this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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What vpn obfuscations do you use? Because you know they'll block vpn next.
You can probably block companies offering public VPN services.
But good luck blocking VPN in general.
It's not some theoretical topic, it's the reality for China, Russia, Iran. They do block commonly used VPN protocols, so people now use VPN with obfuscations. Some work, some doesn't, some stop working as time goes. So when people say "Ha-ha, I'll just use VPN", it will help you for some time but the trend is they will make it a problem for you, better start preparing before it happened.
Anything encrypted is blocked. Boom, done.
Is it stupid? Yes. Never stopped lawmakers.
How do you know if something is encrypted?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography
Or for more practical implementations: https://blog.frost.kiwi/ssh-over-https-tunneling/ (granted, this one uses normal looking encryption to hide hide maybe unwanted encypted traffic) https://nurdletech.com/linux-notes/ssh/via-http.html
Steganography is extremely far from undetectable, unfortunately. And trivial to find out once you know its there; if we ever allow a framework to be put in place to intercept communication at a large scale, it will be the inverse of the cat and mouse game we have with encryption : very hard to improve, very easy to detect.
And I'm aware of the many funky things we did. At some point people tunneled DNS queries through HTTPS, to get through wifi captive portal that only allowed HTTPS traffic until authenticated.
Just to be clear, I'm aware of the issues of detecting stealth data, and even detecting encryption against seemingly random data. It's kinda fascinating to detect the difference, too; some people have looked into that. But the point is, if you've already agreed on "banning encrypted communication that can't be listened to easily", you can basically just say "this is gibberish, decrypt it or get to jail". I also know that this sounds insane and throw away the "innocent until proven guilty" principle, but we're slowly creeping toward a world where our device scans all our document and communication to notify of issues to a central authority, where black box in large networks are already present, and so on.
It's been slowly creeping toward that. Finding way to hide traffic on public networks can only go so far if the listener can just stop you if it detect what looks like encrypted content.
And, since this is kind of a heated discussion, I'll reiterate: it would be batshit crazy to go this way. But I would have found batshit crazy to have our own devices spy on us and report suspicious activities to third parties years ago, and yet here we are.
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Uk is even more puritanical than the US,
That's where the puritans came from.
They fled Britain and stayed in Holland a few years first.
They're already blocking states in the US.
I remember when you didn't have to have a VPN to enjoy the internet.
Sexuality is a human right, and controlling sexuality is an authoritarian tactic to manufacture compliance.
“Age verification” is not just a tool for elimination of Internet privacy, it’s also a tool for sexual control.
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I’m actually a little concerned some of porn torrenting communities aren’t ready for the jump to i2p yet. Gaytorrents, for example, seems to think this all being blown out of proportion and couldn’t possibly effect them.
What specific knowledge you have
There are sages all around us. Sometimes tho ... Asking for their wisdom comes with a curse.
Hey I heard that theres a Very Pretty Neat trick for Brits to "travel abroad" effortlessly
House of Lords voted for age verification on VPNs. Not for them of course.....
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Buy those VPN shares, lol
Looks like it were gonna go back to private VPNs with 10/20 people putting in each month to pay someone in a unrestricted area to run them a VPN.
Keep it small, make it look like enterprise kinda shit.
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Why did your politicians become right-wing grifters? Genuine question.
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If you live in the UK or in another country where porn is being restricted:
- Talk with friends and family about getting a VPN (everyone says good things about Mullvad VPN, so it's probably one of the best choices)
- Learn to use the Tor network (it's really easy to start, and unlike popular belief, Tor isn't only for illegal activities)
- Pressure MPs that didn't vote in favor of the age verification bill by sending emails to them about it so that they fight (or keep fighting) this age verification nonsense.
You don't need to be a porn addict to do these things. In fact, they have started with porn, but they may as well keep going and fight for age verification in other types of content, making access to said content way more difficult. The best thing you can do right now is to learn to fight back.
If you live in the UK or in another country where porn is being restricted: Talk with friends and family
Hmmmmm... Maybe not though
Help me, stepbro. I can't access PornHub anymore 🥹
Im stuck in age-verification
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Don’t use tor for porn. Use i2p. You can torrent without breaking shit on i2p.
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Good job UK, you will push children to dangerous unmoderated sites instead! All in the name of state surveillance!
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And UK bollocks grew 5 shades bluer that winter
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