Staying ahead of censors in 2025

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

China: Current Circumvention Tools and Performance

  • Commenters report widespread use of v2ray (VLESS/VMess), Trojan, and Xray-core, often chained via near-China VPS “first hops” (e.g., nyanpass setups) and then multiple Asian hops.
  • WireGuard to personal VPSs “just works” for some visitors; commercial VPNs like Mullvad work but slower.
  • Some use roaming SIMs plus self-hosted VLESS, or even custom proxies over Syncthing relays to reach residential IPs.
  • Bandwidth is described as limited but not hard-capped; congestion and poor peering dominate unless you pay for premium CN2 GIA transit.
  • One person notes extremely low speeds when using SSH as a proxy, while others see ~10 Mbps.

Legal/Sanctions Questions Around Tor and Similar Tools

  • A thread examines whether Tor needs OFAC or ITAR clearance to serve users in sanctioned countries.
  • Several argue Tor is “speech, not trade”: free, open-source software publication rather than a commercial export, so OFAC applies more clearly to paid deals (e.g., BrowserBox) than to Tor itself.
  • Encryption is claimed not to fall under ITAR anymore; others remain unsure and seek legal clarity.
  • Comparisons are made to GrapheneOS: open-source projects “supply” nobody directly; users fetch the code themselves.

Conjure, WebTunnel, and the Move From Obfuscation to Mimicry

  • Conjure (refraction networking using unused ISP address space) is praised as a major milestone: it undermines IP enumeration/blocklisting and forces censors to risk large-scale collateral damage.
  • Some doubt this would deter Russian censors, who already block huge IP ranges and tolerate heavy collateral damage.
  • WebTunnel’s SNI imitation and non-WebPKI certificate support are highlighted as useful not just against state censors but also for evading corporate tracking and ad infrastructure.

Why Focus on Russia/Iran, Not EU/UK/Australia?

  • Some object that the Tor post ignores rising censorship and speech-related arrests in the UK, EU, and other democracies (hate-speech laws, age verification, “online harms,” protest restrictions).
  • Others respond that Tor’s blog post is narrowly about technical blocking (DNS/IP/DPI) where Tor itself is targeted; in the UK/EU Tor isn’t generally blocked, so there’s less for Tor to do at the network layer.

Huge Subthread: UK Hate-Speech, “Malicious Communications,” and Arrest Statistics

  • A long argument centers on reported ~12,000 annual arrests in England & Wales for “online/offensive communications.”
  • Critics claim the UK increasingly criminalizes “insulting” or “abusive” speech, sometimes in private contexts (e.g., slurs in texts, memes, misgendering, slogans, silent prayer near abortion clinics), creating “thought crimes” and political policing.
  • Defenders counter that:
    • Laws target incitement to violence, serious harassment, and stirring up racial/religious/sexual-orientation hatred, not mere criticism.
    • Many cited cases involve explicit or contextual threats (e.g., “set fire to hotels full of asylum seekers”) or coordinated racist agitation (e.g., neo-Nazi sticker campaigns).
    • Arrest figures aggregate very different behaviours, including domestic abuse, stalking, and obscene messaging; raw totals are misleading without breakdowns.
  • Several cases (e.g., hate-speech prosecutions, abortion-clinic buffer zones, controversial tweets, the “Nazi dog” video) are hotly disputed; links and sources are debated, and some media outlets are dismissed as unreliable.
  • Comparisons to Russia/Iran are contested: some see Western trends as on the same spectrum; others insist equating UK practice with open dictatorships trivializes far worse repression.

Broader Free-Speech Philosophy and US–Europe Differences

  • One camp stresses that hate speech and troll farms are a direct attack on democratic consensus; they support attempts (even imperfect) to curb incitement and coordinated hatred.
  • Another camp argues that “hate speech” is inherently elastic and tends to become “whatever those in power dislike,” leading to selective enforcement and long-term danger for all sides.
  • US vs European approaches are contrasted:
    • US: strong constitutional protection against government censorship but heavy private and platform moderation, plus libel leveraged by the wealthy.
    • Europe/UK: more state restrictions on hate/insulting speech and protests, but less focus on private-platform absolutism; some see this as necessary, others as democratic backsliding.
  • Several note you cannot “solve” censorship purely with technology; political change and institutional integrity are also required.

Tor-Specific Technical Wishes and Questions

  • Users ask for:
    • Clearer, official instructions for setting up Snowflake on desktop (not only via Orbot on Android).
    • Easier GUI controls for selecting exit-node regions to bypass geo-blocking (Tor dev-side concern: must preserve fair load balancing between countries).
    • Native DNS tunneling support.
  • The article’s emphasis on “mimicry” (traffic that looks like normal HTTPS or legitimate SNI) is seen as the key 2025 shift: random-looking traffic is now itself a DPI signature.

Russia’s Current Network Censorship Situation

  • Recent reports describe:
    • Most off-the-shelf VPNs blocked.
    • Key Western vendor sites (Intel, Microsoft) self-blocking due to sanctions, complicating basic laptop setup.
    • Voice/video calls in most messengers and FaceTime blocked.
    • Outline VPN still functioning, but setting up servers is hard for residents lacking foreign payment options; iOS Outline app remains in the Russian store.