote:
| Though certain mafia economics would suggest exactly that, I
| personally am not suggesting it. It's just an extremely
| interesting possibility that could only be proven with
| evidence.
| v5v3 wrote:
| Classic NSA tactics would be to setup a giant American Man-In-
| The-Middle company that most of the traffic of the world passes
| through.
| chickenzzzzu wrote:
| And classic Washington Consensus tactics would be to
| manufacture a fake enemy to demonize in the media, such as
| Non-Western botnet makers
| sunshine-o wrote:
| I came to the realisation recently that the free Internet only
| happened (in the West) because:
|
| - The Silent Generation, in charge at the time, had no idea what
| was this Internet thing about.
|
| - The US Intelligence community understood it was a powerful tool
| to operate abroad.
|
| - Nobody dared derailing the only engine of growth and progress
| in many economies
|
| It obviously got out of control and is very abnormal in fact if
| you consider how power really works.
|
| As of today, as a user of a reputable VPN, I am blocked from a
| lot essential websites or have to prove I am an human every 5
| minutes, it sucks.
|
| Anyway we are one major cyber disaster away for our the state to
| switch from a blacklist to whitelist paradigm. A safer and better
| Internet for everyone.
|
| We will probably still have ways to access the "Free" Internet.
| It is gonna be fun, slower and might get you in serious troubles.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yeah, a lot of stuff only worked because it was a "subculture".
| That could no longer be sustained once the first Twitter
| President arrived.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| The decline of internet began way before trump, I'd say with
| the rise of facebook and everything moving on there (your
| local restaurant used to have a website, then switched to
| facebook only).
|
| Centralized power, centralized censorship.
|
| At approximately the same time, social networks became less
| social and more propaganda feeds.... so it went from a feed
| of content made by your friends for other friends (from
| complaints in status messages to photos of their plates) and
| moved to whatever crap they try to serve you now,...
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| You're forgetting that that the Internet was intertwined with
| the phone system at a time when the latter was the only
| reliable form of communication at both local and long-distance
| levels. Interference with the Internet would be interference
| with the international telephone system.
| int_19h wrote:
| I don't see how the fact that dial-up was the norm for the
| internet "last mile" changes anything wrt the ability to
| block it. It would be done in exact same way it is done today
| - by forcing ISPs to do the blocking on internet protocol
| level.
| 6510 wrote:
| Thats a good idea, we could moderate the phone system.
| MaxPock wrote:
| The internet was a very good tool in subverting dictatorships
| and influencing elections. Now that adversaries of the West
| have mastered it and the shoe is on the other foot ,internet
| bad
| lxgr wrote:
| > As of today, as a user of a reputable VPN, I am blocked from
| a lot essential websites or have to prove I am an human every 5
| minutes, it sucks.
|
| I have to do that using corporate and residential US networks,
| simply because I use Firefox.
|
| As great as Cloudflares services might be to each individual
| user, the centralization of infrastructure, and by extension
| the centralization of power, doesn't seem to be worth it at a
| macro level. The tragedy of the commons strikes again.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Try disabling third party cookies, and on some sites, you'll
| be clicking cloudflare captchas every time you open them :)
| lxgr wrote:
| Ah, I guess that's why I get tons of them, thank you!
|
| Can't they at least set a first-party cookie to avoid
| repeated captchas per site, given that they're terminating
| HTTP?
| xtracto wrote:
| The thing is, the Internet was supposed to be P2P initially (in
| Spanish it had the motto "La red de redes" (the network of
| networks, meaning that it was supposed to connect several LANs
| together).
|
| But as soon as you had ISPs started, centralization came. Now,
| most countries will have at most 5 major ISPs, and in reality
| geographical availability within countries make 1 or 2
| available.
|
| Then, originally people had their own websites (I was there!)
| in their own servers. But Geocities started the centralization
| trend. And then CDNs, and then MySpace/Facebook and all that.
|
| The only way we are going to get the "freedom" network as it
| was before is through mesh-networks or similar technologies.
| Which maybe so far are very slow and cumbersome, but they will
| have to evolve. I know it is not very fashionable here in HN,
| but the only see that capable of happening is implementing some
| kind of "incentive mechanism" that incenvitives people to let
| data pass through their node in the mesh network; aaaand
| cryptocurrencies offer an possible solution for that.
| sunshine-o wrote:
| Something I have always been wondering is: how much was WiMAX
| a threat to this centralisation and the 3 - 5 ISP per country
| model?
|
| I remember around 2010 there were cities with several small
| new ISPs providing fast home and mobile Internet for cheap
| and with very good coverage. Infrastructure costs were
| probably very low. Order of magnitude I guess compared to 4G,
| cable or fiber.
|
| You could find phones supporting it (HTC was one of the
| maker) and it seemed to be the perfect solution for most
| users. I am not sure if those small ISPs already had a
| roaming system in place but it would have made a lot of
| sense.
|
| Anyway, when Intel finally gave up I thought there are
| probably strong forces wanting to keep access to the Internet
| in a few hands, expensive and centralised.
| axus wrote:
| The centralized search engine's AI summary says that LTE
| became more popular, and the people who would buy WiMax
| hardware ended up buying LTE hardware instead.
| sunshine-o wrote:
| From what I remember (and I might be wrong) WiMAX was
| first competing on the "home" Internet market. Mostly
| against cable & DSL I guess at the time. It was a USB
| dongle you would put in your laptop.
|
| Having a one WiMAX enabled smartphones was the cherry on
| top and probably more of a long term goal. The only one I
| remember was the HTC Evo 4G [0] (the first 4G enabled
| smartphone released in the US, and by 4G they meant
| WiMAX, not LTE).
|
| My guess is there was for sure a big battle between
| Intel, major phone manufacturers, telcos, infra providers
| and various patents holders.
|
| There was probably a chicken and egg dilemma for mobile
| phone manufacturer since they had to wait for the network
| to grow before risking launching their WiMAX phone but
| having a WiMAX enabled phone would make WiMAX at home
| really attractive.
|
| My guess is also that since people usually get their
| phone from their telco, phone manufacturer had to be
| careful not to go against their interests. And since most
| telco wanted LTE, WiMAX couldn't take off.
|
| But there might be more to this story, including the fact
| Intel was also trying to get in the phone SOC market at
| this time.
|
| - [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Evo_4G
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > The thing is, the Internet was supposed to be P2P initially
| (in Spanish it had the motto "La red de redes" (the network
| of networks, meaning that it was supposed to connect several
| LANs together).T
|
| The Internet is just a commercialised ARPANet. ARPANet was
| designed to survive bombs taking out a fair percentage of
| it's nodes. The Internet still has that robust resistance to
| damage. You can see it in action when anchors cut ocean
| cables - barely anyone notices. And as the old saying goes,
| the internet treats censorship as damage and routes around
| it.
|
| However, the commercial enterprises built on top of the
| internet love centralisation. CloudFlare is an interesting
| case in point. They have been champions of an uncensored
| internet for as long as I can remember, which is one of the
| reasons they grew to their current size. That growth was
| always going to compromise that core principle, because once
| a significant amount of traffic passed through them they
| would become an attractive target for groups wanting to
| inflict their views of what's proper viewing for the rest of
| the world.
|
| But while CloudFlare can't exist without the internet, the
| internet will continue on without CloudFlare. So while the
| self appointed gatekeepers have indeed blocked the large hole
| in the sponge that is CloudFlare, underneath the sponge is
| still a sponge. Information people find interesting will just
| take other routes.
|
| Or to put it another way, if they think they have stopped or
| even appreciably slowed down teenage boys from accessing
| porn, they are kidding themselves.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Every computer is a general purpose computer. What would you do
| to force me to participate exclusively in your nanny-net? I
| suspect any answer to that question requires an incredible
| amount of coordination and participation.
|
| The real problem with the internet, as I see it, is
| centralization. This is a product of monopoly, which is the
| core feature of copyright. A truly better internet would
| replace the authoritative structure of copyright with a truly
| decentralized model.
|
| As far as I can tell, the only hard problem left in
| decentralized networking is moderation. No one wants to browse
| an unmoderated internet. The problem is that moderation is
| structured as an authoritative hierarchy, so it's not
| compatible with true decentralization.
|
| I propose we replace moderation with curation. Every user can
| intentionally choose the subset of internet they want to
| interact with, defined by attestations from other users, all
| backed with a web of trust. This way everyone is the highest
| authority, and users can help each other avoid content they are
| disinterested in.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| i thought people in the west used these things called seedboxes?
| basically computers in low risk countries like romania etc,
| download the torrent there, then copy the file over or something
| like that.
| ReaperCub wrote:
| I have one of these. However it is connected to a VPN 24/7 in
| my own home. It can't access the net without the VPN being
| connected and I've checked for IP leaks.
|
| https://github.com/qdm12/gluetun
|
| However at some point I will have a machine setup in a foreign
| country as a jump box.
| v5v3 wrote:
| As per the URLs listed in the article, many people don't
| download movies nowadays.
|
| They stream them on streaming websites.
| tlogan wrote:
| So pirate sites cannot use CloudFlare. But isn't that against
| their ToS?
|
| Im just confused - can somebody explain me this?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Cloudflare used to have really open ToS and would host
| _anybody_. This included all sorts of far-right sites, and
| eventually they accepted that they were going to be held
| responsible for what their customers were doing.
| xtracto wrote:
| Pirate Sites are stupid. And the need for a Site is a stupid
| limitation of Bittorrent. People should use real distributed
| protocols like SoulSeek, Kademila or other similar file sharing
| protocols that do not require a website for discovery.
| throw123xz wrote:
| SoulSeek still relies on central servers for some things.
| Every time they go down, people go to the sub reddit to ask
| what's happening.
| boramalper wrote:
| > Pirate Sites are stupid. And the need for a Site is a
| stupid limitation of Bittorrent.
|
| See https://bitmagnet.io/
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| While I don't think it's reasonable to blame corporations for
| complying with legal orders in the end, I don't see any evidence
| that they tried to fight it. I really wish they did.
| encom wrote:
| Why would they fight it? It plays right into their MO as
| gatekeepers of the Internet.
| ReaperCub wrote:
| They have no legal grounds to fight it. So there would be no
| point in trying to.
| gpm wrote:
| Blocking is the wrong terminology here. Cloudflare is not an ISP
| which fetches whatever you ask for from third parties. It's a
| company contracted by the web site owners to distribute their
| websites. It's much more accurate to say that Cloudflare is no
| longer _acting as a host_ for pirate sites in the UK.
|
| The shocking part of this isn't that they aren't participating in
| that form of crime in the UK, it's that they're somehow able to
| participate in it in the rest of the world.
|
| And I say this as someone who thinks that copyright laws are
| largely unjust, preventing people from engaging with their own
| culture, but that doesn't make them not the law.
| pjc50 wrote:
| See https://cybersecurityadvisors.network/2025/04/15/la-liga-
| blo... : I'm slightly surprised that this hasn't caught up with
| them too. It used to be important to stay somewhat "below the
| radar" when pirating, not creating an account at one of the
| largest internet services. But then anti-piracy enforcement is
| about money and going after soft targets.
| lambertsimnel wrote:
| > It's much more accurate to say that Cloudflare is no longer
| _acting as a host_ for pirate sites in the UK.
|
| I understood from the article that it was for users in the UK,
| not for hosts in the UK.
| gpm wrote:
| The implied parentheses were intended to be "(Cloudflare is
| no longer acting as a host for pirate sites) in the uk" not
| "Cloudflare is no longer acting as a host for (pirate sites
| in the uk)".
| viktorcode wrote:
| > Blocking is the wrong terminology here. This is geo-blocking,
| by definition.
|
| Personally, it's always sad when a company agrees to censor on
| their own merit when they don't have legal obligation to.
| gpm wrote:
| > > Blocking is the wrong terminology here.
|
| > This is geo-blocking, by definition.
|
| Do you also refer to steam games that only sell in some
| regions as "geo-blocking"? I don't. Steam doesn't (they call
| them region restrictions). There's no _blocking_ going on,
| merely declining to offer something in the first place.
| Cloudflare is the host here, they aren 't blocking anything,
| they just aren't providing the pirate site in the first
| place.
|
| > when they don't have legal obligation to.
|
| While I know relatively little about UK law I'm extremely
| skeptical of the idea that cloudflare does not have a legal
| obligation to not knowingly host websites committing
| copyright infringement.
| bathory wrote:
| sad how your take is one of the only sensible ones in this
| thread
| wmf wrote:
| There are court orders here; it doesn't look voluntary to me.
| wmf wrote:
| Most of the world doesn't bother playing whack-a-mole with
| pirate sites because it usually doesn't work. The UK, however,
| is no stranger to enacting policies that are known to be
| ineffective.
| pyb wrote:
| Why is Cloudflare providing its services to known pirate sites?
| v5v3 wrote:
| To prevent a competitor popping up with a USP.
| throw123xz wrote:
| Is the site illegal? If yes, where? And is CF required to
| follow the laws of that jurisdiction?
| papichulo2023 wrote:
| I guess renting a vps and setup wireguard should still work?
| v5v3 wrote:
| Yes.
|
| And you can buy VPS using crypto.
| encom wrote:
| UK is speed-running the Orwellian police state. They're already
| arresting people for Tweets, and logging "non-crime hate
| incidents" on your record, available to prospective employers.
| int_19h wrote:
| They have been speed-running for decades. Remember "anti-social
| behaviour orders"? Those were introduced in 1998.
|
| I think a better Orwell reference for this isn't 1984 though
| but rather https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-
| foundation/orwel.... This is the essay that was originally
| meant as a preface to Animal Farm - and, ironically, was itself
| censored (by publishers).
| throw123xz wrote:
| Can you quote one of the Tweets that resulted in someone being
| arrested?
| encom wrote:
| https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/google
|
| Anyway, few examples of many:
|
| >A teenager who posted rap lyrics which included racist
| language on Instagram has been found guilty of sending a
| grossly offensive message.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921
|
| >A man has been accused of sending a "grossly offensive"
| tweet in which he claimed "the only good Brit soldier is a
| deed one" the day after fundraising hero Captain Sir Tom
| Moore died.
|
| https://news.sky.com/story/man-accused-of-sending-grossly-
| of...
|
| >UK police arrest veteran because anti-LGBTQ post 'caused
| anxiety'
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/world/uk-police-british-army-
| veteran...
|
| >Officers from 37 police forces made 12,183 arrests in 2023
| [over offensive posts on social media], the equivalent of
| about 33 per day.
|
| https://archive.ph/Yk6Bo
| kragen wrote:
| Wow, that last statistic on arrests for offensive posts is
| staggering.
| theodric wrote:
| I wonder how long it will take their most loyal client state,
| Ireland, to implement mirror legislation. I give it a year.
| untoasted12 wrote:
| Setting my VPN to the UK or Ireland is blocking the sites for
| me. Mainland Europe is fine.
| theodric wrote:
| Well that didn't take long! Truly, we are the least
| independent non-member member of the United Kingdom.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| It's truly United.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| Are you getting a 451 error though? Think that's something
| else.
| moktonar wrote:
| Time to make our own internet...
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| there are so many approaches already tho. yggdrasil, ipfs, tor,
| freifunk, meshtastic, i2p (mixing a lot of things here, but
| there is tech out there). so much cool stuff, we just gotta use
| it.
| boramalper wrote:
| > ipfs
|
| IPFS have content blocking already:
| https://badbits.dwebops.pub/
| bn-l wrote:
| This is not cloudflare's job.
|
| Also, don't they have bigger problems than this as country?
| KPGv2 wrote:
| Honestly I really don't care if countries want to ban sites that
| obviously exist to facilitate breaking the law. Yeah yeah but muh
| linux isos. If they call themselves PIRATE BAY, EZTV, SPORTSCULT
| or whatever, and everyone who uses it talks only about pirating
| movies and stuff with a wink wink "linux ISOs" it's pretty clear
| why it exists.
|
| Visit others like ext.to and literally the entire front page is
| stuff like the new Superman movie, etc. You sound like a fool if
| you try to argue it's mainly for legitimate purposes. (Contrast
| with freenet and stuff, where if you've ever used it, you'll find
| most of the stuff there is people's boring ass personal webpages
| and stuff
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The Internet sees censoring as damage and routes around it
| accordingly.
| betaby wrote:
| 'The Internet' is not a thing and won't route anything around.
| Censured sites stay censured.
| kragen wrote:
| No, that was Usenet. John actually said "the Net", but he was
| talking about Usenet. Usenet routing does work that way,
| although it's vulnerable to spoofing. Internet routing
| basically doesn't work that way at all and never has.
| devmor wrote:
| I think "block" is a misnomer here.
|
| Cloudflare has said pirate sites as clients - they are not (and
| cannot) block any pirate sites that are not their clients. The
| remedy is for those sites to no longer be patrons of Cloudflare.
|
| If an analogy helps anyone understand better - imagine you have a
| lemonade stand. You use your neighbor's yard to set up the stand
| for some reason (maybe since its closer to a main road, the why
| doesn't really matter). The city tells your neighbor that they
| will be fined if they continue to have a lemonade stand in their
| yard, so your neighbor parks their truck in front of the stand,
| hiding it from the street.
|
| In that analogy, cloudflare is the neighbor and your lemonade
| stand is the pirate site. You aren't prevented from selling your
| lemonade, but you can no longer freely use your neighbor's yard
| unless you want to direct people around the truck ahead of time.
| dlenski wrote:
| In my opinion, this article does a _terrible_ job of explaining
| the technical mechanisms by which these blocks have been
| implemented, and the relationships between the entities involved.
|
| Trying to piece together the details, here's my undewrstanding:
|
| - Until recently, major British residential _ISPs_ were blocking
| access to torrent /pirate/porn sites for their customers ("BT,
| Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk, EE, and Plusnet account for the
| majority of the UK's residential internet market")
|
| - Cloudflare has recently been ordered by courts in the UK to
| block access to these torrent/pirate/porn sites
|
| - The reason that Cloudflare is involved is because many of these
| sites use Cloudflare as a content delivery network. A CDN is
| <waves hands> basically an application-layer distributed cache
| that sits between end users' web browsers and the origin HTTP
| servers that they're trying to access.
|
| - Cloudflare geolocates clients connecting to its CDN. It
| undoubtedly has many reasons to do this, besides _just_ court-
| ordered geoblocking: these would include routing queries
| efficiently within its globally distributed datacenters, DDoS
| prevention, bot blocking, etc.
|
| - Cloudflare's geolocation techniques are, unsurprisingly, more
| sophisticated than just determining a country based on a client's
| IP address.
|
| If I've got all that right (do I???)... then the tl;dr is:
|
| It used to be possible for UK users to circumvent the blocks of
| these sites simply by using _any VPN_ to acquire a non-UK IP
| address. Now the order to block these sites has been imposed on
| Cloudflare, which plays a critical role as an intermediary in
| distributing their content in a scalable way. For a variety of
| reasons, some of which end-users probably approve of and others
| not, Cloudflare uses more sophisticated techniques to geolocate
| clients. So "just use a VPN" is not enough to circumvent the
| blocks anymore.
| zalix45 wrote:
| Is this affecting anyone else in Canada
| kragen wrote:
| This is a big deal. We knew since the beginning that replacing
| the World-Wide Web with a centralized system would make it
| vulnerable to government censorship, however well intentioned
| Cloudflare's founders were. This is only the beginning.
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