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Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

freenetproject.org

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Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#301

Post by hutzlibu »

b5 wrote: post #280
pnathan wrote: post #262

I've run Freenet twice in the last twenty years. Maybe 2006, 2012? Each time CSAM was surprisingly visible. Maybe these days it's kicked off to a corner but back then it was pretty much a click away. I'm going to have to say if that's the basic motivation for censorship resistant communication in the USA, I am disappointed and sad. Wonder if it's actually useful in places where you actually have censorship, or if it'…

That was my experience too, the few times I tried it. I haven't been back for just that reason. There's nothing that I can do on there that I can't do on the real internet and even the tiniest risk of CSAM material reaching my machine is not worth it. It's sad but I think in most modern democracies that are relatively free, like the USA and EU, the primary use for these services is CSAM. There's no other reason to us…

" There's no other reason to use it, except maybe paranoia or technical curiosity,"

How about idealism?

I mean 20 years ago, you would have been declared paranoid, if you said secret government agencies and big corporations track everything you do online - but now you just speak a inconvinient truth, most people are aware of, but try to ignore it as much as possible.

It is good, to have working alternative plattforms, in case there are really needed by us in the west.

But yeah, currently I do not use them either, because my last experience with them were "dark", too. Because yes, the strongest incentive right now have those people not acting out of idealism, but because their content is not tolerated on the open web. Quite a shitty situation. How do one establish a "alternative, anonymous" communication service, without attracting all the kicked out elsewhere btards first?

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#302

Post by h_anna_h »

noxer wrote: post #107
h_anna_h wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no free speech anywhere in Europe This is a bold and unsubstantiated claim. > And there is no doubt she would be free in every state in the US. For this specific action? Sure. For other actions that are protected under the 1st amendment? Depends on whether there is a law against it and if she pissed off someone "important" or enough people. There are various such cases. edit: will respond to the replies af…

>This is a bold and unsubstantiated claim. I'm fine with that but its non the less the hard truth there is nothing like the 1st amendment in any other place. >For other actions that are protected under the 1st amendment? Depends.... To be in the right doesn't mean you win the court case that's true but in the EU you dont have the 1st amendment, you dont have the right to free speech. If the court system does its job…

I showed that this is incorrect here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28587930

> You go to jail because what you said is actually a crime to say

Sounds like the US. Just look at all these people who went to jail for crimes related to illegal numbers (eg. piracy). Or people like Mildred Gillars. Or the various whistleblowers.

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#303

Post by h_anna_h »

CRConrad wrote: post #264
h_anna_h wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One man's criminal is another man's freedom fighter. Snowden is a criminal but his supporters consider him a decent person. I do not believe that the two are mutually exclusive. The whole point of projects like freenet is to let people communicate data between each other without censorship and without being identified, no matter what that data is. If you disagree with that principle then I believe that freenet is pro…

> Make sure to block TLS connections on every network that you manage. You don't know what naughty things your users might be doing after all. You would not want to help a criminal, would you? Way not to get the point. Are you saying the overwhelming majority of users on some network GP manages are using it to do "naughty things"? Yes, then of course GP should shut it down. That's why the question in this sub-thread…

No need to be so hostile and toxic. I only mentioned it because this is an actual argument against TLS that I have seen being used in the past, even by popular sites such as pornhub for example (before being forced to enable TLS due to google downranking non-https sites). I also mentioned it because one of the points of TLS is to hide what kind of content is being accessed, so just like freenet you will not know whether most of the traffic is used for naughty things even if you want to, you can only assume. Especially since nowadays http has the Host header and services such as cloudflare are popular, so checking whether a user made a request to a "bad" IP address won't be effective.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

> Yes, then of course GP should shut it down

I would say that this is debatable.

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#304

Post by kragen »

h_anna_h wrote: post #298
kragen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point out which HN users are doing both of these? Maybe they're Russian trolls.

We could do with less racism and cold-war-era scare. Edit: As a revenge for pointing his racism the above user decided to act abusively and go to my history and downvote my recent posts - the only one of my 4 most recent posts that was not downvoted was this one, as people can't downvote replies to their own posts. It happened just after that poster responded, feel free to form your own opinion about it. Apparently p…

I'm pretty sure the trolling offices the Russian government runs will hire people regardless of their race; it's not a racism thing. It's true that other governments have also started doing this, but the Russian government was an early pioneer and is still arguably the leader.

There's no need to get scared, but this is well-attested information with reputable sources like Freedom House, the Washington Post, the Grauniad, el Arabiya, BuzzFeed, the BBC, the St. Petersburg Times, and Global Voices Online.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades

I haven't seen any indication that they've targeted HN, but if they have, it would be an interesting thing to know.

Going around making baseless accusations of racism is... unfortunately par for the course in the degraded slum parts of the internet and not at all limited to Russian trolls trying to silence critics of their government's deplorable astroturfing policies.

(I wasn't the one who went to your recent history to downvote your comments. Maybe someone else thinks you're contemptible but doesn't want to be targeted for your vicious, hateful slander. Or maybe you're lying about that too.)

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#305

Post by h_anna_h »

CRConrad wrote: post #268
notriddle wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a stretch to blame “absolute rights” for Trump’s election. That can be placed pretty solidly on xenophobia. The anti-maskers? The only reason those guys think they have a case is exactly because they think bodily autonomy has no limits.

> ...they think bodily autonomy has no limits. ...they think THEIR bodily autonomy has no limits -- not even where sane people would see that it has to be limited to not encroach on OTHER PEOPLE'S bodily autonomy. There, FTFY.

This also seems to be bi-partisan sadly.

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#306

Post by Gigachad »

ArneBab wrote: post #229
djcapelis wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offering only a Java installer, of all things from the increasingly distant past, wholly divorced from any semblance on how most anyone wants to install or use software these days, is 100% a choice the freenet project made and entirely that project’s fault. This type of uncaring about the user experience nonsense is exactly the type of issue that the person you’re replying to is sharing about their experience.

Do you want to help fix the debian installer? Freenet has been providing a Gentoo package for years. Other distributions need more work. If you have the skills, then please help updating the debian package! https://github.com/freenet/debian

These days you just ship it in a flatpak which is easy to install on any system. Distro specific packaging is a relic these days.

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#307

Post by CRConrad »

h_anna_h wrote: post #305
CRConrad wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...they think bodily autonomy has no limits. ...they think THEIR bodily autonomy has no limits -- not even where sane people would see that it has to be limited to not encroach on OTHER PEOPLE'S bodily autonomy. There, FTFY.

This also seems to be bi-partisan sadly.

I'm not so sure about that. Stands to reason, AFAICS, that "MY freedoms (and screw yours)!" ideologically resonates more on the right than the left: The whole left-right dichotomy is one of ~ "my freedoms above all" vs "freedoms for all, balanced with responsibility for all".

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#308

Post by CRConrad »

h_anna_h wrote: post #303
CRConrad wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Make sure to block TLS connections on every network that you manage. You don't know what naughty things your users might be doing after all. You would not want to help a criminal, would you? Way not to get the point. Are you saying the overwhelming majority of users on some network GP manages are using it to do "naughty things"? Yes, then of course GP should shut it down. That's why the question in this sub-thread…

No need to be so hostile and toxic. I only mentioned it because this is an actual argument against TLS that I have seen being used in the past, even by popular sites such as pornhub for example (before being forced to enable TLS due to google downranking non-https sites). I also mentioned it because one of the points of TLS is to hide what kind of content is being accessed, so just like freenet you will not know whet…

> "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

Yeah, well, sorry, but I really couldn't see much of a stronger interpretation.

I mean, hey, was my take all that much more of "a weaker one that's easier to criticize" than:

>>> Make sure to block TLS connections on every network that you manage. You don't know what naughty things your users might be doing after all. You would not want to help a criminal, would you?

? I'd say no.

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#309

Post by martin_a »

ArneBab wrote: post #285
b5 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my experience too, the few times I tried it. I haven't been back for just that reason. There's nothing that I can do on there that I can't do on the real internet and even the tiniest risk of CSAM material reaching my machine is not worth it. It's sad but I think in most modern democracies that are relatively free, like the USA and EU, the primary use for these services is CSAM. There's no other reason to us…

Have you ever been threatened by a right-wing extremist that they would come to your house when you answered their hatred online and pointed out the flaws in their logic? I have been. That’s why I deeply appreciate having a pseudonym that’s separated from where I live so I don’t have to fear Neonazis turning up at my doorstep or attacking my kids when I write something they do not like.

You know that you could just name yourself "John Doe" and that's it, right?

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#310

Post by intricatedetail »

ArneBab wrote: post #295
intricatedetail wrote: post #273

How this will be legal in the EU? E.g. incoming TERREG regulation requires website operators to have 1hr SLA for deleting harmful content and a dedicated officer to liaise with government requests.

You could also ask, how TERREG could be consistent with European values.

It's already passed, so one way or another it is a part, as it faced very little protest.
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