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Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

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261–270 of 391 posts

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#261
Here's crazy idea: Instead of the US spending all this money on restraining the Iranian government through military build ups and sanctions, rather drop hundreds of thousands of Starlink kits by drones.

Firstly the protesters will be able to communicate in private.

And secondly, Iranians will continue to be reminded of the freedoms most other Muslims enjoy: As in free speech and free trade.

One of the reasons the Berlin wall fell was that East Europeans saw on TV that how prosperous Western Europe became.

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#262

I've been moderately happy this morning to find out I can open hackernews. Also Gmail is working. After attempting to get bridges using email and configuring an dozen of them I got 100% connection but then it disconnected without me being able to connect to anything. I would assume some sort of tunneling must be possible cause the services available are varied and not limited to a few websites (We only had access to…

Is there anything people outside Iran can spin up in order to get more routes out?

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Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately if it's public the government can also see it and block it :(

Snowflake aims to make every IP address a Tor bridge. It hides Tor traffic inside something very similar to a video call, which works in a browser behind NAT.

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Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#264
post #2

… while every other country waits to see how it goes while drafting plans to emulate this

I mean... EU already blocks eg. some russian sites (some countries more effectively than others)... plus all the chat control pressures every year. Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches. UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off. But every such country likes pointing fingers at others, "hey, our censorship is not bad, they have more of it!". edit: considering the downvotes, HN is n…

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Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#265
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... EU already blocks eg. some russian sites (some countries more effectively than others)... plus all the chat control pressures every year. Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches. UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off. But every such country likes pointing fingers at others, "hey, our censorship is not bad, they have more of it!". edit: considering the downvotes, HN is n…

Downvotes might happen because your comment reads one-sided. What about Russia blocking sites? As of late 2025 and early 2026, Russia has blocked numerous foreign communication, social media, and information services, restricting platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram (partially), Signal, Viber, FaceTime, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Many independent news, VPN services, and foreign websites (e.g., Chess.com…

But that's my point exactly.... do you consider this to be a good thing? Should EU behave the same as russia or iran? Should those two countries be an "excuse" for us to do it too (hey! russia does it too!)? Should the police in eg. Brussles start shooting at protesting farmers and say "what about iran, they're killing their protesters too!"?

If we consider russia bad for doing those blocks above, then we should consider EU being bad when they do it for us.

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#266
post #67

Spacex satellites blockage was the surprise. How did they do it? I thought it would be the best dooms day kind of insurance. Turns out not.

My wild guess is that jamming is local. Major cities may be fully jammed. To get an idea about GNSS jamming range (different signal of course, probably much easier to jam), there are maps online where you can see which parts of Europe are currently GNSS-jammed. But I have the same question as you.

https://gpsjam.org/

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#268
post #261

Here's crazy idea: Instead of the US spending all this money on restraining the Iranian government through military build ups and sanctions, rather drop hundreds of thousands of Starlink kits by drones. Firstly the protesters will be able to communicate in private. And secondly, Iranians will continue to be reminded of the freedoms most other Muslims enjoy: As in free speech and free trade. One of the reasons the Ber…

One major difference is that it was extremely difficult to leave Eastern Europe. Borders with the West were fortified and even in the unlikely event of getting a visa issued, the government would make sure that your loved ones were left behind, forcing you to eventually come back.

The citizens of Iran, in turn, are free to leave the country as they wish. In fact, the official policy is that if you don't like it here, then you are are supposed to move out.

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in EU and I oppose internet cenorship, privacy invasion and many other bad things the governments have been doing for years now. I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there, neither does anyone else commenting here it seems... but many of us do live in EU, and are bothered by EU doing the same thing as iran, even if it's on a smaller scale (for now). You can't support censorship at home and then act out…

> I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there You also don’t live in the United States, or in Israel or Palestine but folks tend to forget that it seems. But you can do something anyway which is to be aware of the atrocities committed by Iran’s regime, make sure your government is aware of your opinion, you can protest outside the Iranian embassy in your country, help Iranian dissidents, help Iranians find sne…

But what can you do for iran? I mean... we can type text on forums and sites like this, that no one in iran can see... and in the meantime, EU will push for another chat control, some new "think of the children" thing will happen, suddenly the "show your real-identity ID to watch at porn" will turn into "show your ID to register on reddit".

On the other hand, there are many people from EU here who need to hear it, that EU is doing the same as iran... censoring websites and more (IDs, chat control,...). Yes, maybe not at the same level, less sites are censored here, but censorship is still censorship, and the trend is going towards more control and more censorship.

United states, israel (and palestine), etc. are different. Are we bothered by what israel is doing in palestine? Yes! (some of us). Can we actually do something about it? Sure... the germans can tell their government to stop selling weapons to israel [0], we can implement sanctions, tarrifs, etc. This is something that we can do "at home", something that can make some change. We did that for russia, we did that for iran, north korea etc (at various times and various levels), but we did something. We didn't really do that (at least not at scale) for isreal. US is doing that to us (EU) with tarrifs every two weeks, but we didn't really properly respond, even under the threat of an invasion on greenland.

Yes, restricted internet in iran is bad, but we can't stop it. Sadly, changing back EU rules is similarly hard to do, which again, is something that should be fixed, by us, at home.

[0] https://www.dw.com/en/war-in-gaza-germany-supplies-30-of-isr...

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their economic prosperity is more linked to Oil than Internet. Plus, the elites economic prosperity is also linked to their not being protests and for the toppling of govt to not occur and they might be willing to offset some losses to keep the average population in check Which sucks for the average iranian but we saw how their protests were cracked down with 20-30 THOUSAND people killed and Iran hiding bodies etc. I…

Yeah, foreign intervention is probably the best option at this point. If the elites are willing to murder tends of thousands of innocent people, then I see no moral issues with foreign intervention to get rid of IRGC and current government using any means necessary.

Consent manufactured or manufacturing consent I wonder.
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