Pornhub ban now covers more than a third of US states \ stacker news ~news

pull down to refresh

Why are VPN's even legal?

Obviously, I'm not arguing they shouldn't be. I just don't get why they aren't a target of the regime.

200 sats \ 2 replies \ @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears 5 Jan

There are valid legal uses for them (logging into work networks, etc), but there are regimes that are absolutely going after them, like Russia and more recently India

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 5 Jan

I figured the answer was something like that. For the record, I consider most of the invalid legal reasons to be valid reasons, too.

32 sats \ 0 replies \ @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears 5 Jan

Same.

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @ZezzebbulTheMysterious 5 Jan

Because the law in the west has yet to deal with them. As the west progresses towards greater authoritarianism, the west will crack down on VPNs like Russia, China and other Authoritarian states.

Traffic obfuscation works. If the state cracks down on VPN providers, we adapt and develop better ways to hide traffic.

55 sats \ 0 replies \ @petertodd 5 Jan

Traffic obfuscation works. If the state cracks down on VPN providers, we adapt and develop better ways to hide traffic.

To a limit. In China, when I visited a decade ago, any significant amount of encrypted traffic to an unknown destination was blocked by local ISPs. Even transferring files over SSH didn't work.

67 sats \ 5 replies \ @SimpleStacker 5 Jan

Probably because the regime controls all the endpoints. That's what I've heard about TOR, anyway. Admittedly, I'm speaking out of my butt, but it's at least plausible.

FWIW, when I went to China, I prepared a VPN beforehand but when I got there, I couldn't access it because they knew the VPN's IPs. (It was NordVPN). So there is some truth that gov'ts might not care because they can still track you if they need to.

24 sats \ 1 reply \ @stack_harder 5 Jan

there probably are vpns that work there, most of the popular ones also blocked in Russia, but a ton of new ones have popped up, specifically targeted at russian users. I'm sure something like that must exist in China

14 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 5 Jan

There definitely are. My Chinese friends have told me that basically every educated person has a functioning vpn,

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @AlCoHoLnAcEtOnE 5 Jan

No you're right, the guys at Tor have even recognized this and hence why they push for users to run their own end points, the more the better. Protons stealth protocol works wonders for deep packet scanning protection.

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 5 Jan

I basically just couldn't use the internet in China.

90 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 5 Jan

Xi Jinping really did a number on that country. Things were steadily getting better till he took power

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @AlCoHoLnAcEtOnE 5 Jan

VPN's are means between life and death for many, even in the government but yes regimes are most assuredly actively trying to implement ways to block access to them. Being that proton is based in Switzerland a neutral country with extensive respect for privacy, there's not a lot they can do to them.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 5 Jan

Perhaps because even if they made them illegal , they couldn’t enforce the law. They are often used to login to remote work computers for remote workers.

106 sats \ 1 reply \ @1fatmess 5 Jan freebie

Came here for the “I’m affected and angry” chat and was very disappointed.

137 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 5 Jan

Only on stacker news will you find people more interested in discussing VPNs than porn

58 sats \ 0 replies \ @ChrisS 5 Jan

One of those libertarian things that is a good thing but we still don't want the government mandating it for us.

12 sats \ 5 replies \ @Skipper 5 Jan

I have a feeling most normies will simply go for the first VPN that comes up first on Google search, which is usually a shady VPN or a scam–and get rekt sooner or later.

31 sats \ 4 replies \ @SimpleStacker 5 Jan

My first three Google results for "VPN":

Wikipedia
Chrome Web Store
Proton VPN

So you might be right that they go for the first search results :) Dunno if Proton would be considered shady though.

30 sats \ 3 replies \ @Skipper 5 Jan

I've tested Google(.com), DuckDuckGo, and Bing, all first results were NordVPN ExpressVPN and some other random VPN that i've never heard of.

This test was done from a clean browser session. :)

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @SimpleStacker 5 Jan

Interesting. Wonder why I got Proton.

For the record, my browser session wasn't clean and I had clicked on the X post from Proton before doing the search

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @Skipper 5 Jan

I had clicked on the X post from Proton before doing the search

Google tracking got you ! 😆

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 5 Jan

58 sats \ 2 replies \ @TheBTCManual 5 Jan

Why can people take the motivation to watch other people bang and channel that into using their VPN to run a node and flood P2P exchange order books

14 sats \ 1 reply \ @BlokchainB 5 Jan

That would be a dream. But so would people controlling their diet and not becoming overweight

51 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheBTCManual 5 Jan

Lol point taken, sometimes I forget a lot of my views are in the minority

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @galt 5 Jan

Take away people's porn and they will learn about VPN, privacy and anonymous payment, good for them and a loss for the censors since they woke them up

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @NovaRift 5 Jan

Read this tweet from Proton 😂

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @nitter 5 Jan bot

https://xcancel.com/ProtonPrivacy/status/1875313260880408776

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @NovaRift 5 Jan

Ah! You bot.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @AlCoHoLnAcEtOnE 5 Jan

You can tell it's the ankle biters when search terms like "Texas VPN" come up 🤣

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 5 Jan

The Proton link is hilarious

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nitter 5 Jan bot

https://xcancel.com/ProtonPrivacy/status/1875313260880408776