Imgur geo-blocked the UK, so I geo-unblocked my network

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Archive.org and UK blocking

  • Commenters disagree on whether archive.org is “blocked in the UK.”
  • Consensus: it’s generally reachable, but many UK mobile and PAYG broadband packages enable “adult content” filters by default, which incidentally block archive.org.
  • Unblocking usually requires age verification with the ISP (credit card, online toggle, or phone/shop visit), and specifics vary widely by provider and contract type.

UK content controls, Online Safety Act, and public opinion

  • Several posts describe long-standing UK practice of default adult-content blocking on mobile networks, justified as cheap, broad parental control.
  • There’s debate whether Imgur’s withdrawal is due to the Online Safety Act (age checks) or pre-existing data protection rules enforced by the ICO.
  • Some argue this is straightforward child-data protection; others see it as part of a broader authoritarian drift and “landslide” of censorship.
  • Polls reportedly show strong support for child-protection laws, but commenters note such polling hides nuance (e.g., people support “protect kids” but not incidental blocking of benign sites like Imgur).

Why Imgur left and how they block

  • Imgur is geoblocking UK traffic and also appears to block many VPN exit IPs, sometimes returning misleading “over capacity” errors instead of a clear geoblock message.
  • This makes casual circumvention with off-the-shelf VPNs unreliable.

Network-level workarounds and split tunneling

  • Many readers have built similar setups:
    • Policy-based routing (PBR) on OpenWRT, UniFi, MikroTik, OPNsense/pfSense, etc., to send only specific domains/IPs via VPN or WireGuard.
    • Use of DNS tricks, nftables/ipset, or nginx SNI inspection to route by hostname.
    • Raspberry Pi or small PC acting as a VPN router so all LAN devices benefit without per-device configuration.
  • Some note router-based PBR on raw IPs is brittle with CDNs; hostname-aware proxies are more precise.

Practical issues, limits, and side effects

  • Solutions stop working when you leave home unless you also VPN back into your own network, leading to “double VPN” scenarios.
  • IPv6 support is a weak point in some consumer gear (e.g., UniFi’s WireGuard), complicating full coverage.
  • Several users comment on the long history and fragility of free image hosts: when services shut down, forums become graveyards of broken embeds, and Imgur’s current behavior is seen as another turn of that cycle.