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Staying ahead of censors in 2025

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Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#51

Post by [deleted] »

earthnail wrote: post #22
throwfaraway135 wrote: post #17

Considering the staggering number of arrest for online/offensive communications in England & Wales, we should add Britain to the list of Russia and Iran 2017: ~5,500 arrests 2019: ~7,734 arrests 2023: ~12,183 arrests

I’d much rather get arrested in Britain than Russia or Iran. And I certainly wouldn’t put the UK in the same bucket as Russia and Iran. Not even close. Hate speech is a problem. If it wasn’t, why are Russia and China spending so much on troll farms? It’s a direct attack on a democracy’s ability to form consensus. I don’t think we’ve found the right, effective way to deal with this problem yet, but I applaud any democ…

[deleted]

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#52

Post by fruitworks »

Defletter wrote: post #37
throwfaraway135 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it is really difficult to define what hate speech is, and more often than not it's used as a cudgel to silence the opposition. For Iran and Russia, it is what Khamenei and Putin don't want to hear, in the UK it's what Starmer doesn't want to hear.

> The problem is that it is really difficult to define what hate speech is It can be, but free speech types like to pretend it's nigh impossible. The UK has had modern hate-speech laws (for want of a better term) since the Public Order Act 1986, which made it an offence to stir up or incite racial hatred. Amendments in 2006 and 2008 expanded that to religious and homophobic hatred respectively. This exists in stark c…

[flagged]

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#53

Post by RobotToaster »

nomilk wrote: post #18
throwfaraway135 wrote: post #17

Considering the staggering number of arrest for online/offensive communications in England & Wales, we should add Britain to the list of Russia and Iran 2017: ~5,500 arrests 2019: ~7,734 arrests 2023: ~12,183 arrests

I was also surprised the post focusses on Rus/Iran when Australia, UK, and many more countries (Malaysia, Thailand) have/are introducing laws to prevent large swaths of free speech (banning mediums by age, banning conversation by topic, or by making speaking one's mind online too risky, as almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech').

Tor is primarily funded by the US State department, that's why.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#54

Post by JuniperMesos »

earthnail wrote: post #26
throwfaraway135 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it is really difficult to define what hate speech is, and more often than not it's used as a cudgel to silence the opposition. For Iran and Russia, it is what Khamenei and Putin don't want to hear, in the UK it's what Starmer doesn't want to hear.

That comparison is not only highly inaccurate, it’s also harmful in that it distracts from the real problem at hand. Putin and Khamenei are ruthless, brutal dictators. You don’t need to like Starmer, but he’s none of that. He’s a proper democrat. The implication that they’re all somewhat the same delegitimises democracies and legitimises these dictators. That’s how they win. I personally don’t think UK’s age verifica…

> Putin and Khamenei are ruthless, brutal dictators. You don’t need to like Starmer, but he’s none of that. He’s a proper democrat. The implication that they’re all somewhat the same delegitimises democracies and legitimises these dictators. That’s how they win.

Someone who is a citizen of the UK who has no connection to Iran or Russia is legitimately much more concerned with the ways in which Starmer governs the UK, than in whether Putin or Khamenei "win". I don't even disagree with you that Putin and Khamenei are ruthless dictators, and certainly plenty of people in Russia or Iran or countries in the Russian or Iranians sphere of influence have plenty of good reasons to politically oppose both those dictators. But a democratically-elected official can wield the power of the state against you and harm your interests just as much as a dictator can, and people in the UK who oppose Starmer and his party shouldn't let up in that opposition just because it makes Starmer seem closer to Putin or Khamenei than Starmer's supporters would like.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#55

Post by JuniperMesos »

teiferer wrote: post #31
throwfaraway135 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it is really difficult to define what hate speech is, and more often than not it's used as a cudgel to silence the opposition. For Iran and Russia, it is what Khamenei and Putin don't want to hear, in the UK it's what Starmer doesn't want to hear.

> more often than not Do you have any evidence for that claim or is it a gut feeling? > in the UK it's what Starmer doesn't want to hear. In a literal sense that can't be true, since upon change of government, the hate speech definition does not suddenly change. In contrast, Putin and Khamenei are very literally able to personally define the definition. In a figurative sense, that's likely true. As a democratically e…

> In a literal sense that can't be true, since upon change of government, the hate speech definition does not suddenly change. In contrast, Putin and Khamenei are very literally able to personally define the definition.

Well it might if people systematically vote for politicians who promise to change the hate speech definition.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#56

Post by kgeist »

Fiveplus wrote: post #11

The section on conjure is fascinating. For those who haven't followed the refraction networking space, the idea of leveraging unused address space at the ISP level is something academic papers have proposed for years [1]. Seeing it deployed in the wild is huge. The hardest part of this has always been non-technical by the way. Convincing ISPs to cooperate. If the Tor project has managed to get ISPs to route traffic d…

>It completely breaks the censor's standard playbook of IP enumeration. You can't just block a specific subnet without risking blocking future legitimate allocations

At least in Russia, they don't really care about collateral damage. Currently, without a VPN, I can't open like 30-50% links on Hacker News (mostly collateral damage after they banned large portions of IPs)

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#57

Post by RobotToaster »

throwfaraway135 wrote: post #17

Considering the staggering number of arrest for online/offensive communications in England & Wales, we should add Britain to the list of Russia and Iran 2017: ~5,500 arrests 2019: ~7,734 arrests 2023: ~12,183 arrests

To put that into perspective, the number arrested in Russia was 3,253 in 2023.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#58

Post by Defletter »

fruitworks wrote: post #52
Defletter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that it is really difficult to define what hate speech is It can be, but free speech types like to pretend it's nigh impossible. The UK has had modern hate-speech laws (for want of a better term) since the Public Order Act 1986, which made it an offence to stir up or incite racial hatred. Amendments in 2006 and 2008 expanded that to religious and homophobic hatred respectively. This exists in stark c…

[flagged]

What a shining example of freedom of speech, right here. Bravo.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#59

Post by ajb »

Defletter wrote: post #37
throwfaraway135 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it is really difficult to define what hate speech is, and more often than not it's used as a cudgel to silence the opposition. For Iran and Russia, it is what Khamenei and Putin don't want to hear, in the UK it's what Starmer doesn't want to hear.

> The problem is that it is really difficult to define what hate speech is It can be, but free speech types like to pretend it's nigh impossible. The UK has had modern hate-speech laws (for want of a better term) since the Public Order Act 1986, which made it an offence to stir up or incite racial hatred. Amendments in 2006 and 2008 expanded that to religious and homophobic hatred respectively. This exists in stark c…

The previous law used to control racial hatred was the law of criminal libel; it was successfully used to prosecute antisemitism etc. As a species of libel, it had an absolute defence of of speaking the truth. Now, clearly you can be clever enough to spread hatred by only the use of true statements. But we have reached the point where those speaking the truth about atrocities committed by a foreign government are imprisoned for hate speech, and vastly more self censor. Your implied claim that those criticising the law just want to be free to be racist is not defensible - and indeed, you're not bold enough to defend it, merely "find it interesting".

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#60

Post by mos87 »

Do they have official instructions on how to setup (which URLs for STUN, etc - there are a couple required) TOR via Snowflake on desktop (bc on Android it all seems to be bundled inside Orbot)?
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