There's going to come a point at which the Feds/States will lean on the ISPs to handle the censorship for them. We've had people all over the Nat Sec system staring at the "Great Firewall of China" and asking themselves "Can we get something like this over here?"
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
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This is why it's perfect time to get some tech literacy regarding tor, i2p, yggdrasil, and shadowsocks. It's not perfect solution to use tech to circumvent restrictions that shouldn't be there in the first place, but sometimes it really comes to that point and it's really nice to have all systems ready!
Arguably though, at some point they'll just say "if we can't read your traffic, you can't use the Internet."
Which still isn't a problem, as I'm sure we can come up with a means to encrypt traffic to make it look entirely legitimate. But it's going to take a while.
At that point people would probably go to a p2p adhoc wireless meshnet to bypass the ISPs entirely.
You mean "at which point, people will just say 'oh, ok'". (Assuming they even notice)
"People" will just comply. Tech savvy people like us are the only ones that could circumvent it
Except if the topic is wifi meshnets, no amount of tech savvyness will get you around an absence of other nodes nearby. General apathy is actually a huge problem here.
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One... Not so disappointing fact is that means at least the Internet will go back to the pre-social media era.
You can feel it here on Lemmy still. It exists.
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Sneakernets, my friend. Never underestimate the bandwidth of a pocket full of microsd cards traveling on the subway.
Flash drives of banned foreign films are the one method of accessing foreign media that north Koreans realistically have. It's extremely hard to prevent people plugging a flash drive into their computer in their home to view some media
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I don't know literally ANYTHING, so take that into account when answering this, but why can't a single person access the "Internet" on their own, without an ISP. Can't they be their own ISP? Or can't small groups of people - friends, family, co-conspirators - create their own private ISP?
The p2p meshnet that they were referring to basically is a local/small group ISP.
As for why a single person cannot (effectively) become their own ISP? It's complicated. Really complicated. ISPs have to pay other ISPs just like you and I do, unless they're a Tier-1 ISP/Network. Otherwise you're always going to be paying to connect to (and generally paying for bandwidth) another network that has access to a network that then has access to a T1 network. T1s are basically the largest networks that hold (or can directly access) the majority of people on the internet. Top of the food chain, so to speak.
So in theory, yeah, you can become your own ISP - but you'll still need to pay and be at the mercy of other ISPs. Datacenters are typically their own ISP, but they have to pay others to get online just like we do.
this is what the mesh networks are that people have mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
It is theoretically possible to create a purely peer-to-peer network where each individual connects to people nearby, and then any individual can in theory communicate with any other, by passing data packets to nearby people on the network who then pass it on themselves until it reaches the other person.
You can probably already grasp a few of the issues here - confidentiality is a big one, and reliability is another. But in theory it could work, and the more people who take part in such networks, the more reliable they become.
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If this really about protecting kids, they could've done opt in blocking at the ISP level. Just a few new fields with ISPs and they have products that can take care of this already.
This is really about tracking every little thing you do online.
Eventually it will be about restricting what we can access on the web.
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All my IT and InfoSec friends have called me alarmist for suggesting even the possibility of a GFW of America, but every day that passes, it looks more and more likely to happen, doesn't it?
Start practicing circumvention techniques now, y'all, while it's still legal and cheap to do so. Learn amateur radio. Learn Meshtastic. Learn all the different censorship-resistant VPN technology out there. Host your own websites or services for friends, family, or your community. It doesn't make it impossible, but it does make it hard, and fascism is nothing if not lazy.
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staring at the “Great Firewall of China” and asking themselves “Can we get something like this over here?”
I've just been assuming that was the goal all along.
Fifteen years ago, I said on Reddit, "The U.S. is trying to become like China before China can become like the U.S." Of course, I got buried.
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Its already happening in Spain. Everyday there is a football match from the spanish league (thats from Friday to Monday, both included) LaLiga orders the ISPs to shutdown everything that uses Cloudflare under the pretext that the shady websites that offers pirated football use their services, killing easily 1/3 of the national traffic for like 4-6h.
Why the ISPs comply?
- The biggest ISP of the country (Movistar) also happens to be the main one that showcase legal football.
How is this legal?
- The judge that authorised this and the president of LaLiga have been friends since forever.
Eventually this will go the European court where they will rule this was illegal and anti-constitutional all along and give a Spain a fine (the the citizens have to pay), and revoke this bullshit, but untill then we are screwed. Nothing will happens to LaLiga, the judge, or Movistar, fucking privileged and corrupted bastards.
Whoa whoa whoa! Callate chico!
You copied this from us Italians where we have the friend of Berlusconi providing the State with a censorship system (the Piracy Shield), allegedly exactly for the same reason since 2023.
Let's give the right Fascists what is theirs.
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The thing is that works fine for the people pushing this kind of legislation. They hate how easy it is right now to spread inflammation and opinions, how quickly people can organize. This isolates their little fiefdoms and makes them easier to control.
nobody should comply
Would have been the smart move for business, too. Just don't comply until everyone else caves and then sue the state for favoring some businesses.
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Huawei was forced to not comply and look what happened to their phones
We are neither as popular as huawei and neither chinese. We will be fine
OPPO is doing just fine and it’s Chinese with Huawei investment
The more interesting question is, who would you arrest? Just ignore the law. It's unenforceable when it comes to the fediverse.
I think the instance owner would be responsible, but what if the instance is out of the state?
Unless the instance owner is on a visa, with a criminal record they could get him. But otherwise it’s hard to be enforced.
Maybe they could ask the app stores to ban apps in that states. Something like that
Also states could ask ISP blocking the main instances.
Those hosting the more popular environments. The posts would live on perhaps but target enough people and it likely becomes too small for them to care anymore, sadly.
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We need more federation and P2P in everything.
P2P! I have been screaming this into every forum at reddit since last piece of shit president was president. See? This is why!
What P2P solutions exist that need more attention? I know PeerTube does some neat P2P stuff to keep server load down (if they ever had the traffic...)
Keet, is a messaging app! It's in beta right now, but its already pretty stable and has a ton of promise!!
More info= works kinda like torrents - your client's IP & connectivity info is encrypted, then distributed across their 'hyperDHT'. Users you've connected with can ping the DHT to get your current IP info, then you establish a direct connection to whoever you're chatting! File shares are also accomplished over that DHT, so you can send files of any size, even terabytes!
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I agree with mastodon, even though eventually Texas will enact similar legislation forcing me to use a vpn to read it
Woudn't it be smarter to just leave the hellhole that is Texas? Either to the north or to the south, leaving is a win.
Sometimes there's family or other things you just can't take with you. Support structures you might not have somewhere else. Friends and neighbors. Mutual aid.
There can be circumstances that override that. But honestly, the more that flee. The easier it is to get what the fascists want. And at best you're only helping yourself short term. Because no matter where you go. They will come for you if they can.
For real. I want me and my family to leave the United States. Bringing the entire family to a whole new life abroad is a very tall order.
And even there. There's no guarantee. Going to Europe where fascists in Russia, Hungary, etc loom? Maybe you'll be safe a little longer somewhere on the Asian continent with the currently slower rolling fascist forces there. But it's only temporary. You can't ultimately escape.
The question is. Where well the breaking point be for most people. What event will cause the public to drag these fuckers from their homes and hold them responsible. Because that's what it's going to take. For them to remember that they rely on us. Not only for their wealth. But continued existence. Only when that fear has been driven into them, will things even start to get better.
And it might surprise us. It may just be a red state that does it. One of these Republican sycophants getting dragged from a town hall. Assaulted by a whole community for their rolls in making things worse for everyone. Police are going to have a hard time locking up a whole town. And these elected ghouls that love to ignore their constituents will reel in terror. To be clear, violence isn't the answer. Fear is. The fear of knowing we far outnumber them. That they could be subject to violent accountability at any moment. Dragged from their safe beds even.
Fear backed by the threat of violence.
Look, I hate violence. But anyone who says “violence isn’t the answer” clearly hasn’t read a history book. It’s nearly always how things are changed (for better or worse).
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People fleeing fascism are just hoping other people will be forced to fight it and win before it gets to them. No matter what happens, eventually some people will have to stand and fight it. There is nothing wrong with deciding that the time to stand and fight it has come. It is scary, yes. It has been a long time since we have had to fight fascism. We might feel like we have forgotten how. But we will learn quickly. The same technology that enables them also enables us in ways just as profound, maybe more profound. Vive la resistance!
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Does the law in Mississippi apply to the geographic region and airspace, or only residents?
Last time i checked "states rights" didn't mean the right to impose your laws on people or businesses running out of other states.
If anyone from Mississippi wants to use our services I'm totally ready to ignore any and all laws that don't acknowledge to sovereignty of the net.
Also states don't have one company to go after. It is nearly impossible to track down and file court orders for if your lucky non-profits in other countries.
Like I don't think there are many people that host Mastodon instances that will listen to a court order out of the goodness of there heart.
"Mississippi has a backwards-ass age verification requirement. We're not allowed to let users in from Mississippi. Verify you're not in Mississippi"
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